This is a study of the ways knowledge and science have been used in South Africa to develop a sense of self-awareness and national identity and have been put to the service of power - mostly white power. It starts in the early 19th century when knowledge and institutions of knowledge (like the South African Library and the South African Museum) formed part of a drive to establish a middle-class order that laid claim to the rights of British citizens in the Cape Colony. By the 20th century, particularly under Prime Minister ...
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This is a study of the ways knowledge and science have been used in South Africa to develop a sense of self-awareness and national identity and have been put to the service of power - mostly white power. It starts in the early 19th century when knowledge and institutions of knowledge (like the South African Library and the South African Museum) formed part of a drive to establish a middle-class order that laid claim to the rights of British citizens in the Cape Colony. By the 20th century, particularly under Prime Minister Smuts, himself a philosopher and amateur botanist, science was being used to underpin a sense of South African patriotic achievement within the Commonwealth. After the National Party came to power, the links between science and nationalism deepened, with the state becoming heavily involved in projects like Sasol, the Verwoerd Dam, Armscor and Pelindaba, both to establish self-sufficiency and security in a hostile world and to develop a sense of pride in national achievement. In the final chapter the politics of indigenous knowledge in contemporary South Africa are touched upon, with particular reference to President Mbeki's public attitudes to HIV/Aids. This is the kind of work that makes one look at the familiar in a new way, whether at a building like the South African Library or at a figure like Smuts whose scientific interests now seem quite logical for a man concerned with building a white South African identity.
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