Abstract:The Right2Know (R2K) campaign was initiated to protect access to information and, more broadly, freedom of expression in South Africa. The campaign is structured at national and provincial levels and is a 'democratic activist driven' organisation mobilising activists, supporters and allied organisations. R2K activists describe their own organisation as a hybrid, combining features of formal hierarchy with the more fluid and open characteristics of social movements. More widely, analysts view 'such hybrid protest formations as organisational configurations that might check cyclical processes in which social movements decline after initial phases of mobilisation'. This paper focuses on R2K's experience to test whether its hybrid character has helped it to retain vitality and resist bureaucratisation.
{"title":"'Living inside the movement': The Right2Know campaign, South Africa","authors":"S. Mottiar, T. Lodge","doi":"10.1353/trn.2020.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2020.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Right2Know (R2K) campaign was initiated to protect access to information and, more broadly, freedom of expression in South Africa. The campaign is structured at national and provincial levels and is a 'democratic activist driven' organisation mobilising activists, supporters and allied organisations. R2K activists describe their own organisation as a hybrid, combining features of formal hierarchy with the more fluid and open characteristics of social movements. More widely, analysts view 'such hybrid protest formations as organisational configurations that might check cyclical processes in which social movements decline after initial phases of mobilisation'. This paper focuses on R2K's experience to test whether its hybrid character has helped it to retain vitality and resist bureaucratisation.","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83271754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The post-apartheid South African land reform programme meant to challenge racially based inequalities and poverty has hardly been successful in transforming the racially skewed land patterns. South African land reform debates are largely centred on the land acquisition struggles and less on post-settlement livelihoods experiences, which indicates the paucity of studies linking land restitution to human development. This paper uses the Capabilities Approach (CA) to understand the human development impact of the land restitution programme. A qualitative study was conducted in Macleantown and Salem restitution cases in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Data was analysed using the theoretically derived qualitative content analysis and the CA as theoretical lens. The paper found that these restitution projects have failed to function, leading to failure to improve the livelihoods of beneficiaries. Based on these findings, I argue that the capabilities and the agency of beneficiaries in Macleantown and Salem remain constrained in that restitution has not provided any hopes to reduce poverty and recreate the 'good' past as beneficiaries expect, which hinders beneficiaries living a life they have reason to value. Since land is a capability-enabling commodity/resource that can help to achieve different functions, this study identifies conversion factors that constrain the conversion of capabilities. I envisage that this paper will encourage relevant stakeholders on land restitution to focus largely on the developmental impact of accessing land, and the multiple meanings of land, rather than largely focusing on land acquisition struggles.
{"title":"South African land restitution and development: the capabilities approach to an understanding of the Macleantown and Salem restitution projects in the Eastern Cape","authors":"Mzingaye Brilliant Xaba","doi":"10.1353/trn.2020.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2020.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The post-apartheid South African land reform programme meant to challenge racially based inequalities and poverty has hardly been successful in transforming the racially skewed land patterns. South African land reform debates are largely centred on the land acquisition struggles and less on post-settlement livelihoods experiences, which indicates the paucity of studies linking land restitution to human development. This paper uses the Capabilities Approach (CA) to understand the human development impact of the land restitution programme. A qualitative study was conducted in Macleantown and Salem restitution cases in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Data was analysed using the theoretically derived qualitative content analysis and the CA as theoretical lens. The paper found that these restitution projects have failed to function, leading to failure to improve the livelihoods of beneficiaries. Based on these findings, I argue that the capabilities and the agency of beneficiaries in Macleantown and Salem remain constrained in that restitution has not provided any hopes to reduce poverty and recreate the 'good' past as beneficiaries expect, which hinders beneficiaries living a life they have reason to value. Since land is a capability-enabling commodity/resource that can help to achieve different functions, this study identifies conversion factors that constrain the conversion of capabilities. I envisage that this paper will encourage relevant stakeholders on land restitution to focus largely on the developmental impact of accessing land, and the multiple meanings of land, rather than largely focusing on land acquisition struggles.","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82703720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This paper discusses the political economy of the water-energy nexus in South Africa, by using Medupi power station as case study. Medupi is a huge coal-fired plant that signals the country's attachment to coal in the face of the African National Congress' repeated commitments to a low-carbon, just transition. Although Medupi's water consumption is much lower than that of older power stations, the plant still needs massive amounts of water for its operations. For this reason, the state is building a new water infrastructure based on an inter-basin transfer scheme from the Crocodile River in Gauteng to the Mokolo River in Limpopo Province, where Medupi is located. A political economy analysis is employed here to show who is going to win and who is going to lose from this new water scheme. For instance, the rural poor living upstream of the Mokolo Dam cannot rely on the river's water to solve their own water crisis, as the Mokolo has been allocated to Medupi. The case of Medupi and its water-energy nexus, therefore, serves to illustrate a broader 'water question' in the country. This has to do with the state's politics of water allocation privileging production over social reproduction, and hence leaving the basic, material needs of the poor unmet, under the (false) assumption that economic growth will translate into better water access for all.
摘要:本文以南非梅杜皮水电站为例，探讨南非水能关系的政治经济学。梅杜皮是一个巨大的燃煤电厂，它表明，面对非洲人国民大会(African National Congress)一再承诺的低碳、公正的转型，该国仍依赖煤炭。尽管梅杜皮的耗水量远低于老电站，但该电站的运行仍然需要大量的水。出于这个原因，该州正在根据从豪登省的鳄鱼河到梅杜皮所在的林波波省的莫科洛河的流域间转移计划建设新的水利基础设施。这里采用了一种政治经济学分析来显示谁将在这个新的水计划中获胜，谁将失败。例如，生活在Mokolo大坝上游的农村贫困人口不能依靠河水来解决他们自己的水危机，因为Mokolo已经分配给了Medupi。因此，Medupi的案例和它的水-能源关系，有助于说明该国更广泛的“水问题”。这与国家的水分配政策有关，该政策将生产置于社会再生产之上，因此在(错误的)假设下，经济增长将转化为所有人获得更好的水，从而使穷人的基本物质需求得不到满足。
{"title":"Medupi power station and the water-energy nexus in South Africa","authors":"Michela Marcatelli","doi":"10.1353/trn.2020.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2020.0000","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper discusses the political economy of the water-energy nexus in South Africa, by using Medupi power station as case study. Medupi is a huge coal-fired plant that signals the country's attachment to coal in the face of the African National Congress' repeated commitments to a low-carbon, just transition. Although Medupi's water consumption is much lower than that of older power stations, the plant still needs massive amounts of water for its operations. For this reason, the state is building a new water infrastructure based on an inter-basin transfer scheme from the Crocodile River in Gauteng to the Mokolo River in Limpopo Province, where Medupi is located. A political economy analysis is employed here to show who is going to win and who is going to lose from this new water scheme. For instance, the rural poor living upstream of the Mokolo Dam cannot rely on the river's water to solve their own water crisis, as the Mokolo has been allocated to Medupi. The case of Medupi and its water-energy nexus, therefore, serves to illustrate a broader 'water question' in the country. This has to do with the state's politics of water allocation privileging production over social reproduction, and hence leaving the basic, material needs of the poor unmet, under the (false) assumption that economic growth will translate into better water access for all.","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81095870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Voices of Resilience: a living history of the Kenneth Gardens municipal housing estate in Durban by Monique Marks, Kira Erwin and Tamlyn Fleetwood (review)","authors":"N. Odendaal","doi":"10.1353/trn.2020.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2020.0005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73231860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The study of inequality in South Africa presents something of a paradox. Post-apartheid South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world in terms of income and wealth. The richest 10 per cent of the population earns 60 per cent of national income and owns 95 per cent of all wealth and assets. These high levels of inequality have been sustained, and in some cases have deepened in the post-apartheid era. However, the country has one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, one which is underpinned by a radical Bill of Rights which foregrounds expanded socio-economic rights. The parallel existence of these apparently contradictory phenomena is what we call the South African inequality paradox. We present three examples from the South African workplace where progressive policy instruments and legislation exist alongside persistent and widening inequality. We suggest that a dependence on Black Economic Empowerment, as one of the ANC government's most important attempts to transform the racialised economy of the past has resulted in the capital relations which produce and reproduce inequality remaining largely intact.
{"title":"The paradox of inequality in South Africa: a challenge from the workplace","authors":"E. Webster, David Francis","doi":"10.1353/trn.2019.0035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2019.0035","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The study of inequality in South Africa presents something of a paradox. Post-apartheid South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world in terms of income and wealth. The richest 10 per cent of the population earns 60 per cent of national income and owns 95 per cent of all wealth and assets. These high levels of inequality have been sustained, and in some cases have deepened in the post-apartheid era. However, the country has one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, one which is underpinned by a radical Bill of Rights which foregrounds expanded socio-economic rights. The parallel existence of these apparently contradictory phenomena is what we call the South African inequality paradox. We present three examples from the South African workplace where progressive policy instruments and legislation exist alongside persistent and widening inequality. We suggest that a dependence on Black Economic Empowerment, as one of the ANC government's most important attempts to transform the racialised economy of the past has resulted in the capital relations which produce and reproduce inequality remaining largely intact.","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81124369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This paper contributes to debates about the complexity of the multi-directional relationships between education, poverty, and inequality in South Africa today, by engaging with findings from an important body of research including from economists working on education within South Africa, from the the World Bank, and from researchers within or linked to the Department of Basic Education. The findings of this research clearly demonstrate the relationship between inequality of educational outcomes and poverty, and between poor educational outcomes and labour market inequality. Its policy recommendations, however, call for focusing on in-school factors in order to improve educational outcomes, with the assumption that improved educational outcomes will in turn improve the chances of poor people in the labour market. We argue that this policy focus mis-diagnoses the underlying causes of both inequality of educational outcomes and income inequality, and over-emphasises the possibility of substantially improving learning outcomes by changing in-school factors, as well as the role of education in changing economic outcomes. Because widespread poverty underpins the vastly disparate education and labour markets outcomes, these outcomes will not change without changing wide-spread poverty and the broader conditions that underpin it. Moreover, even if the knowledge and skills of the workforce and potential workforce were radically improved, there is no evidence that this additional supply of skilled workers would create its own demand for their labour, and therefore improve income inequality.
{"title":"Rupturing or reinforcing inequality? The role of education in South Africa today","authors":"S. Allais, A. Cooper, Yael Shalem","doi":"10.1353/trn.2019.0039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2019.0039","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper contributes to debates about the complexity of the multi-directional relationships between education, poverty, and inequality in South Africa today, by engaging with findings from an important body of research including from economists working on education within South Africa, from the the World Bank, and from researchers within or linked to the Department of Basic Education. The findings of this research clearly demonstrate the relationship between inequality of educational outcomes and poverty, and between poor educational outcomes and labour market inequality. Its policy recommendations, however, call for focusing on in-school factors in order to improve educational outcomes, with the assumption that improved educational outcomes will in turn improve the chances of poor people in the labour market. We argue that this policy focus mis-diagnoses the underlying causes of both inequality of educational outcomes and income inequality, and over-emphasises the possibility of substantially improving learning outcomes by changing in-school factors, as well as the role of education in changing economic outcomes. Because widespread poverty underpins the vastly disparate education and labour markets outcomes, these outcomes will not change without changing wide-spread poverty and the broader conditions that underpin it. Moreover, even if the knowledge and skills of the workforce and potential workforce were radically improved, there is no evidence that this additional supply of skilled workers would create its own demand for their labour, and therefore improve income inequality.","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79260210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Framing poverty and inequality studies in South Africa","authors":"S. Mosoetsa, David Francis","doi":"10.1353/trn.2019.0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2019.0034","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73084060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Despite policy and practical efforts to undo the apartheid form of SA cities, many wealthy areas appear relatively unchanged in socio-economic profile. But in Johannesburg, poverty is evident in middle class suburbs in public spaces such as parks. Research on park dwellers living along Johannesburg's Braamfontein Spruit, a linear park, shows that many people are there to minimise costs of accommodation and transport, respond to cash flow crises, or prioritise expenditure on family members elsewhere. Their lives and situation is connected to the economy of the northern suburbs and the spatial distortions of the city, yet they are frequently dismissed as criminals and vagrants. I use the notion of the politics of invisibility to discuss this and to show its connection to forms of inequality and their modes of production. Park dwellers attempt to evade the censure and punishment of metropolitan police, private security, and those with assumed claims over the public space, through concealment strategies; and through hiding their situation from relatives. At the same time, more privileged residents deploy a politics of invisibility that enables the use of cheap labour without confronting how some wages and forms of work can't sustainably buy either transport elsewhere, nor nearby accommodation, and are therefore implicated in a spectrum of forms of cheap living, including rough sleeping. This politics of invisibility sheds light on what enables and perpetuates this economic and existential inequality, and the distanciation that produces and reinforces it.
{"title":"Down by the river: park dwellers, public space and the politics of invisibility in Johannesburg's northern suburbs","authors":"S. Charlton","doi":"10.1353/trn.2019.0040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2019.0040","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Despite policy and practical efforts to undo the apartheid form of SA cities, many wealthy areas appear relatively unchanged in socio-economic profile. But in Johannesburg, poverty is evident in middle class suburbs in public spaces such as parks. Research on park dwellers living along Johannesburg's Braamfontein Spruit, a linear park, shows that many people are there to minimise costs of accommodation and transport, respond to cash flow crises, or prioritise expenditure on family members elsewhere. Their lives and situation is connected to the economy of the northern suburbs and the spatial distortions of the city, yet they are frequently dismissed as criminals and vagrants. I use the notion of the politics of invisibility to discuss this and to show its connection to forms of inequality and their modes of production. Park dwellers attempt to evade the censure and punishment of metropolitan police, private security, and those with assumed claims over the public space, through concealment strategies; and through hiding their situation from relatives. At the same time, more privileged residents deploy a politics of invisibility that enables the use of cheap labour without confronting how some wages and forms of work can't sustainably buy either transport elsewhere, nor nearby accommodation, and are therefore implicated in a spectrum of forms of cheap living, including rough sleeping. This politics of invisibility sheds light on what enables and perpetuates this economic and existential inequality, and the distanciation that produces and reinforces it.","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75942187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The world of work has been reorganised, the numbers of workers employed through the standard employment relationship has declined and there has been an increase in non-standard employment: labour broking, outsourcing and other forms of precarious and temporary work. This has created highly unequal workplaces where atypical workers perform the same work as permanent workers for often half the wages of what a permanent worker receives. This article considers how precarious workers are organising, outside of trade unions, to fight against workplace inequality to gain rights to permanent work. This article develops the power resource approach (PRA) as a lens through which to explore how labour broker workers are organising in Gauteng. Through the analysis of two workplace case studies, the article examines how amendments to the Labour Relations Act (LRA) in 2015 provided new rights and a new avenue through which precarious workers could organise. The case studies illustrate the dynamic interactions between institutional and associational power, an often overlooked relationship , and demonstrate the multiple avenues through which precarious workers mobilise their power to fight against inequality.
{"title":"Challenging workplace inequality: precarious workers' institutional and associational power in Gauteng, South Africa","authors":"T. Englert, Carin Runciman","doi":"10.1353/trn.2019.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2019.0038","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The world of work has been reorganised, the numbers of workers employed through the standard employment relationship has declined and there has been an increase in non-standard employment: labour broking, outsourcing and other forms of precarious and temporary work. This has created highly unequal workplaces where atypical workers perform the same work as permanent workers for often half the wages of what a permanent worker receives. This article considers how precarious workers are organising, outside of trade unions, to fight against workplace inequality to gain rights to permanent work. This article develops the power resource approach (PRA) as a lens through which to explore how labour broker workers are organising in Gauteng. Through the analysis of two workplace case studies, the article examines how amendments to the Labour Relations Act (LRA) in 2015 provided new rights and a new avenue through which precarious workers could organise. The case studies illustrate the dynamic interactions between institutional and associational power, an often overlooked relationship , and demonstrate the multiple avenues through which precarious workers mobilise their power to fight against inequality.","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85213017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Race for Education: gender, white tone and schooling in South Africa by Mark Hunter (review)","authors":"C. Soudien","doi":"10.1353/trn.2019.0044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2019.0044","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78490555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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