African National Congress Government Research Articles

BRIDGING THE DIVIDE: ADDRESSING SOCIOECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (2000-2015)

The practice of the apartheid system in South Africa has been widely condemned for perpetuating enduring socio-economic inequality and for its detrimental impacts on the lives of millions of citizens. While many studies have strongly affirmed this assertion, socio-economic inequality continues to arguably engender a long-lasting struggle among the black and colored communities in post-apartheid South Africa. This places a burden on the country’s successive governments to implement long-term policies that can rectify the plight of the people. Consequently, the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 becomes an important reference tool for the African National Congress (ANC)-dominated government, which has initiated and implemented policies to combat inequality in the post-apartheid era. This study examines the roles and measures taken by the ANC government to address racially discriminated economic and social inequality within the framework of the MDGs. Using qualitative research methods, the study explores the background framework of the MDGs and analyzes socio-economic measures implemented by successive ANC governments between 2000 and 2015, focusing on areas such as education, poverty eradication, and healthcare. Primary and secondary sources are utilized to provide insights and support the analysis. The findings reveal that the ANC-dominated government effectively incorporated the frameworks of the MDGs into its formulation and execution of policy measures to eradicatesocial inequality in South Africa. The study concludes that the effective implementation of these measures has yielded considerableprogress, effectively addressing multifaceted issues such as poverty, healthcare, education, and unemployment. This conclusion alignswith the official South African MDG report, which unequivocally highlights the several achievements of MDG targets through policyimplementation from 2000 to 2015.

Raids, Resistance, and Retribution: South Africa's Cato Manor Killings, 1960–1

AbstractOn 24 January 1960 nine police were killed in the African settlement of Cato Manor when residents turned on officers conducting a liquor patrol. On 5 September 1961, nine men convicted of the killings were hanged in Pretoria's Central Prison. These deaths produced contrasting narratives, one by the apartheid state and then decades later, another by the current African National Congress government. Apartheid police and judicial authorities vilified the accused as the worst kind of killers who wantonly slaughtered the representatives of law and order. Sixty years later, these murderers of the apartheid period were resurrected as martyrs and their remains were interred at Heroes Arch, a resting place for many antiapartheid activists. Moving past these binary versions allows us to consider a more mundane story that underscores the South African state's commitment to a model of policing that generated an unmatched degree of persecution in colonial Africa.

Laundering racial capitalism in post-apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACT This article employs the theoretical concept of racial capitalism as an intellectual framework with which to theorise and explain racialised inequality in South Africa. Historical evidence shows that the accumulation of Whiteness in South Africa has historically been inseparable from the accumulation of capital. This work illustrates that the African National Congress (ANC) used the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to launder and legitimise racial capitalism in post-apartheid South Africa. It identifies Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) as one of the ANC government’s economic laundering schemes that it employs to legitimise racial capitalism in post-apartheid South Africa. I use the insight of scholars such as Marzia Milazzo to conclude that, as a full-blown laundered discourse, racial capitalism allows a White middle class to continue to own and manage the means of production and intergenerational wealth, while a Black middle class continues to endure intergenerational poverty and dispossession.

The neoliberal influence on South Africa’s early democracy and its shortfalls in addressing economic inequality

In this article, I will argue that early post-Apartheid South Africa adopted certain neoliberal principles which compromised the efforts to combat economic inequality. In particular, I will show that the economic policies that South Africa adopted during its early democracy reflect core neoliberal principles which promote a neoliberal political rationality. These economic policies indicate a pivotal approach from the African National Congress government in addressing economic inequality in South Africa. The dramatic shift from traditional Marxist policies to neoliberal policies reveals the significant influence of a neoliberal global market system during South Africa’s early democracy. However, the neoliberal policies failed to address the problem of economic inequality in South Africa. Instead, these policies seem to have deepened the existing economic inequality in contemporary South African society.

Consistency and inconsistency in the foreign policy of the Republic of South Africa towards Israel

AbstractThe subject of South Africa‐Israel relations has always been a considerable scholarly topic that is amongst the ongoing academic and policy makers' debates. This is because of the uncertainties and confusion that exists in South Africa's foreign policy stance on Israel in the contemporary period. In this secondary data‐based research article, the author analyses the historical relations between South Africa and Israel with Palestine in question. The central aim is to analyse the consistencies and inconsistencies historically and contemporarily shown by South Africa's foreign policy towards Israel. The article looked at the pre‐and post‐apartheid governments' foreign policy positions. The author argued that there is no gainsaying that South Africa had good relations with Israel during apartheid. These relations only became unstable when South Africa adopted democracy, but scholars still observe a lot of uncertainties on South Africa's Israeli foreign policy stance, particularly in the context of Palestine in question. This is especially in economic and political links which still exist between the two countries. Afrocentricity as a theoretical lens has been adopted. The results show that whilst the pre‐democratic apartheid government enjoyed good relations with Israel; the new democratic government has continuously had unstable relations with Israel. The article concluded that whilst the African National Congress (ANC) government is policy conflicted on relations with Israel; it though enjoys economic engagement with their so‐called internationally condemned apartheid Israel. The initial recommendation made was that the new democratic ANC government should make a firm policy stance on Israel to clear any policy confusion.

The empirical reality of project management failures in the construction of social housing projects in South Africa

PurposeThe concept of government reconstruction development programme (RDP) social housing in South Africa was rolled out in 1994 after the African National Congress Government came to power when the apartheid rule was abolished. The main aim of the government was to enhance the lifestyles of the poor in society through the provision of houses that they could not afford in the open market. However, many concerns have been reported about the social housing project in terms of poor project implementation and the delivery of deliverables that do not befit the need of the end-users. This study aims to assess the flaws in the application of project management (PM) principles in the construction of these social houses.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative approach was adopted for the study by making use of closed- and open-ended questionnaires to collect data from 1,893 social housing inhabitants in Bloemfontein, Free State. Descriptive statistics and R programming language software were used to analyse the data collected.FindingsThe findings reveal that there was a profound failure in the application of PM principles in the construction of the social houses leading to the provision of deliverables that do not meet the needs of the beneficiaries. There are also poor project deliverables and lack of consultations that could have probably been prevented had proper PM systems been put in place by the government throughout the project lifecycle. This lack of proper PM philosophies has generated dissatisfaction among the beneficiaries leading to numerous complaints about the social housing programme.Research limitations/implicationsThe survey was done in only RDP housing communities in Bloemfontein in the Free State Province of South Africa; however, the result may be applicable in other RDP housing programmes.Practical implicationsThe empirical results indicate that the government has been providing houses with disregard to project objectives by not instituting an appropriate PM systems; hence, the main objective of providing befitting houses to the less privileged to enhance their living conditions has woefully failed, as the inhabitants do not see any improvement of their social standings after receiving the houses. This means the government might have wasted resources as a result of ineffective PM throughout the project implementation.Originality/valueThis study has identified PM flaws in the construction of the RDP houses, which have led to poor project deliverables. This study thus gives recommendations with regard to proper PM strategies for the implementation of the same or similar project in the future to achieve project objectives.

África do Sul e o seu entorno regional

O objetivo deste texto é analisar as relações da África do Sul com seu entorno regional desdeo fim do apartheid, problematizando a noção de que os governos do Congresso NacionalAfricano (ANC) praticam uma política subimperialista. A análise se apoia em documentose entrevistas realizadas na África do Sul, Zimbabwe e Zâmbia. Inicialmente, é apresentadauma visão geral das relações da África do Sul com seus vizinhos, evidenciando a assimetriaque as caracteriza. A seguir, é discutida a tentativa malograda do presidente Thabo Mbekide liderar um renascimento africano sob a égide da Nepad, e seus desdobramentos.A terceira seção enfoca a África Austral, examinando as consequências da expansão mercantilsul-africana em Zimbábue e Zâmbia. Na sequência, discuto, a partir de entrevistas, se essaexpansão corresponde a uma estratégia determinada dos governos da ANC. Nas reflexõesfinais, avanço a hipótese de que, embora constate-se uma assimetria nas relações da Áfricado Sul com seus vizinhos, as debilidades e contradições do Estado e do próprio capitalismosul-africano limitam sua possibilidade de atuação. Como resultado, a expansão regional denegócios sul-africanos se dá à despeito de qualquer estratégia estatal, o que enseja repensara caracterização desse fenômeno como um subimperialismo.

Marking Constitutional Transitions: The Law and Politics of Constitutional Implementation in South Africa

Marking Constitutional Transitions: The Law and Politics of Constitutional Implementation in South Africa

Macro-environments of South Africa: time to stop the rot, deterioration, distrust and dysfunctionality

Since the introduction of black economic empowerment (BEE) in South Africa by the African National Congress (ANC) in 2003, the impact of the legislation and its accompanying policies on the six major “PESTIS” (political, economic, social, technological, institutional and structural-physical) macro-environments in which businesses in the private sector and government in the public sector operate, has largely gone unnoticed or has been ignored. In an exploratory study using the “5 Star” research methodology, and with the aid of specially developed qualitative research adjudication matrix (QRAM), the impact of the ANC’s BEE policies on these macro-environments was investigated. Unfortunately, it appears that these policies have negatively affected South Africa’s political, economic, social/cultural and institutional macro-environments. Allegations of state capture and nefarious influences on government and ministerial appointments, poor economic performance and possible further credit downgrade to “junk” status by the international ratings agencies, increased prevalence of racism, hate speech and discrimination, and violation of the Constitution of South Africa and international treaties by the ANC government, paint a dismal picture. In addition, the coun¬try is facing unseen high levels of corruption, graft, fraud, looting, bribery, nepotism and self-enrichment in government, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and businesses. BEE can be regarded as the ANC’s “Achilles heel” in South Africa, and the political party should rather abandon this policy in order to stop the rot, and further deterioration, distrust and decay in the country’s most important macro-environments.

South Africa and the Search for Strategic Effect in the Central African Republic

This article provides a critical assessment from a strategic perspective of the South African military involvement in the Central African Republic that culminated in the Battle of Bangui. The strategic assessment was aimed at an understanding of the South African armed forces and their government’s strategic approach and logic (i.e. strategic ways) through a consideration of, firstly, their strategic objectives and end states and, secondly, a critical reflection on the military means that were available and employed in the Central African Republic. The authors question the logic of South African political and military objectives through an emphasis on the absence of South African interests in the Central African Republic, the failure of the executive to inform parliament, the dubious and blurred intentions of the African National Congress government and the absence of a clear political–military nexus for the operation. The lack of sufficient military capabilities for the deployment was assessed through a consideration of overstretch, obsolescence, neglect and mismanagement of military resources. The article concludes that not only did the government set the military up for failure; it also succeeded in creating the perfect conditions for a strategic fiasco.

South Africa\u2019s Economic Transformation Since 1994: What Influence has the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) Had?

When the African National Congress (ANC) became the democratic government of South Africa in 1994, it faced the challenge of transforming the economy. How this was to be done, however, revolved around two divergent views of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) which forms the underlying ideology or glue that binds together the Tripartite Alliance comprising the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the largest workers’ union in the country. Transformation could be achieved either radically through measures such as nationalisation where political control would be transposed into economic power, or via a more liberal route involving the promotion of macro-economic development and the growth of company earnings. This article investigates how the ANC government has sought to bring about the much-needed transformation by providing summary analyses of the following macro-economic policies: the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy, the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative - South Africa (ASGISA), the New Growth Path (NGP) and the National Development Plan (NDP). Evidence suggests that while the NDR promised radical results, the economic transformation that has been taking place in South Africa since 1994 has been driven largely by neo-liberal principles. This is in contrast to what the ANC claims in various policy documents and what various scholars, such as Jeffery (2010:5) and Venter (2012), have also claimed. As South Africa’s economic fortunes have declined in recent years in the face of mounting external pressures and internal policy uncertainty, this deviation from the original ideology and plan is causing significant discord in the country.

Race to the top and the fear of falling

The rapid rise of a growing African middle class is one of the most dramatic transformations of the post-1994 period. Its emergence has long been a cornerstone of African National Congress (ANC) policy - the 'patriotic bourgeoisie'- with its rise being a central feature of former President Mbeki's economic policies. This middle class has long been the focus of considerable political, popular and scholarly interest. Much has long been placed on the shoulders of this newly expanding vibrant and powerful class. A class that is viewed as : central to de-racialising the political economy of apartheid; the driving force in economic growth; key to the ANC's continued power in government (a very senior member of the ANC alliance and government minister presented his PhD on the very question of the patriotic-bourgeoisie); the bulwark against revolutionary threats; and more.

Marikana: Analysing Miners’ Subjectivity and the Crisis of Representation

This article analyses some of the reasons for the violent repression of the miners’ strike in Marikana, South Africa, in which 34 people died on 16 August 2012. It explores the economic and productive context which led the Rock Drill Operators to demand a wage increase outside the usual wage-bargaining structures. It goes on to examine the strikers’ subjectivity and the principles of their strike. Because the strike was organised independently of the main union, the National Union of Mineworkers, by miners demanding direct talks with their employer, as a sign of recognition, it illustrated a crisis of representation and embodied an alternative politics. The author argues that the African National Congress government was faced with a challenge to its instituted forms of political representation and, as a result, ordered the police to fire on the demonstrators.

The coming crisis of Zuma's ANC: the party state confronts fiscal crisis

Rising state expenditure threatens to outstrip the South African government's ability to pay. This danger is merely a symptom of and challenge to the predatory characteristics of the ‘party-state’ erected by the ruling African National Congress (ANC), notably as they are exhibited under the presidency of Jacob Zuma. The ANC government is increasingly looking to an oil and gas bonanza to avoid a ‘fiscal cliff’, while Zuma himself is driving a nuclear power future which threatens to bankrupt the economy. The latter strategy conforms to the party's greater disposition to corruption and patronage. Key parastatals have become headed by Zuma cronies; family and friends have been awarded government favour; and Zuma's personal interests intrude upon the governance of parastatals, the South African Revenue Service and the functioning of constitutionally protected agencies such as the office of the Public Protector. The Zuma government's repudiation of accountability highlights an official drift to secrecy. However, the increasing limitations of ANC economic policy combine with growing discontent in society to place the party's political hegemony at risk – but Zuma's presidency has compromised the ANC's capacity for internal reform.

Inclusive innovation and inequality in South Africa: a case for transformative social policy

South Africa's quest for inclusive innovation is encumbered by the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment. Although the present African National Congress government has made strides to promote inclusive innovation, structural inequalities inherited from apartheid hinder the creation of a new social contract. Social policy is today receiving greater attention in the field of innovation and development. Much emphasis is placed on the important issues of reproduction, redistribution and social production. However, in the South African context the vital concern of production needs to be considered. This article argues that transformative social policy in South Africa enhances innovation through its effects on human capital and skill formation and its capacity to alleviate risk. This paper uses a transformative social policy approach in contributing to discourse around inclusive innovation in South Africa and the Global South.

Governing through Crime in South Africa: The Politics of Race and Class in Neoliberalizing Regimes. By Gail Super. Dorchester: Ashgate, 2013. 182 pp. $98.96, cloth.

Governing through Crime in South Africa: The Politics of Race and Class in Neoliberalizing Regimes. By Gail Super. Dorchester: Ashgate, 2013. 182 pp. $98.96, cloth.In ways more similar than different, crime policies in South Africa after end of formal apartheid play out in a field where poor are not well represented and indeed where punitive penal policies absurdly reinforce inequality of society. So argues Gail Super in Governing through Crime in South Africa. Super's raw material in this well-researched book comes from her focus on official criminology-state discourses about crime and criminality (pp. 6-7). These discourses are a form of communication and are themselves performative. Using this material, Super shows how politics of race and class in post-apartheid South Africa under conditions of neo-liberalism have led to a place where criminal justice and prisons policy appear to exhibit more continuity than change-despite new democratic government led for more than twenty years now by former liberation movement, African National Congress (ANC).As a historical case study spanning late apartheid, transition, and post-apartheid South Africa, Super's work perhaps is inherently inclined toward examining continuities of new with old. While this fits with much of best recent scholarship on crime and policing in South Africa (Altbeker 2005; Hornberger 2013), others call for an emphasis on discontinuity (Steinberg 2014). In any case, Super's analysis is nuanced and careful. It is not simply old wine in new bottles. Working at messy and fertile intersection of crime and governance, Super refreshes and complicates simple distinction that sees apartheid as bad and post-apartheid as better (or perhaps just not-sobad).As even a casual reader of major newspapers in South Africa would be aware, crime and its management have become a central issue in governance of post-apartheid South Africa. Productively drawing on Foucauldian themes, one chapter follows directly on Super's previously published work on spectacle of crime in post-apartheid South Africa (Super 2010). She details how relationship between crime and politics changed as African National Congress went from a liberation movement to a ruling party. Likewise, relationship between crime and race changed as blacks moved from oppressed to governing majority-Super has less to say about gender. In new South Africa, crime has become subjected to more intensive measurement techniques but simultaneously has become an object through which governing occurs. Thus halt to publication of crime statistics directed by ANC Minister of Safety and Security in 2000 justifies Super's contention that the ANC government used denial and refusal to divulge information as a tactic of rule-just as NP [National Party] government had done before it (p. 39).Continuity also figures in discussion in Governing through Crime in South Africa about country's shift to neoliberal macroeconomic policies. Super dates start of neoliberal policies in South Africa to early 1980s, under white National Party government: a shift from racial Fordism to privatization (p. 9). Post-apartheid, Super describes how new democratic government has unexpectedly taken stances in favor of imprisonment and without mention of or attention to structural causes of crime. In this engagement with neoliberalism and its effects, Super follows Jonathan Simon in seeing not only repressive side of crime control but also its softer and enabling effects (Simon 2007).Indeed, for Super, continuities continue. Where others have depicted a shift from early post-apartheid days of community based crime prevention to a later (from late 1990s or 2000) era of getting tough, she emphasizes linkages and points of intersection in both language about criminals and in penal complex. …

Lost dreams? Tales of the South African city twenty years after apartheid

When Phindile (this is not her real name) left rural Kwa Zulu in 1989 for Johannesburg, she had every hope of building a better life in the city. She dreamed of a place where she was free from the trauma of virginity testing, where she could move freely as a black woman, and where she could own her own home and have children that she could bequeath a better life than the one she had had. A few years later, the incoming government of the African National Congress (ANC) had a similar dream for its citizens – the right of all South Africans, regardless of race, creed or gender, to dream of a better future. In its Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the new ANC government promised to create ‘an integrated programme, based on the people, that provides peace and security for all and builds the nation, links reconstruction and development and deepens democracy’ (ANC, 1994, p. 7, emphasis in original). What has happened to both the state's and Phindile's dream 20 years later? Through Phindile's life, a single mother of two, this article explores the extent to which 20 years of democracy has changed the urban landscape and realized the state's vision for a non-racial, integrated and prosperous city for all. We follow Phindile through Gauteng, the country's most urbanized province, as she migrates to the city, looks for work, rents a shack in an informal settlement and eventually gets her own state-provided RDP home in the province's East Rand. Phindile's life becomes a window through which we examine how public policies, policy statements and programmes affect individual lives. We follow the evolution of key policies on local government housing policies, the constitution, integrated development plans, the National Development Plan and other official statements and legal statutes that relate to cities. Through Phindile's experience we move beyond discourses of policy ‘failure’ or ‘success’, allowing us to understand how policy deeply impacts personal lives – for better or worse. By juxtaposing Phindile's everyday life with official declarations, visions and statements, we see the progress, setbacks and stagnation of South Africa's dream to create a rainbow nation with cities that are racially, economically and socially integrated.

Blasphemy, Holocaust Denial, and the Control of Profoundly Unacceptable Speech

Many new democracies exhibit a disturbing lack of electoral competition. All too often, the first party to hold office creates a network of power and patronage that chokes off meaningful political challenge. These strong party democracies, with power often being held by the inheritors of the political mantle of those that led the opposition to prior authoritarian rule, exhibit a tendency toward the three “C's” of associated with the lack of accountability: clientelism, cronyism, and corruption. Such strong-party regimes and their associated pathologies present relatively new constitutional courts with a distinct set of controversies that necessarily bring the judiciary into conflict with consolidating political power. This article explores the form that judicial responses to the excesses of political dominance might take. Three courts are selected as exemplars of such responses. In the first instance, the Colombian Constitutional Court repudiated the attempt of President Uribe to amend the constitution to permit a third term in office, despite the lack of reasoning to support the rejection of a largely procedurally proper constitutional amendment. In the second, the South African Constitutional Court has scrupulously avoided any frontal confrontation with the current African National Congress government, instead casting its repeated rejection of government efforts to insulate itself from accountability in narrow procedural rulings or in rulings based on other, non-politically charged sources of law. Finally, there is the Thai Constitutional Court which, while providing the strongest jurisprudential defense of its intervention, appears an active ally of one partisan camp as the country hovers on the brink of civil war. Rather than offer any off-the-rack solution for the difficult realm of constitutional courts as democracy falters, this Article examines the relation between the issues presented to such courts and the fundamental absence of electoral challenge and accountability. To the extent these courts navigate this difficult terrain, the Article concludes, the decisive feature will likely be the ability to contribute to the establishment of a competitive electoral system able to constrain single-party dominance.

Some Critical Thoughts on Consolidating the Neoliberal Agenda in South African Politics

The paper attempts in narrative form, a critical commentary in respect of the issues raised in the title of the paper. The issue arises as to what has happened to the working class in South Africa, under the ruling African National Congress government of South Africa? In reality neoliberalism has triumphed and therefore, according to Zwelinzima Vavi, the unnecessarily suspended Secretary General of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU, radical economic transformation remains a dream in South Africa. The paper crystallizes his thoughts in the formulation of this paper. On the other hand, the paper will discuss the work of Mzukisi Qobo, who argues that the South African Communist Party has abandoned its socialist convictions, is now a strange bedfellow of the government. In reality, under the present leadership it has sold out to the capitalist neoliberal agenda and has abandoned the working class. It is a question of waving goodbye to the red flag in South African politics. It is against this background that the paper will look at some of these issues, but will not pretend to intellectually exhaust the issues that permeate this important topic. It is hoped that the article would generate critical discussion in this direction by South African and world academics.

South African Economic Woes : Poor Political Leadership and Rating Downgrades Hampers Growth and Development

Purpose: The paper aims to focus on South Africa’s poor economic performance and the regular downgrades of the country’s economic and financial rating by international rating agencies. It attempts to show that these continuous downgrades are a recipe for economic and financial disaster in the long – run; that the continuance of this phenomenon will stymie the implementation of the National Development Plan (NDP) and the securing of the much desired developmental state. A host of other important and necessary issues will be raised that pertain to the economic woes of South Africa. Research Method: The classical research design is not followed. A range of economic and financial issues amidst other salient issues are analyzed by the researchers. In so doing South African newspapers and its media including the opinions of other writers will be utilized in formulating the thought processes of the researchers. This will allow for a clear delineation of the economic and financial woes that confront South Africa, under a so – called democratic state. The research method is therefore self – explanatory as captured above, and relies on articles that appeared in the South African media and invokes the critical analysis of the writers in terms of projecting on the issues raised in the title of the paper. Findings: The findings are influenced by the thought processes of the researcher and the analysis made, by various writers as concerns these issues. The implications for South Africa and its people are immense. These findings are dispersed throughout the discussion undertaken in the paper. It also draws attention to the poor political leadership in South Africa, exhibited by the ruling party. It draws attention to the all embracing fact that a successful election win for the ruling African National Congress Government on May, 7 2014 is not a panacea for sound development nor will it promote the general welfare and the enhancement of the public good. It argues that if the economic and financial challenges and problems are not dealt with decisively, then poverty, unemployment and inequality will escalate and spiral out of control. Originality Value: The paper draws attention to a number of vexing issues that require urgent attention by politicians and the South African bureaucracy to address the issues raised in this paper. The originality value underscores a host of issues as concerns the economic, financial and downgrade woes that generally are not addressed by the government in a proactive and sustainable manner.