ETD Collection
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Item Human rights are not enough: a critical assessment of challenges of inequality and care for international human rights(2019) Harbour, SophieThis thesis takes human rights and presents two contemporary critiques that find fault in the ability of the concept to adequately address current moral crises and to found a theory of moral reasoning moving forward. What will develop is an argument that human rights are not enough to be the starting point from where we form our ideas of moral theory and political and social policy. They do not provide a framework that recognises the indelibly dependent nature of human existence embodied by the ethics of care and they are ill-equipped to adequately counteract the growing radical inequality which has considerable social, political and moral consequences. Aside from critiquing human rights, an ethics of care also serves as a potential starting point from whence to reassess how we understand political and social realities. It offers insights into how we might approach the question of ‘why inequality matters’ and it is a lens through which I see possibilities of expanding our ideas of motivation, power, vulnerability and language, amongst othersItem Shades of blackness: politicians' performances of blackness in South Africa(2018) Khan, FirdausOver the decades, the concept of race has been interpreted and altered in various ways. Supposed characteristics have been imposed by society on groups of individuals as stereotypes of what they should be or do. This is the basis for racism, as it has been proven through studies on genetics that all races of humans bear the same genetic makeup. This has not only allowed for divisions between races but has created space for differences within them. However, scholars have, in recent years, come to an understanding of race as a social construct that is performed, instead of something that humans are born with. This study seeks primarily, to explore the diverse and fluid black identities that are present within South Africa’s political sphere. It seeks to understand the varying and opposing ways in which South African politicians display their blackness, and simultaneously develop an understanding of how this is received by the media and the South African public alike. To establish these differences, this study seeks to employ three case studies from the South African political landscape. The case studies are the ANC’s Jacob Zuma, the EFF’s Julius Malema and the DA’s Mmusi Maimane. The study hopes that in exploring three very different political personas, some of the many varying tropes that exist will become lucid. In To structure this study, one speech by each case study politician has been selected as a text to be analysed. This speech, in turn, consists of three components which are critically unpacked: a video recording of the speech, an article posted alongside it and comments posted below it. All three components of the text are analysed in detail, to ascertain the different approaches and responses (both by the author of the article and the public commenters) each politician receives with regards to their black identity. These responses then feed the research in terms of understanding the tropes of blackness that each politician enacts, determined by a range of factors including their specific masculinities, accents, dress styles, approaches to the systems in place and so forth.Item Understanding young South African students' participation in local government(2018) Tracey, Lauren LouiseThe common narrative of social movements and protest action in recent years, indicates that young eole globally are doinating suh oveents n outh fria, students’ ontinued engageent in protests around politics and public issues at the local level, as well as their low levels of participation in formal democratic processes such as elections, calls for an assessment on whether students are knowledgeable and understand the role of local government, as well as local governance. This study looks at young outh frian students’ (1-24 years) knowledge and understanding of local government, and local governance in the Johannesburg Metropolitan. For the purpose of this qualitative research study, 56 young students in two universities and two TVET colleges in the Johannesburg metropolitan were interviewed through 35 semi-structured in-depth, one-on-one interviews, and three focus group discussions. This study confirms that students present a very narrow knowledge and understanding of democratic governance and the political system at the local level. This, it is argued, is a key reason behind their lack of engagement and participation at the local level, as well as their identification of protests as the only effective form of political activism. This study also indicates that, desite students’ awareness of traditional olitial latfors suh as eletions and taking art in community meetings, their perceptions of poor local leadership, eroding trust in traditional democratic institutions, patronage party politics and general disillusionment with the political future of the country, are hindering these students’ artiiation in loal governaneItem Structuralism, colonialism and development: understanding the interpellation of the black subject in South Africa(2017-03) Dabas, AnandiniToday a large percentage of the black elite in South Africa have identified with the ideology of the white coloniser and in doing so is reproducing the effects of colonialization albeit in a free and fair democratic country. Structuralist and post-structuralist discourse both provide the conceptual tools that enable the articulation of the subject under the colonial and developmental symbolic. Colonialism is conceived as an overdetermined and asymmetric differential relation and takes forward the understanding of both coloniser and colonised and the structure of their historical trajectories as political subjects. Development as a discourse is undertaken for the Americanisation of the global landscape has rendered the economic as the principal determination of society. Furthermore, the development of the subject is affected by nodal points in history, for example, the effect of liberalism, Marxism and democracy. These dominant discourses intertwine and reveal four principal identifications and experiences of the black colonised subject. The presentation of the four identifications of the black colonised subject is undertaken chronologically from 1962 to present. These identifications include the elementary position of the black subject suffering from subjective destitution; the black colonised subject identifying with the white coloniser but being further pushed into the Real and Steve Biko’s positivised black subject. Fourth and lastly, today at a conscious level a very significant number of black citizens have succeeded in moving beyond the elementary colonial definition of who they are as blacks and have enthusiastically embraced the identity the Constitution offers them. But it would be a mistake to think that this signals the eclipse of colonial forms of identification. On the one hand, there are blacks who because of the way they behave towards other blacks, must at some level believe they are white. Consciously, they are empirical black agents who define themselves in non-racial universalist terms but without realising it, they themselves desire to be white and identify with whiteness. On the other hand, the majority of blacks are being treated as they were under colonial conditions, but this time by their black counterparts. The Economic Freedom Fighters push forth an agenda that emancipates the black subject from colonisation via a program of economic liberation.Item Government appointments, patronage and social justice in South Africa(2016) Safodien, KhalidIn this research, I‟m interested in exploring the question as to whether government appointments on the basis of patronage undermine the delivery of social goods and service and the obligations of and social justice in South Africa. One of the norms of social justice relates to the distribution of goods and services in ways that are just. As Rawls shows in A Theory of Justice, justice is not only the first virtue of society, it is one that should be thought of in terms of fairness — where fairness has to do with skewing society or the principles that govern society in ways that are responsive to the interest and good of all (rather than that of an individual or a select few or particular group). One conclusion that can be drawn from this is that to meet this requirement it is imperative that social institutions are calibrated to be sensitive to justice and with regard to appointments to government positions such appointments are done on the basis of ability to meet such obligation. As part of investigating the above question, I will discuss a number of examples that highlight that certain government appointments in South Africa are done on the basis of party affiliation and not based on skills and qualifications. As such, the most qualified people do not often hold those positions. One consequence of this is the inadequacies and inefficiencies in the distribution of social goods and services that has gradually become the norm in South Africa.Item Asisjiki: black women in the Economic Freedom Fighters, owning space, building a movement(2018) Dlakavu, Simamkele BlossomItem Permanent juniority: black youth politics in the Vaal under late colonisation(2017) Ndlozi, Mbuyiseni QuintinThis thesis examines how the political subjectivity of black youth took shape within the violent period of late colonialism in South Africa known as apartheid. As a historico-philosophical inquiry that aims to understand the historical modalities of subject formation and political practice, the thesis is grounded in extensive original research on black youth politics in the townships of the Vaal region south of Johannesburg during the 1980s and early 1990s. At the same time, the thesis interprets the findings of that historical research through a critical engagement with the philosophical work of various thinkers (including Hegel, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Foucault, Fanon, Mamdani, Mbembe, Zizek and Maldonado-Torres, among others) in an effort to address the problem of freedom in relation to the black subject under colonial and post-colonial rule. The thesis shows how colonial authority and governance both posits and aims to reproduce what I call the ‘permanent juniority’ of blacks generally, and of black youth in particular. Key sites for the exercise of such authority and governance in the townships under apartheid included the street and the school, where blacks were subjected to social, infrastructural and disciplinary violence. In examining one ‘Bantu’ high school in depth, I show how black youth were subjected to what I call a ‘pedagogy of offence’ – a mode of socialisation and discipline based on the premise that black youth, merely by virtue of being black, are always already guilty of breaching the socio-political order and are therefore addressed as delinquents. The thesis shows how a collective black youth subject constituted itself in revolt against this disciplinary regime. In the course of this revolt, the figure of the outlaw comrade, or ‘com-tsotsi’, emerged, occupying an ambiguous position between political resistance and illegal criminality. This figure is shown to have a genealogy originating in slavery and the Frontier Wars in the Cape, and extending to the early period of mining and industrial capitalism in Johannesburg. In the concluding chapters, which explore the underground activities of Self-Defence Units as violence on the Vaal reached its apogee in the early 1990s, the thesis probes the ethical ambiguity that emerges when violence is used in the service of a politics of love and emancipation. Here, I argue that the constitution of a collective black youth political subject in revolt also suggests a theory of black emancipation: of subjectivity beyond object-hood, of political love and everyday life beyond colonial violence and death, and of a political optimism oriented toward freedom.Item The evolution of large technical systems in the Waterberg coalfield of South Africa: from apartheid to democracy(2017) Ballim, FaeezaThis thesis follows the development of a particular set of large technical systems in South Africa from the late apartheid era into the age of democracy. During apartheid technological prowess, upheld by the network of state corporations or parastatals, bolstered the authoritarian rule of the white minority government in South Africa. The economic and political liberalisation of the late 1980s challenged the power of the parastatals and altered the underlying rationale of infrastructure development. In particular I describe the transformation of Iscor and Eskom, two of the country’s major parastatals, and their activities in the Waterberg coalfields, an isolated region on the country’s north-western border. While Eskom’s activities in the region began in the 1980s they gained public notoriety with the construction of the Medupi power station two decades later. The obstacles that Eskom faced at Medupi represent the main challenge of developing large technological infrastructures in the democratic, post-colonial order, where the fruits of infrastructure development demand to be spread beyond the bounds of an elite minority. But the eventual completion of some power generating units in 2015 at Medupi demonstrates that failure is not inevitable. I argue that this success is due to the fact that the autonomous parastatal network negotiated the political and economic liberalisation of the early 1990 by incorporating the changing socio-political conditions into its operations. The parastatal network retained a momentum, in the sense first described by the historian of technology Thomas Hughes, which was also a product of the “locked-in” nature of investment in the infrastructure project. Because of the large capital investment required for the infrastructure development, proceeding tenaciously against the odds to see the project to completion was cheaper than retreat for those involved.Item The politics - administration interface in South Africa between 1999 and 2009(2016) Shazi, Xolisani RaymondThe critical observation for public administration and governance in South Africa has been the relationship between senior managers and political officials since the establishment of the democratic government in the country. The first documented observation in the United States of America by Woodrow Wilson marked the launch of public administration as an independent faculty, breaking away from the political sciences. The dominant theory that characterised public administration was that there must be a clear distinction between politics and public administration. This theory suggested that politics had nothing to do with public administration and, therefore, politicians should not intrude into matters of public administration. For contemporary academia, it is crucial to ask questions about the relevance of Wilson’s perspective with regard to the relationship between senior managers and political officials. Nevertheless, contemporary scholars are challenged by the emergent need to study the dual nature of public administration, suggesting that public administration should not be separated from politics, since public administration is merely the expression of the political ideology. Hence, politics and public administration should be inseparable. To refute or reaffirm these notions, this thesis explores this study by reviewing the relationship between senior public managers and political officials through analysing the politics– administration interface in South Africa between 1999 and 2009. In congruence with the main research questions of this study, the researcher utilises four pre-claims to examine the politics–administration interface and the factors that lead to strained relationships around the interface. The first pre-claim in this study examines the notion suggesting that it is the nature of the political bureau to dominate public administration. The second pre-claim examines the notion suggesting that there could be conflicting leadership styles between a political official and a senior public service official. The third pre-claim is that political officials may have a different political ideology as compared with the political ideology upheld by a senior public service official. The fourth pre-claim is that political officials or public service officials or both parties may have some disregard for documented duties and responsibilities. Consequently, this study examines the politics–administration interface in South Africa within the scope of the pre-claims as presented in the introduction to the study. The study found that the colonial legacy in the Commonwealth Nations with features of the Westminster system of governance perpetuates political bureau dominance over public administration. The study further found that it is conventionally accepted that the political bureau should provide guidance to the public administration bureau and dominate public administration which is only the expression of the prevailing political will. The researcher has examined the pre-claim of conflicting leadership styles between the elected officials and senior public servants. The study found that between 1999 and 2009 there was a transition from the collective leadership of the ruling political bureau to a closed conventional leadership system where political power was centralized in the presidency, resulting in leadership through fear and mistrust. Regarding the pre-claim on different ideologies, this study argues that public administration is the implementation of political ideologies, and public service managers are at the apex of implementing policies for the benefit of the social classes on behalf of the political bureau, which drives the ideologies of a ruling political party. Therefore, different political ideologies between the political bureau and the administration bureau may be one of the factors of a strained politics–administration interface. The study found that in cases (Buthelezi and Masetlha as well as Zille and Mgoqi) where officials from different political parties attempted to work, the arrangement resulted in a power struggle in the politics–administration interface. With regard to the pre-claim on disregard for documented rules and responsibilities, the study found that the problem in the interface is not always the neglect of documented rules and responsibilities, but rather that in some cases the documented rules and responsibilities are not always clear, resulting in grey or nondescript areas in the politics−administration interface that are ultimately claimed by the political bureau. This study has further proposed a public service governance structure with an added governance responsibility for the Public Service Commission to oversee the administration in order to distance the political bureau from public administration operations and direct engagement with senior public servants, such as the directors-general.Item An assessment of South African political parties' adherence to governance principles(2017) Besani, Sibongile JeremiaPolitical parties are prominent in the development of democracy in South Africa. Therefore, it is critical to expand knowledge about the governance of the major parties in the country in order to reflect on the future of democracy. The framework based on key functions - membership recruitment, policy formulation and organisational complexity performed by political parties facilitate an incisive assessment of adherence to governance principles - participation, accountability and transparency. Various sources, which include constitutions, interviews and focus group discussions of political parties, were central in the assessment of the governance principles of parties. The study revealed that the visions, missions, regularity of meetings, quorums requirements for meetings, diverse representation and structures are instructive in assessing and understanding the prevalence of governance principles within the operations of political parties. These areas are revealed in the study and they also provide insights in a future perspective of South African democracy.