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The complexity and the impact of international migration on developing economies have grown to be a global phenomenon that cannot be ignored. Natural disasters, human-made disasters such as conflicts as well as political and economic instabilities in countries are at the centre of international migration. The receiving countries can have positive contributions from migration and face the glaring realities of providing social services to their citizenry and the migrants. South Africa is not an exception to this impasse. Among other challenges experienced by developing countries linked to international migration are overpopulation growth, rising unemployment and poverty levels, poor infrastructure and low lifestyle quality. Therefore, the purpose of this conceptual paper was to analyse the impact of international migration on developing economies with specific reference to South Africa. The study used secondary data comprising existing literature and legislative and policy documents related to international migration for both domestic and international migration. The information collected from the secondary data was analysed and used as the basis to give the view and the study in its conclusion. The study aimed at contributing to the body of knowledge and the shaping of policy perspectives for both policy makers and development actors in South Africa, and to broaden the understanding of how governments from both receiving and the sending countries deal with international migration. The study provided an important foundation upon which further large-scale research could be developed on international migration, especially on its impact on developing economies like South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the political and historical roots of collective action problems around community policing in Hout Bay, South Africa. Utilizing a social capital approach, it argues that party politics has exacerbated a racialized politics of public goods provision in the community, with implications for the local governance of security. Using original data from semi-structured interviews and secondary sources, the paper analyzes the community's environment of social capital, the influence of local and provincial party agendas on inter-group relations there, and its ultimate impact on community policing in Hout Bay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa is gripped by protests which have usually taken the form of service delivery protests that have become more manifest during election periods. However, each election cycle has different types of protests with varying degrees of intensity. Thus, the aim of this paper is to analyse the link between elections and service delivery protests in South Africa with a focus on the 2016 and 2021 local government elections in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. This qualitative study relies on relative deprivation theory to tease out socio-economic issues driving these protests and rational choice theory to explore the rationale behind the timing of protests. Findings are that, in both provinces, although protests were linked to poor service provision, other factors like intra-party tension were notable. This article recommends a re-visit of cadre deployment policy, because the lack of capacitated and skilled cadres has fuelled service delivery especially in local municipality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa's 2021 local government elections witnessed the lowest voter turnout since the advent of democracy. This reflects a longer trajectory of declining voter turnout. The primary objective of this paper was to discuss factors that contributed to the hesitancy of the electorate in participating in local government elections in South Africa particularly the rural perspective. The study employed qualitative approaches, designs and methods. It relied mostly on literature review and utilised document review of reports and plans in order to gather data. The findings highlight that this behaviour reflects how political parties treat the electorate once elected in municipal councils. Furthermore, elections no longer offer hope for the improvement of the lives of voters. The other factors contributing to low turnout at the polls include political, social, economic perceptions of the voters. This article recommends that multisectoral efforts be concerted to address the major challenge at hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2021 local government elections (LGE) in the Republic of South Africa once again delivered hung metropolitan municipalities – a phenomenon that became common following the 2016 LGE results. The City of Cape Town is, however, a metropolitan municipality that has experienced coalition governance since the early 2000s, while the rest of South Africa's metropolitan municipalities were governed by the ruling African National Congress from 1994 to 2016. The 2021 LGE delivered coalition governments across the majority of metropolitan councils, namely: City of Tshwane (the capital), City of Johannesburg (Africa's economic hub), Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, City of Ethekwini, and Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality. This paper provides a conceptualisation of 'coalition governance and politics', and key characteristics of this phenomenon in South Africa and globally. Conceptual and operational understandings of coalitions is crucial given their increasing prevalence in South Africa. Areas of cooperation, compromise, consensus and divergence among the prospective coalition partners in South Africa are also examined in the article (based on political party electoral performance trends, political ideology, policy preferences and leadership personalities and qualities). Such factors are important because they determine the likely feasibility, efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of coalition governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa's 2021 municipal elections present something of a paradox. The results suggested a highly competitive environment, especially in the urban metropoles, with an unprecedented number of hung councils where no single party was able secure 51 percent. The larger parties suffered losses while smaller parties made gains, suggesting voters had abandoned old political homes for new ones. In contrast, while previous local elections enjoyed modest but steady increases in participation, the 2021 municipal elections also witnessed a sharp decline in voter turnout. Less than a third of eligible voters participated. This paper argues that these paradoxical features are likely to remain a feature of South African electoral politics in the medium-term. While many who participated were likely to be volatile voters, switching their votes to a party different from previous choices, their participation was insufficient to compensate for a higher numbers of abstentions, which are a result of growing political system disaffection with electoral actors. These disaffected citizens are positioned at the periphery of politics and will be difficult to entice back to the polls, leaving the competitive aspect of South Africa's elections reliant on a diminishing number of engaged and unpredictable voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 17th Sustainable Development Goal seeks to promote partnerships at various levels. To this end, COVID-19 vaccines development partnerships in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are inevitable in facilitating ethical access to affordable and safe vaccines the world over. With South Africa being part of the BRICS, its presence can assist in leveraging the partnership to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines developed by the BRICS are efficiently deployed in Africa. Through the tracking of announcements, documents and critical discourse analysis, and Geographical Information Systems, this paper investigates COVID-19 vaccines development collaboration in the BRICS and its implication for Africa. It emerges that there is an inherent discord in the BRICS, with bilateral arrangements both within and outside the forum being evident. This has resulted in advance breakthrough COVID-19 vaccines from China and Russia not widely tried across the BRICS. The paper notes that these developments weaken the global south and affect its potential to develop COVID 19 vaccines. The work recommends a reconsideration in terms of COVID-19 vaccines development and future proofing of collaboration within the BRICS and finding a way of having South Africa continue to lobby for affordable and accessible vaccines for Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa's recent democratic elections have witnessed a decline in political participation. Yet few studies examine the influence of political efficacy on the decision to participate. Using 2014 and 2019 post-election public opinion survey data captured after these respective national and provincial elections, the paper addresses a research gap by demonstrating a relationship between a respondent's level of internal and external political efficacy and their likelihood of voting across two consecutive elections. It finds that external political efficacy, and to a lesser extent, internal efficacy shapes the decision to vote. The responsiveness of the political system is a key determinant of voting even after other key predictors of participation are accounted for. It concludes that years of state-based failures have eroded citizen perceptions of political system responsiveness which has, in turn, undermined how citizens perceive the utility of their vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2015 and 2016 student protests amplified criticism of university curricula which protesters proclaimed to be ill-suited to our context. This paper engages with such criticism by evaluating the South African political studies curriculam it terms of whether or not it can be considered to be 'decolonised'. I ask three questions, all of which arise from comments made by student protesters about the need for curriculum change: 'Who is teaching our students?', 'Which scholars' work is being prescribed?' and 'Which geographical areas receive attention?' These questions are answered based on data gathered from undergraduate political studies course outlines from seven South African universities. In answer to the first question, I show that while white academics are still over-represented, the demographics of those teaching undergraduate politics are shifting towards demographic representivity. In answer to the second question, I show that our political studies departments still mostly prescribe the work of male scholars, white scholars and Western scholars. Responding to the third question, I show that politics departments include courses focused on Africa and particularly on South Africa while other regions of the world receive little attention. The paper concludes by raising some difficult questions with the hope of stimulating further debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The #FMF protests at the University of Pretoria (UP) and universities across South Africa reflected a confrontation with power and an exhibition of distrust in democratic institutions. #Fallists consciously chose to challenge pre-determined notions of 'the right to education' and the pervasiveness of gatekeeping and access. These were questions intricately linked with their past. On all campuses, including UP, the #Fallists encountered many challenges. At UP, students who had affiliated themselves with the AfriForum Jeug student society contested very specifically the 'rights' that the #Fallists were demanding. This paper involves a modest attempt at formulating the possibilities that have been opened up by considering the #MustFall events in light of the responses by white Afrikaans speaking students. In this case study, one of the challenges faced by the #Fallists at UP was the opposition they encountered from AfriForum Jeug. How was this tug-o-war to be read and understood? The AfriForum case study is particularly relevant since it has been significantly argued that a dominant motivation and rationale for participation in the #MustFall protests included a pushback against persistent inequality and racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who are the swing voters in South Africa's elections? This study is among the first to systematically investigate the correlates of the swing vote in South Africa. The paper argues that race, cohort, performance, and partisan networks influence the likelihood that an individual is a swing voter. To investigate these arguments, this study uses original exit poll survey data from South Africa's 2016 local elections. The results indicate that swing voters are those who have weaker racial identities, weaker attachments to their racial group's party, are 'born free', have lower assessments of ANC performance, and have fewer friends and family who support their preferred party. The paper also predicts what drives swing voters to support a certain party. The results present key implications for race and identity-based voting in South Africa and dominant regimes across the continent and suggests that South Africa's elections are not clearly a racial census. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on South Africa's post-apartheid foreign policy decision-making has stagnated. For more than a quarter century analysts have generally drawn on secondary material from other scholars, newspaper reporting, and the speeches of government officials to elucidate how South Africa crafts and carries out its foreign policy. The accessibility of previously classified archival documents and the availability of policy makers for research interviews holds the potential to advance scholarship on South African foreign policy along two fronts. First, these primary sources offer insight into foreign policy decision-making processes. And second, they encourage a critical re-evaluation of many of the traditional understandings and tropes that have dominated the study of South African foreign policy. This paper outlines the state of foreign policy studies in South Africa and then demonstrates the power of primary research to alter key ideas about the conduct and content of South African foreign policy through three case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-apartheid South Africa, one of the central analytical questions is to do with the continuity of protests, in particular student movement protests that are highly driven by social, economic and political conditions in the present. In a social and political context of student protests, student movement is considered a threat to the state and a target for state violence. In this paper, we assert that student movement in contemporary South Africa is a social and political space in which we can begin to engage with and understand issues of dispossession and repossession as re-emerging struggles in South Africa. We also assert that student protests should be understood as real or perceived emancipatory terrain of transformation within and beyond the university campus, but also as the engine that engages with the unfinished struggle for decolonisation and transformation in post-apartheid South Africa. We draw on and engage with decolonial thought as our analytical lens through which to unpack and understand student protests in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South African politics has been dominated by the African National Congress (ANC) since the country’s successful transition to democracy. But what is the degree of ANC support in South Africa at the micro-level? This paper will examine individual party closeness to the ANC for the period 2008-2014. We will use data from the nationally representative South African Social Attitudes Survey. Multivariate tests will be employed to identify the determinants of party closeness at the start of this period and at the end. Of those factors that our models revealed as statistically significant predictors of ANC support, the strongest was race group. Class identity, by contrast, was not strongly correlated with support. Interestingly, perceptions of electoral instrumentality were positively associated with higher levels of support for the ruling party. The findings of this paper suggest the need for future research on party closeness in the country and we conclude by outlining potential avenues of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with Mudimbe's concept of the ‘colonial library’ with the aim of using this engagement to contribute to current debates about decolonising South African university curricula. The term ‘colonial library’ refers to the body of texts and epistemological order which construct Africa as a symbol of otherness and inferiority. Mudimbe shows that even the most determined attempts to resist the colonial library draw on this same epistemological order. This presents a profound challenge for attempts to decolonise university curricula as it suggests that the colonial library's reach extends into attempts to dismantle it. In response to this challenge, I discuss ways in which we can oppose epistemological ethnocentrism and argue that we need to be open to the possibility of the emancipatory reappropriation of aspects of the colonial library. The paper concludes by relating the foregoing discussion to the South African political studies classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is divided into two parts. In the first section, I describe a project that we have underway at University of Western Cape, to rethink Political Theory and Philosophy. It is a project partly responsive to the questions that have been raised over the last two years in South African universities, about rethinking the curriculum and ‘decolonizing knowledge’. The second part of this paper will offer a description of a course that I have been teaching at Honours and Masters level on Political Violence and the Modern State. In recounting these two projects I wish to contribute to possible ways we might reconstitute the genealogy of the modern state from an African vantage point, and therefore to think about how this might be done in a way that is not Eurocentric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses attempts by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the leader of Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) for than four decades, to change his political image from that of a Zulu nationalist to that of a elder statesman of South African politics, who advocates inclusive politics. Although Buthelezi's attempts at political transformation have been underway for more than two decades now, the article focuses on his two recent attempts: the Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi Museum and Document Centre, and his 90th birthday celebrations. While these attempts are interesting in their own right, it is what they reveal about the politics of Zulu nationalism that is important. The paper argues that significant transformations are under way in the politics of Zulu nationalism, to which scholars should pay attention. These changes underscore the malleability and dynamism of the ideology of nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Class-based analysis has become one of the key academic approaches to examining political behaviour in South Africa. As its usefulness in the context of high inequality is contested, this article seeks to contribute to the debates on its analytical potential based on interviews and group discussions with womxn1 studying at the University of Johannesburg. Drawing on Foucauldian theorising on power of norms and discourses, and theories of intersectionality, this paper shows that the expectations attached to middle classness and eliteness in South Africa contribute to the maintaining of the existing systems of power by seeking to discipline young educated womxn away from becoming political change-makers. The effectiveness of this class-based disciplinary power is in its embeddedness in other systems of domination, including gender, race and age. Thus, only within an intersectional critical framework, does the category offer a useful lens for understanding how power impacts South African politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-apartheid democratic South Africa experienced the pitfalls of one-party dominance when the country's fifth democratically elected parliament (2014–2019) faced growing corruption, state capture, undermining of parliamentary oversight and the abuse of political power and state institutions. These events threatened the country's constitutional democracy and its principles of an accountable government as the ruling party undermined parliamentary oversight structures through majoritarianism to evade accountability by the Legislature and Executive. This led to the growing coexistence and cooperation of opposition parties (despite their ideological differences) in parliamentary oversight as a means of challenging the African National Congress' (ANC) one-party dominance. This process resulted in the establishment of formal and informal coalitions for governing key cities such as Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay. Against this backdrop, and building on a case study of these three metropolitan municipalities, this paper analyses the coexistence of the opposition parties in parliamentary oversight and in the governance of key cities as a means of challenging the ANC's one-party dominance. The analysis delineates the prospects and challenges of using coexistence as a strategy for challenging the ANC's one party-dominance post the 2019 general election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No longer simply trophy wives, First Ladies in Southern Africa in particular, are an increasingly influential political force in the inner circle of presidents and politics. Recent examples of the growing political influence of First Ladies of Southern Africa include Graça Machel and Grace Mugabe. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the political role, influence and activities of First Ladies in Southern Africa and in particular to contribute to this under-researched area related to political leadership in Africa. From peace missions to summits, First Ladies play a leadership role in the sustainable development and politics of the sub-region. In some instances, however, First Ladies have contributed to the undermining of accountable leadership on the continent. For analytical purposes, the paper addresses the political agenda, role, influence and accountability of selected First Ladies in Southern Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Empirical studies rarely examine the reasons why some South Africans choose to vote at elections and others not. In South Africa's early democratic elections scholars assumed that voting was an expression of group loyalties or strong party loyalties. However, the decline in turnout in recent elections appears to contradict these socio-psychological explanations. Using 2014 post-election public opinion data, the paper addresses this research lacuna in the South African literature by testing several theories of voter participation. It finds that the influence of one's social networks and, to a lesser extent, psychological engagement with politics are central to voter turnout. Trade unions and churches, and political parties, despite their obvious efforts to mobilise voters, make little impact on the decision to vote. Media exposure is a weak mobiliser but perceptions of media bias are important, suggesting that people filter out or select among media sources to suit their partisan proclivities, and this exercise in itself encourages turnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of apartheid, there has been a steady rise in community protests in South Africa. Many of these protests - often cumulatively grouped under the rubric of 'service delivery protests' are not only about the delivery of basic services, but equally about the closing down of democratic/institutional space and process when communities try to raise issues related to services and corruption. If protests are a way for the poor and the marginal to let their voices be heard, these protests should be seen as a form of communication from below with the aim of attaining greater social transformation and inclusion for those sections of society who still feel excluded from the democratic public sphere more than two decades after the arrival of formal democracy in South Africa. The coverage of these protests that the mainstream media provides, the way they are framed and the discourses constructed around them, can be considered communication from above. This paper investigates both these perspectives - from above and below - on community protests, through a three-fold methodology: a quantitative content analysis of print media coverage of community protests; qualitative in-depth interviews with journalists; and qualitative interviews with activists who were involved in the protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the history and changing role of worker advice offices between the 1970s and the present. It summarises different aspects and different periods of legal advice office history. In the experience of these offices, we see an experimentation with new forms of worker organisation and sources of power for a workforce facing exclusion and oppression. During the struggle against apartheid, at a time when traditional union activity relied on workers’ structural bargaining power, it was not always a safe option and institutional power was lacking, advice offices contributed to the labour movement by building workers’ associational power and aiming at development of strong trade unions. In post-apartheid South Africa, on the contrary, despite gains in institutional power, labour faces weakening structural and associational power due to challenges of neoliberal globalisation, so worker advice offices have to look for new approaches to help workers defend their labour rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion of citizen participation as a means to the equitable delivery of public services has distinguished South Africa’s democratic development trajectory over the last 20 years. While equitable resource allocation remains high on the agenda of more recently democratised states, most of which have highly diverse and unequally resourced populations. Influencing the design of more inclusive participation is the notion of a universal citizenship that applies the concept of the equality of individuals to the needs, identities and sense of agency of citizens both between and within states. The liberal democratic theoretical conceptualisation of the individual centres on the notion of universal citizen, who is the recipient and embodiment of democracy through the rights bestowed through the democratic model. This conceptualisation has been criticised for its inability to deal with the imprecision of individual and collective political identities, especially as these evolve in newly democratic contexts. The construction of a single identity citizen living in communities imbued with homogenous characteristics is carried forward into the policy construction of participatory governance. This article explores and challenges the notion of the single identity citizen that belongs to one homogenous community that can be identified and drawn into formally constructed government spaces. The paper explores the construction of political and socio-economic identities and how notions of community are constructed by citizens, on the one hand, and government policies, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how knowledge and accountability are framed and challenged within participatory spaces. I focus on an April 2013 case study from Khayelitsha, a township at the margins of the City of Cape Town. Over the course of one week, local members of a non-governmental organisation undertook a ‘social audit’, an attempt to dissect one of the city's many service provision contracts and to investigate local delivery of these services within several informal settlements. This paper argues that the audit inverts the city's existing spaces of governance by highlighting everyday forms of knowledge as paramount, creating legibility for non-expert forms of knowledge, and positioning government and private contractors as those who should be accountable to the community. Understanding the dynamics within community-led spaces of citizen participation can thus serve to identify and critique normative practices within neoliberal governance that further marginalise residents living within the urban periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A critical debate in contemporary post-1994 South Africa is the extent to which organised labour can join forces with community-based movements to construct coalitions which might be called ‘spaces of hope’ where policies more conducive to constructing an egalitarian society can be pursued. Using three organisations: the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and Housing Assembly (HA) in Cape Town, this paper will explore coordinated labour–community interactions. It advances a new analytical framework for thinking about ways in which the poor in South Africa are mobilised to actualise their rights. In the new political and trade union landscape (post-Marikana and post-Numsa's historical decision to dissociate from the ANC)—what I term the ‘post-alliance landscape’—new repertoires of protest and participation linked to national formations (such as Numsa who have called for a united front of the poor and working class leading to a new left party) are emerging. These emerging repertoires might help in promoting ‘shared spaces of citizenship’ where common issues and a feeling of shared fate can arise among sections of the broader oppressed. This paper will further suggest that while the social movement left criticises neo-liberalism, they have unwittingly helped the neol-iberals because of their frequently ‘misplaced criticism’ of the trade unions and their attachments to specific organisational principles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers how Durban citizens understand protest and what other methods of participation they employ in their pursuit of service delivery, democratic citizenship and social change. It is based on a sample of 20 households drawn from Cato Manor, a ‘hotspot’ for ‘service delivery’ protest as well as Merebank and Wentworth situated in the South Durban basin well known for its civil society/community opposition to local petrochemical refineries. The paper employs theories of ‘invited’ and ‘invented’ spaces of participation and ‘participation as citizenship’ to understand protest and participation among Durban's low-income, urban citizens. It argues that protest and formal participation methods are used in parallel, but with differing levels of intensity across communities depending on how people view agency and democratic citizenship. The paper also considers the role of social movements and non-governmental organisations, arguing that their initiatives to effect ‘transformative’ participation have their limits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Floor-crossing, the practice of defecting from one political party to join another, is common in democracies. While empirical research has answered a number of questions about the determinan ts of party switching and the motivations of party switchers, little is known about the consequences of floor-crossing in electoral democracies, especially for the voters who watch their elected representatives 'switch uniforms' in the middle of the game. From 2002 to 2008, floor-crossing was legal in South Africa and defections at all levels of government were numerous. Critics of the country's floor-crossing regime often speculated that rampant defections would drive voters away from the polls and undermine voters' trust and political engagement. This paper uses data cataloguing defections in municipal legislatures to assess the extent to which floor-crossing in South Africa may indeed have alienated voters. The paper finds strong evidence that floor-crossing may have suppressed voter turnout, at least in immediately subsequent elections, but only weak evidence to suggest that floor-crossing had any direct or lasting effect on voters' attitudes about government and the politicians who run it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under Apartheid, marginalised groups had limited power to influence decisions contributing to environmental injustices. Democracy witnessed civil society as 'inclusive' to engage in formal decision-making. This paper examines the ability of the state and industry to effectively implement formal participatory decision-making spaces, including the ability of civil society to engage in these spaces. This paper presents viewpoints from stakeholders in Durban to examine engagement amongst civil society, the state and industry for participatory democracy. Investigations reveal that tokenistic participatory processes by provincial/local government and industry during development processes, government use of industrial consultants for decision-making, and fragmentation between some local community groups due to acquisition of industrial funding has not effectively included marginalised citizen's into participatory processes to inform decisions. Despite a democratic transition, participatory democracy for environmental justice is limited. This paper suggests that government and industry need to engage proactively with civil society before decisions are made on development processes, rather than as an afterthought. It is also suggested that consultants used during development processes be chosen in consensus between civil society, industry and government. Community coherence against industrial risks will also be better achieved if industrial funding was administered through a community fund with an appropriate monitoring system of how funds are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concepts such as democracy and accountability rely heavily for their normative framing on scholarship originating in Europe and America. While these theories of democracy are useful for setting up frameworks with which to engage, it is important to assess the actually existing practices of everyday state-society engagement in informal locations and economies of the global south. Practices of everyday democracy may differ in contexts such as South Africa’s and it is important to assess what this tells us about reconceptualising democratic theory in our region. While not uncritical of the power imbalances inherent in clientelism, this article attempts to provide a clear conceptual definition of clientelism and then investigates how this practice may fulfil democratic tasks such as increasing participation and accountability at the local level of governance. By reframing democratic expectations and unpacking where traditionally vilified practices such as clientelism may hold moments of democracy, the paper advances the idea that the study of democracy can be decolonised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to populist political discourses, in South Africa the ruling party's approach to land policy is reproducing paternalistic relations that echo apartheid practices and represent the 'colonial present'. This reality stands in stark contrast to the initial aim of land reform, which was conceived as part of a larger project of decolonisation. The latest land redistribution strategy, the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy, where the state remains the landowner, is no longer consistent with the project of decolonisation. This is because, we argue, land redistribution in South Africa has drifted away from the ideal of social justice; it increasingly displays symptoms of what the 'colonial present' and 'recolonisation'. Party politics, as well as the emergence of a challenge to the ruling party from the left, has prompted a more radical rhetoric, but one that co-exists with deeply conservative practices. This paper argues that the status quo represents a betrayal of the idea of land reform as decolonisation, and that a radical shift in policy and practice is needed in order to align it with a project of decolonisation in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some commentators note that much of the literature on South Africa’s foreign policy behaviour is marked by clash of concepts, arguments and normative convictions. This clash has mainly been between two dominant intellectual traditions: realism and liberalism. Works based on each of the perspectives incline towards particular preferences, values and prescriptions – a single vision or a universalising organising principle guides the framing of policy problem, interpretation of empirical observations and prescriptions. The limitation of this mode of enquiry is that it fails to take account of the complexity of the social world and that there are many ways of looking at it. The article argues that neither of the two dominant perspectives ‘comprehensively and persuasively’ explains South Africa’s foreign policy behaviour and practice. Beyond parsimony the paper advocates scholarship grounded in ‘analytic eclecticism’. It is an approach that integrates ideas and variables associated with different theoretical perspectives. This approach is preferable because it ensures that the scholarly endeavour is sufficiently close to the experience of real world actors. It leads to deeper insights into policy behaviour and how to holistically deal with the problems associated with it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How can we begin to make sense of the diversity of hashtag student movements that sprang up in South Africa in the course of 2015? In this paper we start by presenting key elements of Altbach’s empirical theory of student movements and Castells’ conceptualisation of internet-age networked movements to propose as conceptual point of departure the notion of ‘internet-age student movement’. At the case of the campus-based #SteynMustFall and #UFSFeesMustFall student movement at the University of the Free State (UFS), we illustrate the richness of data available for empirical analysis and reflect on related methodological challenges when seeking to understand internet-age student movements and the dynamic relationship between the campus-based and the country-wide movement, the territorial space and the cyberspace. We conclude by reflecting on some elements of a possible research agenda for engaging with the 2015 South African hashtag student movements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Southern Africa has experienced highs and lows in its efforts towards democratisation. Following political independence of Southern Africa states, the germination of democratisation was a rather slow process. A brief period of multi-party democracy introduced through pre-independence elections quickly dissipated and was replaced by one-party, one-person and, in some instances, military regimes. This era also coincided with the height of the Cold War globally and the heyday of apartheid in which inter-state conflicts had intensified. Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new dispensation has emerged wherein multi-party democracy has re-emerged in the context of the post-Cold War and post-apartheid dispensation, marked by relative peace dividend. However, democratisation in Southern Africa remains a mixed bag today. Some countries have not yet experienced the democratic transition. Others have managed to transition from one-party, one-person and military regimes to multi-party democracies. In various others, there are signs of reversal of democratic gains. This paper reviews the state of democratisation in Southern Africa with a view to understand why the regional record is so uneven across countries that form the Southern African Development Community (SADC). While the article presents a regional snapshot, it also presents comparative insights from Botswana and Lesotho. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Democratic consolidation relies on a degree of political trust and support for new democratic institutions and actors. A decline in political trust threatens the legitimacy of institutions, and democracy itself. Using Ipsos Khayabus 2014 national public opinion survey data, the paper explores levels of political trust in South Africa's transitional society in late 2014. It asks whether there is a sufficient mass of ‘critical citizens’ to ensure accountable government, and trust expressed towards key objects in the political system. We find that a majority of South Africans are critical citizens, offering conditional support based on performance evaluations. However, we also find little distinction in the minds of citizens between political institutions and the actors that inhabit them. Low levels of trust in political actors tend to erode trust in institutions. In turn, political trust in democratic institutions is also linked to evaluations of the ruling party; signalling the dangers of a prolonged stay in power by a dominant party. Finally, we conclude with possible implications for democratic consolidation by arguing that if despondence with current actors and institutions increases citizens may become less satisfied with democracy and less inclined to embrace the dream of a democratic, unified nation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With its ‘ecological reserve’, South African National Water Act of 1998 is perceived as one of the most ambitious Water Acts in the world from an environmental perspective. At first sight, this ‘ecological reserve’ provision could be mistaken for a typical case of North–South policy transfer when actually it was initially engineered by the Department of Water Affairs and its civil engineers in the 1970s–1980s. The paper shows the renewed influence of the scientific community over the definition of the concept during the debate leading to the adoption of the Water Reform Act in the mid-1990s. While investing in the international arena, South African hydro-ecologists managed to reinforce their position in the domestic arena at the same time. Therefore, we demonstrate complex interdependence between domestic and international levels benefiting this travelling concept. Finally, we emphasize that for hydro-ecologists, the international arena was never a resource already there but an opportunity created. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although South Africa is a founding member of the Antarctic Treaty, the southernmost continent has played little part in its post-apartheid foreign policy. This article, however, argues that vigorous engagement with Antarctica and Antarctic politics represents an unparalleled opportunity and means for South Africa to simultaneously assert leadership in an increasingly important area of global politics and to address some of its most critical socio-economic problems. Due to its founding member status, the paper suggests that South Africa is uniquely positioned to be able to advocate for and champion reform of the Antarctic Treaty to achieve greater democratization of Antarctic governance. Furthermore, the introduction of a bioprospecting governance framework in the Antarctic commons based on equitable benefit sharing would help reorient South African foreign policy to better meet some of its expressed objectives, and could also generate capital funding revenue for domestic development priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

South Africa's 2009 election featured competition between the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the steadily improving Democratic Alliance (DA), and the newly formed ANC splinter party, the Congress of the People (COPE). In 2009, national-level parties faced the same strategic imperative as in previous elections: to gain support among the Black majority. But the emergence of COPE had potentially important implications for election strategy. Competition was no longer only between the liberation party (the ANC) and the successor of an apartheid-era party (the DA). COPE had its own set of liberation-linked leaders that presented a new challenge to both the ANC and the DA. This paper examines the main parties' use of candidate lists, voter outreach, and campaign rhetoric to target the Black majority in 2009. It updates and expands previous studies of racial politics in South Africa, providing novel empirical data on the campaign tactics of the ANC, DA, and COPE. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper revisits the role of grassroots forms of mobilisation and organisation that act as governance intermediaries between civil society and government. It focuses on two organisations in Khayelitsha, the Khayelitsha Development Forum (KDF), a development organisation formed at grassroots in 1985, and the South African National Civics Organisation (SANCO), a national social movement organisation claiming grassroots forms of mobilisation that retains a strong membership base in Khayelitsha. The main focus of the article is to examine to what extent these two grassroots governance organisations enable ordinary people to influence government through direct and representational forms of participation. Agency is explored in relation to the degree to which individuals and community groups are able to access and influence both self-created (invented) and more formal (invited) spaces of governance and government [Cornwall, A., and V. S. Coelho. eds. (2007). Spaces for Change? Participation, Inclusion and Voice. London: Zed Books; Thompson, L., and C. Tapscott, eds. (2010). “Introduction: Mobilisation and Social Movements in the South – The Challenges of Inclusive Governance.” In Citizens and Social Movements: Perspectives from the Global South. London: Zed Books]. The discussion shows that grassroots mobilisation on socio-economic rights, in the case of KDF and, to a greater extent, SANCO, is fraught with leadership battles, factionalism and party politics. The ability to exercise agency through SANCO is limited severely as a result, and in the case of KDF, managing political rivalry and party politics negatively impacts on the functioning of the community development organisation, and its ability to influence government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the utilisation of social movement trade unionism by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in seeking to influence the government to pursue policies that improve the lives of workers in South Africa. Social movement unionism involves trade union movement struggles characterised by shop-floor participatory processes, broader socio-political struggles and trade union alliances with community and political organisations. This perspective transcends economistic trade union struggles that are limited to the workplace. As a social movement union, COSATU played a critical role in contributing to social change by demanding the abolition of apartheid; rolling back of neoliberal economic policies in post-apartheid South Africa and, today, continues to be a key player in representing workers. However, COSATU social movement influence in the post-apartheid era has been affected by its adoption of alliance politics, utilisation of formal structures of incorporation such as the National Economic Development and Labour Council, intra-union conflicts and the reduction of its historical militant approach, among other challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]