The Laziness Myth

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
South African ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Good Work ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The People ◽  
Good Lives

When people cannot find good work, can they still find good lives? By investigating this question in the context of South Africa, where only 43 percent of adults are employed, this book invites readers to examine their own assumptions about how work and the good life do or do not coincide. The book challenges the widespread premise that hard-work determines success by tracing the titular “laziness myth,” a persistent narrative that disguises the systems and structures that produce inequalities while blaming unemployment and other social ills on the so-called laziness of particular class, racial, and ethnic groups. The book offers evidence of the laziness myth's harsh consequences, as well as insights into how to challenge it with other South African narratives of a good life. In contexts as diverse as rapping in a library, manufacturing leather shoes, weed-whacking neighbors' yards, negotiating marriage plans, and sharing water taps, the people described in the book will stimulate discussion on creative possibilities for seeking the good life in and out of employment, in South Africa and elsewhere.

“We want to live a good life”

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Good Work ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
African People ◽  
Economic Trends

This chapter introduces the book and talks about the ways people seek a good life, and how their various ways of seeking a good life do — or don't — intersect with work. It aims to help in understanding some of the global political and economic trends that make it rare for South African people to find the good life through a paid job, and how people go on finding the good life anyway. It explains that when good work is hard to find, politically polarized discourses of scapegoating abound. It then discusses how the different narratives people are inclined to believe shape their lives. Finally, the chapter talks about the danger of the hard-work narrative.

“I need to respect that person and that person needs to respect me”

2020 ◽  
pp. 82-109
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
African People ◽  
People’S Perception

This chapter explores the narrative that people associate strongly with a Zulu identity, but which also resonates beyond South Africa, a moral schema demanding that the good life requires respect for all people. It talks about hierarchies, how it affects people's perception of who they are, and how they learn to live with them. It defines inequality as the kind of situation when someone with lesser power has to figure out how to demand better treatment from someone in power. The chapter discusses how South African people manage with precarity — a situation when people have a source of income, a supportive social group, and a home to live in, yet they are always hovering just at the edge of losing those basic necessities. It also talks about respect as a moral code, respect being at the intersection of work and the good life, and it asks if respect is truly achievable.

“Despite the contradictions”

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-194
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Racial Inequalities ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Narrative

This chapter offers closing thoughts that reiterate and summarizes the main points of the book. The chapter explores the ways people make a careful survey of their situation and work out a method to yield growth despite life's contradictions and pressures. If their lives look at times like wind-torn shrubs, that does not mean that they are poorly adapted or lethargic. Instead, it offers evidence of the hard work it takes to thrive in a world where the good life is hard to find. It shows that a dominant myth blaming inequality on laziness has guided, upheld, and justified racial inequalities in South Africa and the world since the earliest mercantile and colonial encounters between Europeans and Africans, and this narrative was never eradicated, despite antislavery, civil rights, and anti-apartheid movements that achieved important legal and structural changes. The struggle to change this social narrative is an unglorified resistance with no clear ending point, but it is essential to the pursuit of the good life. It also shows evidence that in order to generate employment while aiming for the higher goal of seeking good, South Africa must address the history of antiblack disrespect that perpetuates dysfunctional employment structures. The people described in this book refuse to conform to narratives of inevitable happy endings or easy hope, but neither do their stories end only in despair.

HAPPINESS AND THE GOOD LIFE

Think ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (60) ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
David Louzecky
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Good Lives

The question I raise is whether happiness constitutes a good life. I argue that it does not and contend that the good life is based on three essentials: worthwhile activities, worthwhile character, and worthwhile relationships. I provide examples of possibly happy lives that are not good and good lives that are not happy.

scholarly journals Rural Development within the Context of Development, Sustainability and Rural Issues – Some Constitutional, Policy and Implementation Perspectives

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Nic Olivier ◽  
Carin Van Zyl
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Rural Development ◽  
South African ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Development Programme ◽  
Sustainable Rural Development ◽  
Rural Development Programme ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
The People ◽  
The Republic

This article provides an overview of some developments, internationally, regionally and in the SADC, in relation to development, that may be expected to influence the South African government’s response to the development needs of the people in the country.  An overview is provided of the somewhat haphazard way in which the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 refers to the need for and objective of development (including rural development) in the country.  Through their explanatory outline of three distinct phases in South African rural development law and policy: 1994–2000 (the Reconstruction and Development Programme and related documents and their implementation); 2000–April 2009 (the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Strategy and its implementation) and April 2009+ (the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme and related documents), the authors review some of the historical strengths and future prospects related to rural development in South Africa.  Based on an assessment of historical trends, a number of recommendations are made for government’s way forward in the implementation of the constitutional objectives, law and policy relevant to rural development in the country.

scholarly journals TRANSFORMATION OF GOVERNANCE IN STATE-OWNED COMPANIES: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA AS A DEVELOPING COUNTRY

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 162-176
Author(s):  
Maphelo Malgas ◽  
Bonginkosi Wellington Zondi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
General Public ◽  
African State ◽  
South African Government ◽  
The South ◽  
African Government ◽  
Financial Reports ◽  
The People ◽  
The Will

The basis of this article is an article published by Thomas (2012) whose objective was to track over a two-year period the performance of five strategic South African state-owned enterprises with regards to issues of governance. These enterprises were ESKOM, South African Airways (SAA), South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Telkom, and Transnet. The paper revealed that there were serious transgressions in these entities and recommendations were made to address these. The aim of this article therefore was to establish whether or not the transgressions reported by Thomas are still happening within these entities. The data was collected from the 2014/2015, 2015/2016, 2016/2017, and 2017/2018 financial reports of these entities. The study revealed that the transgressions are still taking place. With regards to issues of sustainability SAA and SABC continue to make loses, with SAA continuing to be bailed out by the South African government against the will of the South African general public. Fruitless and wasteful expenditure increased in all the five entities mentioned above and no serious action has been taken by the South African government to hold the people responsible accountable. While Telkom, Transnet and Eskom were making profits these profits are not at the envisaged level.

Aligning the ideals of free software and free knowledge with the South African Freedom Charter

First Monday ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bob Jolliffe
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Free Software ◽  
Short Paper ◽  
The South ◽  
The People ◽  
Digital Commons ◽  
Science And Culture ◽  
African Soil ◽  
The Rich

When Amartya Sen visited South Africa in 2004 he made the observation that Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom began on African soil. He implicitly recognised that we have in South Africa a long tradition of interpreting, articulating and striving for an ideal of freedom, which reflects the aspiration of the broad masses of our people. The clearest articulation of this struggle was the Freedom Charter, adopted by the congress of the people in Kliptown in 1955. The free software movement (and related efforts in the fields of science and culture) draws upon a tradition of freedom rooted in an American libertarian tradition. In this short paper, I underline the importance of aligning efforts to promote free software and free culture with the rich existing tradition embodied in the South African Freedom Charter. Doing so may require a reinterpretation, re–imagining and even perhaps a re–vocabularising of the digital commons if it is to succeed as as a social, technical and political project in South Africa.

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 Book review: “Into the people effectiveness arena: Navigating between chaos and order”

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Herman J. Pietersen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Resource Management ◽  
South African ◽  
Human Resource ◽  
New South ◽  
Strategic Human Resource Management ◽  
Knowledge Resources ◽  
The People ◽  
Management Issues

Veldsman, T.H. (2002) "Into the people effectiveness arena: Navigating between chaos and order", Randburg, South Africa: Knowledge Resources, 364 pages. In a noteworthy new South African management text, Theo Veldsman, consultant in the strategic human resource management (SHRM) field, brings together the fruit of many years of experience and thought on people management issues in an exciting new way.

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