Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Nicholas Rush Smith
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Emerging Democracies ◽  
Democratic State

The brief introductory chapter lays out the questions for the book, connects vigilantism to broad questions about democratic state formation, and suggests the power of understanding vigilantism in South Africa as a means to understanding politics in emerging democracies generally. It shows how existing explanations are inadequate for understanding vigilantism in varying parts of South Africa. The chapter also sets up the narrative that follows in subsequent chapters, which tracks vigilante violence from the late apartheid era, through the early democratic state’s attempts to monopolize violence, citizens’ resistance to these efforts, and ultimately to the state’s mimicking of vigilantism today.

Contradictions of Democracy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Rush Smith
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Latin America ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Gang Violence ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Emerging Democracies ◽  
Democratic State

Despite being one of the world’s most vibrant democracies, vigilantism is regularly practiced in South Africa. In any given year, police estimate between 5 percent and 10 percent of the country’s murders result from vigilante violence—four to five times the percentage from gang violence. Vigilantism is also frequent in other democracies across Latin America, Asia, and Africa. High rates of vigilantism are particularly puzzling in South Africa, though, given that it underwent a celebrated transition to democracy, has a lauded constitution, and enacted massive reforms of the state’s legal institutions following democratization. Contradictions of Democracy asks why vigilantism is prevalent in South Africa, asks what South Africa reveals about vigilantism in other emerging democracies, and uses vigilantism to explore contradictions of democratic state formation generally. Where most scholars explain vigilantism as the result of state or civic failure, the book argues the opposite. Based on nearly twenty months of ethnographic and archival research, it shows vigilantism is a response to processes of democratic state formation—specifically the extension of rights—and thrives in dense civic networks.

Vigilantism and the Contradictions of Democratic State Formation

2019 ◽  
pp. 18-37
Author(s):  
Nicholas Rush Smith
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Young Men ◽  
The State ◽  
Police Violence ◽  
Men Of Color ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Procedural Rights

This chapter argues that vigilantism is a response to processes of democratic state formation—particularly the extension of procedural rights—and is enabled by dense civic ties. It also shows how vigilantism is a metaphor for processes of democratic state formation, which unsettles common theoretical assumptions that democratic states are directed toward protecting citizens. By seeing states as inherently protective, the chapter argues that scholars overlook the ways in which that protection may be premised on vigilante-like procedureless police violence against groups of citizens deemed dangerous—in South Africa predominantly young men of color. Rather than protective, these men often experience the state as terrorizing.

Foreigners' Rights to Work and Fair Labour Practices in South Africa: A Review of the South African Labour Legislation and Jurisprudence

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Mangu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
The South ◽  
Legislation And Jurisprudence ◽  
Foreign Nationals ◽  
Lay Persons ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Labour Legislation

After several decades of apartheid rule, which denied human rights to the majority of the population on the ground of race and came to be regarded as a crime against humanity, South Africa adopted its first democratic Constitution in the early 1990s. The 1996 Constitution, which succeeded the 1993 interim Constitution, is considered one of the most progressive in the world. In its founding provisions, it states that South Africa is a democratic state founded on human dignity, the achievement of equality, the advancement of human rights and freedoms. The Constitution enshrines fundamental human rights in a justiciable Bill of Rights as a cornerstone of democracy. Unfortunately, in the eyes of a number of politicians, officials and lay-persons, the rights in the Bill of Rights accrue to South African citizens only. Xenophobia, which has been rampant since the end of apartheid, seems to support the idea that foreigners should not enjoy these rights. Foreign nationals have often been accused of posing a threat to South African citizens with regard to employment opportunities. In light of the South African legislation and jurisprudence, this article affirms the position of the South African labour law that foreign nationals are indeed protected by the Constitution and entitled to rights in the Bill of Rights, including the rights to work and fair labour practices.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-52
Author(s):  
Torben Iversen ◽  
David Soskice
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Wealth Accumulation ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Advanced Economies ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Over Time

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. The main argument is that over time, the advanced capitalist democratic state has paradoxically become strengthened through globalization. The spread of neoliberal ideas reflects the demand of decisive voters from the middle and upper middle classes to fuel economic growth, wealth, and opportunity in the emerging knowledge economy. The “laws” of capitalism driving wealth accumulation are in fact politically and, largely, democratically manufactured. This was true to a large extent at the formation of advanced economies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it is especially true in today's supposedly borderless economy.

Rethinking Information Privacy in a “Connected” World

2017 ◽  
pp. 268-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ufuoma Akpojivi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Information Privacy ◽  
Information Communication Technologies ◽  
Information Communication ◽  
Emerging Democracies

The emergence and usage of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) by states, institutions and individuals has challenged and created a shift in the normative idea of privacy from rights to solitude. Consequently, this chapter sought to ascertain if emerging democracies and economies such as South Africa and Nigeria have privacy frameworks that adequately guarantee and protect the privacy of their citizens in this globalized era. Using policy analysis, this chapter argues that although the privacy provisions in South Africa are comprehensive, the privacy framework fails to address the privacy leak associated with the usage of these ICTs. Whereas, in Nigeria, it was observed that the privacy framework is inadequate as there are no specific privacy provisions, thus the assertion that Nigerians have no privacy in this globalized era of connectivity.

Introduction: human blood and social policy

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Richard M. Titmuss
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Human Blood ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the study of the beliefs, attitudes, and values concerning blood and its possession, inheritance, and use and loss in diverse societies. The study originated and grew over many years of introspection from a series of value questions formulated within the context of attempts to distinguish the ‘social’ from the ‘economic’ in public policies and in those institutions and services with declared ‘welfare’ goals. As such, this book centres on human blood: the scientific, social, economic, and ethical issues involved in its procurement, processing, distribution, use, and benefit in Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, South Africa, and other countries. Ultimately, it considers the role of altruism in modern society. It attempts to fuse the politics of welfare and the morality of individual wills.

SOUTHERN IRISH NATIONALISM AS A HISTORICAL PROBLEM

2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN M. REGAN
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Public History ◽  
The South ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Revolutionary Period

To what extent has the recent war in Northern Ireland influenced Irish historiography? Examining the nomenclature, periodization, and the use of democracy and state legitimization as interpretative tools in the historicization of the Irish Civil War (1922–3), the influence of a southern nationalist ideology is apparent. A dominating southern nationalist interest represented the revolutionary political elite's realpolitik after 1920, though its pan-nationalist rhetoric obscured this. Ignoring southern nationalism as a cogent influence has led to the misrepresentation of nationalism as ethnically homogeneous in twentieth-century Ireland. Once this is identified, historiographical and methodological problems are illuminated, which may be demonstrated in historians' work on the revolutionary period (c. 1912–23). Following the northern crisis's emergence in the late 1960s, the Republic's Irish governments required a revised public history that could reconcile the state's violent and revolutionary origins with its counterinsurgency against militarist-republicanism. At the same time many historians adopted constitutional, later democratic, state formation narratives for the south at the expense of historical precision. This facilitated a broader state-centred and statist historiography, mirroring the Republic's desire to re-orientate its nationalism away from irredentism, toward the conscious accommodation of partition. Reconciliation of southern nationalist identities with its state represents a singular political achievement, as well as a concomitant historiographical problem.

THE UNITARY, DEMOCRATIC STATE AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST APARTHEID IN PALESTINE–ISRAEL

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr Rumy Hasan
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
State Solution ◽  
The South ◽  
Legal Code ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Liberation Struggle ◽  
Fundamental Proposition

This paper utilises a comparison between Apartheid South Africa and Israel to argue that Israel, from its inception, has been an apartheid state, albeit different in form to the South African variety. The fundamental proposition is that only the dismantling of the Zionist legal code, the constitution and discriminatory state structures will ensure the end of apartheid in Palestine–Israel. The sine qua nonfor this is the creation of a single, unitary, democratic state. Accordingly, the goal of the Palestinian liberation struggle should decisively shift away from the 'two-state solution' in favour of a 'one-state solution'. To this end, six theses are presented.

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