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Xenophobia in South Africa is often depicted as anti-immigrant sentiments and stereotypes that emanate from social, political, and economic misconceptions. This paper argues that though the causes of xenophobia are many and complex, they stem from the dashed hopes of independence and the legacy of apartheid. This narrative has over the years been overshadowed by the view that xenophobic attacks in South Africa are a product of hate and anti-migration. We argue that the failure of successive governments of the ANC to correct the wrongs of the apartheid past and make the economy inclusive has stoked the tensions between citizens and foreign nationals. To underscore this point, this paper undertakes a discussion on the pertinent implications of the political trajectory of xenophobia in South Africa and makes some recommendations on what can be done to reduce incidences of xenophobic attacks in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore relations between race, capital and wildlife conservation in the town of Hoedspruit and its surroundings, which has developed into one of the main centres of the lucrative and rapidly growing 'wildlife economy' in South Africa. Behind its image as a shining 'green' example of wildlife-based development is a highly unequal and racialised state of affairs that is deeply unsustainable. At the core of these dynamics are private wildlife reserves, high-end nature-based tourism and gated 'wildlife estates', which have further consolidated land into private, mostly white, ownership. In addition to contestations about the building of a shopping mall and land claims, Hoedspruit's wildlife economy is dependent upon black labourers who commute daily from former homeland areas. Municipal efforts to mediate this situation by building affordable housing, have been thwarted by several wealthy inhabitants and property developers. We build on Mbembe's 'logic of enclosure' to argue that the wildlife economy and its 'green' image perpetuate and reinvent older forms of colonial and apartheid geographies of segregation, in effect creating a form of 'new green apartheid'. While physical-geographical enclosures are at the centre of the wildlife economy, we show that they are reinforced by class and racial enclosures and ideological enclosures, the latter consisting of both the belief in the market as a natural solution for social and environmental causes and apartheid as an historical era that has now ended. We conclude that Hoedspruit serves as an important example of the regressive and unsustainable forms of development that the wildlife economy in South Africa can create. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Kristeva (1982) the abject not only caused visceral disgust but posed a threat to the established order of society. The abject is a product of particular times and places but limited attention has been given to understanding the process of transitioning away from abject status. We address this gap here through an examination of the planning profession in post-apartheid South Africa. The paper examines how the abject is fluid and resilient, evolving to fit a changing planning system and broader political economy where a discourse of abjection by race has been replaced by a focus on poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to delve deeper into the discourse about the epistemic decoloniality of Westernised higher education in South Africa. Discrete academic studies have indicated that African Knowledge paradigms have not found a home in South Africa's Westernised academies yet; knowledge patterns remain foreign and colonized. The current curriculum at a section of Historically White Universities in South Africa largely reflects the colonial and apartheid worldviews and is disconnected from African realities, including the lived experiences of most black South Africans, taking into account Arts and Humanities. Based on an examination of the decoloniality project and curriculum dishonesty and reform through literature study, the article calls for critical rethinking and reconfiguration, which should position South Africa, Africa, and last of all, the globe at the centre of knowledge production. Epistemic decoloniality at South Africa's Historically White Universities should not be pursued with knowledge violence but rather with scholarly debate. This article introduces the framework of decoloniality by tracing the genesis of (South) Africa's knowledge coloniality and initiates a discussion on the current epistemic decoloniality in South Africa's Westernised higher education. The focus is on curriculum justice and knowledge integration across Historically White Universities in South Africa. The last portion of the paper applies the proposed measures to evaluate the cogency of decolonial discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper contributes to literatures on settlements and institutional maintenance work. It does so by unpacking post-settlement legitimation efforts required to maintain contentious institutions between previously conflicting actors. Settlements often necessitate the maintenance of institutions from the past whose legitimacy is dubious for the new regime. We study the role played by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in re-legitimating and maintaining the institution of the armed forces in the transition from apartheid to democracy. Maintaining this legitimacy required collaboration between the incoming government as well as the apartheid era armed forces. We term these unexpected collaborative efforts 'reluctant accommodation work'. Our findings show that the lines of allegiance may be more fluid than currently depicted in the literature. Actors that previously conflicted need to find an interest in collaborating in their efforts to shape central institutions. Second, we show that for settlements to shape the field, they need to agree on the terms of collaboration, what we term 'passage points', as well as engage in public ceremonies to broadly legitimate the settlement and the institution it seeks to preserve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces the evolution and periodization of shifting ideas about the critical issues shaping city planning in South Africa, looking both at the relative and variable importance ascribed to health and other factors such as labour, economic reconstruction and housing. While the evolution of the South African city cannot be read without an understanding of the role of public health, changing ideas about cities and public health necessitate careful historical unravelling before any causal relationships can be identified. Any urban reconstruction, including post-COVID-19 reform, will demand deep knowledge of how the health/planning nexus has evolved, alongside expert advice on how to maximize urban health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1994, as soon as South Africa became a democratic country, the first step taken by the new democratic government was to introduce various transformative constitutional and legislative interventions that sought to redress all the past apartheid discriminatory laws. This paper looks at these interventions by critically showcasing how they are being used to transform and reform land by ensuring inclusivity and equity in South Africa where the previously denied, disposed and segregated Black majority have access and are benefitting broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work on the conceptual amelioration of race concepts is usually negative or critical: it uncovers social features that contribute to racial hierarchies. Much less focus has been placed on how ameliorative accounts contribute to positive change. Using an account of race developed by Steve Biko during South African apartheid, I will argue that we can extract a novel account of positive amelioration in which racial categories can have normative or aspirational force, contributing to positive change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyse civic policing in post-apartheid South Africa as a form of 'weaponized volunteering'. We use 'weaponized volunteerism' as a conceptual lens to refer to practices that rest on the potentiality and/or willingness to use physical violence or to harness the physical violence of others under the guise of 'volunteer work'. By drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted by both authors in eThekwini, South Africa, we show that by framing civic policing as weaponized volunteerism, we are able to analyse the violence at the core of policing and underline the varied ways that violence work is harnessed and expanded through civic policing, in the interest of civic and state actors. This, in turn, allows us to explore the continuum between state and civic violence, which is often directed towards similar groups and individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-reads Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians as a representation of Coetzee's effort to inform the broader world of the actual terrors and crimes against humanity that existed in South Africa in the 1970s and early 1980s by extending the narrative into the later 20th and early 21st centuries. I claim that the representations in the narrative allow readers to see the novel as a critique of a global historical process that started to emerge in the late 1970s and dominate the 1980s and 1990s in South Africa and much of the rest of the world. This historical process, which has come to be called neoliberalism, is part of the larger process of colonialism. Coetzee's novel examines various manifestations of colonialism, and it makes it clear that there is no apparent point when colonialism in South Africa, or around the world, mutated into neoliberalism. Rather, neoliberalism is an extension of the process of colonialism heading into the late 20th and early 21st centuries. To expose this continuous process of colonization, Coetzee symbolically examines colonial discourse, the contradiction inherent in the discourse of Empire, and the failure of a liberal humanist to maneuver successfully with or against the neoliberal tide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nigeria's claim as the giant of Africa is evident in her foreign policy articulation of African Centre Piece. From 1960, Nigeria has championed the project of Africa through different diplomatic engagements across the continent of Africa most especially under President Olusegun Obasanjo's civilian administration. Nigeria's unwavering support against the apartheid regime in South Africa led to the termination of apartheid government in 1994. However, the post- apartheid politics in Africa as well as the post-Cold War politics changed the dynamics of African politics. Nigeria's claim as the giant of Africa became more contested and hypothetical with the emergence of notable countries such as Ethiopia and South Africa posing serious challenges to Nigeria's hegemony in the continent. The most viable and notable threats came from South Africa following the end of apartheid regime in South Africa and coupled with its good governance rating, which had heightened the status of the country as a notable continental leader. This article attempts to explain the leadership roles of Nigeria and South Africa in a peripheral region of Africa with the view of analysing who has the sway to lead the affairs of Africa to the path of prosperity. Through the secondary method of data collection and qualitative method of data analysis (discourse analysis), the study concludes that Nigeria and South Africa roles in Africa were motivated by realist considerations. The study, however, recommends concerted efforts between Nigeria and South Africa in addressing socio-economic challenges in the African continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production and airing of Color TV (2011–2012), a variety comedy show, on the South African Broadcasting Corporation was seemingly driven by creator, producer, and industry desire for increased representation of "coloreds," or people of mixed race, seventeen years after the end of apartheid. Although constitutional mandates and nation-building discourses support proportionate racial representations, the series was not renewed. Using critical race theory and a production studies approach, this analysis explores the apparently supportive context that engenders controversial racial representations by minority television personnel. Drawing on in-depth interviews with the creator of Color TV, and the show's commissioning editor, the study explores how the political economic context of television production constrains racial representations to favor integrative nation-building programming and construct palatable racial representations of minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]