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5398 results in Wits University Press

Page 161 of 270

  • Preface

  • Susan Booysen
  • Book:
    Dominance and Decline
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp ix-x

  • Summary

    As President Jacob Zuma starts his exit from formal state and party power, I realised that it was time to take stock of what has been happening to the African National Congress (ANC) as well as the government and people of South Africa ‘in the time of Zuma’. Capturing trends meant taking aim at a moving target. Even if the analysis followed a fairly predictable track, it was going to be, in ANC language, a ‘challenging’ task to capture the infamous epoch. Events unfolded as my research and writing took shape. Projects accumulated to build Zuma's legacy, explain or reinterpret the consequences of the period, and there was fervour from within for the post-Zuma era to resemble the Zuma era. Despite new developments, the fundamentals of the era had been cast; the trends presented themselves for capture into a book, this book.

    Dominance and Decline follows in the footsteps of my earlier book, The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power. Dominance and Decline is not a doomsday analysis – it recognises the ANC's strengths and accomplishments amidst the havoc sown by the Zuma-ist ANC, which has also become the ANC of the time. The central questions the book answers are: How much damage has been wreaked and how permanent is it likely to be? My analysis also casts light on the question: What kind of ANC after Zuma?

    The time of Zuma has turned out to be one of many turning points – away from unambiguous moral high ground, from idealised leaders, from the hope that policies brought by the extensive and expensive state will anchor continuous liberation. The time of Zuma has been one of persistent ANC dominance yet also of appalling decline. It is the entanglement of glory and irony. There is little doubt that South Africa – perhaps also the ANC – will glance back and contemplate what went awry, at what exact point in time, amidst what pieces of countervailing information. This book is intended to take stock and analyse, to map and interpret the unfolding trends.

    It was never going to be easy to execute a study of this period. While the analysis gives credit where credit is due, it is also consistently critical of the party-movement that has epitomised much of South Africa's liberation struggle.

  • Introduction

  • from Section 3 - Consequences of a changing climate for society
  • Bob Scholes, Mary Scholes, Mike Lucas
  • Book:
    Climate Change
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 109-109

  • Summary

    The remarkable and vibrant thing we call ‘society’ – that set of rules, relationships and institutions which allows us to generate not only basic necessities such as food, shelter and protection, but also the surplus which permits leisure, comfort and art for many – is comparatively recent in evolutionary terms. Complex societies, meaning those with many levels and with a high degree of differentiation of roles, arose after the Neolithic Revolution within the narrow climate niche provided by the remarkably stable, moist and equable period offered by the Holocene, which began about 10 000 years ago. Complex societies result in urbanization and a progressive disconnection for most people from direct exposure to nature. Most people these days get their food from supermarkets, which get it from distant farms, and their water from a tap plumbed from a dam on a faraway river. Nevertheless, even the most advanced society is founded on services delivered by ecosystems somewhere, including agricultural ecosystems. The capacity of ecosystems to deliver the services on which we depend is very sensitive to climate. So, although climate change is not ‘the end of life on Earth’, climate change beyond the limits of human or ecological adaptive capacity would be the end of advanced civilizations as we know them. Many past civilizations have tumbled as a result of climate change or environmental degradation, for example in Sumeria, Egypt, Central America and possibly even at Mapungubwe in Southern Africa. The difference now compared to then is that those extinct societies were regional, whereas in many respects ours is global.

    Some of the obvious ways in which our society depends on the climate are for water supplies and food. The first half of the twenty-first century will be a critical period for both, especially in Southern Africa. Population projections suggest a levelling offof the global population after mid-century, at around ten billion people. We can have reasonable confidence in these projections because the fundamental controls on human demography are quite well known, and change rather slowly and predictably. Even now, human population growth is measurably slowing down for the first time in history, everywhere except in sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, increasingly well-offpopulations in Asia and South America are catching up with Europe and North America in terms of per capita consumption of food, animal proteins, water and almost every other natural resource.

  • How do governments assess climate change?

  • Bob Scholes, Mary Scholes, Mike Lucas
  • Book:
    Climate Change
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp xii-xv

  • Summary

    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an organization of thousands of scientists, nominated by their governments to evaluate the evidence on climate change. The IPCC assessments provide the most credible source of information on this topic.

    The science of climate change is complex and specialized. Thousands of research papers are published on this topic every year, some with apparently contradictory findings. How are policymakers and laypeople expected to sort through this deluge of information? To address this problem, the IPCC was set up in 1988 to summarize climate research at regular intervals. It is tasked with sorting out what is widely agreed to be true, what is likely but remains uncertain, and what is speculative. To do this in an unbiased way, the IPCC is constituted from a very large number of recognized scientific experts from all over the world, and follows a clear and open review process.

    The inspiration for the formation of the IPCC was the Assessment of Ozone Depletion, which led to the Montreal Protocol in the 1980s, and is on track to resolve the problem of the ozone hole. The rigorous assessment process by the IPCC has now been applied to several issues, including climate change, that combine high social importance and high technical complexity. Assessments do not dictate what actions to take, which is the responsibility of duly mandated authorities. The assessments set out to sort, organize and evaluate the evidence in such a way that the policy decisions are well informed. Scientists have always subjected themselves to peer review to promote scientific rigour, and assessments play a similar role. The intended audience is professionally knowledgeable, but not assumed to be scientific specialists.

    The IPCC provides the interface between science and politics. To be accepted by a wide range of stakeholders as credible and legitimate, it must apply very high standards of impartiality and scientific correctness. It is an independent body set up under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Representatives of 194 participating governments agree on the scope of the assessment, elect the scientific leaders of the assessment, nominate authors, review the results and approve the summaries written for policymakers. More than a thousand scientists – who are not paid for this service – evaluate the available scientific, technological and socioeconomic information on climate change, and draft the assessment reports.

  • Chapter 6 - The platinum belt strike wave: Breakdown in the institutionalisation of industrial conflict

  • from PART 2 - ECONOMY, ECOLOGY AND LABOUR
    • By Crispen Chinguno, ICDD PhD Fellow, Society Work and Development Institute (SWOP), University of the Witwatersrand
  • Edited by Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Prishani Naidoo, Devan Pillay, Roger Southall
  • Book:
    New South African Review 5
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 104-119

  • Summary

    In 2012-2013, South Africa experienced an unprecedented strike wave in the platinum belt. The first strike started at Impala Platinum (Implats) in January 2012. It spread to other sectors and culminated in what became the Marikana massacre in which thirty-four workers were killed by the police and at least fifty lives were lost in various forms of violence. The strikes were characterised by hitherto unknown levels of worker militancy and the presentation of demands direct to management; by the rejection of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) (which at the time was the majority and recognised union in the sector); by the organisation of dissent by workers in informal structures independent of trade unions; by the use of muti and sangomas and various genres and similar repertoires of violence.

    The wave of strikes is significant for a number of reasons. It represents one of the many different forms of social protest that characterise the South African democratic dispensation, and it took place in the platinum sector, which has surpassed gold in recent years to become the biggest mining sector in the country. Although mining has generally been declining in recent years in terms of its contribution to GDP and employment, it nevertheless remains crucial to shaping the South African socioeconomic order since the democratic transition. Its role in the mineral-energy complex is central to the South African economy, and understanding this is important in unpacking the post-apartheid socioeconomic and political order.

    The strike wave presented one of the biggest challenges to the post-apartheid industrial relations order underpinned by the institutionalisation of industrial conflict, which is part of the post-apartheid social pact. It has so far been the most significant organisation of dissent, and of refusal, by the shop-floor workers outside the dominant trade unions aligned to the ruling African National Congress (ANC), to play within the established rules. This wave of strikes is thus significant, not only for understanding postapartheid industrial relations, but also for comprehending the general social order.

    The strike wave raised pertinent questions about the (post-democratic transition) integrity of the South African industrial relations order (often viewed as an international model), which is anchored in the institutionalisation of industrial conflict and promotes collective bargaining and strong institutions such as trade unions to function as its instruments.

  • 1 - Protests before 1976

  • Tshepo Moloi
  • Book:
    Place of Thorns
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 8-43

  • Summary

    The time from the early 1950s up to 1963 was one of protest politics in Kroonstad. First, women protested against the extension of passes to include African women. Towards the end of the 1950s, the black residents – seemingly influenced by the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) – protested against the municipality's oppressive laws.

    Before this time (apart from the period when the residents rallied, first behind the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union [ICU] and later, in the mid-1930s, the Registered and Ratepayers Association), black people in the locations avoided engaging in protests and confrontational politics. The reason for this, and for the intermittent existence of black radical and confrontational politics in Kroonstad, was the restrained approach adopted by the branch of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC, in 1923 renamed the African National Congress) in Kroonstad. The role played by moderate bodies such as the Native Advisory Board (NAB) and the Joint Council of Europeans and Natives (JCEN) helped to contain radical politics in the locations. Most of the residents in the old locations sincerely believed that their continued support for these bodies would yield positive results for them. But it was not to be.

    The situation was made worse by the Orange Free State African Teachers Association (OFSATA) and the Society of Young Africa (SOYA). Although these bodies did not shy away from challenging the government and expressing their radical views, they nevertheless were overly cautious about not involving themselves in protest action. It did not help that their memberships, especially OFSATA's, were composed of teachers, the educated elite, who would rather discuss and negotiate matters of concern with the relevant authorities than protest. To compound the situation, after the introduction of Bantu Education in 1953 it became illegal for any teacher to publicly oppose the government. SOYA, more so than OFSATA, did not subscribe to confrontational politics but believed in generating ideas to oppose the government. In her autobiography, Phyllis Ntantala noted that SOYA's slogan was ‘We fight ideas with ideas’.

    Establishment of Kroonstad and the formation of black locations

    In March 1855, The Friend, a regional newspaper in the Orange Free State (OFS), reported a sale of erven (land) in the village of Klip Plaat Drift, Valsch River, in the district of Windburg. Joseph Orpen, the landdros (magistrate) of Windburg and the government land surveyor, later named this place Kroonstad.

  • 3 - The YCW, labour protest and government reforms, 1977–1984

  • Tshepo Moloi
  • Book:
    Place of Thorns
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 70-94

  • Summary

    The 1973 African workers’ strike at Coronation Brick and Tile Company in Durban and the 1976 student protests forced the government to introduce reforms pushed through by the verligtes (moderates) who had gained an upper hand over the verkramptes (conservatives) in the National Party. Balthazar Johannes (BJ) Vorster resigned as the prime minister. He was succeeded by Pieter Willem (PW) Botha, formerly minister of defence. The government appointed two commissions, the Wiehahn and the Riekert commissions of inquiry, to investigate labour relations and the utilisation of manpower respectively.

    The commissions’ recommendations were reported in 1979. In summary, the Wiehahn Commission recommended that African trade unions be registered and recognised to enable them to participate in the collective bargaining system. It went on to propose that the formation and registration of racially mixed unions should be permitted. Not long after that, the Federation of South African Trade Unions (Fosatu) was formed.

    The Riekert Commission, on the other hand, recommended that Africans with ‘section 10’ rights should be allowed to settle in urban areas permanently, with their families, and that Africans living legally in the urban areas had to be responsible for financing the development of their townships and for subsidising transport costs.

    Although the government did not implement all the recommendations made by the commissions for fear of alienating its traditional constituencies, it did implement some. It created a black middle class which ‘… would have too much to lose to help the masses in the struggle for liberation’. It introduced a 99-year leasehold. Blacks were encouraged to buy (rather than rent) newly built houses – the government's strategy for dividing black people. In Kroonstad in 1977 a new residential section was established called ‘LTA’ – so named after the construction company that built houses there. Civil servants received loans from banks and purchased houses. And, significantly, the government introduced the relatively powerful community council to replace the urban bantu council.

    It was against this background that the Young Christian Workers (YCW) and the workers employed by Union Steam Bakery in Kroonstad mobilised to challenge the blatant injustice prevailing in the town. Towards the end of the 1970s, some of the members of the YCW shifted their focus to the armed struggle and planned to engage in acts of sabotage.

  • Chapter 3 - Tricksters, potency and dance

  • Siyakha Mguni
  • Book:
    Termites of the Gods
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 46-67

  • Summary

    The dance is our religion … The Bushman has always known the Big God and the way to him through our dance.

    (Tete, a Ju|’hoan healer)

    When I dance and the people sing loudly, the power comes to my feet. It is the power of the music and the seriousness of the occasion that makes me very hot. N|om is also heat … I only feel power in the dance.

    (Twele, a Ju|’hoan healer)

    Once upon a time, in the remote elemental past of southern Africa, myths concerning San cosmology have it that a trickster deity called Pishiboro first appeared in this world. He emerged from the depths of the earth's subterranean bowels by climbing upwards through a deep waterhole onto this earth. Until his arrival, the carnal world had been characterised by a state of inertia. This was the dramatic beginning of the creation of humankind, natural life forms and landscape features, according to the mythology of the G|wi, one of several San groups of the central Kalahari Desert. In another twist to this creation myth, this foundation of all creation was a culmination of Pishiboro's agonising demise from a fatal puff adder bite to his genitals. His kicking and writhing limbs gouged out the ancient dry valley beds and his decaying body became the rivers, while his black hair created the rain clouds. Today, these pans and dry river beds are called molapos. As a result of Pishiboro's emergence, the G|wi believe that the unfamiliar underworld and this present world of the living are linked ‘through certain deep waterholes’, some of which can still be seen in the arid Kalahari landscape. In other similar San creation myths, deities like Pishiboro ascended into the sky realm, where they reside to this day as sky gods. George Silberbauer writes of the G|wi divinity N!adima, who created the heavens, earth and seasons and is called upon in all matters of religious significance. N!adima is the G|wi's cosmological portrayal of the Great God while Pishiboro is almost invariably presented in their folklore as the earthbound trickster deity.

  • Chapter 3 - Constructing the ANC's compliant state

  • Susan Booysen
  • Book:
    Dominance and Decline
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 93-125

  • Summary

    The ANC circa 2014–2015 is all but the strident, confident party and movement-in-power of even five years before, and the state in these times matches it. The ANC under Jacob Zuma entrenched itself in state power at exactly the time of persistently ineffectual local government, lack of credibility of policing and public security, and lapses in the legal system. It was overseeing the subjugation of several of the institutions of democracy to the will of a faction of the ruling party.

    Earlier in the Zuma period South Africa had lived the hype of the pending reinvigorated, reconnected and more caring ANC state and government under redeemer Jacob Zuma. Instead, South Africa entered a time of unparalleled presidential controversy, which affected the state. There were morbid symptoms of compromised state capacity that merged with ‘gross manifestations of corruption at the local level’, while ‘public discourse is replete with cases of the abuse of state resources’ and ‘patronage on a grand scale in state-owned enterprises’, ‘shoddy responses to the injunctions of the public protector’, ‘strange shenanigans in critical state agencies’, and infighting and top-order political agendas in security agencies.

    The ANC is not a party to sit back passively watching poor fortune enfolding it. It intervenes, and state action is a useful part of its repertoire. This ANC, strategically shrewd, works to change public perceptions and limit public expressions of dissent and critique. It issues public statements, engages in the media, disseminates history lessons that remind citizens of the ongoing struggle for liberation, and sets out to undermine if not demonise the sources of challenge. The ANC believes it retains the historical mission to fully liberate South Africa from apartheid and its structural legacies – even if it has to recast the struggle and the role of the current leadership ten times over. The ANC does not imagine itself as an ordinary political party: it works to preserve a sense of being special, a party in a distinctive relationship with the people. It equally believes it has the right (if not obligation) to act out its electoral majority in the state.

    Many of the ANC's acts of recasting and reinvention rest on compliance, and both the ANC and ANC-as-government use state institutions to manufacture it. Chapter 2 unpacked the major, presidency-centred aspects of this, and showed that the president is in control of a vast construct of state power.

  • Chapter Three - Races, Racialised Groups and Racial Identity: Perspectives from South Africa and the United States

    • By Lawrence Blum, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
  • Edited by Xolela Mangcu
  • Nina G. Jablonski, Lawrence Blum, Steven Friedman, Mark Swilling, Vusi Gumede, Joel Netshitenzhe, Suren Pillay, Crain Soudien, Hlonipha Mokena
  • Book:
    The Colour of Our Future
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 25-44

  • Summary

    By the nineteenth century, throughout the West there was a general consensus that the human population of the world could be divided into a small number of what were called ‘races’. Although there was not absolutely uniform agreement on how many and which groups were races in this sense, JF Blumenbach's division into five – Malayan; Ethiopian (sub-Saharan African, or black); American (indigenous peoples of the Americas); Caucasians (white, or of European ancestry); and Mongoloid (East/Southeast Asian) – can serve as a rough consensus. Because of controversy over the term ‘race’, I will provisionally refer to such groups in the more neutral terminology of ‘classic racial groups’.

    Classic racial groups were thought to possess the following characteristics, which were implied in calling them ‘races’:

  • 1. Each group possessed mental and other psychological qualities specific to that group.

  • 2. The qualities were rooted in the group's nature, generally understood in a biological fashion.

  • 3. The qualities were passed from one generation to the next through some sort of mechanism, generally understood to be biological in character. (Only later, around 1900, was this biological mechanism assumed to be genetic.)

  • 4. The differences between the groups were fixed and unchangeable, and this was thought to follow from their biological character.

  • 5. The groups generally, but not necessarily, differed in certain phenotypic characteristics (especially skin colour, eye shape, hair texture, other facial features). So these features could be regarded as markers of the internal, racedefining characteristics.

  • 6. The groups were understood as originating in specific, generally continent-defined regions of the world (blacks in sub-Saharan Africa, whites in Europe, and so forth).

    • Note that the fifth feature means that classic racial groups were not defined by phenotypic characteristics. The Nazis did not define what they regarded as racial groups by phenotype, which leads us to a second strand of racial theory that was rather different from Blumenbach's. Nazism drew on a prominent alternative strand in European racial thought in which races were thought of as national (French, German, Italian) rather than continental.

Page 161 of 270