Natal Society Foundation – förlag

This history of agricultural studies in KwaZulu-Natal over a period of 75 years, from 1934 to 2009, gives a detailed overview of the establishment of formal agricultural studies in the province and focuses on the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Alumni of "e;AgFac"e;, as it was affectionately known, have made their mark in agricultural research not only in South Africa but also internationally. Today the School of Agricultural Sciences and Agribusiness, which replaced the old "e;AgFac"e;, has extended into the sociological and ecological significance of agriculture for the continent as a whole through its African Centre for Food Security (ACFS), and the African Centre for Crop Improvement (ACCI). Much attention is also being paid to the improvement and popularization of traditionally useful food and craft plants indigenous to Africa.

The author's interest in the philosophy of communication started while he was still at school. He had become increasingly aware that many problems in society stem from poor communication. During several years of intensive investigation, made possible by the vast resources of digitized academic books and research papers available through the internet, he began formulating his own ideas and conclusions. They resulted in the present book which he began writing shortly after turning 18. Analytic Aesthetics discusses the philosophy of communication, in particular the theory of context, using poetry and a word picture to illustrate aspects of how communication works.

This is a history of the health of the people of Pietermaritzburg, a developing city in Africa and capital of the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The book covers a period of about 170 years: from a time when a few explorers of European extraction started to settle themselves in a rural southern African valley, through the process of building and establishing a colonial town, followed by an apartheid city, and then a large multiracial and democratically governed metropolis of over 600 000 people. It shows how this process of creating and inhabiting a city changed people's health, for better or worse; and looks at the impact of the built environment, the physical environment, the social and economic environment, and the policy and legal environment on health status. The book examines the history of public health as affected by the process of urbanisation, combined with the peculiar form of social engineering that took place in South Africa, particularly during the Apartheid years.

Numbering the Dead is a seminal account of the violent civil conflict that broke out around the city of Pietermaritzburg in 1987 and what ensued over the next three years. Aitchison and his colleagues, based at the Centre for Adult Education, documented and dissected the ebb and flow and the changing circumstances of this not-so-low intensity civil war in the region. They collected, computerised, and categorised literally thousands of instances of eyewitness or documentary evidence, and then applied an innovative synthesis of qualitative and quantitative approaches that uncovered the patterns and intimated the underlying causes. This book, mainly covering the period 1987 to 1989, presents a distillation of this monitoring work, conducted under unimaginably difficult and stressful conditions. It was originally done with the simple aim of stopping the killing by telling people in the province, in South Africa and the world what was happening, as accurately and truthfully as possible.

Nelson Mandela called the Black Sash, founded in May 1955 to contest legislation that removed coloured South Africans from the common voters'' roll in the Cape, the ''conscience of white South Africa''. Adopting a radical critique of the national condition, Sash maintained high-profile protest against iniquitous apartheid legislation through the darkest hours of recent South African history. It also ran advice offices that assisted those disempowered by racist legislation and used the information gathered to support its political campaigns. This book chronicles the history of the Natal Midlands branch based in Pietermaritzburg. What was the relevance and legacy of the Black Sash, the women''s anti-apartheid organisation, and what did this mean to its members? This book looks specifically at the Natal Midlands (Pietermaritzburg) region and the distinctiveness of its contribution. Like other regions it supported the liberation struggle through public protest and educational campaigns aimed at exposing iniquitous apartheid legislation. In a police state this required considerable determination and courage. During the darkest hours Natal Midlands Sash kept alive hope for universal civil rights in a democratic South Africa. The Pietermaritzburg Advice Office became one of the country''s busiest, specialising in old age pension and disability grant issues. Knowledge painstakingly gathered about life for black South Africans was fed back into Sash''s political and information campaigns while Natal Midlands produced several significant publications. One of the smaller branches, it punched above its weight. Whether Sash was a political pressure group of women, or a women''s organisation challenging patriarchy, it generated lively debate. Environmental issues were also accorded a high priority. Fifteen interviews show that involvement in Sash was a life-enhancing experience for many members who have looked back with pride and honour at their part in the anti-apartheid movement from 1955 to 1994.

This is the first of a three-volume history by Bill Guest of a major South African university founded as the Natal University College in Pietermaritzburg in 1909. Despite trying conditions, including two world wars, the university expanded, developed a second campus (Howard College) in Durban and became the University of Natal in 1949. This volume covers the Natal University College years from 1909 to 1949. It looks at the personalities, events and significant milestones in the early history of the university's two city campuses that helped shape its future role as one of the country's leading universities. The author draws extensively on the university archives of publications, reports, documents, reminiscences and minutes of meetings, recalling both the serious as well as the lighter side of campus life. An appendix lists all those who received degrees, diplomas and certificates from Natal University College before 1948.

This is the second of a three-volume history by Bill Guest of a major South African university founded as the Natal University College in Pietermaritzburg in 1909. Despite trying conditions, including two world wars, the university expanded, developed a second campus (Howard College) in Durban and became the University of Natal in 1949.The first volume covered the history of Natal University College from 1909 to 1949. This volume covers the years 1949 to 1976 during which the university continued to develop as a dual-centred institution while struggling to maintain its autonomy. This included control of a new third campus, a blacks-only medical school, in the face of interference from the apartheid government. The administrative centre of gravity shifted inexorably towards Durban as student enrolments and course options increased in the larger city. In addition to other sources the author draws extensively on the university archives of publications, reports, documents, reminiscences and minutes of meetings, recalling both the serious as well as the lighter side of campus life.

This is the last of a three-volume history by Bill Guest of a major South African university founded as the Natal University College in Pietermaritzburg in 1909. Despite trying conditions, including two world wars, the university expanded, developed a second campus (Howard College) in Durban and became the University of Natal in 1949. Thereafter until the mid-1970s the university continued to develop a dual-centred institution while struggling to maintain its autonomy. This included control of a third campus, a blacks-only medical school, in the face of interference from the apartheid government. The administrative centre of gravity shifted inexorably towards Durban as student enrolments and course options increased in the larger city, which also had many more potential donors. This final volume covers the tumultuous years from 1976 to 2003 during which many of the university's staff and students became embroiled in resistance to apartheid and then engaged with the consequences once the country had achieved political freedom in 1994. Some contributed to the formulation of national government policies for the new South Africa and in the restructuring of the university as it became completely desegregated and coped with financial constraints. Meanwhile it had also become a four-campus institution with the incorporation of Edgewood College of Education; and eventually five following its 2004 merger with the University of Durban-Westville to form the University of KwaZulu-Natal. In addition to other sources, including staff and student reminiscences, the author draws extensively on the University's archive of publications, reports, documents and minutes of meetings, recalling both the serious and the lighter side of campus life.

In 1977, when John Conyngham was twenty-three, the sugar farm of his childhood and youth was sold. Driven by a sense of loss, he wrote his acclaimed novel The Arrowing of the Cane. Now, decades later, he returns to where his story began, to capture a world before it fades forever. Hazara is a lyrical memoir of a family and a farm. It is about a homestead in a park-like garden among cane fields, within sight of the Indian Ocean. It is about sons fighting in wars and daughters nursing in military hospitals. It is about tennis parties, and drinks on the veranda. It is about people who love Africa but know they don't fully belong. After their marriage in 1924, a young couple named Mia and James settle on the Natal coast, just south of the Zululand border, intending to establish themselves and start a family. Before long they name their farm Hazara, after James's former regiment in the British Indian Army. Like other planters scattered across the countryside, they socialise with neighbours and have visitors to stay in their house with its view eastwards to the Indian Ocean. Then, after a chain of fateful occurrences, into this isolated world of sugar-cane farming, with its horse riding and games of tennis and charades, there arrives from England a girl named Anne. In World War II, James serves in North Africa while Mia and Anne remain on the farm and like other wives and daughters provide a surrogate home for Royal Navy sailors whose ships are undergoing repairs in Durban harbour. Later, back to Natal from flying operations with the Royal Air Force returns a young pilot named Mick, with a family story of his own. He and Anne meet and marry, and over decades transform Hazara into a model estate, but a political showdown is looming and their future seems increasingly uncertain. In the tradition of elegiac memoirs such as Karen Blixen's Out of Africa, about Anglo-Kenya, and David Thomson's Woodbrook, about Anglo-Ireland, onto this rural template John Conyngham stitches a lyrical and multi-layered tapestry of Anglo-South African life, with its interwoven destinies shot through with imperial associations, and its divided loyalties and love of the land, to catch a world before it slips from memory.

Durban''s McCord Hospital, this book argues, is one of the most important hospitals of the twentieth century. Founded ''for the Zulu'' in 1909 by American Christian missionaries, Dr James B. McCord and Margaret Mellen McCord, for more than a century it was a centre of affordable health care for the under privileged of many faiths, cultures and political persuasions. It also pioneered the training of black nurses, midwives and doctors and was supported by prominent figures such as John L. Dube and Chief Albert Luthuli. It initially faced, however, strong opposition from white factions in Durban and, by the 1960s was directly targeted for closure by South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd himself. McCords survived in part because apartheid forces did not understand that for several generations and for many communities, it had come to be a ''people''s hospital''. This identity would help carry it through to the early twenty-first century with the conviction and courage, when necessary, to stand up against the State when its policies threatened the health of all South Africa''s people. This is a history of the religious, health, medical and political contexts of Natal and South Africa from the late 1800s to the 1970s. There are many stories of important firsts and milestones, but what emerges is more than simply a straightforward tale of heroism and triumph. Instead, we tell multiple stories of struggles, successes, failures, frustrations, sacrifices, and how, on occasion, difficult choices and compromises had to be made.