Worlds Apart: Social Attitudes to Restitution in South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anye-Nkwenti Nyamnjoh ◽  
Sharlene Swartz ◽  
Benjamin Roberts ◽  
Jare Struwig ◽  
Steven Gordon
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Fault Line ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
Major Fault ◽  
Nationally Representative

Given the urgency of redressing South Africa’s unjust legacies of the past, we interrogate the nature of support and opposition to restitution in South Africa. Informed by responses to the nationally representative South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), we contend that South Africa remains deeply polarised when it comes to addressing these unjust legacies, with race being the major fault line. When it comes to restitution, South Africans are worlds apart on three levels. We are worlds apart across racial groups; we are worlds apart within racial groups, and we are worlds apart in the kind of language we wish to use in framing our pursuit of equality. In the final analysis, while South Africans may be unified in the acknowledgement that the inequality gap is too high, and perhaps even unified in a desire for change, there is a fundamental disagreement about the desirable vehicles we hope to employ.

scholarly journals Minding the Protest: Attitudes towards different forms of protest action in contemporary South Africa

2017 ◽  
pp. 81-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Narnia Bohler-Muller ◽  
Benjamin James Roberts ◽  
Jare Struwig ◽  
Steven Lawrence Gordon ◽  
Thobeka Radebe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Perceived Effectiveness ◽  
Student Protest ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Student Protest Movement

This article focuses on providing new insights into the nature of public opinion about protest action in South Africa. Since the mid-2000s the country has experienced one of the world’s highest levels of popular protest and strike action, combined with the recent resurgence of an active student protest movement. Sociological research into these protests has suggested that they represent distinct phenomena and that local protests have assumed plural forms that cut across simple violent/non-violent and orderly/disorderly binary distinctions. Despite the rapid growth of literature on South African protests, surprisingly little is known about public opinion relating to various forms of protest. Consequently, this article aims to examine differences with regard to the acceptability, perceived effectiveness and participation in respect of three categories of protest action, namely orderly, disruptive and violent protests. The article uses data from a protest module included as part of the 2016 round of the South African Social Attitudes Survey, a nationally representative series conducted annually by the Human Sciences Research Council. Apart from determining the nature and extent of variation in opinion regarding the three types of protest action on aggregate, the article explores patterns of similarity and differentiation across societal groups, based on class, age, race, gender and geography. Finally, we analyse how and for whom perspectives on the three forms of protest have changed over the course of a generation by drawing on functionally equivalent data collected in 1995. The article concludes by reflecting on whether the evidence supports key hypotheses regarding the ‘rebellion of the poor’1 in the country.

scholarly journals COVID-19: Two sides to the story

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juanita Mellet ◽  
Michael Pepper
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Infected Person ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
Significant Negative Impact ◽  
African Perspective ◽  
Two Sides

Since the report of the first COVID-19 infected person in South Africa, COVID-19 has moved from being a distant threat to a new reality that resulted in a nationwide lockdown. Though the lockdown was necessary to prepare health facilities for when the country reached its peak, it had a significant negative impact on the economy. In other areas such as the environment, work and education, and the personal lives of South Africans, the consequences have been varied. This article will highlight the positive and negative impact of the past 18 months of lockdown from a South African perspective.

“Lest We Forget”: A Postapartheid Perspective on Remembering in Liturgy for Healing and Justice

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-72
Author(s):  
Hilton Scott
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
South African ◽  
South African Context ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Future ◽  
African Context

The idea of Remembrance Day (also known as Armistice Day) in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries carries two important notions: (1) to remember significant tragedies and sacrifices of the past by paying homage, and (2) to ensure that such catastrophes are prevented in the future by not forgetting. This concept can be applied to the South African context of a society and young democracy that is living in the wake of apartheid. In certain spheres this will include decolonizing the long-standing practices of Remembrance Day in South Africa, ritualizing the event(s) to be more relevant to those who partake by shifting the focus to tragedies caused during apartheid, and remembering that such a deplorable catastrophe should never be repeated. The important liturgical functions and pragmatic outcome(s) of this notion are reconciliation, restoration, transformation and, ultimately, liberation, as South Africans look to heal the wounds caused by the tragedies of the recent past and prevent such pain from being inflicted on others in the future.

Unmasking the enduring legacies of apartheid in South Africa through Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Malesela Edward Montle
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
The Political ◽  
African Society ◽  
South African Society ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
Racial Tension ◽  
Apartheid Regime

Prior to the dispensation of democracy in South Africa, the country was presided by a system of apartheid that perpetuated colonial policies that discriminated against non-white (South) Africans. Nevertheless, the democratic jurisdiction dethroned and succeeded the apartheid regime in 1994. This galvanised South Africa to undergo a political transition from segregation (autocracy) to peace, equality and unity (democracy). The political emancipation engineered a shift of identity and also made a clarion call for South Africans to subscribe to a democratic identity branded by oneness and harmony. However, as South Africa sought to redress herself, it unearthed appalling remnants of the apartheid past. Twenty-seven years since democracy took reigns in South Africa, the country is still haunted by the horrors of the past. It is the apartheid government that has bred hegemonic delinquencies that encumber the South African society from extricating herself from discriminatory identities such as racial tension, division, inequality and socio-economic crises. This qualitative study sought to scrutinise the vestiges of apartheid in South Africa. It has hinged on the literary appreciation of Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow, which reflects on the menace that the enduring legacies of apartheid pose to livelihoods in the democratic period. Mpe’s post-apartheid novel is chosen for this study by virtue of its exposure and protest against apartheid influence in the newly reconstructed democratic South African society. Scholarly attention has been satisfactorily paid to the implementation of socio-economic transformation in the country, however, there seems to be an inadequate scholarship to explore the pretexts or the genesis of socio-economic transformation setbacks, which this study aims to unmask.

Accountability: The Debate in South Africa

1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Kollapen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Solid Base ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Just Society ◽  
To Come

The constitutional and political negotiations in South Africa have reached an advanced stage and elections for a government of national unity might take place within the next twelve months. For the millions of South Africans who have waited, fought, sacrificed and suffered the end appears to be in sight. While they will have every right to celebrate the results of their hard-fought battles to achieve a democratic and just society, they equally have a solemn duty to ensure that they proceed to build the future on a solid base, not only to guarantee the protection of democracy and justice but more importantly to ensure that no other South African is ever again the victim of the types of human rights abuses that have for the past decades become synonymous with the country. There will only be one opportunity to rebuild the nation. If it fails it will be a great disservice to South Africa's countrymen and women and to the generations that will follow. Even as a South African one has difficulty in fully comprehending the enormity of the social and human destruction caused in the name of apartheid. It has brutalized and dispossessed its people; robbed children of their youth and their innocence; widowed and orphaned thousands and destroyed the dreams and hopes of decent men and women. The 18 million people gaoled in terms of the pass laws and the 15.5 million people uprooted by forced removals bear testimony to the brutality and savagery with which apartheid was applied. The legacy of those policies will remain for many years to come.

scholarly journals DE-LINKING UBUNTU: TOWARDS A UNIQUE SOUTH AFRICAN JURISPRUDENCE

Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Freddy Mnyongani
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
National Unity ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
Divided Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic

The adoption in 1993 of the interim Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act (200 of 1993) as the supreme law of the Republic marked a watershed moment in the history of South Africa. It was a moment of transition for which the interim Constitution was to serve as a bridge. In the words of the post-amble: “This Constitution provides a historic bridge between the past of a deeply divided society characterized by strife, conflict, untold suffering and injustice, and a future founded on the recognition of human rights democracy and peaceful co-existence and development opportunities for all South Africans, irrespective of colour, race, class, belief or sex.” (Under the section titled: “National Unity and Reconciliation”.) Given the volatile political context within which South Africa’s transition was negotiated, the drafters of the Constitution saw fit to append a postamble in which they called for the “need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation” (under the section titled: “National Unity and Reconciliation”). For a country where the traditional legal discourse has been the domain of Western liberal values, the inclusion of an African value of ubuntu in the Constitution was in itself “a historic bridge”. In the words ofEtienne Mureinik, if this bridge is to “span the open sewer of violent and contentious transition” those who are entrusted with its upkeep need to know where the bridge is from and where it is leading to. For Mureinik, the interim Constitution is a bridge away from a culture of authority to a culture of justification where every exercise of power must be justified.

Ontological Well-being and the Effects of Race in South Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crain Soudien
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
The South ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Prejudice And Discrimination ◽  
Analyze Data

The concept of ontological insecurity draws attention to uncertainty, instability, and threats to autonomy, as these relate to people’s identities. It has connections to the idea of practical consciousness or the cognitive and emotive anchors that enable people to feel secure. The experience of racism has important implications for ontological insecurity. Racism as an experience profoundly dehumanizes a person. Despite the multiple affinities ontology has with questions of race and inequality, the idea of ontological insecurity has not been used widely in discussions of social difference. The concept can help explore the effects of prejudice and discrimination as they relate to a person or group’s whole sense of being. These ideas are used to analyze data from the South African Social Attitudes Surveys conducted between 2003 and 2016. In the surveys young South Africans report feelings of dampened capacity—a diminishing of their self-confidence. Race was a factor in these feelings; however, it was not determinative in a totalizing sense.

Suicidal Behavior in Black South Africans

Crisis ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lourens Schlebusch ◽  
Naseema B.M. Vawda ◽  
Brenda A. Bosch
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Suicidal Behavior ◽  
Health Care Facilities ◽  
South African Society ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Care Facilities ◽  
Black South Africans ◽  
To Come

Summary: In the past suicidal behavior among Black South Africans has been largely underresearched. Earlier studies among the other main ethnic groups in the country showed suicidal behavior in those groups to be a serious problem. This article briefly reviews some of the more recent research on suicidal behavior in Black South Africans. The results indicate an apparent increase in suicidal behavior in this group. Several explanations are offered for the change in suicidal behavior in the reported clinical populations. This includes past difficulties for all South Africans to access health care facilities in the Apartheid (legal racial separation) era, and present difficulties of post-Apartheid transformation the South African society is undergoing, as the people struggle to come to terms with the deleterious effects of the former South African racial policies, related socio-cultural, socio-economic, and other pressures.

Reframing Xenophobia in South Africa as Colour-Blind: The Limits of the Afro Phobia Thesis

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-444
Author(s):  
Amanuel Isak Tewolde
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Conflict Theory ◽  
Black African ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Online Newspaper ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
Realistic Conflict Theory

Many scholars and South African politicians characterize the widespread anti-foreigner sentiment and violence in South Africa as dislike against migrants and refugees of African origin which they named ‘Afro-phobia’. Drawing on online newspaper reports and academic sources, this paper rejects the Afro-phobia thesis and argues that other non-African migrants such as Asians (Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis and Chinese) are also on the receiving end of xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa. I contend that any ‘outsider’ (White, Asian or Black African) who lives and trades in South African townships and informal settlements is scapegoated and attacked. I term this phenomenon ‘colour-blind xenophobia’. By proposing this analytical framework and integrating two theoretical perspectives — proximity-based ‘Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT)’ and Neocosmos’ exclusivist citizenship model — I contend that xenophobia in South Africa targets those who are in close proximity to disadvantaged Black South Africans and who are deemed outsiders (e.g., Asian, African even White residents and traders) and reject arguments that describe xenophobia in South Africa as targeting Black African refugees and migrants.

A Review of Medical Waste Management in South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olaniyi FC ◽  
Ogola JS ◽  
Tshitangano TG
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Waste Management ◽  
South African ◽  
Management Practice ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Medical Waste ◽  
African Government ◽  
The Past ◽  
Government Documents ◽  
Medical Waste Management

Background:Poor medical waste management has been implicated in an increase in the number of epidemics and waste-related diseases in the past years. South Africa is resource-constrained in the management of medical waste.Objectives:A review of studies regarding medical waste management in South Africa in the past decade was undertaken to explore the practices of medical waste management and the challenges being faced by stakeholders.Method:Published articles, South African government documents, reports of hospital surveys, unpublished theses and dissertations were consulted, analysed and synthesised. The studies employed quantitative, qualitative and mixed research methods and documented comparable results from all provinces.Results:The absence of a national policy to guide the medical waste management practice in the provinces was identified as the principal problem. Poor practices were reported across the country from the point of medical waste generation to disposal, as well as non-enforcement of guidelines in the provinces where they exit. The authorized disposal sites nationally are currently unable to cope with the enormous amount of the medical waste being generated and illegal dumping of the waste in unapproved sites have been reported. The challenges range from lack of adequate facilities for temporary storage of waste to final disposal.Conclusion:These challenges must be addressed and the practices corrected to forestall the adverse effects of poorly managed medical waste on the country. There is a need to develop a medical waste policy to assist in the management of such waste.

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