3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/45

Browse

Has files: YesSubject: search.filters.subject.Human rights--South Africa

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Human rights are not enough: a critical assessment of challenges of inequality and care for international human rights
    (2019) Harbour, Sophie
    This 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 others
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Advocating for the right to food in South Africa - an analysis of judicial activism, public interest litigation and collective action in South Africa as a strategy to secure the right to food
    (2016) Moyo, Busiso Helard
    This dissertation is an investigation of the conditions that would bring about the legal enforcement of the right to access sufficient food in South Africa as premised on the Constitution. This is motivated by the fact that modern-society has seen a gradual increase in the occurrence of socio-economic rights being protected through the legal opportunity structure of countries, ultimately leading to public interest litigation. At present, the right to food is being violated in South Africa. Taking into account the ambit of the constitution and several international instruments that speak to its realisation and the fact that there has been litigation on other socio-economic rights, suggesting that tools for litigation are in place, it is perplexing that right to food litigation has not taken place. The research question of this paper is therefore: which factors and conditions would have to be present for there to arise public interest litigation on the right to food in South Africa? Due to the fact that literature on right to food litigation is almost non-existent, especially for the African context, this is an explorative case study. The dissertation utilises an analytical framework to study the prospect of litigation on the right to food becoming a reality. The study is largely theory-driven, relying on various sources of evidence: secondary literature, conducted-research and official state documents speaking to the countries right to food narrative. The analysis reveals that there are many barriers to right to food litigation in South Africa. These mainly have to do with the conditions that impact the manner in which right to food violations are understood by the poor and marginalised in society on one hand and the responsiveness of the courts to the voice of the marginalised and poor on the other. The dissertation concludes that the most crucial factors for right to food litigation in South Africa to arise are the need for more information and awareness around the right to food; improved legal assistance for the hungry and poor; more trust in the legal system amongst those at the bottom of the pyramid; the need for a stronger focus on litigation strategies by civil society and advocacy groups and the need for judges to be more innovative in carrying-out their duties. The conclusions of this study have relevance for those working actively for the promotion and realisation of the right to food in South Africa.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    No longer the skunk of the world? Neoliberalism, human rights and contemporary South African foreign policy (1994-2014)
    (2016) Von Essen, Brendan Craig
    In the early 1990s South Africa left the Apartheid-era and transformed into a country based on liberal democratic principles such as freedom and human rights. The soon to be inaugurated president, Nelson Mandela, promised that South Africa would base its new foreign policy on these same principles and the pursuit of the international human rights agenda. Initially this seemed to be the case; South Africa signed on to most international human rights conventions and even acted on these principles condemning Nigeria when the ruling regime executed human rights activists. However, once the country gradually began adopting neoliberal ideological positions, first domestically then in its foreign policy, the prominence of human rights in South Africa’s foreign policy began to wane. This is evidenced in South Africa’s actions on international organisations as well as the country’s approach to human rights challenges such as the Zimbabwean crisis in the early 2000s and the furore over planned visit of the Dalai Lama in 2011. Using a hermeneutic approach it is possible to gain an ontological understanding of the process by which this move towards neoliberalism lead to a economisation and commodification of South Africa’s foreign policy between 1994-2014. This in turn undermined the liberal democratic principles which underpinned the country’s international relations leading to a relegation of the human rights agenda to a subsequent by product which can be achieved through greater market liberalisation.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    'Gendered histories and the politics of subjectivity, memory and historical consciousness - a study of two black women's experiences of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process and the aftermath.'
    (2016-03-01) Letlaka, Palesa Nthabiseng
    This study examines the gendered histories of two black women who both narrated their personal testimonies in self-authored narrations for public consumption, and who both testified at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It situates the politics of subjectivity, memory and historical consciousness within the social constructivist and hermeneutical theoretical frameworks of Butler and Ricoeur respectively; and through a generative process, working with their TRC testimonies and subsequent oral interviews, it examines self-narrativity, subject formation and the formation of female selfhood in the formation of gendered historical consciousness
Copyright Ownership Is Guided By The University's

Intellectual Property policy

Students submitting a Thesis or Dissertation must be aware of current copyright issues. Both for the protection of your original work as well as the protection of another's copyrighted work, you should follow all current copyright law.