Charles Van Onselen

Three Wise Monkeys presents a startling new way of viewing the entangled, often hidden, economic, political and social dynamics that informed the rise of 20th-century South Africa, often at the expense of neighbouring Mozambique. It is history that transcends state boundaries to take the reader into previously uncharted domains of the recent past. This 3-volume work was published as a box set but is also available as individual volumes.Volume 2, 'Through the Turnstiles of the Mind', explores Catholic Mozambique's role in the leisure economy of Protestant South Africa, as a place where bachelor miners and Randlords alike could project their fantasies of subtropical exotica, whether in the raucous bars and brothels of the port or in the development of the upmarket Polana Hotel and the vision of segregated 'tourist zones' for increasingly race-conscious Rand holidaymakers.Mozambique's liminal place in the leisure and entertainment universe was nowhere better represented than in the rise and eventual fall of Louren o Marques Radio. For decades, LM Radio beamed the hit songs of the day, and a certain vision of post-war modernity, to white South Africans increasingly in thrall to the stifling rule of Calvinist churches, the National Party and the Broederbond-dominated SABC. The eventual triumph of the SABC in muzzling LM Radio was a foretaste of the administrative and police state that came to imprison South African minds during the 1960s and 1970s.

Three Wise Monkeys presents a startling new way of viewing the entangled, often hidden, economic, political and social dynamics that informed the rise of 20th-century South Africa, often at the expense of neighbouring Mozambique. It is history that transcends state boundaries to take the reader into previously uncharted domains of the recent past. This 3-volume work was published as a box set but is also available as individual volumes.Volume 1, 'The Making of an African Economic Tragedy', looks at the Portuguese colonisation of Mozambique, and the gradual transformation of the colony into a reservoir of cheap labour, first during the Atlantic slave trade and then during the rise of the voracious Rand mining industry. In a relatively short period during the late 19th century, Mozambique went from being a sleepy imperial backwater, its economy focused on the Indian Ocean, to a weak client feeding into the South African economy, which was being transformed by the discoveries of first diamonds and then gold. The desperately poor Sul do Save region in southern Mozambique became the hunting ground for agents recruiting labour for the Witwatersrand mines, and a grim trade in black bodies defined this unequal relationship. A profound imbalance was created between the two territories, with Mozambique locked into financial dependence on its neighbour to the west. In effect, the South African mining industry got to own a large part of the harbour infrastructure in the capital, Louren o Marques. The story of Mozambique's finances, and particularly of its 'central bank', the Banco Nacional UItramarino, illustrates how the colony's commercial economy and sluggish administration were no match for the power of the Rand mining houses and British sterling. Mozambique was colonised twice over - first by Portugal and then by South Africa.

Three Wise Monkeys presents a startling new way of viewing the entangled, often hidden, economic, political and social dynamics that informed the rise of 20th-century South Africa, often at the expense of neighbouring Mozambique. It is history that transcends state boundaries to take the reader into previously uncharted domains of the recent past. This 3-volume work was published as a box set but is also available as individual volumes.Three Wise Monkeys culminates with volume 3, 'The Quest for Wealth Without Work', a forensic examination of South Africa's long struggle to suppress gambling, and especially lotteries. The opposition of the Calvinist churches - both Afrikaans- and English-speaking - had its counterpart in the eager embrace of games of chance by the white working class on the Witwatersrand. Focusing on the career of Rufe Naylor, an Australian bookmaker, horse dealer and entrepreneur who, with the help of a defrocked Portuguese Catholic priest, ran the Louren o Marques Lottery, Volume 3 shows how the efforts of church and state to control the leisure time and morals of the working class, intersected with the need to ensure the flow of cheap mine labour from Mozambique. Ultimately, in the suppression of the Louren o Marques Lottery - and in campaigns against pinball machines, dog racing and other 'social evils' - can be seen the emerging outlines of the apartheid police state.

This seminal book reveals how black labor was exploited in twentieth-century South Africa, the human costs of which are still largely hidden from history. It was the people of southern Mozambique, bent double beneath the historical loads of forced labor and slavery, then sold off en masse as contracted laborers, who paid the highest price for South African gold. An iniquitous intercolonial agreement for the exploitation of ultra-cheap black labor was only made possible through nightly use of the steam locomotive on the transnational railway linking Johannesburg and Louren o Marques. These night trains left deep scars in the urban and rural cultures of black communities, whether in the form of popular songs or a belief in nocturnal witches' trains that captured and conveyed zombie workers to the region's most unpopular places of employment. By tracing the journeys undertaken by black migrants, Charles van Onselen powerfully reconstructs how racial thinking, expressed logistically, reflected the evolving systems of segregation and apartheid. On the night trains, the last stop was always hell.

This seminal book reveals how black labour was exploited in twentieth-century South Africa, the human costs of which are still largely hidden from history. It was the people of southern Mozambique, bent double beneath the historical loads of forced labour and slavery, then sold off en masse as contracted labourers, who paid the highest price for South African gold. An iniquitous intercolonial agreement for the exploitation of ultra-cheap black labour was only made possible through nightly use of the steam locomotive on the transnational railway linking Johannesburg and Lourenço Marques. These night trains left deep scars in the urban and rural cultures of black communities, whether in the form of popular songs or a belief in nocturnal witches' trains that captured and conveyed zombie workers to the region's most unpopular places of employment. By tracing the journeys undertaken by black migrants, Charles van Onselen powerfully reconstructs how racial thinking, expressed logistically, reflected the evolving systems of segregation and apartheid. On the night trains, the last stop was always hell.

Masked Raiders follows the wild exploits of legendary brigands like the McKeone brothers and 'One Armed Jack' McLoughlin, who ravaged the subcontinent, from the mining towns of Barberton, Kimberley and Johannesburg, to the borders of Basotholand, Bechuanaland, Mozambique and Rhodesia. With tales of heists, safecracking, illegal gold dealings, prison breaks and hidden roadside treasure, the book reveals the potency of the highveld's 'criminal heroes'. Startling insights also reveal how the hidden grammar of brigandage informed political actions of the day, such as the Jameson Raid, and how the movement of bandits across the interior helped shape the borders of what was to become modern South Africa.

A bold and innovative social history, The Seed Is Mine concerns the disenfranchised blacks who did so much to shape the destiny of South Africa. After years of interviews with Kas Maine and his neighbors, employers, friends, and family – a rare triumph of collaborative courage and dedication – Charles van Onselen has recreated the entire life of a man who struggled to maintain his family in a world dedicated to enriching whites and impoverishing blacks, while South Africa was tearing them apart.

The Jameson Raid was a pivotal moment in the history of South Africa, linking events from the Anglo-Boer War to the declaration of the Union of South Africa in 1910. For more than a century, the failed revolution has been interpreted through the lens of British imperialism, with responsibility laid at the feet of Cecil Rhodes. Yet, the raid was less a serious attempt to overthrow a Boer government than a wild adventure with transnational roots in American filibustering.In The Cowboy Capitalist, renowned South African historian Charles van Onselen challenges a historiography of over 120 years, locating the raid in American rather than British history and forcing us to rethink the histories of at least three nations. Through a close look at the little-remembered figure of John Hays Hammond, a confidant of both Rhodes and Jameson, he discovers the American Old West on the South African Highveld. This radical reinterpretation challenges the commonly held belief that the Jameson Raid was quintessentially British and, in doing so, drives splinters into our understanding of events as far forward as South Africa’s critical 1948 general election, with which the foundations of Grand Apartheid were laid.

The Jameson Raid was a pivotal moment in the history of South Africa, linking events from the Anglo-Boer War to the declaration of the Union of South Africa in 1910. For over a century the failed revolution has been interpreted through the lens of British imperialism, with responsibility laid at the feet of Cecil John Rhodes. Yet the wild adventurism that characterised the raid resembles a cowboy expedition more than a serious attempt to overthrow a Boer government. In this book Charles van Onselen challenges a historiography of over 120 years, locating the raid in American rather than British history and forcing us to rethink the histories of at least three nations. Through a close look at the little-remembered figure of John Hays Hammond, a confidant of both Rhodes and Jameson, he discovers the American Old West on the South African Highveld. This radical reinterpretation challenges the commonly held belief that the Jameson Raid was quintessentially British and, in doing so, drives splinters into our understanding of events as far forward as South Africas critical 1948 general election, with which the foundations of Grand Apartheid were laid.

Johannesburg was -- and is -- the Frontier of Money. Within months of its founding, the mining camp was host to organised crime: the African "Regiment of the Hills" and "Irish Brigade" bandits. Bars, brothels, boarding houses and hotels oozed testosterone and violence, and the use of fists and guns was commonplace. Beyond the chaos were clear signs of another struggle, one to maintain control, honour and order within the emerging male and mining dominated culture. In the underworld, the dictum of "honour among thieves", as well as a hatred of informers, testified to attempts at self-regulation. A "real man" did not take advantage of an opponent by employing underhand tactics. It had to be a "fair fight" if a man was to be respected. This was the world that "One-armed Jack" McLoughlin -- brigand, soldier, sailor, mercenary, burglar, highwayman and safe-cracker -- entered in the early 1890s to become Johannesburg's most infamous "Irish" anti-hero and social bandit. McLoughlin's infatuation with George Stevenson prompted him to recruit the young Englishman into his gang of safe-crackers but "Stevo" was a man with a past and primed for personal and professional betrayal. It was a deadly mixture. Honour could only be retrieved through a Showdown at the Red Lion.