The National Committee for Liberation ("ARM"), 1960-1964 : sabotage and the question of the ideological subject

Subject Matter: The dissertation gives an account of the history of the National Committee for Liberation (NCL), an anti-apartheid sabotage organisation that existed between 1960 and 1964. The study is aimed both at narrating its growth and development in the context of South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, and explaining its strategic and political choices. In particular, the reasons for its isolation from the broader muggle against Apartheid and its inability to transcend this isolation are investigated. Sources: Discussion of the context of the NCL's development depended on secondary historical works by scholars such as Tom Lodge, Paul Rich, C.J. Driver and Janet Robertson as well as archival sources. The analysis of liberal discourse in the 1950s and 1960s also drew heavily on primary sources such as the liberal journals Contact, Africa South and The New African. Secondary sources were also used for the discussion of the NCL's strategy in the context of the development of a theory of revolutionary guerrilla warfare after the Second World War: here the work of Robert Taber, John Bowyer Bell, Kenneth Grundy and Edward Feit was central. The history of the NCL itself was reconstructed from trial records, newspapers and personal interviews. Archival sources such as The Karis-Carter collection, the Hoover Institute microfilm collection of South African political documents, the Paton Papers, the Ernie Wentzel papers were also extensively used. Methodology: The discussion of the discourse of liberal NCL members depended on a post-structuralist theory of subjectivity. The conceptual underpinnings of the thesis were provided by on the work of Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Michel Pecheux, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and Slavoj Zizek. Pechcux's elaboration of the Althusserian concept of interpellation formed the basis of a discourse analysis of NCL texts. In the interviews, some use was also made of techniques of ethnographic interviewing developed by qualitative sociologists such as James Spradley. Conclusions: The analysis focused on the way NCL discourse constructed NCL members as "ordinary persons", a subject-position which implied a radical opposition between political struggle and ideological commitment. The NCL's strategic difficulties were related to the contradictions this discourse, related to metropolitan political traditions that valorised civil society, manifested in the context of post-Sharpeville South Africa. These contradictions were explored in terms of the Lacanian notion of the "ideological fantasy". The dissertation thus closes with a consideration, both of the importance of the ideological traditions identified in the analysis of NCL discourse, and the methodological importance of non-reductive conceptualisations of political identity and ideology

Nasruddin's key: poverty measurement and the government of marginal populations

This paper considers the role of ‘measurement’ and other forms of poverty knowledge in a context where the nature and direction of global economic growth is creating ‘surplus populations’ suffering various forms of marginalisation in the global economy. It links the development of different forms of poverty knowledge with the ways in which states and non-state agents seek to ‘govern’ poverty and poor populations, and with the ‘biopolitics’ whereby calculations are made about the differential allocation of resources towards different sectors of the global population. The paper argues that addressing the root causes of poverty requires social actors to go beyond the narrow limits of institutionally sanctioned and bureaucratically invested ‘poverty knowledge’ that currently dominate policy thinking. Rather than seeking to understand poverty by measuring the characteristics of members of populations, they should try to understand poverty as an aspect of social relations, and try to come to grips with differential insertion of populations in the fields of force of modern globalised capitalism. Analysis should abandon simple notions of ‘marginalisation, and come to grips with the agency of poor people and the complex relationships between informality, marginality, exclusion and incorporation. Ultimately, however, a more nuanced understanding of the role of poverty knowledge in present day biopolitics does not bring with it any easy answers: rather, it challenges applied social scientists to be more aware of the responsibilities they bear as producers of 'useful' knowledge in a time of increased global instability.Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Germany

Adverse incorporation and agrarian policy in South Africa, Or, How not to connect the rural poor to growth

Paper presented at the "Escaping Poverty Traps: Connecting the Chronically Poor to Economic Growth" Conference, February 26-27, 2009 J.W. Marriott, 1331 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington, D.C

Chronic and structural poverty in South Africa: challenges for action and research?

Ten years after liberation, the persistence of poverty is one of the most important and urgent problems facing South Africa. This paper reflects on some of the findings of research undertaken as part of PLAAS's participation in the work of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, situates it within the broader literature on poverty in South Africa, and considers some emergent challenges.? Though PLAAS's survey, being only the first wave of a panel study, does not yet cast light on short term poverty dynamics, it illuminates key aspects of the structural conditions that underpin poverty that last for a long time: the close interactions between asset poverty, employment vulnerability and subjection to unequal social power relations. Coming to grips with these dynamics requires going beyond the limitations of conventional "sustainable livelihoods" analyses and functionalist analyses of South African labour markets. The paper argues for a re-engagement with the traditions of critical sociology, anthropology and the theoretical traditions that allow a closer exploration of the political economy of chronic poverty at micro and macro levels

Money and sociality in South Africa's informal economy

This article examines the interplay of agency, culture and context in order to consider the social embeddedness of money and trade at the margins of South Africa’s economy. Focusing on small-scale, survivalist informal enterprise operators, it draws on socio-cultural analysis to explore the social dynamics involved in generating and managing wealth. After describing the informal sector in South Africa, the article elucidates the relationship between money and economic informality. First, diverse objectives, typically irreducible to the maximization of profit, animate those in the informal sector and challenge meta-narratives of a ‘great transformation’ towards socially disembedded and depersonalized economic relationships. Second, regimes of economic governance, both state-led and informal, shape the terrain on which informal economic activity occurs in complex and constitutive ways. Third, local idioms and practices of trading, managing money and negotiating social claims similarly configure economic activities. Fourth, and finally, encroaching and often inexorable processes of formalization differentially influence those in the informal sector. The analysis draws on these findings to recapitulate both the ubiquity and centrality of the sociality at the heart of economy, and to examine the particular forms they take in South Africa’s informal economy.Web of Scienc

The Land and Its People: the land question and the South African political order

This paper examines the disjuncture between the discourses of policy deliberation and contentious politics in debates about ‘the land question’ in South Africa. It argues that the South African land debate as it unfolds in the public realm is best understood as a displaced discourse indirectly addressing the terms of political belonging and the nature of the post-apartheid political order. Far from being a distraction, this is a challenge that urgently needs to be confronted in its own terms. Confronting the crisis of the post-apartheid political order requires a re-thinking of the terms in which national identity is conceived. The paper explores the possibilities of a politics of belonging centred on the Constitutional invocation of a political order ‘for all who live in it’ and what this might imply for a more constructive and productive engagement with land struggles in urban and rural South Africa

Whose Land Question? Policy deliberation and populist reason in the South African land debate

On 4 and 5 February 2019, the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), along with colleagues from the Universities of Fort Hare and of Rhodes, hosted a national conference entitled Resolving the Land Question: Land redistribution for equitable access to land in South Africa. This paper considers this conference as a case study of ‘policy sense-making’—an attempt to frame contentious issues in a way that renders them amenable to governmental resolution. It explores the contrasting conceptions of the political rationality of land reform put forward at the conference, and the different conceptions of the nature of democracy and government that informed competing policy visions. The paper also considers the disjuncture between the world of technical land reform policy deliberation on the one hand, the way the notion of land is used in contentious and popular politics in the public sphere on the other. In the end, the paper argues, much more is at stake in South African land debates than land itself. Beyond the question of who should own the land, how it should be used, and how it could be shared are deep and intractable questions about the nature of South African democracy and of the political community on which it depends

Real acts, imagined landscapes

Why do we want land and agrarian reform? Why should its policies be supported? Much can be said about its stated purposes and goals, but why do those goals matter — and to whom? If, as James Ferguson remarked earlier in this colloquium (Ferguson 2011), ‘land’ can have a multitude of functions — if it is true that we can’t just assume we know what ‘land’ is for — do we necessarily know what ‘land reform’ is for? Perhaps, following Ferguson, we could think of land reform itself as rather like one of John Austin’s ‘speech acts’. Austin thought we could learn a lot by exploring just how many things we can ‘do with words’ (Austin 1962): perhaps the same is true of land reform itself

Can agriculture contribute to inclusive rural economies?

If agricultural development is to contribute to economic growth, it has to do more than increase the productivity or efficiency of farming. It also needs to contribute to employment in the rural non-farm sector. This is because increases in the intensity, efficiency or competitiveness of agriculture often push large numbers of people off the land – and opportunities for finding alternative employment in the cities are scarce. Inclusive growth thus also depends on the development of an inclusive and diverse rural non-farm economy (RNFE). This is something often ignored both by agricultural and labour market policy. Policymakers, therefore, need to ask how different pathways of agricultural development affect non-farm employment. Research conducted by PLAAS indicates that agricultural development can indeed stimulate local non-farm job creation – but the links are neither simple nor direct. While access by farmers to lucrative global markets or national markets can stimulate the local economy, much depends on the precise nature of the forward and backward linkages that connect farming to the rest of the economy. The ability of farming to stimulate the RNFE depends greatly on the scale of agriculture, the social and spatial organisation of agricultural value chains and the political economy of local institutions

Making sense of 'evidence': Notes on the discursive politics of research and pro-poor policy making

This paper explores some of the assumptions underlying ‘evidence based’ approaches to poverty reduction impact assessment. It argues that the discourse of Evidence-Based Policy (EBP) offers poor guidance to those who seek to ensure that social policy making is informed by the findings of social science. EBP discourse relies on a technocratic, linear understanding of the policy making process and on a naïve empiricist understanding of the role of evidence. This renders it unable to engage with the role of the underlying discursive frameworks and paradigms that render evidence meaningful and invest it with consequence: EBP discourse does not help us understand either how policy changes, or what is at stake in dialogue across the ‘research-policy divide’. Rather than simply focusing on evidence, approaches to policy change need to focus on how evidence is used in the politically loaded and ideologically compelling ‘policy narratives’ that contest rival policy frameworks. The paper considers an example from the South African context – the shift to the ‘two economies’ framework and the policy interventions associated with ASGISA – and explores the implications for approaches to research more attuned to the realities of the policymaking process. It concludes with a discussion of the implications for social researchers and policy makers