Rethinking 'Apartheid's Golden Age': South Africa, c1966-1979

Abstract

This special issue features the peer reviewed proceeds of a colloquium held at the University of Pretoria on 20 June 2016. The colloquium was an initiative of the 'Rethinking Twentieth-Century Southern Africa' research team based in the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies at the university. The team has its origins in the convergence of research interests amongst departmental members, with South Africa's 'long 1970s', defined as the period stretching from the mid-1960s to the aftermath of the Soweto Uprising, being an area of particular concern. Dr Ian Macqueen's work on white radicals and Black Consciousness, and mine on the ANC's armed struggle, both highlighted previously unacknowledged ways in which the apartheid state was challenged during this period, calling into question notions of those years as having been characterised by political quiescence.