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5398 results in Wits University Press

Page 122 of 270

Competition Law and Economic Regulation in Southern Africa
  • Addressing Market Power in Southern Africa
  • Edited by Jonathan Klaaren
  • Anthea Paelo, Genna Robb, Simon Roberts, Witness Simbanegavi, Nicholas J. Sitko, Imraan Valodia, Thando Vilakazi, Tatenda Zengeni, Isaac Tausha
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017
  • Shaping markets through competition and economic regulation is at the heart of addressing the development challenges facing countries in southern Africa. The contributors to Competition Law and Economic Regulation: Addressing Market Power in southern Africa critically assess the efficacy of the competition and economic regulation frameworks, including the impact of a number of the regional competition authorities in a range of sectors throughout southern Africa. Featuring academics as well as practitioners in the field, the book addresses issues common to southern African countries, where markets are small and concentrated, with particularly high barriers to entry, and where the resources to enforce legislation against anti-competitive conduct are limited. What is needed, the contributors argue, is an understanding of competition and regional integration as part of an inclusive growth agenda for Africa. By examining competition and regulation in a single framework, and viewing this within the southern African experience, this volume adds new perspectives to the global competition literature. It is an essential reference tool and will be of great interest to policymakers and regulators, as well as the rapidly growing ecosystem of legal practitioners and economists engaged in the field.

Memory Against Forgetting
  • Memoir of a Time in South African Politics 1938 - 1964
  • Rusty Bernstein
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017
  • Lionel 'Rusty' Bernstein was arrested at Liliesleaf Farm, Rivonia, on 11 July 1963 and tried for sabotage, alongside Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and other leaders of the African National Congress and Umkhonto we Sizwe in what came to be known as the Rivonia Trial. He was acquitted in June 1964, but was immediately rearrested. After being released on bail, he fled with his wife Hilda into exile, followed soon afterwards by their family. This classic text, first published in 1999, is a remarkable man’s personal memoir of a life in South African resistance politics from the late 1930s to the 1960s. In recalling the events in which he participated, and the way in which the apartheid regime affected the lives of those involved in the opposition movements, Rusty Bernstein provides valuable insights into the social and political history of the era.

New South African Review 6
  • The Crisis of Inequality
  • Edited by Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Sarah Mosoetsa, Devan Pillay, Roger Southall
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    01 January 2018
  • Despite the transition from apartheid to democracy, South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. Its extremes of wealth and poverty undermine intensifying struggles for a better life for all. The wide-ranging essays in this sixth volume of the New South African Review demonstrate how the consequences of inequality extend throughout society and the political economy, crippling the quest for social justice, polarising the politics, skewing economic outcomes and bringing devastating environmental consequences in their wake. Contributors survey the extent and consequences of inequality across fields as diverse as education, disability, agrarian reform, nuclear geography and small towns, and tackle some of the most difficult social, political and economic issues. How has the quest for greater equality affected progressive political discourse? How has inequality reproduced itself, despite best intentions in social policy, to the detriment of the poor and the historically disadvantaged? How have shifts in mining and the financialisation of the economy reshaped the contours of inequality? How does inequality reach into the daily social life of South Africans, and shape the way in which they interact? How does the extent and shape of inequality in South Africa compare with that of other major countries of the global South which themselves are notorious for their extremes of wealth and poverty? South African extremes of inequality reflect increasing inequality globally, and The Crisis of Inequality will speak to all those – general readers, policy makers, researchers and students – who are demanding a more equal world.

Between Worlds
  • German missionaries and the transition from mission to Bantu Education in South Africa
  • Linda Chisholm
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017
  • The transition from apartheid to the post-apartheid era has highlighted questions about the past and the persistence of its influence in present-day South Africa. This is particularly so in education, where the past continues to play a decisive role in relation to inequality. Between Worlds: German Missionaries and the Transition from Mission to Bantu Education in South Africa scrutinises the experience of a hitherto unexplored German mission society, probing the complexities and paradoxes of social change in education. It raises challenging questions about the nature of mission education legacies. Linda Chisholm shows that the transition from mission to Bantu Education was far from seamless. Instead, past and present interpenetrated one another, with resistance and compliance cohabiting in a complex new social order. At the same time as missionaries complied with the new Bantu Education dictates, they sought to secure a role for themselves in the face of demands of local communities for secular state-controlled education. When the latter was implemented in a perverted form from the mid-1950s, one of its tools was textbooks in local languages developed by mission societies as part of a transnational project, with African participation. Introduced under the guise of expunging European control, Bantu Education merely served to reinforce such control. The response of local communities was an attempt to domesticate – and master – the ‘foreign’ body of the mission so as to create access to a larger world. This book focuses on the ensuing struggle, fought on many fronts, including medium of instruction and textbook content, with concomitant sub-texts relating to gender roles and sexuality. South Africa’s educational history is to this day informed by networks of people and ideas crossing geographic and racial boundaries. The colonial legacy has inevitably involved cultural mixing and hybridisation – with, paradoxically, parallel pleas for purity. Chisholm explores how these ideas found expression in colliding and coalescing worlds, one African, the other European, caught between mission and apartheid education.

New South African Review 2
  • New paths, old compromises?
  • Edited by John Daniel, Prishani Naidoo, Devan Pillay, Roger Southall
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    28 February 2012
  • In this second volume of the New South African Review, the New Growth Path adopted by the South African government in 2010 provides the basis for a dialogue about whether ‘decent work’ is the best solution to South Africa’s problems of low economic growth and high unemployment. There are investigations into rising inequality against the backdrop of the failings of Black Economic Empowerment; ‘greening the economy’, with emphasis on biofuels; the crisis of acid mine drainage on the Witwatersrand; possibilities for participatory forms of government; civil society activism; transformation of the print media and the SABC; the crisis in child care in public hospitals; the relationship between the police and a township community; the problems related to the absence of legislation to govern the powers of traditional authorities over land allocation; and assessments of the state of opposition political parties and the ANC Alliance. Asking whether the New Growth Plan reflects a set of new policies or an attempt to re-dress old (com)promises in new clothes, this volume brings together different voices in debate about possibilities for alternatives to neo-liberal and capitalist development in South Africa.

Metal that Will not Bend
  • The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, 1980-1995
  • Kally Forrest
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    27 November 2011
  • In the 1980s there was a surge of trade union power in South Africa. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) was prominent and innovative in this assertion of muscle.Metal that does not Bend traces Numsa’s accumulation, from a few small unions in a handful of factories to the staging of national strikes involving thousands of workers in auto and engineering. It examines how the union used its influence in macroeconomic and political arenas. Numsa was Cosatu’s most radical socialist affiliate, and the book explores its attempts to implement its vision. Historians have framed apartheid’s downfall as resulting from the activities of the exiled liberation movement, global anti-apartheid boycott strategies and internal township insurrection. This book reasserts the critical role of the internal labour movement.

Ekurhuleni
  • The making of an urban region
  • Phil Bonner, Noor Nieftagodien
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    22 March 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2013
  • The first academic work to provide an historical account and explanation of the development of this extended region to the east of Johannesburg since its origins at the end of the nineteenth century. From the time of the discovery of gold and coal until the turn of the twenty-first century, the region comprised a number of distinctive towns, all with their own histories. In 2000, these towns were amalgamated into a single metropolitan area, but, unlike its counterparts across the country, it does not cohere around a single identity. Drawing on a significant body of academic work as well as original research by the authors, the book traces and examines some of the salient historical strands that constituted what was formerly known as the East Rand and suggests that, notwithstanding important differences between towns and the racial fragmentation generated by apartheid, the region’s history contains significant common features. Arguably, its centrality as a major mining area and then as the country’s engineering heartland gave Ekurhuleni an overarching distinctive economic character.

Healing the Exposed Being
  • The Ngoma healing tradition in South Africa
  • Robert Thornton
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    22 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017
  • This ethnography explores the Ngoma healing tradition as practiced in eastern Mpumalanga, South Africa. ‘Bungoma’ is an active philosophical system and healing practice consisting of multiple strands, based on the notion that humans are intrinsically exposed to each other and that this is the cause of illness, but also the condition for the possibility of healing. This healing seeks to protect the ‘exposed being’ from harm through augmenting the self. Unlike Western medicine, it does not seek to cure physical ailments but aims to prevent suffering by allowing patients to transform their personal narratives of Self. Like Western medicine, it is empirical and is presented as a ‘local knowledge’ that amounts to a practical anthropology of human conflict and the environment. The book seeks to bring this anthropology and its therapeutic applications into relation with global academic anthropology by explaining it through political, economic, interpretive, and environmental lenses

The Disorder of Things
  • A Foucauldian approach to the work of Nuruddin Farah
  • John Masterson
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    22 March 2018
    Print publication:
    01 January 2014
  • Nuruddin Farah is widely regarded as one of the most sophisticated voices in contemporary world literature. Michel Foucault is revered as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, with his discursive legacy providing inspiration for scholars working in a range of interdisciplinary fields. The Disorder of Things offers a reading of the Somali novelist through the prism of the French philosopher. The book argues that the preoccupations that have remained central throughout Farah’s forty year career, including political autocracy, female infibulation, border conflicts, international aid and development, civil war, transnational migration and the Horn of Africa’s place in a so-called ‘axis of evil’, can be mapped onto some key concerns in Foucault’s writing most notably Foucault’s theoretical turn from ‘disciplinary’ to ‘biopolitical’ power. In both the colonial past and the postcolonial present, Somalia is typically represented as an incubator of disorder: whether in relation to internecine conflict, international terrorism or contemporary piracy. Through his work, both fictional and non-fictional, Farah strives to present alternative stories to an expanding global readership. The Disorder of Things analyses the politics and poetics that underpin this literary project, beginning with Farah’s first fictional cycle, Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship (1979-1983), and ending with his Past Imperfect trilogy (2004-2011). Farah’s writing calls for a more refined, substantial reading of our current geo-political situation. As such, it both warrants and compels the kind of critical engagement foregrounded throughout The Disorder of Things. This book will appeal to students, academics and general readers with an interest in the interdisciplinary study of literature. Its engagement with theorists, drawn from postcolonial, feminist and development studies, set against the backdrop of a host of philosophical and sociological discourses, shows how such intellectual cross-fertilisation can enliven a single-author study.

Labour Beyond Cosatu
  • Mapping the rupture in South Africa’s labour landscape
  • Edited by Andries Bezuidenhout, Malehoko Tshoaedi
  • Christine Bischoff, Janet Cherry, Nkosinathi Paul Jikeka, Boitumelo James Malope, Johann Maree, Sandla Nomvete, Ntsehiseng Nthejane, Ari Sitas, Bianca Tame
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017
  • Labour Beyond Cosatu is the fourth volume in the series Taking Democracy Seriously – a ground-breaking, textured and nuanced study on workers and democracy – which was established in the 1990s. The series looks at members of trade unions affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and provides a rich database of trade union members and research conducted over the past twenty years. It is one of the very few such resources available to researchers anywhere in the world. Labour Beyond Cosatu paints a complex picture. The 12 chapters of the volume explore various rebellions and conflicts in the trade union sector, starting with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and rivalries between Cosatu affiliates. Unpacking the conflicts between state-sector and private-sector workers, contributors look at the impact of generational and educational shifts, seen by some commentators as proof that Cosatu is now ‘middle class’. The book also raises the issue of gender in the unions by usefully locating the controversy around charges levelled at Zwelinzima Vavi in 2013 in the larger context of serious problems in the gender politics within parts of Cosatu.Refuting the image of a union federation solidly committed to the ANC, Labour Beyond Cosatu presents evidence of a sharp decline in support for the ANC within Cosatu, and growing scepticism towards the Alliance. It shows that attempts to understand the labour movement in South Africa in the future will need to include research of smaller, independent unions and social movements. The volume’s contributors make a major contribution to key debates on labour and democracy, providing new material that can potentially shift the discussion in important ways. This book will be of great value to students and researchers in Industrial Sociology, Political Studies, Industrial Psychology and Economics and Management.

Becoming Worthy Ancestors
  • Archive, public deliberation and identity in South Africa
  • Edited by Xolela Mangcu
  • Ntongela Masilela, Frederik Zyl Slabbert, Martin Bernal, Pumla Dineo Gqola, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Benedict Anderson, Carolyn Hamilton
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 March 2018
    Print publication:
    27 November 2011
  • Why does it matter that nations should care for their archives, and that they should develop a sense of shared identity? And why should these processes take place in the public domain? How can nations possibly speak about a shared sense of identity in pluralistic societies where individuals and groups have multiple identities? And how can such conversations be given relevance in public discussions of reconciliation and development in South Africa? These are the issues that the Public Conversations lecture series – an initiative of the Constitution of Public Intellectual Life Project at Wits University – proceeded from in 2006. Five years later, cross currents in contemporary South Africa have made the resumption of a public debate to clarify the meanings of identity and citizenship even more imperative, and an understanding of ‘archive’ even more urgent. The 2006 lectures were subsequently collected, resulting in this volume which takes its title from Weber’s point, elaborated on in the chapter by Benedict Anderson, that the future asks us to be worthy ancestors to the yet unborn. The book, as did the lecture series, aims to reach a broad and informed reading public because the topic is still of pressing interest in contemporary public discourse. In a changed (and, some might say, degraded) environment of public dialogue, the editor hopes to inspire a re-thinking of the very essence of what it means to be a citizen of South Africa. Becoming Worthy Ancestors aims to make accessible the theoretically informed, sometimes highly academic work of its various contributors. With chapters from high profile international and local contributors, it will be of interest to South African and international audiences. Editing for publication has further enhanced the accessibility of each speaker’s thinking without forfeiting any of its complexity, and the addition of an introductory chapter by the editor contributes to the coherence of the volume. While the target audience is the broad public, the book is based on a core of academic thinking and research.

Picturing Change
  • Curating visual culture at post-apartheid universities
  • Brenda Schmahmann
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 March 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2013
  • Since South Africa’s transition to democracy, many universities have acquired new works of art that convey messages about the advantages of cultural diversity, and engage critically with histories of racial intolerance and conflict. Given concerns about the influence of British imperialism or Afrikaner nationalism on aspects of their inherited visual culture, most tertiary institutions are also seeking new ways to manage their existing art collections, and to introduce memorials, insignia or regalia, which reflect the universities’ newfound values and aspirations. In Picturing Change, Brenda Schmahmann explores the implications of deploying the visual domain in the service of transformative agendas and unpacks the complexities, contradictions and slippages involved in this process. She shows that although most new commissions have been innovative, some universities have acquired works with potentially traditionalist – even backward-looking – implications. While the motives behind removing inherited imagery may be underpinned by a desire to unsettle white privilege, in some cases such actions can also serve to maintain the status quo. This book is unique in exploring the transformative ethos evident in the curation of visual culture at South African universities. It will be invaluable to readers interested in public art, the politics of curating and collecting, as well as to those involved in transforming tertiary and other public institutions into spaces that welcome diversity.

The Bram Fischer Waltz
  • A play
  • Harry Kalmer
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2016
  • Although widely known as the Afrikaner communist who saved Nelson Mandela from the gallows, very little is known about Bram Fischer the man. Fischer was a respected Senior Advocate at the Johannesburg Bar who chose to side with the oppressed and went underground to join the armed struggle. He was arrested on 5 November 1965 after almost ten months on the run. ‘I owed it to the political prisoners, to the banished, to the silenced and to those under house arrest not to remain a spectator, but to act.’ These words spoken by Bram Fischer in his statement from the dock during his treason trial were followed by a life sentence. Scion of a proudly Afrikaner family that included a prime minister and a judge president of the Orange Free State, he would seem to be an unlikely hero of the liberation movement. Uncompromising in his political beliefs and driven by an unshakeable integrity and a commitment to the dream of a non-racial democracy, Fischer was also humorous, fun-loving and a family man, devoted to his wife and children. The many facets of this remarkable man are reflected in The Bram Fischer Waltz, Harry Kalmer’s lyrical tribute. A brief and intense work, with the protagonist as narrator, this one person play takes the audience through a roller coaster of emotions as it tells Fischer’s story. The play won The Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award when it premiered in English at 2013 the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and was awarded the Adelaide Tambo Award for Human Rights in the Arts in 2014. The text is supplemented by a foreword by George Bizos and an introduction by the playwright, reflecting on the path that led him to write the play, and an afterword by Yvonne Malan, entitled ‘The Power of Moral Courage’.

Mooi Street and Other Moves
  • Paul Slabolepszy
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017
  • This collection of six plays by one of South Africa’s leading playwrights/actors features works written between 1984 and 1993. Slabolepszy, who has won many awards in South Africa and abroad both for his plays and his performances in them, is a master of dialogue, capturing the essence of the personality and speech patterns of his protagonists in language that is often dramatic, frequently funny, sometimes tragic and always entertaining. The works included are Under the Oaks, Over the Hill, Boo to the Moon, Smallholding, Mooi Street Moves and The Return of Elvis du Pisanie. Elvis won Slabolespzy the 1992/93 IGI Life Vita Award for Play of the Year and, together with Mooi Street Moves, gained him the Vita Playwright of the Year award. This collection is introduced by Robert Greig, a well-known theatre critic, and by Bobby Heaney who has been involved in the evolution of several of Slabolepszy’s plays.

Lover of his People
  • A biography of Sol Plaatje
  • Seetsele Modiri Molema
  • Translated by D. S. Matjila, Karen Haire
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    16 March 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2013
  • Seetsele Modiri Molema’s Sol T. Plaatje: Morata Wabo is the first biography of Solomon Plaatje written in his mother-tongue, Setswana, and the only book-length biography written by someone who actually knew him. The manuscript had long been housed in the Wits Historical Papers and was accessible only to scholars. D.S. Matjila and Karen Haire have mined the archive to produce the first English translation of Molema’s biography, Lover of His People. Molema balances Plaatje’s public and political persona – as a pioneer black politician and man of letters – with an intimate account of Plaatje, the human being: his physical features, habits, temperament, talents, personality, character, fears, struggles, dreams and aspirations. He illuminates the spirit of Plaatje, painting a personal portrait. Recognising that the biographer was an extraordinary scholar, intellectual and politician in his own right, the book includes an essay on the life and legacy of Seetsele Modiri Molema and his contribution to South Africa’s black intellectual heritage. The editors highlight some of the ways in which the book might be relevant to contemporary South African readers and, in inspiring them about a local historical figure, prompt critical thinking about pertinent issues such as gender, the future of African languages and the re-writing of history.

Alexandra
  • A history
  • Noor Nieftagodien, Phil Bonner
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    15 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 March 2009
  • Alexandra: A History is a social and political history of one of South Africa’s oldest townships. It begins with the founding of Alexandra as a freehold township in 1912 and traces its growth as a centre of black working-class life through the early years before the Nationalist government, through the struggles of the apartheid era and into the present day. Declared as a location for ‘natives and coloureds’, Alexandra became home to a diverse population where stand owners, tenants, squatters, hostel-dwellers, workers and migrants from every corner of the country converged to make a new life for themselves near the economic hub of Johannesburg. The stories of ordinary people are at the core of the township’s history. Based on numerous life-history interviews with residents and previously unexamined archive sources, the book portrays in vivid detail the daily struggles and tribulations of the people of Alexandra. A significant focus is the rich history of political resistance, in which political organisations and civic movements organised bus boycotts, anti-removal and anti-pass campaigns, and mobilised for housing and a better life for the township’s residents. But the book also tells the stories of daily life, of the making of urban cultures and of the infamous Spoilers and Msomi gangs. Over weekends Alexandra came alive as soccer matches, church services and shebeens vie for the attention of residents. Alexandra: A History highlights the social complexities of the township, which at times caused tension between different segments of the population. Above all else, despite a long history of hardship and adversity, the community spirit of the people of Alexandra, expressed in a fiercely loyal love of their township home, has repeatedly triumphed and endured.

African Archaeology Without Frontiers
  • Papers from the 2014 PanAfrican Archaeological Association Congress
  • Chapurukha M. Kusimba, Santores Tchandeu, Dirk Seidensticker, Adrianne Daggett, Marilee Wood, Laure Dussubieux, Tim Forssman, Kate Smuts, Nick Wiltshire, Akin Ogundiran, Matthew Davies, Caleb Adebayo Folorunso, Timothy Kipkeu Kipruto, Freda M'Mbogori, Henrietta L. Moore, Emubosa Orijemie, Alex Schoeman, Festo W Gabriel, Elinaza Mjema, Philip de Barros, Gabriella Lucidi, Narcisse
  • Edited by Karim Sadr, Amanda Esterhuysen, Christine Sievers
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    15 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2016
  • Confronting national, linguistic and disciplinary boundaries, contributors to African Archaeology Without Frontiers argue against artificial limits and divisions created through the study of ‘ages’ that in reality overlap and cannot and should not be understood in isolation. Papers are drawn from the proceedings of the landmark 14th PanAfrican Archaeological Association Congress, held in Johannesburg in 2014, nearly seven decades after the conference planned for 1951 was re-located to Algiers for ideological reasons following the National Party’s rise to power in South Africa. Contributions by keynote speakers Chapurukha Kusimba and Akin Ogundiran encourage African archaeologists to practise an archaeology that collaborates across many related fields of study to enrich our understanding of the past. The nine papers cover a broad geographical sweep by incorporating material on ongoing projects throughout the continent including South Africa, Botswana, Cameroon, Togo, Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria. Thematically, the papers included in the volume address issues of identity and interaction, and the need to balance cultural heritage management and sustainable development derived from a continent racked by social inequalities and crippling poverty. Edited by three leading archaeologists, the collection covers many aspects of African archaeology, and a range of periods from the earliest hominins to the historical period. It will appeal to specialists and interested amateurs.

Accented Futures
  • Language activism and the ending of apartheid
  • Carli Coetzee
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    01 November 2013
  • In this wonderfully original, intensely personal yet deeply analytical work, Carli Coetzee argues that difference and disagreement can be forms of activism to bring about social change, inside and outside the teaching environment. Since it is not the student alone who needs to be transformed, she proposes a model of teaching that is insistent on the teacher’s scholarship as a tool for hearing the many voices and accents in the South African classroom. For Coetzee, ‘accentedness’ is a description for actively working towards the ending of apartheid by being aware of the legacies of the past, without attempting to empty out or gloss over the conflicts and violence that may exist under the surface. In the broad context of education, ‘accent’ can be an accent of speech; an attitude; a stance against being ‘understood’; yet a way of teaching that requires teacher and pupil to understand each other’s contexts. This is a book about the relationships created by the use of language to convey knowledge, particularly in translation. The ideas it presents are evocative, thought-provoking and challenging at times. Accented Futures makes a significant and important contribution to research on identity in post-apartheid South Africa as well as to the fields of education and translation studies.

The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power
  • Susan Booysen
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    28 February 2012
  • The African National Congress is light years beyond the liberation movement of old. It remains a juggernaut, but its control and dominance are no longer watertight. The ANC lives the contradictions of weaknesses, cracks and factions while retaining its colossal status. As a party-movement it draws on its liberation credentials, and extracts immense power from its deep anchorage in South Africa’s people. It is immersed in electoral politics that marks the state of its overwhelming power cyclically. As government the ANC is the object of protest, but not protest designed to bring the ruling party to its knees. The ANC is in command of the state, yet fails to definitively counter the deficits that make South Africa’s democracy seem so diluted. Its incredulous and thus far trusting supporters condemn but only rarely punish deployees who do not ‘pass through the eye of the needle’.The ANC and the Regeneration of Political Power unpacks these contradictions. It focuses on four faces of the ANC’s political power – the organisation, the people, political parties and elections, and policy and government – and explores how the ANC has acted since 1994 to continuously regenerate its power. By 2011-12 the power configurations around the ANC were converging to a conjuncture holding vexing uncertainties. This book presents insights into how South African politics – in many ways synonymous with the politics of the ANC – is likely to unfold in years and possibly decades to come.

African-Language Literatures
  • Perspectives on isiZulu fiction and popular black television series
  • Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2012
  • African-language writing is in crisis. The conditions under which African writing developed in the past (only remotely similar to those of Western models), resulted in an inability of Eurocentric literary models to explore the hermeneutic world of African language poetics inherited from the oral and the modern worlds. Existing modes of criticism in the study of this literary tradition are often unsuited for a nuanced understanding of the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects at play in the composition, production and reading of these literatures. In African-Language Literatures, Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi charts new directions in the study of African-language literatures generally and isiZulu fiction in particular by proposing that African popular arts and culture models be considered as a logical solution to current debates and challenges. Mhlambi shows how the popular arts and culture approach brings into relationship the oral and written forms, the local and the international, and elitist and popular genres, and locates and places the resultant emerging, eclectic culture into its socio-historical context. She uses this theoretical approach to explore – in a wide range of cultural products – what matters or what is of interest to the people, irrespective of social hierarchies and predispositions. It is her contention that, in profound ways the African-language literary tradition evinces diversity, complexity and fluidity, and that this should be seen as an invitation to look at systems of meaning which do not hide their connections with the facts of power and material life.

Page 122 of 270