Apartheid Modern: South Africa's Oil from Coal Project and the history of a South African company

310 Pages·2012·4.82 MB·English

Apartheid Modern:
South Africa‘s Oil from Coal Project and the history of a South African company town
by
Stephen John Sparks

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Anthropology and History)
in The University of Michigan
2012

Doctoral Committee:

Professor Gabrielle Hecht, Chair
Emeritus Professor David William Cohen
Professor Adam P. Ashforth
Associate Professor William J. Glover
© Stephen John Sparks
————
2012
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Love and appreciation are due to Ann Arbor family: Gretchen Elsner-Sommer and David
William Cohen for ‗truck parks‘, thanksgiving dinners and a special barn, and to fellow
road-trippers and dinner dialogists, Gina Moranz-Sanchez and Geoff Eley. Special
thanks, too, for neighbors, baby communers, Marx and dissertation potluck reading
groups, indoor soccer team-mates and graduate student comrades: Danna Agmon, Dan
Simundza and Eli Agmon-Simundza, Daniel Birchok, Lori Roddy and Anna Roddy-
Birchok, Federico Helgott, Esteban Rozo, Latika Neelakantan, Jack Taylor, Aaron
Seaman, Brady G‘Sell, Isabelle de Rezende, Monica Patterson, Davide Orsini, Guillermo
Salas, Daniel Hershenzon, David Epstein, Tasha Rijke-Epstein, Robyn D‘Avignon,
Anneeth Kaur Hundle, Jolene Pelton, Robert Blunt, Heloise Finch, Ashley Rockenbach,
Pedro Monaville, Clapperton Mavhunga, Edward Murphy, Andrea Wright, Lauren
Hirshberg, Sarah Miller, Elspeth Martini, Suzi Linsley, Dave Trout, Andrew Ross, Sara
Lampert, Ian Campbell, Galia Rebhun, Colleen Woods, Dave Rowland, Helen Ho,
Mathieu Desan, Kenneth Garner, M. Saleh Saul Allen, Heidi Liere and Caroline
Jeannerat.

I will always be immensely grateful for the generous time, thought and effort that
Gabrielle Hecht has dedicated to improving my writing and scholarship over the last six
or so years. In his uniquely probing manner, David William Cohen has offered insights
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and asked challenging questions which will stay with me for years to come. I hope to one
day be able to better answer them than I have yet been able to do. It was fabulously
serendipitous that I had the opportunity to take a class with Will Glover shortly after
discovering the role of Swiss architect Max Kirchhofer in the planning of Sasolburg. It
has been a privilege to benefit from Will‘s guidance as I have begun to explore
Sasolburg‘s place in the history of planning. Adam Ashforth has provided thoughtful
comments, criticisms and suggestions in early seminar and workshop presentations of my
research, through to the defense itself. I would also like to thank Nancy Rose-Hunt,
Derek Peterson, Grace Davie, Stephan Miescher, Timothy Burke, Lynn Thomas, Paul
Edwards, John Carson, Elizabeth Roberts, Paul Johnson, Kali Isreal, Kathleen Canning,
Ellen Poteet, Joshua Cole, Jay Cook, Christian de Pee, Scott Spector, Erik Meuggler,
Matthew Hull, Julie Skurki, Jonathan Hyslop, Alan Mabin, Lis Lange, Neil Roos and the
late Fernando Coronil.

Family at home in South Africa have provided unflinching support, love and good humor
during my studies. My deepest love and gratitude to Tim, Chris, Celia and Roger, Tahira,
Yunus, Sumaya, Adnaan, and Muhammad, all of whose assistance with childcare in the
final months of writing proved invaluable. Friends and colleagues at home have given
succor and pleasure along the way. My special thanks to the gang of increasingly
diasporic Durbanites: Prinisha Badassy, Anesh Naidoo, Vashna Jagarnath, Richard
Pithouse, Suryakanthie Chetty, Azad Essa, Ian Macqueen, Julian Brown, Bernard
Dubbeld, Vanessa Noble, Vukile Khumalo, Julie Parle and Thembisa Waetjen. Keith
Breckenridge and Catherine Burns have continued to provide unparalleled generosity,
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support, and intellectual nourishment, for which I will always be grateful. The venerable
History and African Studies Seminar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard
College campus in Durban has proven a remarkable intellectual compass over the years:
rooted in historiographical rigor while pushing outwards towards broader comparative
and theoretical scholarly horizons. In addition to those mentioned above, my thanks to
fellow seminarians and interlocutors Marjike du Toit, Jeff Guy, Mark Hunter, T.J. Tallie,
Bill Freund, Gillian Hart, Shirley Brooks, Richard Ballard and Sharad Chari. At
Michigan I would like to thank the participants in the Anthropology and History
Workshop, the African History and Anthropology Workshop and the Science,
Technology and Medicine Studies reading group, all of whom provided valuable
feedback at key points.

I would like to thank Diana Denney, Lorna Altstetter and Kathleen King for their patient
and expert labors in helping myself and many other graduate students negotiate the
complicated bureaucratic worlds of the University of Michigan, taxes and immigration.
The research for this dissertation received the generous funding support of Rackham
Graduate School, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies and the Doctoral Program in
Anthropology and History at Michigan, as well as the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, and
the National Science Foundation, ‗Science and Society‘ Doctoral Dissertation Research
Grant #SES-0823211.

Elspeth Martini – an Aussie who this South African is proud to call his friend – has
helped with printing and paper-work across the ocean, for which I am hugely thankful.
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Prinisha Badassy helped with some last-minute formatting. I have treasured her
friendship and support all these years.

It has been the greatest pleasure and privilege of my life to have been able to travel this
road together with Nafisa Essop Sheik, making our first home in Ann Arbor, learning,
reading, debating and raising our child together. She has lived with this dissertation for
every bit as long as I have and has helped me to develop and clarify my thinking
immeasurably over time. I am especially thankful for her patience and unreasonably good
humor in these final months of writing, when she has had to carry a disproportionate
responsibility for child-care, all the while itching to focus her attentions on her own
writing. Even if she hasn‘t literally finished every one of the sentences I‘ve written, she
has always known better than any other, what I‘ve been trying to say.

Finally, to the people of Sasolburg and Zamdela: baie dankie, Kea leboha!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ii
List of Figures viii
Abstract x

Introduction: The ‗Apartheid Modern‘ and the SASOL project 1

Chapter One

‗Tailor Made for South African Conditions‘: 31
The Technopolitics of South Africa‘s Oil-from-Coal Project

Chapter Two

Pioneering Work of (Inter)National Importance: 63
Techno-nationalism and Modernization at SASOL

Chapter Three

―Spoiling the neighborhood, pulling down the town‖: 95
Town planning, Class and Respectability in Sasolburg

Chapter Four

―another location in the white town‖: 134
Domestic labor, letter writing and the politics of space in Sasolburg

Chapter Five

‗Paternalism‘, Respectability and ‗New Black Apartheid Moderns‘: 170
SASOL and the making of Zamdela township

Chapter Six

‗their cultures were not well invested in them‘: 230
The Patriots Theater Group and the Production of History in Zamdela
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Conclusion 280

Bibliography 287

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Inaugural SASOL Board of Directors (1950) 51
Figure 2: SASOL ‗pioneers‘ 69
Figure 3: The national flag flying in front of SASOL 76
Figure 4: SASOL plant, Sasolburg, 76
Figure 5: Boy refuels toy Sasol tanker, 78
Figure 6: Parade participants, Sasolburg, 1956 79
Figure 7: SASOL‘s Republic Festival float, Pretoria, 1966 80
Figure 8: Two Rand note, 81
Figure 9: SASOL Stamp, 81
Figure 10: SASOL ‗Great Trek‘ Cartoon, 82
Figure 11: Stills from the Jamie Uys film ‗Rip van Wyk‘ (1960) 86
Figure 12: SASOL‘s Technical Language Committee, July 1961 90
Figure 13: General layout of Sasolburg 103
Figure 14: Max Kirchhofer with Sasolburg municipal officials 105
Figure 15: ‗Sasolburg, 4pm‘ drawing by Helen Neale-May 111
Figure 16: ‗Sasol women have the opportunity to relax over a cup of tea‘ 111
Figure 17: Sloppy Sam/Jors Gemors 122
Figure 18: Tidy Tim/Orderlike Okkert 122
Figure 19: ‗Jors se Keffie‘ 122
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Figure 20: Jors Gemors/Sloppy Sam and car 123
Figure 21: Respectable Black moderns 200
Figure 22: ‗Sasol‘s Gift to Zamdela‘ 201
Figure 23: Mr. Sibisi, proudly displaying a poster for one of his concerts 222
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