Download or read book Minority Protection in Post Apartheid South Africa written by Kristin Henrard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-08-30 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accommodation of population diversity is a vital issue for any multinational society. The legacy of Apartheid in South Africa complicates this effort considerably. Henrard introduces a theoretical framework regarding how to accommodate minority protection in the most appropriate way and analyzes the respective contributions of individual rights, minority rights, and the right to self-determination. Subsequent chapters examine the case study of post-apartheid South Africa and attempt to investigate its constitutional development. Henrard finds that provisions within the 1996 Constitution do acknowledge an interrelation between these three important factors; however, implementation of minority protection policy is often quite a different matter. In seeking appropriate means of minority protection, this study stresses inclusionism, integration, and the essential right to identity and real equality. While Henrard reviews and discusses the entire democratic transformation process in South Africa, she cautions that, because current developments are characterized by their unsettled nature, major transformation and flux, analysis of the implementation phase can be only indicative. The apartheid history does not in itself inhibit progressive stances on this important issue. Still, despite the promising nature of the 1996 Constitution, the picture that emerges in terms of policy development aimed at minority protection is ambivalent.
Download or read book Race and Nation in Post apartheid South Africa written by Kogila Moodley and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book After Apartheid written by Ian Shapiro and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2011-06-21 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy came to South Africa in April 1994, when the African National Congress won a landslide victory in the first free national election in the country’s history. That definitive and peaceful transition from apartheid is often cited as a model for others to follow. The new order has since survived several transitions of ANC leadership, and it averted a potentially destabilizing constitutional crisis in 2008. Yet enormous challenges remain. Poverty and inequality are among the highest in the world. Staggering unemployment has fueled xenophobia, resulting in deadly aggression directed at refugees and migrant workers from Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Violent crime rates, particularly murder and rape, remain grotesquely high. The HIV/AIDS pandemic was shockingly mishandled at the highest levels of government, and infection rates continue to be overwhelming. Despite the country’s uplifting success of hosting Africa’s first World Cup in 2010, inefficiency and corruption remain rife, infrastructure and basic services are often semifunctional, and political opposition and a free media are under pressure. In this volume, major scholars chronicle South Africa’s achievements and challenges since the transition. The contributions, all previously unpublished, represent the state of the art in the study of South African politics, economics, law, and social policy.
Download or read book Whites and Democracy in South Africa written by Roger Southall and published by African Sun Media. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the place and role of whites in South African political life today? Are whites genuinely willing participants in a ‘non-racial democracy’, willing to forego the racial privileges of the past or, despite legal equality, have they proved reluctant to relinquish power and continue, as black activists assert, to dominate many aspects of South African society? Building upon the burgeoning body of work on whiteness, this book focuses on how whites have adapted politically to the arrival of democracy and sweeping political change in South Africa. Outlining a variety of responses in how white South Africans have sought to grapple with apartheid’s brutal history, the author shows how their memories of the past have shaped their reactions to political equality. Although the majority feared the coming of democracy, only a right-wing minority actively resisted its arrival. Others chose (and are still choosing) to emigrate, used democracy to defend ‘minority rights’ or have withdrawn into psychologically or physically demarcated social enclaves. Challenging much current thinking, Southall argues that many whites have chosen to embrace the freedoms that democracy has offered, or to adapt to its often disconcerting realities pragmatically. Examining this crucial issue against the historical context of minority rule and its defeat, the author presents a new dynamic to the continuing debate on whiteness in Africa and globally.
Download or read book Post apartheid Fragments written by Wessel Le Roux and published by Unisa Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the tension between public and private and between equality and dignity; the notions of sovereignty; aesthetics; action and revolt in South Africa.
Download or read book State of Transition written by Clive Harber and published by Symposium Books Ltd. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main purpose of this book is to provide a concise overview of educational transition – to document, discuss and analyse key changes (and continuities) in South African education since the end of apartheid. What makes this period particularly fascinating for educationalists is that the legacy of apartheid and the years of international isolation meant that educational reform had to be fundamental and wide ranging if South Africa was to become a modern, democratic state participating in the global political economy of the twenty-first century. The result was that in the final five years of the twentieth century South Africa became something of a laboratory or crucible for educational innovation. From 1948 to the early 1990s South African government was based on an institutionalised system of ‘racial’ separation and inequality formally known as apartheid. A white minority dominated a black majority in a context of stark social, political and economic differentiation. While the apartheid state used force to maintain this system, formal education was also used to try to make the basic tenets of apartheid ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ in the minds of South Africans. From the apartheid government’s point of view, the role of education was to help to perpetuate and reproduce a racist system and to encourage obedience and conformity to that system. It is not therefore surprising that in the 1970s and 1980s education also became a key site in the struggle against apartheid or that educational reform was high on the agenda of the first democratically elected government after April 1994. However, while the direction of educational reform has inevitably been strongly influenced by the nature and history of the anti-apartheid struggle inside South Africa, the global political and economic context has also played its part in shaping educational debate and policy outside South Africa. Clive Harber’s book recognises that there is a difference between planned reform and the actual nature of educational change on the ground and tries, where possible, to set reform in the contextual realities of South African education as they presently exist. It aims to understand the difficulties and ambiguities of transition as well as the overt aims and goals as enshrined in policy documents and legislation.
Download or read book Elusive Equity written by Edward B. Fiske and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Protecting Minority Rights in African Countries written by John M. Mbaku and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2018-01-26 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this enlightening book, John Mukum Mbaku analyses the main challenges of constitutional design and the construction of governance institutions in Africa today. He argues that the central issues are: providing each country with a constitutional order that is capable of successfully managing sectarian conflict and enhancing peaceful coexistence; protecting the rights of citizens - including those of minorities; minimizing the monopolization of political space by the majority (to the detriment of minorities); and, effectively preventing government impunity. Mbaku offers a comprehensive analysis of various approaches to the management of diversity, and shows how these approaches can inform Africa's struggle to promote peace and good governance. He explores in depth the existence of dysfunctional and anachronistic laws and institutions inherited from the colonial state, and the process through which laws and institutions are formulated or constructed, adopted, and amended. A close look at the constitutional experiences of the American Republic provides important lessons for constitutional design and constitutionalism in Africa. Additionally, comparative politics and comparative constitutional law also provide important lessons for the management of diversity in African countries. Mbaku recommends state reconstruction through constitutional design as a way for each African country to provide itself with laws and institutions that reflect the realities of each country, including the necessary mechanisms and tools for the protection of the rights of minorities.From students and scholars to NGOs, lawyers and policymakers, this unique and judicious book is an essential tool for all those seeking to understand and improve governance and development in Africa.
Download or read book Media in Postapartheid South Africa written by Sean Jacobs and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Media in Postapartheid South Africa, author Sean Jacobs turns to media politics and the consumption of media as a way to understand recent political developments in South Africa and their relations with the African continent and the world. Jacobs looks at how mass media define the physical and human geography of the society and what it means for comprehending changing notions of citizenship in postapartheid South Africa. Jacobs claims that the media have unprecedented control over the distribution of public goods, rights claims, and South Africa's integration into the global political economy in ways that were impossible under the state-controlled media that dominated the apartheid years. Jacobs takes a probing look at television commercials and the representation of South Africans, reality television shows and South African continental expansion, soap operas and postapartheid identity politics, and the internet as a space for reassertions and reconfigurations of identity. As South Africa becomes more integrated into the global economy, Jacobs argues that local media have more weight in shaping how consumers view these products in unexpected and consequential ways.
Download or read book Indians in Post apartheid South Africa written by Anand Singh and published by Concept Publishing Company. This book was released on 2005 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study seeks to examine the perceptions of and responses to transformation among the people of Indian origin, in the context of the debates around race, class, ethnicity and civil society in post-apartheid South africa.
Download or read book Language Policy and Nation Building in Post Apartheid South Africa written by Jon Orman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-08-27 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The preamble to the post-apartheid South African constitution states that ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity’ and promises to ‘lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law’ and to ‘improve the quality of life of all citizens’. This would seem to commit the South African government to, amongst other things, the implementation of policies aimed at fostering a common sense of South African national identity, at societal dev- opment and at reducing of levels of social inequality. However, in the period of more than a decade that has now elapsed since the end of apartheid, there has been widespread discontent with regard to the degree of progress made in connection with the realisation of these constitutional aspirations. The ‘limits to liberation’ in the post-apartheid era has been a theme of much recent research in the ?elds of sociology and political theory (e. g. Luckham, 1998; Robins, 2005a). Linguists have also paid considerable attention to the South African situation with the realisation that many of the factors that have prevented, and are continuing to prevent, effective progress towards the achievement of these constitutional goals are linguistic in their origin.
Download or read book Taking Ethno Cultural Diversity Seriously in Constitutional Design written by Solomon A. Dersso and published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. This book was released on 2012-11-08 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite decades of nation-building exercise, ethnic-based claims for substantive equality, justice and equitable political inclusion and socio-economic order continue to result in communal rivalries. These are claims that define and represent the issue of minorities in Africa, of which these conflicts are manifestations. Although ethnic conflicts in Africa have been a subject of a large number of studies, the potential and role of norms on minority rights to address claims that ethno-cultural groups raise has not received the attention it deserves. Based on materials from normative political theory and international human rights law and using an empirical and prescriptive analysis, this book defends a robust system of minority rights built around culture, equality and self-determination. This is employed to elaborate an adequate constitutional design providing policy frameworks (multilingual language policy, recognition and affirmation of cultural diversity,), structures (that ensure just representation and participation of members of all groups) and norms (that guarantee substantive equality and the rights to language, religion and culture). The study then proffers two cases studies (South Africa and Ethiopia) to ascertain how such constitutional design might be translated into actual policy frameworks, institutions and norms.
Download or read book Devising an Adequate System of Minority Protection written by Kristin Henrard and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-07-26 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book From Power Sharing to Democracy written by Sid Noel and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2005-09-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Power Sharing to Democracy examines the theoretical underpinnings of power sharing as a means of achieving sustainable democratic governance. Contributors examine key areas, including Afghanistan, Cyprus, Kosovo, Macedonia, and South Africa, where power-sharing constitutions and political institutions have been employed or proposed. They provide an in-depth exploration of consociationalism, under which the previously warring ethnic communities are guaranteed a proportionate share of political offices and protection of their vital interests, and federalism, which provides for substantial territorial autonomy in cases where the communities are territorially segregated.
Download or read book Until We Have Won Our Liberty written by Evan Lieberman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-24 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling account of South Africa’s post-Apartheid democracy At a time when many democracies are under strain around the world, Until We Have Won Our Liberty shines new light on the signal achievements of one of the contemporary era’s most closely watched transitions away from minority rule. South Africa’s democratic development has been messy, fiercely contested, and sometimes violent. But as Evan Lieberman argues, it has also offered a voice to the voiceless, unprecedented levels of government accountability, and tangible improvements in quality of life. Lieberman opens with a first-hand account of the hard-fought 2019 national election, and how it played out in Mogale City, a post-Apartheid municipality created from Black African townships and White Afrikaner suburbs. From this launching point, he examines the complexities of South Africa’s multiracial society and the unprecedented democratic experiment that began with the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994. While acknowledging the enormous challenges many South Africans continue to face—including unemployment, inequality, and discrimination—Lieberman draws on the country’s history and the experience of comparable countries to demonstrate that elected Black-led governments have, without resorting to political extremism, improved the lives of millions. In the context of open and competitive politics, citizens have gained access to housing, basic services, and dignified treatment to a greater extent than during any prior period. Countering much of the conventional wisdom about contemporary South Africa, Until We Have Won Our Liberty offers hope for the enduring impact of democratic ideals.
Download or read book The State of Secularism written by Dhammamegha Annie Leatt and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of global political secularism comparing religion and traditional authority in apartheid South Africa. The Dutch Reformed Church, it was said in apartheid South Africa, was the National Party at prayer, and indeed, given that the Bible was so fundamental to much of the legislation that governed the apartheid state, that apparently satirical description had the ring of truth. 'Religion in South Africa's past', writes Dhammamegha Annie Leatt has been 'saturated by politics' and politics 'saturated by religion'. So how, she asks, was it possible for a new state to found itself without religious authority? Why did the churches give up so much of their political role in the transition? How can we think about tradition and the customary in relation to secularism? How can we not? In The State of Secularism Leatt guides the reader from a history of global political secularism through an exploration of the roles played by religion and traditional authority in apartheid South Africa to the position of religion in the post-apartheid state. She analyses the negotiations relating to religion in the constitution-making process, arguing, that South Africa is both secular in its Constitution and judicial foundations and increasingly non-secular in its embrace of traditional authorities and customary law. In the final chapter Leatt turns her attention to post-apartheid South Africa, examining changing relationships between churches and the ruling African National Congress and the increasing influence of traditional leaders and evangelical Christians in an anti-liberal alliance. This book makes a tremendous contribution to the literature on postcolonial politics on the African continent. It has wonderful insights into the founding of a constitutional democracy in South African and will appeal to students in history, politics, sociology and anthropology and constitutional law.
Download or read book South Africa s Emergent Middle Class written by Grace Khunou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is drawn from diverse studies that grapple with Black Middle Class experiences in contemporary and historical South Africa. The chapters present research from diverse disciplines, and tackle issues related to being black and middle class, using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Like many other social phenomena, the black middle class concept is seen as complex and not easy to pin down. As a result, conceptualizations from these chapters are dynamic and relevant for understanding the position of the black middle class in contemporary South African society. An interesting dynamic explored by contributors is the critical engagement with the usually reductionist notions of black middle class experiences as ahistorical, homogenous experiences of a group of conspicuous consumers. These limiting notions are unpacked and repositioned in how the book is structured. This book was published as a special issue of Development Southern Africa.
