Search

South Africa is undergoing a rapid decline in social and political cohesion at various scales. This paper explores Cape Town's experience of socio-territorial messages and identities deployed by the City administration and the leading party, the Democratic Alliance. I focus on relational constructions of the subjectivity of the 'ratepayer' and the deserving Capetownian as constructed in the City and the DA's discourse and policy measures in juxtaposition to 'street people' and other supposedly deviant urban subjects and how, as such, the wilful ignorance of the first remains both unchallenged and in service of an exclusionary and unjust spatial order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates the direct and indirect effects of democracy on CO2 emissions in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) from 1992 to 2018. In view of the distribution heterogeneity of CO2 emissions, the panel quantile regression model is especially used to explore the nexus among different variables. Furthermore, in order to predict the trends of CO2 emissions in different countries, we also estimate the kernel density function of CO2 emissions in the BRICS countries by the quantile-fitted values. The results indicate that the direct impact of democracy on carbon dioxide emissions is significantly negative and great at high-emission countries. Although the indirect effect of democracy is positive in China and negative in Brazil and South Africa, the total effect of democracy on CO2 emissions remains negative in all BRICS countries. The estimation of kernel density function shows that the distribution of CO2 emissions in each country is gradually concentrated. Moreover, there is an environmental Kuznets curve depicting the linkage of urbanization and carbon dioxide emissions in Brazil and South Africa. These findings further highlight that the impact of democracy on high-emission and low-emission countries should be taken into account in policymaking to achieve sustainable developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against a backdrop of definitions and conceptual clarifications of the term urban policy, including its expression in the developing world—and Africa, in particular—this paper reviews the trajectory of urban policy in South Africa post-1994 and comments on future directions and plausible scenarios. In a highly specific context-dependent analysis, the paper argues that, in the first 10 years of democracy, we have seen the creation of democratic, integrated development local government, mass delivery of housing and services, a finely crafted array of capital and operating subsidies for delivery to lowincome households, and a number of programmes intended to enhance the capacity of local government to undertake delivery. All of these have been centrally driven. The counterpoint to the national perspective and frameworks, the paper argues—and in evidence over the past 5 years, in particular—is the increasingly robust role and influence of cities in setting the urban agenda and, in effect, leading urban policy. The paper concludes by examining the many points that contribute to this view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about conflicts of rights, and the particularly difficult challenges that such conflicts present when they entail women's equality and claims of cultural recognition. South Africa since 1994 has presented a series of challenging--but by no means unique--circumstances many of which entail conflicting claims of rights. The central aim of this paper is to make sense of the idea that the institution of traditional leadership can be sustained--and indeed given new, more concrete pow-ers--in a democracy; and to explore the implications that this has for women's equality and equal human rights. This is a particularly pertinent question in the South African context, and I think it is worth reiterating from the outset that there is a distinct impression that women's equality is always "up for grabs" when other, perhaps more powerful interests, come into play, in a way that would be unacceptable for other aspects of identity, and therefore signifiers of equality. It would be inconceivable, for example, to countenance a claim for a hierarchical racial arrangement in a given community, no matter how deeply culturally entrenched that arrangement was, and regardless of how much support it (ostensibly) had from the community concerned. I think therefore that we are obliged to ask difficult questions about the new legislation on traditional leadership, and to put it under the microscope of political theory in assessing the claim that this is one way of recognizing people's rights and freedoms in a new democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the contribution of South African nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to the process of democratic consolidation. By drawing on a 1998 survey conducted among 270 NGOs, on several expert interviews, and on an analysis of the structures and programmes of the umbrella body of South African NGOs (Sangoco), the author presents a multi-faceted picture of the activities of the South African NGO sector. The focus is on the NGOs' role as (1) “schools of democracy,” (2) in bridging societal cleavages, and (3) in providing channels of interest representation for the most marginalized sections of the population. The paper concludes that the contribution of South African NGOs to the process of democratic consolidation is significant, but highly dependent on an enabling external environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly 25 years after democracy, South African cities are still burdened with an apartheid spatial form. Whilst some literature on the persistence of the legacy of apartheid spatial planning exists, not enough work has been done to understand the complex challenges facing the urban planners mandated with the task of spatial redress. Using a case study of the eThekwini Municipality in Durban, South Africa, this article responds to this gap. The research commenced with a census survey of 87 municipal planners within the municipality, supported by five interviews with senior City executives. What stood out from the survey was that three quarters of all planners admitted that municipal planning had not been successful in transforming the built environment in Durban. In trying to understand the critical challenges facing municipal planning, the top three issues emerging from the study in order of priority were the negative influence of politics that affects technical decision-making, a compliance-driven legal framework, and an unsupportive institutional environment. In unpacking findings from the study, the paper contributes to the debates around the role of planning professionals in post-apartheid spatial transformation within the context of a market economy. In particular, it exposes how political power being exerted on behalf of private developers to influence local planning decisions, compromises the interests of the poor in the city. It also brings attention to the impact of an unsupportive institutional environment in inhibiting city spatial transformation. It does not seek to propose ready-made solutions to these challenges but suggests the urgent need for a sustained conversation with strategic role players about reimagining planning, making the call for renewed action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under apartheid, black African households could not own land or homes in most major urban centres in South Africa. This limited residential mobility and locked many households into state rental accommodation in townships. Homeownership for all South Africans was restored in the mid-1980 s and the Group Areas Act was repealed in 1991. Democracy opened up economic opportunities previously unavailable to black people. This paper investigates the effect on black middle-class South African households’ residential mobility and housing careers. A retrospective cross-sectional survey of 244 such homeowners in the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality determined their last five housing states. Changes in housing state indicated a steady improvement in housing quality, but tenure changes were not necessarily unidirectional—some had reverted to rental. More than 85% of the study participants had used mortgages to finance their housing career. Very few had financed their housing using own savings, an inheritance, or sale of a previous house, and not many had used the government subsidy. We found that housing careers are bridging the historical spatial racial divide in this municipality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dostoevsky, Mandela, and others have long noted that prisons expose social realities, often hidden, particularly inequality and gaps between policy and practice. Prisons symbolize, mirror, and shape the communities and countries in which they exist. Although prisons informed and were intertwined with many of the defining moments of 1989, in the 20 years since, societies often failed to recognize the important role prison and punishment play in relationship to democracy. By not recognizing that “prison matters” in relationship to democracy, polities (whether in transition to democracy or established democracies) failed to adequately learn “prison lessons.” Starting with a case study of South Africa, this paper considers prisons during apartheid and under democratic governance. This case is connected to other comparative and international examples (including Russia, Brazil, and the USA) to identify five lessons learned and not learned concerning prison and democracy. First, policies and practices of imprisonment reflect social orders, especially structures of inequality and understandings of legitimate power and opposition. Second, countries transitioning to democracy seldom anticipate rising crime and invariably neglect the relevance of prisons. Third, nations do not adequately grapple with the role of prison in the past, especially the nondemocratic past. Fourth, in established and recent democracies, penal populism resulted as politicians defined prison as a solution to a host of social ills, ignoring the consequences of expanded punishment. Fifth, prisons shaped key substantive realities beyond their walls, from leadership to recidivism, scandals, fiscal deficits, and crises of legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide a sketch of the ways in which ‘formal’ institutions of democratic representation worked in practice in Durban/eThekwini in the 2000-2004 period. In so doing, it assesses how the representation of eThekwini’s citizens functioned at both the ward and metropolitan levels. After outlining the formation of the new metropolitan political arena, we consider the relationships amongst political parties at Metro and Ward levels, and, in particular, explore some contextually specific forms of democratic practice which emerged through the interaction of proportional representation and ward representation over time. The election of councillors as such does not resolve a series of dilemmas concerning how to institutionalise democratic representation within a racially diverse, spatially divided, and rapidly changing metropolitan area. Electoral-representative aspects of a urban democratisation are not a straightforward ‘formal’ framework alongside which other processes of democratic discussion, mobilisation and contestation can be easily situated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a case study of development policy making in the eThekwini metro (Durban), South Africa, this paper explores the emergence of new forms of local democracy in post-apartheid South Africa. After a review of the process surrounding the preparation of the Long-term Development Framework and the Integrated Development Plan in the city from the late 1990s through to 2003, the paper outlines the nature of community participation in the creation of these plans. We note the relationship between processes of formal elected representation and strong community participation in the preparation of the Long-term Development Framework. The initially extensive participatory process to some extent evolved into a routinised series of local meetings in each ward where community involvement was better characterised as consultative rather than participatory. The complexities and power relationships internal to participatory or consultative practices are placed alongside the way in which ‘participation’ competes with other forms of representation. Elected representatives were very important for setting the tone and direction for development policy in the city, although some perceived community meetings as threatening to their legitimacy or role. Unelected representatives such as traditional authorities were also relevant in this context. The final section turns to more informal but no less important influences on development policy in the city. In particular, major business actors have had a direct influence on large capital projects within the city. Furthermore, politicians at a provincial and national level participate in many decisions relating to the city through party networks. Officials and council departments played a significant role in determining the policy documents and visions for the future of the city. We conclude that a range of forms of democratic government all played a role in shaping development policy: participatory, electoral, party mechanisms, bureaucratic institutions of government, and informal influence. While all these co-existing aspects of democracy instantiate fields of power relations, the evidence from Durban suggests that local democracy is being forged in distinctive and vibrant ways in post-apartheid South Africa, even if these are necessarily embedded in emergent systems of power relations which frame and limit opportunities for redistributive and developmental outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the fact—despite a widespread impression to the contrary—that the collapse of Communism in the fall of 1989 did not happen overnight, the paper explores the kind of gradual societal work that had led to the emergence of democratic polities in Central Europe but that had generally escaped the notice not only of policy makers and the leaders of the “free world” but also of theorists. The concept and practices of performative democracy as it manifested itself in the period of late Communism (1970s–1989), but also in South Africa at the dusk of apartheid, and the conditions for political performativity, as well as its main features, are then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crime has become central to any discussion about the consolidation of democracy in South Africa. Concerns about crime intensified in the years after 1994, as the country attempted to grapple with the apparent ‘crime wave’ that accompanied the transition. A decade later crime is still a priority for government and a concern among citizens, but the clamour that characterised both state and civil society responses in the early years of democracy has receded (See the article by the author in Social Indicators Research 41: 137–168, 1997). This may relate to the decrease in crime levels as reflected by various statistical sources. It is also possible that those whose voices were heard most loudly on the issue – the middle classes – have taken all available measures to protect their property and lives from crime. In all likelihood, South Africans have become accustomed to living in a violent society, and one in which other equally serious problems now require attention. Although the national obsession with crime has waned, the available data nevertheless indicate that the problem still affects many thousands of lives. The impact of crime – in terms of the costs of victimisation, negative perceptions and fear, and the cost of responding to crime – remains high for South African society. This paper considers how crime levels and perceptions about crime and safety have changed over the past decade, and what these trends tell us about the country 10 years into our democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the grantmaking to South African civil society of six major U.S. foundations between 1988 and 1996. It answers four related questions: (1) How did these foundations understand civil society, and did they think there was a link between it and democracy? (2) How significant was their support for civil society from 1988 to 1996? (3) How did South Africa's democratization affect their grantmaking patterns? (4) Did the foundations favor professionalized NGOs over grassroots and decentralized organizations, and if so, was this the right approach? The empirical analysis of the South African case contributes to the general debate about the link between civil society and democracy, and the role of funders in supporting both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local economic development (LED) is a salient public policy issue in South Africa. This article offers a critical analysis both of the current policy status of LED in South Africa and of 15 years of evolving LED practice. Themes of concern are an overview and discussion of current LED policies, frameworks and guidelines; the key LED stakeholders and of how they define their own roles in LED; and the emergence and state of the practice of LED in South Africa since the 1994 democratic transition. It is argued that considerable overlap and duplication of tasks exist among key institutional stakeholders. National government must assume a greater leadership role and establish clear LED guidelines to assist often poorly capacitated local authorities to facilitate LED activities. Fifteen years of LED practice in South Africa have served to reinforce geographical inequalities in economic and social development across the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa celebrated ten years of democracy in 2004. This special issue of Social Indicators Research (SIR) reviews developments that have impacted on the quality of life of ordinary South Africans during the transition period. The issue updates an earlier volume of SIR (Volume 41) published in 1997 and as a stand-alone volume. The earlier volume was initiated following SIR editor Alex Michalos’ first visit to South Africa. This update on quality of life in South Africa follows on his return visit to the country in 2004 to see firsthand the changes that had occured in the meantime. This introductory article outlines major achievements of and setbacks for the new democracy and the challenges facing it in future. It provides the backround for the evaluations of a range of quality of life domains and issues including poverty and inequality, crime, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, migration and housing, religiosity, reconciliation, and optimism for the future which are covered in the eleven articles that follow. The introduction divides the articles under the headings of challenges, achievements, monitoring quality of life, and social capital for the future. The overview article concludes that improvements in quality of life have been uneven but goodwill and a positive outlook bode well for South African quality of life in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I revisit the question of socio-economic transformation in South Africa to illustrate how it connects with human rights, essentially because, as I argue, transformation is unattainable without a comprehensive understanding of the central role of human rights in activating that process. I state the claim that the progressive human rights culture on the basis of which South Africa launched itself from the demise of apartheid into one of the most treasured constitutional democracies globally is noticeably disintegrating, displaying signs of post-independence failures that have bedevilled many other African countries. It leaves unanswered questions with regard to the transitional promise for a better life and equitable opportunities. Not only is the political intent to actualise the project for socio-economic transformation apparently lacking, prospects that the expectations of the impoverished segments of the population may never be fulfilled prompts the need for an in-depth diagnosis of the contrasts that dissociate the country from its constitutional commitment to remedy the injustices of the past, which remain visible in legislation, policies, institutional practices, governance mechanisms and social perceptions that seem to be hardwired to accommodate transformation. I aim to demonstrate that even though South Africa's constitutional democracy is anchored on a radical undertaking to eradicate the injustices that unreasonably limit options for the larger part of the population, there is no genuine adherence to the constitutional standards for transformation under the present dispensation, which is shaped by misconceived and misdirected priorities at the expense of human rights that lie at the core of the project for socio-economic transformation. I articulate these viewpoints by bringing into sharper focus the connection between human rights and transformation so that perhaps, the arguments may provide conceptual direction in academic discourses and probably also shape policy direction in crafting transformative solutions to the socio-economic exigencies that South Africa is confronted with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effects of energy consumption, democracy and globalization on environmental degradation in the context of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for South Africa between 1971 and 2014. To this end, the study applies the combined Bayer-Hanck cointegration test and the fully modified ordinary least squares (FM-OLS) estimation approach. The empirical results confirm the presence of cointegration among the variables, and thus validate the EKC hypothesis for South Africa. In addition, while energy consumption increases environmental degradation, the effect of democracy is positively insignificant. The finding also suggests that globalization condenses environmental degradation. The results of the long-run causal relationship divulge that economic growth, energy consumption, democracy and globalization Granger-cause environmental degradation. The results also find causality running from CO2 emissions, economic growth, democracy and globalization to energy consumption. In the short run, a causality is found running from globalization to CO2 emissions, energy consumption to CO2 emissions and globalization to energy consumption. In addition, economic growth is said to Granger-cause democracy while democracy Granger-causes CO2 emissions. These results are validated by the innovation accounting tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Legislation to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was passed soon after election of South Africa's first democratic government. Discourse around the TRC focused on the importance of bearing witness to the past, and on the healing powers of forgiveness. However, there was also a concern that individuals with TRC relevant experience would simply be re-traumatized by participation in the process. To date, there has been little empirical data for either hypothesis.Methods: A nationally representative survey of the South African population (n = 4,351) was undertaken 6-8 years after the TRC process began. Information about subjects' exposure to and participation in the TRC was collected, and views about the testimony of survivors and perpetrators were assessed. To determine the predictors of distress, anger, and forgiveness, linear regressions were undertaken with inclusion of demographic variables, exposure to TRC variables, and attitudes to the TRC.Results: Distress was significantly associated with specific demographic factors (female gender, less education), with having a TRC-related experience to share, and with negative perceptions of the TRC (a negative view of survivors' testimony). Anger had similar associations but was also predicted by lower age. Forgiveness was associated with age and education, with being Coloured, and with having a positive view of perpetrator's testimony, while it was inversely associated with having a TRC experience to share. Distress and anger correlated inversely with forgiveness. Perceptions of the TRC were moderately positive irrespective of many demographic variables (race, education, age).Conclusion: In this cross-sectional study, causal relationships are difficult to ascertain. Nevertheless, relationships between increased distress/anger, having a TRC relevant experience to share, and negative perceptions of the TRC, support a view that bearing testimony is not necessarily helpful to survivors. However, in the population as a whole, moderately positive attitudes towards the TRC across sociodemographic variables support a view that the TRC helped provide knowledge and acknowledgment of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the views of the author on democracy, government policy and law in South Africa. Reasons for the political nature of policies; Need of consistency between government policy and the constitution; Discussion on policy, law and the separation of powers in a state.

Examines the role of the quality of life surveys on the change management in democratic transitions in South Africa. Observation of gap in living standards between the rich and poor; Problems related to the nation transition to democracy; Government policies and programs for improving the quality of life.