Janeke Deodata Thumbran

My proposed project is to develop my PhD dissertation into a book manuscript. The PhD dissertation titled, “The ‘Coloured Question’ and the University of Pretoria: Separate Development, Trusteeship and Self Reliance, 1933-2012” tracked the apartheid state’s shifting discourses on the ‘coloured’ category as part of its attempt to resolve the 'coloured question': the political and social conundrum of where those categorized racially as ‘coloured’ belonged in South African society. The book manuscript project titled “From Stellenbosch to Pretoria: (Re)-Locating the ‘Coloured Question’ (1932-1990),” argues that, through the state’s shifting discourses, the ‘coloured question’ moved out of the geographical and epistemological space of the Western Cape, to the Transvaal. The objective of the manuscript is to trace how and why this move occurred.