Empty Signifiers of Transformation in Participatory Planning and the Marginalization of Black People in South Africa

The rapid production of films of diversity in post-1994 South Africa has unfortunately not been matched by critical works on film. Part of the reason is that some of the films recycle old themes that celebrate the worst in black people. Another possible reason could be that a good number of films wallow in personality praise, and certainly of Mandela, especially after his demise. Despite these problems of film criticism in post-1994 South Africa, it appears that some new critics have not felt compelled to waste their energy on analysing the Bantustan film – a kind of film that was made for black people by the apartheid system but has re-surfaced after 1994 in different ways. The patent lack of more critical works on film that engages the identities and social imaginaries of young and white South Africans is partly addressed in SKIN – a film that registers the mental growth and spiritual development of Sandra’s multiple selves. This article argues that SKIN portrays the racial neurosis of the apartheid system; and the question of identity affecting young white youths during and after apartheid is experienced at the racial, gender and sex levels.

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Free but fragile: Human relations amidst poverty and HIV in democratic South Africa

Oral History Journal of South Africa ◽

10.25159/2309-5792/8 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 85-94

Author(s):

Christina Landman

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Predominantly White ◽

Black People ◽

Hiv Treatment ◽

Human Relations ◽

White People ◽

Black And White ◽

The Past ◽

Wide Range ◽

Black Township

Dullstroom-Emnotweni is the highest town in South Africa. Cold and misty, it is situated in the eastern Highveld, halfway between the capital Pretoria/Tswane and the Mozambique border. Alongside the main road of the white town, 27 restaurants provide entertainment to tourists on their way to Mozambique or the Kruger National Park. The inhabitants of the black township, Sakhelwe, are remnants of the Southern Ndebele who have lost their land a century ago in wars against the whites. They are mainly dependent on employment as cleaners and waitresses in the still predominantly white town. Three white people from the white town and three black people from the township have been interviewed on their views whether democracy has brought changes to this society during the past 20 years. Answers cover a wide range of views. Gratitude is expressed that women are now safer and HIV treatment available. However, unemployment and poverty persist in a community that nevertheless shows resilience and feeds on hope. While the first part of this article relates the interviews, the final part identifies from them the discourses that keep the black and white communities from forming a group identity that is based on equality and human dignity as the values of democracy.

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The Reflection of Apartheidic Trauma / Traumatic Apartheid in None to Accompany Me by Nadine Gordimer

European Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies ◽

10.26417/ejms.v6i2.p328-328 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 328

Author(s):

Şahin KIZILTAŞ

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Black People ◽

Native People ◽

Nadine Gordimer ◽

Equal Rights ◽

White People ◽

Post Colonial ◽

Violence Victimization ◽

White Settlers ◽

Almost All

The world has gone through a trauma for centuries. Almost all nations have experienced all sorts of traumatic events and feelings in this period. Among those nations, the black seem to be the most unlucky and ill-fated suffered from traumatic disasters. However, among those black nations, the natives of South Africa have been the most piteous and wretched ones. Their misfortune began in 1652 with the arrival of white colonists in the country. Since then, the oppression and persecution of white European colonists and settlers on natives increasingly continued. Those native people were displaced from the lands inherited from their ancestors a few centuries ago. They were not allowed to have equal rights with white people and to share same environment in public premises. The natives have put up resistance against the racial and colonial practices of white settlers which excluded them from all living spaces; yet, they could not manage, even they came into power in 1994. Today their exclusion and violence victimization still go on and they are still subjected to inferior treatment by (post)colonial dominant white powers. As a white intellectual and writer who had European origins, Nadine Gordimer witnessed the repression and torturing of European settlers on native people in South Africa. In her novels, she has reflected the racial discrimination practiced by white people who have considered of themselves in a superior position compared to the black. This study aims to focus on how Gordimer has reflected the trauma which the black people of South Africa have experienced as a consequence of racist practices. This will contribute to clarify and get across the real and true-life traumatic narratives of native people in the colonized countries.

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The colonial matrix of power: Image ontology and the question of blackness

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies ◽

10.4102/hts.v77i4.7074 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 77 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Itumeleng D. Mothoagae

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

South Africa ◽

United States Of America ◽

Black People ◽

World Order ◽

The United States ◽

Global South ◽

Black Theology ◽

The Social ◽

The World

The question of blackness has always featured the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality and class. Blackness as an ontological speciality has been engaged from both the social and epistemic locations of the damnés (in Fanonian terms). It has thus sought to respond to the performance of power within the world order that is structured within the colonial matrix of power, which has ontologically, epistemologically, spatially and existentially rendered blackness accessible to whiteness, while whiteness remains inaccessible to blackness. The article locates the question of blackness from the perspective of the Global South in the context of South Africa. Though there are elements of progress in terms of the conditions of certain Black people, it would be short-sighted to argue that such conditions in themselves indicate that the struggles of blackness are over. The essay seeks to address a critique by Anderson (1995) against Black theology in the context of the United States of America (US). The argument is that the question of blackness cannot and should not be provincialised. To understand how the colonial matrix of power is performed, it should start with the local and be linked with the global to engage critically the colonial matrix of power that is performed within a system of coloniality. Decoloniality is employed in this article as an analytical tool.Contribution: The article contributes to the discourse on blackness within Black theology scholarship. It aims to contribute to the continual debates on the excavating and levelling of the epistemological voices that have been suppressed through colonial epistemological universalisation of knowledge from the perspective of the damnés.

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Politics and Economic Policymaking in South Africa since 1994

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192894199.013.4 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 65-90

Author(s):

Alan Hirsch ◽

Brian Levy ◽

Musa Nxele

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Black People ◽

Global Financial Crisis ◽

Slow Growth ◽

Economic Transformation ◽

Policy Uncertainty ◽

The Poor ◽

The Global Financial Crisis ◽

Growth Economic ◽

Political Settlement

Economic policy in South Africa since 1994 has confronted the imperative to include middle class, working class and poor black people more fully into the economy in circumstances which circumscribe the scope for constructive negotiation and lasting agreement. The new regime of 1994 sought a political settlement which allowed stronger growth, economic transformation of the elite and economic inclusion of the poor. After meeting with some success, the combination of the global financial crisis and new political leadership led to policy uncertainty, increasing corruption and some deterioration of state capacity, which resulted in exceptionally slow growth. The puzzle this chapter engages with is why the struggle over rents has stood in the way of a mutually beneficial deal.

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Black Economic Empowerment, ICT, and Preferential Public Procurement in South Africa

Small and Medium Enterprises ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-3886-0.ch057 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 1164-1185

Author(s):

Karunanidhi Reddy ◽

Renitha Rampersad

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Black People ◽

Public Procurement ◽

Economic Transformation ◽

Economic Empowerment ◽

Black Economic ◽

Black Economic Empowerment ◽

Constitutional Right ◽

The Government ◽

Procurement System

Broad-based black economic empowerment has been a central part of the South African government’s economic transformation strategy. The main purpose of BEE is to increase the number of black people that manage, own, and control the country’s economy, and as a result, to reduce income inequalities and to contribute to economic transformation in South Africa. During apartheid in South Africa, the government procurement system favoured large, established businesses and made it difficult for newly established businesses to participate in the procurement system. This chapter gives an overview of the Black Economic Empowerment policy as a means to achieve socio-economic transformation in South Africa by providing preferences for Historically Disadvantaged Individuals (HDIs) and small businesses, when making procurement decisions. It also examines how procurement is used as a policy tool by government while simultaneously ensuring that it does not contradict the constitutional right to equality. The chapter also explores the implications of the Preferential Public Procurement Framework Act (Act 5 of 2000) and the latest procurement regulations. Finally, it discusses the use of ICT and the vital role it plays in preferential procurement in South Africa.

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Van der Post, Laurens (1906-1996)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism ◽

10.4324/9781135000356-rem1492-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Tony Ullyatt

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Indigenous Peoples ◽

Significant Role ◽

Black People ◽

Adult Life ◽

Growing Up ◽

Boer War ◽

Political Thinking ◽

German Origin ◽

The Village

Laurens van der Post was born on December 13, 1906 in the village of Phillipolis, in what was then the Orange River Colony. He was the thirteenth of the family’s fifteen children and the fifth son. His father, Christiaan, who came from Dutch stock, was a lawyer and politician who had fought against the British during the Second Anglo-Boer War. Van der Post’s mother, Lammie, was of German origin. Growing up on the farm, van der Post came into contact with the black people and the wilderness, two major influences on his life and his writing. Van der Post went to school in Grey College in Bloemfontein, where he was exposed to a line of political thinking embodying a racial philosophy entirely contrary to his own experiences of the indigenous peoples who were to play such a significant role in his adult life. In 1925, he became a junior reporter for the Natal Advertiser newspaper in Durban. In 1926, with William Plomer and Roy Campbell, he founded Voorslag, a journal lasting only three volumes. It was forced to close through lack of support for its radical opinions and its promotion of a more integrated South Africa.

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Coercive agency in mission education at Lovedale Missionary Institution

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies ◽

10.4102/hts.v60i3.614 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 60 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Graham A. Duncan

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Power Relations ◽

Black People ◽

Total Institution ◽

New Model ◽

South Africans ◽

Black South Africans ◽

Mission Education

Any society and its institutions are coercive. While acknowledging the invaluable contribution made by mission education towards the development of black South Africans, Lovedale Missionary Institution exemplifies the concept of a “total institution” susceptible to the problems of power relations. Those who studied there internalized its ethos. Coercive agency encouraged adaptation to missionary ideology. However, many Lovedale students rejected the mores of the religion and education they received as they challenged and resisted the effects of the coercive agency of internalization. Institutionalisation is, by nature, resistant to change as can be seen in the policies of the respective Principals of the Institution. Consequently, black people were alienated by a process of “exclusion”. The values of justice, love and peace are appropriate tools for a new model of education in South Africa.

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Mostly ‘black’ and ‘white’: ‘Race’, complicity and restitution in the non-fiction of Antjie Krog

Literator ◽

10.4102/lit.v37i1.1264 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 37 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jacomien Van Niekerk

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Black People ◽

Partial Answer ◽

White People ◽

White Race ◽

Black And White ◽

Non Fiction ◽

The Way

This article analyses the role of ‘race’ in Antjie Krog’s non-fiction trilogy Country of My Skull (1998), A Change of Tongue (2003) and Begging to Be Black (2009). It explores her explicit use of terms such as ‘heart of whiteness’ and ‘heart of blackness’. Claims that Krog essentialises Africa and ‘black’ people are investigated. The article also addresses accusations of racism in Krog’s work. A partial answer to the persistent question of why Krog is so determinedly focused on ‘race’ is sought in the concept of complicity. There is definite specificity in the way Krog writes about ‘white’ perpetrators and ‘black’ victims in South Africa, but her trilogy should be read within the broader context of international restitution discourses, allowing for a somewhat different perspective on her contribution to the discussion of the issue of whether ‘white’ people belong in (South) Africa.

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Black Consciousness as an Expression of Radical Responsibility: Biko an African Bonhoeffer

Religion and Theology ◽

10.1163/157430108x308145 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 15 (1-2) ◽

pp. 28-52 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Cornel du Toit

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

21St Century ◽

Black People ◽

The Self ◽

Black Consciousness ◽

Black Liberation

AbstractThe article reflects on the ongoing relevance of Biko's thought 30 years after his death. It is not so much a comparison between Biko and Bonhoeffer's thinking as it is a focus on one aspect of Bonhoeffer's thinking, namely the insistence on independence and self-responsibility in your own situation, which is a premise of Biko's thinking. As the father of Black Consciousness in South Africa, Biko laid the foundation for black self-understanding and self-responsibility. The value of his thinking lies in a hermeneutics of consciousness, which he established and which is a presupposition of his ideals of self-responsibility and self-emancipation. Biko's hermeneutics of the self is considered with reference to the forces that kept black people captive. Although Black Consciousness is seen as a historically contingent phenomenon, the challenge of black liberation remains. Biko's legacy is vital for the establishment of a hermeneutics of poverty and freedom, which is presented as a condition for African liberation in the 21st century.

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