The legacy of South African colonialism: the messianic and national subject.

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: Forging the links between historical research and the policy process, 18-19 September 1999.Paper discusses the relationship between the state and the Individual; the importance of ethnic identity, traditional institutions and the modern nation stat

Democracy, cities and space: South African conceptions of local government

A dissertation submitted in the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, in the fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Political Studies. Johannesburg 1997.In 1988 the Soweto People's Delegation and the councils of Soweto, Diepmeadow and Dobsonville began to negotiate an end to the rent boycott and the crisis in the provision of services. Discussions between civic bodies and local government officials - which eventually resulted in the Soweto accord - were increasingly infonned by the slogan 'one city, one tax base'. In the wake of the accord, other parties to similarly established negotiations commonly based their approach on the 'one city' slogan. As a result, local government negotiations and the institutional arrangements that followed were increasingly infonned by this notion. [Abbreviated Abstract. Open document to view full version]AC201

The dark side of democracy popular sovereignty, decolonisation and dictatorship

This paper argues that we must look to the politics of popular sovereignty,‎ and in particular its unfolding in the period after the Second World War, for ‎the origin of the postcolonial condition, its specific vulgarity and temporality.‎ Following Arendt, the paper proposes that as a democratic practice popular‎ sovereignty transforms the ’people’ into absolutist subject, one that is necessarily ‎simple, at one with itself and exercising supreme authority over its territory.‎ Where such a people cannot be convened or institutionalised, democracy‎ tends either towards dictatorship or oligarchy or society itself fragments and ‎is at risk of dissolution. This has especially been the case on the African continent‎ where the new states that emerged after independence from European ‎Empires (and from settler-colonialism) were home to multitudes of great and ‎wide heterogeneity, without long histories of living together in common and‎ without, therefore, traditions and institutions of collective decision-making.

The Sublime Object of Blackness

Le sublime objet de la « négritude ». – Cet article traite d’une publicité parue dans l’un des plus importants journaux sud-africains. Cette publicité suggère qu’il existe une conspiration d’extrême droite blanche contre le Président Thabo Mbeki, conspiration destinée à discréditer son leadership et le leadership des Noirs en général. On défend ici l’idée que cette publicité est à la fois le reflet et le signe avant-coureur d’une forme radicalement nouvelle de nationalisme. À travers l’usage qui est fait du terme « Noir », le Président et le gouvernement deviennent des objets quasi religieux et infaillibles.This paper considers an advert placed in one of the major South African Sunday newspapers. The advert in question proposes that there is a white, right-wing conspiracy against President Thabo Mbeki, to discredit his leadership and the leadership of Blacks tout court. We will suggest here that the advert both reflects and is a harbinger of a radically new form of nationalist politics in South Africa. In the way that the term Black is invoked, the Presidency and the government are transformed into quasi-religious objects that are immune to proof and to criticism

The Sublime Object of Blackness

Le sublime objet de la « négritude ». – Cet article traite d’une publicité parue dans l’un des plus importants journaux sud-africains. Cette publicité suggère qu’il existe une conspiration d’extrême droite blanche contre le Président Thabo Mbeki, conspiration destinée à discréditer son leadership et le leadership des Noirs en général. On défend ici l’idée que cette publicité est à la fois le reflet et le signe avant-coureur d’une forme radicalement nouvelle de nationalisme. À travers l’usage qui est fait du terme « Noir », le Président et le gouvernement deviennent des objets quasi religieux et infaillibles.This paper considers an advert placed in one of the major South African Sunday newspapers. The advert in question proposes that there is a white, right-wing conspiracy against President Thabo Mbeki, to discredit his leadership and the leadership of Blacks tout court. We will suggest here that the advert both reflects and is a harbinger of a radically new form of nationalist politics in South Africa. In the way that the term Black is invoked, the Presidency and the government are transformed into quasi-religious objects that are immune to proof and to criticism

Without the blanket of the land: agrarian change and biopolitics in post–Apartheid South Africa

This paper connects Marxist approaches to the agrarian political economy of South Africa with post-Marshallian and Foucauldian analyses of distributional regimes and late capitalist governmentality. Looking at South Africa’s stalled agrarian transition through the lens of biopolitics as well as class analysis can make visible otherwise disregarded connections between processes of agrarian change and broader contests about the terms of social and economic incorporation into the South African social and political order before, during and after Apartheid. This can bring a fresh sense of the broader political implications of the course of agrarian change in South Africa, and helps contextualise the enduring salience of land as a flashpoint within South Africa’s unresolved democratic transition

Le sublime objet du nationalisme (le nationalisme et la démocratie en Afrique du Sud)

Qu'est ce qu c'est qu'une nation ? Que signifie s'investir dans la construction d'une nation? A quoi se réfère t elle dans le contexte sudafricain? Ces questions constituent toute la problématique de cette thèse. Or, ces interrogations peuvent être jugées désuètes par ceux pour qui le fait national est en voie de disparition sous l'effet de la mondialisation. De ce point de vue et si l'on tient compte du contexte actuel, ce sont peut être là, des questions subsidiaires ou des questions qui n'intéressent que les historiens et autres chercheurs qui s'investissent dans le passé. En effet, le contexte actuel nous oblige à ajouter de nouveaux préfixes aux nations (comme par exemple trans , supra ou post ); ce qui dénote de leur profonde mutation. Mais il convient de signaler qu'il est peut être encore trop tôt pour faire le requiem de la nation, ou de chanter un hymne en l'honneur de son glorieux passé. En fait, l'objectif avoué de l'action politique actuelle en Afrique du Sud est la construction de la nation. La nation est en quête, particulièrement dans les états africains après les indépendances, et ceci au nom de l'anti impérialisme, de la libération et de l'autodétermination. La volonté nationale demeure un instinct puissant et attrayant dans bon nombre de sociétés autrefois colonisées. Si ces notions ne sont que des chimères face à l'Empire, nous avons cependant besoin d'expliquer la durabilité du sentiment national dans ces espaces. Et c'est précisément ce que la grande partie d la littérature contemporaine ne réussit pas à faireWhat is a nation? What does it mean to be involved in nation building? To what does it refer in South Africa? These are the questions tha interest this book. Now, these questions may be judged passé by those for whom the national form is fast disappearing from the global scene. From such a perspective these are perhaps 'bad' questions in the current situation; or perhaps only interesting for historians and others interested in the past. Indeed, in the present we are asked to attach new prefixes to nations (trans or super or post ) that suggest their transgression or even supercession. But it might be too soon for a requiem to the nation. Or a hymn in celebration of its passing. Th nation is pursued, especially in African states after independence, in the narre of anti Imperialism, in the narre of liberation and selfcontrol. Indeed, the will to nationhood remains a powerful and attractive instinct in many former colonised societies. If these notions are increasingly chimeras in the face of Empire, we need account for the durability of the national imagination in these places. This is precisely what so much of the contemporary literature cannot do. How often the 'African state' or 'the State in Africa' is treated in relation to the 'colonial state' or to 'ethnicity' or to 'underdevelopment', 'arrested development' or 'imperialism', 'modernity' and 'modernisation', 'capitalism', 'bureaucratisation', 'traditionalism' and 'traditional authority', 'ritualism' and 'power'. How rarely it is treated in relation to nationalism or the nation stateCACHAN-ENS (940162301) / SudocSudocFranceF