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Keith Breckenridge: I'm a historian at the University
of KwaZulu-Natal
(a brand new combination of the old Universities of Natal and
Durban-Westville). I run a programme here called
Internet Studies (you can see what we do at www.is.und.ac.za). I also help in the History Department. My
current research and writing is on the South African state's effort to use
archival and biometric technologies to control people over the last century.
Some of this work focuses on the contemporary state's use of biometrics to
deliver pensions and regulate identities, but most of my work has looked at
the central government's policies, most of which were developed on what we
call the highveldt--the high flat lands above the Drakensberg mountains, which include the cities of the
gold mining area called the Witwatersrand.
I've lived in Durban for
about a decade, and I'm slowly beginning to understand how it works. Like you, we are moving into a major
election year this year, and much about the government of the city will be up
for grabs. If you feel very
adventurous you might want to take a look at the online summary of election
results from the last set of elections in this city--you'll see that the
African National Congress has something less than a majority of the total
vote (about 46%). This new election,
like your national election, is, thus, likely to be very close and very
important...As I write this I'm sitting on my verandah at home, which
overlooks the city and the harbour. I have a wireless ADSL lan,
so I can pretend to look after my daughter while I'm working. This is the last day of the looonng summer holiday (thank god). It's very warm and very muggy, and my
daughter and her friend are in and out of our very little pool.
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Stephen Sparks:
I'm 23 years young, currently at the beginning of the second year of my
Masters degree in History here at the University of Kwa-Zulu
Natal, Durban. I did this course
in 2002 and helped facilitate last year, so this is my third year sitting in
on the video conferences, which I always enjoy...my Masters research is
focused on the history of the South African oil industry during
Apartheid. At this stage I am looking
at the environmental aspects of the functioning of South Africa's first two
oil refineries which were built in the 1950's and 60's in Durban. The first
refinery was built by the Standard Vacuum Oil Company of New
York (Socony) - later
known as Mobil, the second by Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum.
Apartheid era planning has meant that large residential communities are
located in close proximity to these refineries. There has been increasingly
strident mobilisation by community based
environmental organisations around issues of what
they have termed 'environmental justice.' My research covers the early
history of the functioning of these two refineries and the responses of local
communities, the oil companies concerned and the different levels of
government to the emergence of pollution associated with their operation. I
hope to use this study to illuminate the nature of the Apartheid state's
interactions with multinational oil companies and to historicise
the contemporary controversies surrounding pollution and the petro-chemical industry in South
Africa. I am also however interested in
aspects of the history of work and technological change in the petro-chemical industry. I have previously written an
exploratory paper for this course on the history of work and technology at
the Wentworth oil refinery (South Africa's first) looking at some of the
emergent trends in labour recruitment and organisation which are common to many industrial sectors
globally, including increased sub-contracting, labour
brokering and a general decrease in the amount of stable, long-term
employment on which workers can depend today. This is an aspect which I am
very interested in exploring further in my future research, and I hope this
course will present an opportunity to discuss these issues further.
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Mlungisi
Mabaso--I am 25 years old and I am doing
Masters in IOLS (Indistrial, Organisational
and Labour Studies). I am doing research on the
consequences of workplace restructuring on manufacturing jobs. My intention
is to unveil what neccessitates/ fuels workplace
restructuring because
this process is not new but it
started to take place many years ago, for example in Henry Ford's Industry
with the introduction of the movong assemble line
and Taylor's Scientific
management system. We hear of Keysan method and
today we are talking about Ubuntu, all these are
changes that are introduced in organisations with
the intention of optimising profits and production.
The writers have written a lot on the impact of workplace restructuring on
both the employees and employers but nobody has tried to look at what fuels
workplace restructuring in manufacturing particularly. This is what I am
trying to do and this course is going to help me understand the history of
Industrial developement here in South
Africa especially the part that we have
covered on the strikes in the tyre industry.
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Glen Robbins I am a Research Fellow at the School of
Development Studies (UKZN) and a part-time advisor/consultant/snake-oil
salesman to government, developing country programme
donors, multi-lateral institutions and sometimes the private sector on urban
economic development issues and trade and industry policy. I will be an
irregular participant in the sessions due to my other commitments.
However, I do hope to participate in some sessions and share my experience of
working in Durban local
government (formerly Durban Metro, now eThekwini)
for a number of years. Some of the material I have looked at on Pittsburgh
is very interesting and, perhaps surprisingly, there do seem to be some
common themes.
For those of you interested in information on SA's other cities you might want to try the SA Cities
Network site: http://www.sacities.co.za/
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