The South African Democracy Education Trust's "Road to Democracy' project: Public lecture delivered at Oxford University, 2010 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Liberation Diaries - Reflections on 20 Years of Democracy in South Africa.pdf
The book Liberation Diaries: Reflections on 20 Years of Democracy by was published by Jacana Media in April 2014. The book has 50 chapters including contributions from prominent scholars like Professors Raymond Parsons, Hebert Vilakazi, Ntongela Masilela and Metz Thaddeus. We also have chapters by social activists like Mugabe Ratshikuni and Wayne Duvenage, journalists like Nozipho Mbanjwa, business women like Khanyisile Kweyama of Anglo American as well as university students like Mhlengi Ngcaweni and Mpho Tshivhase. These writers give different critiques of what it means to live in South Africa @ 20. Many of those who categorize the book as a spin in favor of the ruling party and government are immediately disappointed when they navigate the first chapters of the book. This is a critical reflection of the journey we have traveled as a nation, the victories scored and dreams differed. However, even among the worst critics like Wayne Duvenage of OUTA (opposition to urban tolling), the book’s overall conclusion is that South Africa is a country on the move, making strides towards creating a better life for all. Although the book was meant to contribute to the discourse on 20 years of democracy, it has actually achieved more. Most chapters as well as book reviews have moved beyond a critical reflection of the state of the nation @ 20 to pose the question: given what we know about South Africa @ 20 (both negative and positive), using historical and current trends, where will South Africa be @ 30, 40 and so on. Whilst some of the chapters to speculate about our prospects, others challenge us to think hard about the future we chose and the extent to which it will influence the future we choose. This rhetorical exposition suggests that choices made in 1994 have influenced the outcomes 20 years later. Concomitantly, the choices we make today, like introduction of the National Development Plan, will determine the kind of society South Africa will be in the year 2034. The book was among the best sellers of 2014 and has gone through a reprint. It is available in major bookstores internationally. Timeline and Milestones 1. Publication date: April 2014 2. First launch: Oxford University, United Kingdom 3. Featured in the City Press, April 2014 4. Featured in the Sunday Times Autumn Hot Reads, April 2014 5. Second launch: May 2014 at Wits University 6. Featured on CNBC Africa: May 2014 7. Reviewed on Power FM, June 2014 8. Featured on the Mail and Guardian, June 2014 9. Reviewed by Chai FM (Jewish Radio Station), June 2014 10. Reviewed by the Cape Times, June 2014 11. Reviewed in the Public Sector Manager Magazine, July 2014 12. Reviewed on Ukhozi FM in July 2014 13. Reviewed by the Centurion ANC Youth League Branch, July 2014 14. Launch at North West University by Progress Professionals Forum, August 2014 15. Reviewed on Metro FM in August 2014 16. Featured at Jozi Book Fair in September 2014 17. Reviewed at Poppy’s Café, September 2014 18. Reviewed at The Presidency, December 2014 19. Special Reconciliation Day Feature, SABC, 16 December 2014
PhD Thesis in full, 2002
This thesis is about understanding social change and the role of, and influence upon, agency in ‘making history’. In which an overview of the contemporary South African liberation struggle, and the first term of the African National Congress (ANC) government between 1994 and 1999, is juxtaposed with primary life history data of a group of former Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) activists, elected to government in 1994. It examines and analyses what their political participation means in practice and how this affects them and the inter-dependent interaction between individuals and the organisations of which they are members. The comprehension of these relationships, the basic ingredients of which are structural explanation and intentional understanding are situated in the debates around structure and agency and their inter-relationship. Drawing on ‘Marxist’ epistemology it shows how notions of class, conflict, exploitation etc facilitates an understanding of these relationships and the concomitant social relations. As agency and political ideas are an irreducible element of social change, these concepts, taken together with an historical outline of the ANC and the political beliefs that inform activists, aid our understanding of how structure and agency interacts and relates to activists experiences. Drawing on primary interviews, it also compares their experiences with that of more critical and contemporary COSATU activists, to establish if and how they differ and if the activists, turned politicians, have changed their views and ideas from those they were associated with before they went into government. In the process, it shows how these activists have come a long way in terms of what they have experienced and their political and ideological development – that in ‘making history’ they have changed in the process. It shows how they became organised and ideologically committed activists shaped to varying degrees by the mix of nationalist and socialist ideas and rhetoric, reflecting the politics of the ANC leadership and the constituent parts of its multi-class organisation, and how this continues to influence their political development.
Engel/Pallottii (eds.) 2016. South Africa after Apartheid
South Africa after Apartheid Policies and Challenges of the Democratic Transition, 2016
South Africa is a work in progress, in which at every step the contradictions between promises and expectations must be negotiated in a context of fractures and hierarchies inherited by the legacy of apartheid and influenced heavily by dominant international blueprints. The essays proposed here succeed to make connections between scholarly research and political and social action, between theory and practice. To show how state decision-making is influenced, and in what measure determined, by the nature and internal social changes and by government staying in power in regional and international relations. Connections that raise further relevant questions to stimulate the critique of the democratic process and on how these relations of power may influence, stall or even drive back, the path of autonomous emancipation, as it was and is embedded in the history of suffering and sacrifice of the population.
African Identities, 2014
This essay offers critical framing of the articles in the Special Issue on Twenty Years of African Democracy. It prioritizes the ideas of radical scholars and their take on how contemporary South African democracy is being experienced. It focuses on a series of important paradoxes, such as those presented by the challenge to provide truly free and accessible public education and the challenge to provide rights to the city for rural women migrants, the challenge to navigate the foreign policy role of South Africa on the African continent, the challenge posed by new laws for the protection of the reproductive rights and the prohibition of gender-based violence, and the challenge offered by popular cultural production that intervenes in African humanities. These essays explicitly think about South African democracy beyond the basic and normative terms of measuring whether or not democracy has been consolidated and can deliver steady and safe support for civil society and competing political and social interests. Instead, contributors are particularly attuned to how state projects and entrenched power attempt to incorporate and deploy or dismiss alternative indexes of democracy that may in fact be far more insightful measures: it includes research on the seemingly non-political-the genre of crime fiction, the youth poetry scene, masculinity studies, and philosophical debates over the historiography of the struggle for liberation.
Memory of Nations - Democratic Transition Guide: The South African Experience
Chapter 4: Reparations in South Africa, 2020
The experience of Central and Eastern European countries that underwent a transition in recent decades shows that facing the questions of the past, in particular addressing the legitimacy and legality of the former regime and remembering its crimes and their perpetrators are crucial to the democratization of any society. To avoid “repeating of own past”, taking a clear stance towards both the victims and the culprits and embedding this stance into the legal system, education and society’s memory is a necessary task for every transiting nation and may not be underestimated. The current project, which is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy and was launched at the beginning of October 2016, wants to make the democratic transition experience selected countries available in an organized and systematic manner. The primary objective of the project is to produce a practical guide chronicling the democratic transition experience of the selected countries to help reformers, who are in charge of democratization processes in their home countries, to deal with issues involving security services during transition. Secondly, the project aims at creating a database of international experts, authors of the Guide, who are willing to provide guidance to new democracies with navigating delicate issues concerning dismantling the state security apparatuses and preservation of national memory. It is clear that the transitional experience of one nation cannot be copy-pasted to another country. However, it is possible to find inspiration or on the contrary, to learn from mistakes made by others in order not to repeat them. Thus, it is important to have in mind the various experience of other countries when choosing the best practices for one´s transition and to be informed about past setbacks and problems encountered to avoid them