scholarly journals (Re)formulating the Social Question in Post-apartheid South Africa: Zola Skweyiya, Dignity, Development and the Welfare State

2020 ◽  
pp. 263-300
Author(s):  
Jeremy Seekings
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Growth And Development ◽  
African State ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Social Question ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
Social Grant ◽  
First Time

AbstractDemocratisation in 1994 meant that, for the first time, the South African state recognised that all South Africans had claims on and responsibilities to society. To address the racialised legacy of apartheid, the new government sought to expand opportunities for black South Africans—and hence solve the social question—through racially inclusive economic growth and development. The government initially viewed the system of social grants that it inherited as insufficiently developmental and worried about the poor becoming “dependent” on public support. When unemployment and poverty persisted, compounded by HIV/AIDS, reformers—including especially the Minister of Social Development from 1999 to 2009, Zola Skweyiya—reframed the social question in terms of dignity and responsibility and expanded the social grant system.

Minority Monopoly in Transition: Recent Policy Shifts of the South African State

1980 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heribert Adam
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
African State ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The Real ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black South Africans ◽  
The Government ◽  
Policy Shifts ◽  
Recent Policy

Does Zimbabwe provide the model for the likely transformation of white minority rule in the industrial heart of Southern Africa? With their morale boosted, the expectations of many black South Africans have been raised. Likewise many outside commentators predict the inevitable downfall of the white bastion along similar lines of escalating military confrontation after the last buffer state but Namibia has gone. Even Nationalist newspapers draw the lessons by admonishing the Government to pay attention to the ‘real leaders’ of the subordinates instead of unrepresentative collaborators. The Afrikaner political leadership uses the Rhodesian example to drum home its message of ‘adapt or die’ to a bewildered electorate.

PERCEPTIONS OF SOUTH AFRICAN YOUTH OF LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES: A CASE IN THE LEPELLE-NKUMPI MUNICIPAL AREA

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-89
Author(s):  
Matshidiso Kanjere
Keyword(s):  
Leadership Development ◽  
Young People ◽  
South African ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
South Africans ◽  
African Youth ◽  
Multiple Challenges ◽  
The Government

The South African youth faces multiple challenges that range from illiteracy, drug and alcohol abuse, crime and HIV/AIDS, to unemployment. These challenges and many other ills in society have led to interventions by government, and private and other civil societies. The government has established and initiated a number of programmes that aim at building capacity and helping the youth to cope with these multiple challenges. Some of the programmes are aimed at building leadership capacity among the impoverished youth in rural communities. A lot of money is being invested in these programmes, which are meant to develop young South Africans. However, there are some young people who do not participate in these programmes. They are also not in the formal education system, self-employed or employed elsewhere. And they are despondent. The government, private sector and non-governmental organisations are trying hard to bring these youths and others into the developmental arena, so that they can be active participants in the economy of the country in the near future. However, little research has been conducted to assess the broad impact of the various programmes in the country. The contribution that these programmes are making toward improving the livelihoods of young people has to be determined on a larger scale. Nevertheless, this article reports on an investigation that was conducted on a smaller scale, at the Lepelle-Nkumpi Local Municipality. The aim of the research was to explore the perceptions young South Africans have of the leadership development programmes that they have participated in. A mixed research approach was used to collect data and the key findings indicated that knowledge accumulated through participation in the programmes does not always translate into practical applications. However, the programmes were deemed to be valuable in instilling a positive life-view. The study recommends that support systems be established in the rural areas to assist young people with life challenges.

State, Myth, and Agency in the Construction of Chinese South African Identities, 1948–1994

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoon Jung Park
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
African State ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Fourth Generation ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Chinese Descent ◽  
Racial Ethnic

AbstractBased on the author's PhD research, this article focuses on the fluid and contested nature of the identities — racial, ethnic, and national — of people of Chinese descent in South Africa in the apartheid and post-apartheid eras. The research focuses on the approximately 12,000-strong community of second-, third-, and fourth-generation South African-born Chinese South Africans. It reveals that Chinese South Africans played an active role in identity construction using Chinese history, myths and culture, albeit within the constraints established by apartheid. During the latter part of apartheid, movement up the socio-economic ladder and gradual social acceptance by white South Africa propelled them into nebulous, interstitial spaces; officially they remained “non-white” but increasingly they were viewed as “honorary whites.” During the late 1970s and 1980s, the South African state attempted to redefine Chinese as “white” but these attempts failed because Chinese South Africans were unwilling to sacrifice their unique ethnic identity, which helped them to survive the more dehumanizing aspects of life under apartheid.

scholarly journals ‘They’re coming’: Precarity and the white nation fantasy among South African migrants in Melbourne

Ethnicities ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Hamish McKenzie ◽  
Catie Gressier
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
South Africans ◽  
African Migrants ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Migration Experiences

This paper explores the social reproduction of precarity among white South African migrants in Australia. Building on Griffiths and Prozesky’s elucidation of the white South African imaginary and its role in triggering emigration, we draw on ethnographic data on white South Africans living in Melbourne to argue that our informants reproduce what Hage terms a ‘white nation fantasy’. In documenting the ways our informants’ migration experiences can be read as a function of a threatened social imaginary, we suggest that their ‘successful’ resettlement in Australia points to the congruence of their ontological grounding with the white nation fantasy predominating in Australia. Ultimately, however, we argue that the sense of precarity our informants experience in Australia is intrinsically embedded in their reproduction of the white nation fantasy. Our case study therefore serves as a cautionary tale to inflexible constructions of whiteness globally.

scholarly journals Protection Against Labor Troubles

1986 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-165
Author(s):  
Herman Lebovics
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
French History ◽  
Foreign Competition ◽  
Economic Cycle ◽  
Economic Nationalism ◽  
Social Question ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
First Time

By introducing an economic cycle of a new sort in Europe the Great Depression of 1873–96 encouraged the alignment of iron and textile industrialists’ interests with those of the great growers and livestock raisers. The French version, perhaps best labelled the alliance of cotton and wheat, is the concern here, for since profits and sales for both agriculture and industry traced parallel curves, for the first time in French history, representatives of these interests could unite and press the new republican leadership for common relief against depression and intensifying foreign competition. They were also impelled to unite in the face of the growing militancy of the new working class emerging in the provinces. Their spokesmen of the Association de l'Industrie Française and the associated Société des Agriculteurs addressed themselves to the new incarnation of the social question by offering protective tariffs – and protected jobs and pay checks – to workers striking more frequently and organizing more solidly than ever before. Their slogan was “the protection of national labor”. Having no reforms to offer, the Opportunist republicans and their ex-monarchist allies offered the emergent industrial working class safe incomes and economic nationalism.

scholarly journals Tribalism: Thorny issue towards reconciliation in South Africa – A practical theological appraisal

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elijah M. Baloyi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
South African ◽  
African Government ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black South Africans ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
The Government ◽  
Apartheid Regime ◽  
Practical Theological

The apartheid regime used various strategies to ensure that South Africans formed a divided nation. It was through the differences between ethnic groups and tribes, among other things, that the government of the time managed to manipulate and entrench hatred and a lack of trust among most black South Africans. Tribalism, which existed even before apartheid, became instrumental in inflicting those divisions as perpetuated by the formation of homelands. The various ethnic groups had been turned against one other, and it had become a norm. Nepotism, which is part and parcel of the South African government, is just an extension of tribalism. It is the objective of this article to uncover how tribalism is still rearing its ugly head. From a practical theological perspective, it is important to deal with tribalism as a tool that plays a part in delaying tribal reconciliation, which was orchestrated by apartheid policies in South Africa.

scholarly journals Do Social Grants Displace Remittances? Evidence From South Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 275-284
Author(s):  
Mduduzi Biyase ◽  
Talent Zwane ◽  
September Rooderick
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
National Income ◽  
Income Dynamics ◽  
Full Sample ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Grants ◽  
Crowd Out ◽  
Social Grant

This paper employs a newly-available and representative National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) data of South African households to investigate whether social grants crowd-out or displace remittances. The estimated results based on full sample reveal that while the social grants have a negative impact on the amount of remittances received, the effect is statistically insignificant – social grants do not crowd out or displace remittances. The coefficient on the social grant is also insignificant in both sub-samples (rural and urban), consistent with the results on the full sample

scholarly journals The skewed social image of white South Africans in Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist

2020 ◽  
Vol 189 ◽  
pp. 03031
Author(s):  
Xiangting Chen
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
White Identity ◽  
African Society ◽  
White People ◽  
Social Image ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
South African Society ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black South African ◽  
The Social

-In this article he examines the social identity crisis of White South Africans in Nadine Gordimer’s “The Conservationist”. Gordimer describes the psychology, social deformities and human distortions of the repressed white people in post-colonial South Africa. At that time, white South Africans were tortured by colonial guilt and racial contradictions. While recognizing the culture of their European ancestors, they wanted to integrate into the black South African society. This paper analyzes the decline of South African white identity and the phenomenon of white exodus from the perspective of the protagonist’s thoughts and behaviors, and combines the political and social problems during those days.

Nigeria poll signals profound political shift

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Support ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Leadership Role ◽  
Security Sector Reform ◽  
Security Sector ◽  
Sector Reform ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Regional Leadership ◽  
The Government ◽  
First Time

Significance This is the first time that an opposition party has won a multi-party election in Nigeria. Popular support has never before trumped the advantages of incumbency which have historically been used to rig or win elections. The impartiality of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the clear margin of victory give a strong and legitimate mandate to the incoming government. Impacts After pulling off a credible election in difficult circumstances, Nigeria may seek to re-assume its moral regional leadership role. The government and armed forces will be given renewed confidence to tackle Boko Haram, possibly with more international support. Policy focus will have similarities (eg electricity and agriculture) but also differences (eg youth employment and security sector reform). Without being hampered by corruption and low public support, the APC should be better placed to deliver.

Saints or Sinners: Public Evaluations of Post-Apartheid South African Presidents

Politeia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamy Felton
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Performance Evaluation ◽  
South African ◽  
Multivariate Analyses ◽  
Identity Performance ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Cognitive Awareness ◽  
The Government

This study investigates the nature of public evaluations of the presidents of post-apartheid South Africa. It consists of multivariate analyses which tests competing theories. Using IDASA (Institute for Democracy in South Africa) and Afrobarometer data from 1997, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2015, the article tests identity, performance evaluation and cognitive awareness theories to determine which factors predict approval levels of the president. Findings indicate that South Africans are more likely to make use of performance evaluation when ascribing support than to use their cognitive awareness of current affairs. There is an indication that South Africans who share an identity with the president are more likely to approve of the president -- especially in recent years. However, South Africans are rational people who are more likely to base their approval of the president on how the government performs and how they perceive the economy.

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