Inspiring oral history of the impact of cultural and educational exchange between South Africa and the United States during apartheid. For almost forty years, under the watchful eye of the apartheid regime, some three thousand South Africans participated in cultural and educational exchange with the United States. Exposure to American democracy brought hope during a time when social and political change seemed unlikely. In the end the process silently triumphed over the resistance of authorities, and many of the individuals who participated in the program later participated in South Africa’s first democratic elections, in 1994, and now occupy key positions in academia, the media, parliament, and the judiciary. In Outsmarting Apartheid, Daniel Whitman, former Program Development Officer at the US Embassy in Pretoria, interviews the South Africans and Americans who administered, advanced, and benefited from government-funded exchange. The result is a detailed account of the workings and effectiveness of the US Information Agency and a demonstration of the value of “soft power” in easing democratic transition in a troubled area. “Outsmarting Apartheid is a major contribution to the study of ‘soft diplomacy.’ It is a wonderful picture of how the public diplomacy section of an embassy works and the positive impact it can have on advancing US interests. The detail of daily life under apartheid for South Africans of all races is fascinating and will become more important as memories of that period recede.” — John Campbell, author of Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink, Updated Edition “This book fills an important void in the literature—it provides great insight, from the point of view of actual participants, in the dismantling of apartheid and the construction of a postapartheid democratic system in South Africa.” — John Mukum Mbaku, author of Corruption in Africa: Causes, Consequences, and Cleanups

This volume demonstrates the instrumental use of Currere as a methodology to bring about Deracialisation through transformational learning by a white educator in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Offering an honest and vulnerable recognition of privilege and exclusivity, it disrupts deep-seated racial bias and assumptions, unveils racial blind spots, and confronts the discourse that South African "white" educators are, overtly or covertly, perpetuating systemic racism within schools. Based on autoethnographic analyses of the author’s lived educational experiences within the Apartheid regime, it uses the theoretical concepts of Currere to initiate her journey towards Deracialisation and transform her current pedagogical practice. In doing so, the book demonstrates how critical self-examination of underlying beliefs that lead to actions, and how the past – in this case, being born, raised, and educated within the Apartheid era – can influence one’s teaching in ways that harm the educational development of culturally diverse learners. Grappling with how autoethnographical experiences in a specific setting can inform current pedagogy, and be used to bring about professional and personal transformation, this book will be of interest to scholars, postgraduate students, and educational researchers with interests in curriculum theory, race and education, transformative learning, Deracialisation, and autoethnography.

As apartheid crumbled in South Africa, racial identity was thrown into question. Based on a year-long ethnographic study of a multiracial high school in Durban, this book explores how youth make meaning of the still powerful, yet changing, idea of race. In a world saturated with media images and global commodities, fashion and music become charged, polarized racial identifiers. As youth engage with this world, race simultaneously persists and falters, providing us with a glimpse into the future of race both within South Africa and throughout urban youth cultures worldwide.

Cold War Camera explores the visual mediation of the Cold War and illuminates photography’s role in shaping the ways it was prosecuted and experienced. The contributors show how the camera stretched the parameters of the Cold War beyond dominant East-West and US-USSR binaries and highlight the significance of photography from across the global South. Among other topics, the contributors examine the production and circulation of the iconic figure of the “revolutionary Vietnamese woman” in the 1960s and 1970s; photographs connected with the coming of independence and decolonization in West Africa; family photograph archives in China and travel snapshots by Soviet citizens; photographs of apartheid in South Africa; and the circulation of photographs of Inuit Canadians who were relocated to the extreme Arctic in the 1950s. Highlighting the camera’s capacity to envision possible decolonialized futures, establish visual affinities and solidarities, and advance calls for justice to redress violent proxy conflicts, this volume demonstrates that photography was not only crucial to conducting the Cold War, it is central to understanding it. Contributors. Ariella Azoulay, Jennifer Bajorek, Erina Duganne, Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Eric Gottesman, Tong Lam, Karintha Lowe, Ángeles Donoso Macaya, Darren Newbury, Andrea Noble, Sarah Parsons, Gil Pasternak, Thy Phu, Oksana Sarkisova, Olga Shevchenko, Laura Wexler, Guigui Yao, Donya Ziaee, Marta Ziętkiewicz

This incisive, deeply informed book introduces post-apartheid South Africa to an international audience. South Africa has a history of racism and white supremacy. This crushing historical burden continues to resonate today. Under President Jacob Zuma, South Africa is treading water. Nevertheless, despite calls to undermine the 1994 political settlement characterized by human rights guarantees and the rule of law, distinguished diplomat John Campbell argues that the country’s future is bright and that its democratic institutions will weather its current lackluster governance. The book opens with an overview to orient readers to South Africa’s historical inheritance. A look back at the presidential inaugurations of Nelson Mandela and Jacob Zuma and Mandela’s funeral illustrates some of the ways South Africa has indeed changed since 1994. Reviewing current demographic trends, Campbell highlights the persistent consequences of apartheid. He goes on to consider education, health, and current political developments, including land reform, with an eye on how South Africa’s democracy is responding to associated thorny challenges. The book ends with an assessment of why prospects are currently poor for closer South African ties with the West. Campbell concludes, though, that South Africa’s democracy has been surprisingly adaptable, and that despite intractable problems, the black majority are no longer strangers in their own country.

This is the first book to frame U.S. public diplomacy in the broad sweep of American diplomatic practice from the early colonial period to the present. It tells the story of how change agents in practitioner communities – foreign service officers, cultural diplomats, broadcasters, citizens, soldiers, covert operatives, democratizers, and presidential aides – revolutionized traditional government-to-government diplomacy and moved diplomacy with the public into the mainstream. This deeply researched study bridges practice and multi-disciplinary scholarship. It challenges the common narrative that U.S. public diplomacy is a Cold War creation that was folded into the State Department in 1999 and briefly found new life after 9/11. It documents historical turning points, analyzes evolving patterns of practice, and examines societal drivers of an American way of diplomacy: a preference for hard power over soft power, episodic commitment to public diplomacy correlated with war and ambition, an information-dominant communication style, and American exceptionalism. It is an account of American diplomacy’s public dimension, the people who shaped it, and the socialization and digitalization that today extends diplomacy well beyond the confines of embassies and foreign ministries.

Highlights the continuing social unrest and public protest occurring in South Africa’s poorest districts. Frequently praised for its democratic transition, South Africa has experienced an almost uninterrupted cycle of social protest since the late 1990s. There have been increasing numbers of demonstrations against the often appalling living conditions of millions of South Africans, pointing to the fact that they have yet to achieve full citizenship. A Turbulent South Africa offers a new look at this historic period in the existence of the young South African democracy, far removed from the idealistic portrait of the “Rainbow Nation.” Jérôme Tournadre draws on interviews and observations to take the reader from the backstreets of the squatters’ camps to international militant circles, and from the immediate, infra-political level to the worldwide anti-capitalist protest movement. He investigates the mechanisms and the meaning of social discontent in light of several different phenomena. These include, the struggle of the poor to gain recognition, the persistent memory of the fight against apartheid, the developments in the political world since the “Mandela Years,” the coexistence of liberal democracy with a “popular politics” found in poor and working-class districts, and many other factors that have played a crucial part in the social and political tensions at the heart of post-apartheid South Africa.