South Africa, settler colonialism and the failures of liberal democracy

In South Africa, two unmistakable features describe post-Apartheid politics. The first is the formal framework of liberal democracy, including regular elections, multiple political parties and a range of progressive social rights. The second is the politics of the ‘extraordinary’, which includes a political discourse that relies on threats and the use of violence, the crude re-racialization of numerous conflicts, and protests over variouspopular grievances. In this highly original work, Thiven Reddy shows how conventional approaches to understanding democratization have failed to capture the complexities of South Africa’s post-Apartheid transition. Rather, as a product of imperial expansion, the South African state, capitalism and citizen identities have been uniquely shaped by a particular mode of domination, namely settler colonialism. South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy is an important work that sheds light on the nature of modernity, democracy and the complex politics of contemporary South Africa

Higher Education and Social Transformation: South Africa Case Study

This paper advances and draws on the following four propositions. First, in analysing the role of universities in social transformation there is a need to draw a distinction between the pre- and post-Apartheid periods; the former focuses on practices of resistance to the Apartheid regime and the latter on constituting a democratic polity in part by addressing Apartheid legacies. The second draws attention to the unintended consequences of National Party policy. It established black universities to produce passive elites to administer ethnic political institutions but created instead terrains that established a vibrant oppositional student movement and other forms of resistance within and related to the higher education sector. Third, in the post 1994 period the position of the state towards the role of universities and social transformation is derived from a policy inevitably open to reading in two opposing ways. The state demands that universities contribute towards economic and socio-political transformation, yet the nature of the transition from Apartheid to a democratic regime, its macro-economic state policies, and the constraints of globalisation have led to two opposing tendencies. In the first, universities are expected to perform as viable “corporate enterprises” producing graduates to help steer South Africa into a competitive global economy. In the second, universities are expected to serve the public good and produce critical citizens for a vibrant democratic society. To be sure these two tendencies need not be inherently contradictory, yet they do contain in a country with deep class, race and gender divisions the possibility of pulling in opposite directions. Last, when we consider universities as intrinsic sites of civil society, then the focus on the relationship between the state and civil society can be used to better illuminate some of the problems associated with the role of universities in the post-Apartheid system. While the ANC controlled state actively pursues a transformative agenda, institutions of civil society continue to be sites of ongoing contestation and remain more reticent to change. Universities, like other civil society institutions, if they are not simplistically conceived as monolithic coherent blocs, but as constituted by different constituencies (faculty, departments, students, administrators, workers, etc.) allows us to see how various sectors could function in contradictory ways - reproducing, eroding, transforming or remaining consciously oblivious to inherited and prevailing social relations

Black Consciousness in contemporary South African politics

An ironic feature of contemporary South African politics is that while the organisations representing Black Consciousness (BC) ideas remain weak and fragmented, a revival in BC ideas, values and practices in official and civil society discourses seems evident. BC organisations dominated anti-apartheid politics in the 1970s, but their startling decline, particularly their weakened state under post-1994 democracy, calls out for analytical attention. In the 1999 and 2004 elections, the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) was the leading BC organisation. Together with the smaller Socialist Party of Azania (Sopa), Azapo received dismal support. Moreover, Azapo has split into three smaller organisations. Efforts to merge the three have so far faltered. One cannot conclude, however, that the obvious failure of BC political parties to challenge the ANC and the historically white political parties at the polls means that we should dismiss these organisations’ ideologies as ineffective and lacking in influence. The resurgence of BC ideas at the level of civil society, at a time when we might expect BC to be anachronistic, is intriguing. It is also the subject of this chapter

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

Higher Education and Social Transformation in South Africa Since the Fall of Apartheid

L’article situe les développements post-apartheid de l’enseignement supérieur dans un contexte particulier de transition par “transplacement” (un compromis entre l’ancienne classe dirigeante et un mouvement nationaliste modéré). Il suggère que la politique macro économique néolibérale d’après 1994 a eu pour effet de limiter la capacité de l’État à transformer la société civile selon sa propre vision. La troisième section discute des politiques clés concernant la transformation de l’enseignement supérieur. L’auteur estime que la politique universitaire post-1994 est immanquablement sujette à interprétations contradictoires. La dernière section discute de l’impact de l’enseignement supérieur sur les sphères politique, sociale, économique et culturelle de la société post-apartheid. L’auteur conclut que l’enseignement supérieur a contribué à l’émergence d’une classe moyenne noire et, ce faisant, à la consolidation des acquis démocratiques, mais que les politiques suivies par l’État et les pratiques universitaires ont aussi exclu la majorité des étudiants pauvres, révélant par là même l’émergence des nouvelles dynamiques de classes de l’Afrique du sud post-apartheid.The paper locates post-apartheid developments in higher education in relation to the nature of a transition by ‘transplacement’ (one of compromise between the old ruling elite and moderate nationalists of the liberation movement). It then discusses the neo-liberal macro-economic context adopted post-1994 and its effect of limiting the state’s capacity to transform civil society in terms of its own vision. The third section discusses the key policies concerning higher education transformation. It suggests that the post-1994 policy towards higher education is inevitably open to opposing readings. The final section analyses the relations between higher education and its empirical impact on the economic, political, social, and cultural spheres of post-apartheid society. It concludes that higher education has contributed towards the creation of the emerging black middle class (and in doing so assists in consolidating the democratic gains), but also that state policies and university practice exclude the majority of poor students, displaying the emerging class dynamics of post-apartheid South African society

The ‘Cabbage and the Goat’: Xenophobic Violence in South Africa

The paper offers a way to think through the advent of xenophobia as a feature of post 1994 South African democracy. It does so by locating it within a broader politics of a mobilized citizenry in which a ruling class has been unable to assert its hegemony. In this context of opposing wills, the very terms of reference of citizenship are contested, the elite in the society operate within an idiom of rights, and the mass of poor, radical resource distribution and recognition. The ambivalent position of the ANC as liberation movement, key actor in the founding of the new constitutionalism, and political party engaged in competitive electoral politics adds to the social unease. The resultant fragile ruling ideology has allowed local discourses to thrive based on degrees of authentic belonging

South Africa, settler colonialism and the failures of liberal democracy

In South Africa, two unmistakable features describe post-Apartheid politics. The first is the formal framework of liberal democracy, including regular elections, multiple political parties and a range of progressive social rights. The second is the politics of the ‘extraordinary’, which includes a political discourse that relies on threats and the use of violence, the crude re-racialization of numerous conflicts, and protests over variouspopular grievances. In this highly original work, Thiven Reddy shows how conventional approaches to understanding democratization have failed to capture the complexities of South Africa’s post-Apartheid transition. Rather, as a product of imperial expansion, the South African state, capitalism and citizen identities have been uniquely shaped by a particular mode of domination, namely settler colonialism. South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy is an important work that sheds light on the nature of modernity, democracy and the complex politics of contemporary South Africa.CONTENTS: Introduction, p. 1. -- 1 Modernity: civil society, political society and the vulnerable, p. 11. -- 2 The limits of the conventional paradigm, modernity and South African democracy, p. 41. -- 3 The Fanonian paradigm, settler colonialism and South African democracy, p. 63. -- 4 The colonial state and settler-colonial modernism, p. 83. -- 5 Nationalism, ANC and domination without hegemony, p. 107. -- 6 Elites, masses and democratic change, p. 133. -- 7 Crisis of the national modern: democracy, the state and ANC dominance, p. 151. -- Conclusion, p. 187.</p

The Congress Party Model: South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) and India’s Indian National Congress (INC) as Dominant Parties

The paper argues that the model developed to analyze the dominance of the Indian National Congress of the political party system during the first two decades of independence helps in our understanding of the unfolding party system in South Africa. A comparison of the Congress Party and the African National Congress suggests many similarities. The paper is divided into three broad sections. The first part focuses on the dominant party system in India. In the second part, I apply the model of the Congress System to South Africa. I argue that the three features of the Congress System – a dominant party with mass based legitimacy, constituted by many factions and operating on the idiom of consensus-seeking internal politics, and sources of opposition who cooperate with factions in the dominant party to influence the political agenda – prevails in South Africa. In the third part, I draw on the comparison between the ANC and Congress Party to account for why certain nationalist movements become dominant parties. I emphasize that broad nationalist movements displaying high degrees of legitimacy and embracing democratic practices are adaptive to changing contexts and develop

Higher Education and Social Transformation in South Africa Since the Fall of Apartheid

L’article situe les développements post-apartheid de l’enseignement supérieur dans un contexte particulier de transition par “transplacement” (un compromis entre l’ancienne classe dirigeante et un mouvement nationaliste modéré). Il suggère que la politique macro économique néolibérale d’après 1994 a eu pour effet de limiter la capacité de l’État à transformer la société civile selon sa propre vision. La troisième section discute des politiques clés concernant la transformation de l’enseignement supérieur. L’auteur estime que la politique universitaire post-1994 est immanquablement sujette à interprétations contradictoires. La dernière section discute de l’impact de l’enseignement supérieur sur les sphères politique, sociale, économique et culturelle de la société post-apartheid. L’auteur conclut que l’enseignement supérieur a contribué à l’émergence d’une classe moyenne noire et, ce faisant, à la consolidation des acquis démocratiques, mais que les politiques suivies par l’État et les pratiques universitaires ont aussi exclu la majorité des étudiants pauvres, révélant par là même l’émergence des nouvelles dynamiques de classes de l’Afrique du sud post-apartheid.The paper locates post-apartheid developments in higher education in relation to the nature of a transition by ‘transplacement’ (one of compromise between the old ruling elite and moderate nationalists of the liberation movement). It then discusses the neo-liberal macro-economic context adopted post-1994 and its effect of limiting the state’s capacity to transform civil society in terms of its own vision. The third section discusses the key policies concerning higher education transformation. It suggests that the post-1994 policy towards higher education is inevitably open to opposing readings. The final section analyses the relations between higher education and its empirical impact on the economic, political, social, and cultural spheres of post-apartheid society. It concludes that higher education has contributed towards the creation of the emerging black middle class (and in doing so assists in consolidating the democratic gains), but also that state policies and university practice exclude the majority of poor students, displaying the emerging class dynamics of post-apartheid South African society