Terrorism Success Stories Revisited

2018 ◽  
pp. 42-54
Author(s):  
Max Abrahms
Keyword(s):  
African National Congress ◽  
The Political ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
Strategic Model ◽  
History Of ◽  
Effective Instrument ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Political Effectiveness

This chapter revisits the most commonly cited examples in history of terrorism paying politically. If even these cases fail to illustrate the political effectiveness of terrorism then that would further undermine the evidentiary basis of the Strategic Model. Many scholars point to the political successes of the Irgun, African National Congress, and Hezbollah as evidence that terrorism is an effective instrument of coercion. Yet these campaigns did not coerce the occupying powers to withdraw by attacking their civilians. Instead, the groups focused their attacks on military and other government targets. This chapter shows that people overestimate the value of terrorist campaigns by lumping them together with guerrilla campaigns that have been far more successful.

Social sorting as ‘social transformation’: Credit scoring and the reproduction of populations as risks in South Africa

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sachil Flores Singh
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
New South ◽  
Credit Scoring ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Security Device ◽  
Social Sorting

In this article, I show that credit scoring, although not explicitly designed as a security device, enacts (in)security in South Africa. By paying attention to a brief history of state-implemented social categories, we see how the dawn of political democracy in 1994 marked an embrace of – not opposition to – their inheritance by the African National Congress. The argument is placed within a theoretical framework that dovetails David Lyon’s popularization of ‘social sorting’ with an extension of Harold Wolpe’s understanding of apartheid and capitalism. This bridging between Lyon and Wolpe is developed to advance the view that apartheid is a social condition whose historical social categories of rule have been reproduced since 1994 in the framing of credit legislation, policy and scoring. These categories are framed in the ‘new’ South Africa as indicators of ‘social transformation’. Through the lens of credit scoring, in particular, it is demonstrated that ‘social transformation’ not only influences, shapes and reproduces historical forms of social categories, but also serves the state’s attempt to create and maintain populations as risks.

"The Struggle Made Me a Nonracialist": Why There was so Little Terrorism in the Antiapartheid Struggle

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Goodwin
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The South ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
White Allies ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Congress

Most theories of terrorism would lead one to have expected high levels of antiwhite terrorism in apartheid South Africa. Yet the African National Congress, the country's most important and influential antiapartheid political organization, never sanctioned terrorism against the dominant white minority. I argue that the ANC eschewed terrorism because of its commitment to "nonracial internationalism." From the ANC's perspective, to have carried out a campaign of indiscriminate or "categorical" terrorism against whites would have alienated actual and potential white allies both inside and outside the country. The ANC's ideological commitment to nonracialism had a specific social basis: It grew out of a long history of collaboration between the ANC and white leftists inside and outside the country, especially those in the South African Communist Party.

Albert Luthuli and the African National Congress: A Bio-Bibliography

1986 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 345-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothy C. Woodson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
White Men ◽  
Nobel Prize Winner ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Seventh Day Adventist ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Family ◽  
National Congress

Seek ye the political kingdom and all shall be yours.No minority tyranny in history ever survived the opposition of the majority. Nor will it survive in South Africa. The end of white tyranny is near.In their Portraits of Nobel Laureates in Peace, Wintterle and Cramer wrote that “the odds against the baby born at the Seventh-Day Adventist Mission near Bulawayo in Rhodesia in 1898 becoming a Nobel Prize winner were so astronomical as to defy calculation. He was the son of a proud people, the descendant of Zulu chieftains and warriors. But pride of birth is no substitute for status rendered inferior by force of circumstance, and in Luthuli's early years, the native African was definitely considered inferior by the white man. If his skin was black, that could be considered conclusive proof that he would never achieve anything; white men would see to that. However, in Luthuli's case they made a profound mistake--they allowed him to have an education.”If there is an extra-royal gentry in Zulu society, then it was into this class that Albert John Luthuli was born. Among the Zulus, chieftainship is hereditary only for the Paramount Chief; all regional chiefs are elected. The Luthuli family though, at least through the 1950s, monopolized the chieftainship of the Abasemakholweni (literally “converts”) tribe for nearly a century. Luthuli's grandfather Ntaba, was the first in the family to head the tribe and around 1900, his uncle Martin Luthuli took over.

scholarly journals Totstandkoming van de Grondwettelijke Krachtlijnen Voor Een Democratisch Zuid-Afrika

Afrika Focus ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 79-90
Author(s):  
Ted Pekane
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
External Factors ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dutch Translation ◽  
Extensive Introduction ◽  
National Congress ◽  
External Forces

The Realization of the Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa Africa Focus publishes a Dutch translation of the “constitutional guidelines for a democratic South Africa”, adopted in March 1988 at Lusaka, by the African National congress (ANC), together with a preface (by F. Reyntjens) and an extensive introduction written by Ted Pekane, member of the constitutional committee of the ANC, about the drafting ofthis important text. In the preface is referred to the political signification of a constitutional text in Africa today and to the more pragmatic content of the guidelines, compared to the Freedom Charter of 1955. T. Pekane explains the external factors that contributed to the drafting of the guidelines. He also points out the dangers of the “ acceptable” models of constitution for the post-Apartheid period advanced by internal and external forces: a lot of those models are discreet options for a status-quo.

The Elites of Solidarity: Prosopography of Delegates for the First National Congress of Solidarity

2020 ◽  
pp. 088832542094110
Author(s):  
Piotr Osęka
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Life Trajectories ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Congress ◽  
History Approach ◽  
Elected Representatives

The article aims at contributing to the social history of the “Solidarity” movement by tracing the collective biography of its elected representatives. It will focus on the life trajectories of the 900 delegates to the First National Congress of Delegates. The convention, held in Autumn 1981, is commonly perceived as a focal moment in the history of Solidarity and plays a crucial role in almost every academic narrative on the anti-communist opposition. Often seen as a first genuine Polish parliament since pre-war times, its main task was to forge the political and economic programme thus furthering the revolution. The projected research will draw on genuine methodology, combining prosopographical and oral history approach. The research will address mainly the following issues: what social strata the elites came from, what was their cultural and educational background, what motives/causes/expectations drove them to engage with “Solidarity,” to what generations did they belong, how did they embrace the character of political transformation of 1989, and to what extent and how did they get involved in the political, economic, and social life of post-communist Poland. In general, the paper seeks to shed a new light on our understanding of Solidarity’s social roots—for instead examining to what extent the contesting, revolutionary elites were a product of the Stalinist social advancement. It also tries to depict the level of continuity between the elites of 1981 and post-1989—thus testing the common theories whether the Third Republic is (or is not) rooted in the legacy of Solidarity.

scholarly journals Elusive Pursuit of Reconciliation and Development in Post-Apartheid South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Economic Freedom ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Inclusive Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Slow Pace ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
National Congress

Debates on whether reconciliation is taking place and particularly the issue of inclusive development continue in South Africa. Reconciliation is understood as a process whereby different population groups in South Africa peacefully coexist and restore amicable relations which were fractured by colonialism and apartheid. Inclusive development has to do with the socio-economic transformation that involves, or rather benefits all the peoples of a country. Socio-economic transformation is considered slow since the dawn of democracy, with nation-building, development, freedom, and related objectives having suffered in post-apartheid South Africa. The notions of justice and inclusivity require comprehensive analysis, especially many years after the formal end of apartheid in 1994. The paper examines development and reconciliation, in seeking an explanation for what appears to be a changing political landscape in South Africa, epitomised by the decline in the number of votes that the governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), is receiving since 2009 while the Economic Freedom Fighters, a relatively new party, is gaining traction. It is argued that the slow pace of inclusive development and weak reconciliation are compromising the ANC, resulting in the evolution of the political landscape in South Africa. Essentially, the inability to improve reconciliation has resulted in weak inclusive development and makes it difficult for South Africa to become a nation.

scholarly journals The Realization of the Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa

Afrika Focus ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Pekane ◽  
Filip Reyntjens
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
External Factors ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dutch Translation ◽  
Extensive Introduction ◽  
National Congress ◽  
External Forces

Africa Focus publishes a Dutch translation of the "constitutional guidelines for a democratic South Africa", adopted in March 1988 at Lusaka, by the African National congress (ANC), together with a preface (by F.Reyntjens) and an extensive introduction written by Ted Pekane, member of the constitutional committee of the ANC, about the drafting of this important text. In the preface is referred to the political signification of a constitutional text in Africa today and to the more pragmatic content of the guidelines, compared to the Freedom Charter of 1955. T. Pekane explains the external factors that contributed to the drafting of the guidelines. He also points out the dangers of the "acceptable" models of constitution for the post-Apartheid period advanced by internal and external forces : a lot of those models are discreet options for a status-quo. KEYWORDS : African National Congress, constitution, politics, South Africa 

Education Policymaking at National Level

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Cameron ◽  
Vinothan Naidoo
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
National Level ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
The Political ◽  
Robust Performance ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Labour Unions ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Strong Performance

When one looks at the arrangements that have been put in place for managing performance in South Africa’s public sector since 1994—and specifically in the education sector—they are enormously impressive. But in general these efforts have not translated into strong performance. We find that policies for managing performance in basic education could best be explained as the outcome of a strategic interaction among three sets of actors: technocratically oriented public officials in the bureaucracy, teacher labour unions (especially SADTU, as the dominant union), and the African National Congress, in its dual role overseeing the education bureaucracy and as head of a ruling political alliance. In practice, the political strength of organized labour has resulted in outwardly impressive initiatives to promote performance management being diluted and falling well short of the aspiration of robust performance management.

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