Democratic Elections In South Africa Research Articles

The use of social media by three political parties during South Africa’s 2014 general election

Since the first democratic election in South Africa in 1994, electoral campaigns have changed significantly, largely due to social media, which now play a vital role in influencing voters throughout the world. This study examines the social media campaigns of three major South African political parties, namely the African National Congress (ANC), the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), prior to the 2014 general election. Data comprised interviews with members of Parliament (MPs) of all three parties, and an analysis of their Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and YouTube channels. The study finds that, while all three parties made active use of social media, the full potential of this form of communication was not exploited, as they continued to disseminate traditional political messages instead of interacting actively with voters.

Newspaper cartoons as a reflection of political change during the first democratic elections in South Africa

The first Southern African cartoonists were probably the Stone Age Bushman whose drawings adorn rock faces in this part of the continent. Modern cartoonists may use more sophisticated equipment but their drawings, although on recyclable print, also reflect a particular part of our history. The following view of Schoonraad et al (1989:15: "A collection of cartoons covering a particular period, will present an unequalled graphic history of political and current events" They also add that the state of any nation is reflected by its newspaper cartoons Geipel 1972 argues that to the historian, cartoons represent priceless primary source of information about fleeting modes and morals of the passing generations. Few commentators Pretoria will disagree that the run-up to the 1994-election can be regarded as one of the most crucial moments in South African history. The focus will only be on the editorial cartoon usually found on the centre pages of Sunday and daily newspapers and not on comic strips of which the majority are from US-syndications. The only local comic strips that provide (198 social and political commentary are "Ben, Babsie en Famille" and "Louis die Laeveld Leeu".

(E)scatalogical Visions in Marlene van Niekerk’s Triomf

It is over 20 years since Marlene van Niekerk published Triomf ([1994] 1999, Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball), a satire of the poor white Benade family, who have been bedazzled by apartheid ideology. This iconoclastic satire was published originally in Afrikaans in 1994, the year of the first democratic elections in South Africa. This article offers a close reading of “Peace on Earth”, a chapter that desublimates significant sacred icons in Afrikaner cultural mythology and offers a critique of the intricate workings of ideology. Notably, this critique relies upon the abjection of the male Afrikaner’s body, in particular that of Treppie Benade. Treppie, the satirist, is found sitting upon the “throne” (toilet) as he purges himself of the lies and illusions of apartheid ideology through a lengthy scatology. This article begins by situating the novel in terms of its commentary on the apartheid government’s attempt to rehabilitate the abject of the Afrikaner volk: poor white “trash”. It highlights excrement as a master trope of the satirist before analysing the allusions to Judeo-Christian iconography and (e)scatology (invoked in the Great Trek narrative) in terms of their resonances with Louis Althusser’s and Slavoj Žižek’s concepts of ideology. Further, I explore Treppie’s faecal tapestry in terms of an immanent sublime, drawing on Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Dionysian sublime. In conclusion, I consider Treppie’s final words and orientation at the end of the novel, and the implications of his Dionysian approach to an uncertain future.

Educators’ Views on the Provision of Quality Education at Selected Public Schools in Limpopo Province

This article focuses on the assessment of the progress made on the provisioning of quality education at selected public schools in Limpopo province. Qualitative research methodology was used as the author was interested in collecting data on the experiences, perceptions, and views of the research participants. Three research instruments for data collection were employed, namely participant observation, document analysis, and interviews. Purposive sampling was used to select participants who were likely to be knowledgeable and experienced on the phenomenon under study. Ten educators were sampled from public primary and secondary schools. The findings revealed that after the 1994 democratic elections in South Africa, few changes on the provisioning of quality education in Limpopo Province happened. The negative attitudes of the educators towards transformational policies, lack of competency of the educators in teaching reading and numeracy, lack of equitable distribution of resources to public schools, and lack of induction and in-service training of educators were amongst the contributing factors hampering effective provisioning of quality education. The author recommends recruitment of highly qualified and experienced educators, induction of newly appointed educators, continuous in-service training and mentoring, and development of guidelines or prescripts on the implementation of education policies as the tools that can enhance the provisioning of quality education at public schools.

The African Renaissance Conference, Twenty-One Years Later: A Critical Reflection

On September 28 and 29, 1998, four years after the first democratic elections in South Africa which brought about the Government of National Unity (GNU) headed by Nelson Mandela, then president of the African National Congress (ANC) and the first African president in a post-apartheid South Africa, a conference dedicated to the African Renaissance was held at the Karos Indaba Hotel in Johannesburg. In 2019, twenty-one years after the convening of the African Renaissance conference, the vice-chancellor of the University of South Africa (Unisa), Prof. Mandla Makhanya, invited the author to his institution to reflect on the historic event. This reflection was a contribution to Prof. Makhanya's African Intellectuals Project (AIP), a platform provided by him to African intellectuals to reflect on the challenges that continue to confront Africans on the continent, and to suggest possible solutions. Prof. Makhanya saw fit that as one of convenors of the African Renaissance conference, the other two being Thaninga Shope and Thami Mazwai, I should reflect on the successes and failures of the African Renaissance project. In this article I reflect on the journey of the African Renaissance project, twenty-one years after the historical African Renaissance conference.

People or Preservation? How Electoral Accountability Reduces Human Cost in South Africa’s National Parks

Natural protected areas (NPAs) are commonly used to preserve environmental biodiversity. Such policies, however, often harm rural communities. This article argues that the human cost of NPAs is often because of a lack of formal electoral accountability that links national governments to these communities. Through the case of 1994 democratic elections in South Africa that signified the end of the apartheid, I show that an increase in electoral accountability can be associated with a decrease in the human cost of NPAs. Using scholarly observations and histories on NPAs in South Africa, and primary documents from governmental agencies, I examine the post-apartheid change in three areas pertinent to human cost: Law and Intention, Communication and Community Involvement, and Land Restitution. In doing so, I demonstrate that the enfranchisement of black South Africans, who overwhelmingly populate the rural communities that are harmed by NPAs, has led to a shift in human cost.

I AM AN AFRIKANER WOMAN

DISLOCATING WOMENIn the run up to the first truly democratic elections in South Africa, the Afrikaner women issued a heartfelt cry: What have you done in our name? Did Black women understand the question? Twenty years later, many a black-black woman, “Bantu” in the terminology of yesteryear, have begun to feel the anguish of their Afrikaner Sisters. Indeed, I am become the Afrikaner woman of yesteryear - Guilty by Association.The lesson? Power disempowers women and yet, in the final analysis, we are all held accountable for the ills of society. In essence, there is no ‘other’September 7, 2015

The role of the leadership of the Dutch Reformed Church en route to the first democratic election in South Africa: 1990-1994

The role of the leadership of the Dutch Reformed Church en route to the first democratic election in South Africa : 1990-1994Piet Strauss played an important part in the leadership of the Dutch Reformed Church from 1994 to 2011. This article focuses on important events and the role of the leadership of the Dutch Reformed Church which prepared the way for Strauss and his generation of leaders. It takes the acceptance of the important policy document Church and Society by the General Synod of 1986 and the Rustenburg Consultation of 1990 as points of departure. It then describes how the leadership of the church engaged with different political leaders between 1990 and 1994. By doing so, the leadership of the church, which became known for the Biblical foundation of the notorious policy of apartheid, played an important role while South Africa was on the brink of civil war. Their efforts contributed to a peaceful first democratic election in 1994.

“We are all children of God”: a Charismatic church as space of encounter between township and suburb in post-apartheid Johannesburg

Twenty years after the first democratic election in South Africa, Johannesburg is still marked by the legacy of apartheid. This makes it difficult for residents of former townships and of suburban middle classes to interact in everyday life. Nevertheless, urban dwellers create or use spaces with the intention of living up to the ideal of a non-racist post-apartheid society. The case study of a Charismatic church in Linbro Park, in the north-east of Johannesburg, analyses how the white, middle class church leadership conceives of the church as a public space of the Christian rainbow nation. The experiences of township dwellers show, however, that subtle processes of exclusion are at work. The article argues that this post-apartheid space of encounter is fraught with contradiction, tension and ambivalence, a space where urban dwellers transgress, but also reproduce racial and class-based boundaries.

EDITORIAL

Social work intervenes at the points where people interact with their environments with the purpose to promote change in people as well as in society. The 1994 democratic elections in South Africa provided the opportunity to challenge the political processes of the past that had influenced and shaped all South African policies, including social welfare and social work. This challenge included the moulding of the social work profession and social work education, within a democratic, developing South Africa that upholds the principles of human rights and social justice. The extent of this challenge, however, can only be fully understood within the context of the historical development of social work education in South Africa

Structured Inequality: Historical Realities of the Post-Apartheid Economy

With the advent of the twentieth anniversary of the democratic elections in South Africa, it is useful to examine the most crucial and certainly one of the most controversial areas of change: the South African economy. The historic wealth of South Africa, making it the second largest economy on the continent, was based on enormous mineral wealth combined with a racially discriminatory legal system that resulted in an abundant disenfranchised and poorly paid workforce. 1 In this manner, huge profits were gener ated for a very few. While the apartheid economy suffered from a very small internal consumer market, and increasingly from external censure and withdrawal, it still functioned successfully for the extremely small, privileged white community that reaped the benefits of the country’s wealth. Has it continued to be successful with an entirely different agenda of equality? South Africa has fully joined the international community and has been transformed in countless ways. All residents of the country now enjoy the full rights of citizenship; they are free to move about the country, and to engage in business and economic pursuits. South Africa has been welcomed into international business circles and freely trades with all nations. South Africa was asked to join the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) of developing economies, and is the only country in Africa to be ranked among the top fifteen emerging economies worldwide. The very size of the economy has expanded by 438%, from $80 billion to $350 billion, and per capita GDP has increased by 90%. 2 Any visitor to the country’s urban centers will be astounded not only by the growth of the population, but also by the expansion of commerce. Apparently the end of apartheid was great for business in a general sense, but has that change benefitted most South Africans? In reality, the economy has not changed much for many. South Africa today suffers with the most unequal income

Linkages between Entrepreneurship and Black Economic Empowerment in the South African Context

Entrepreneurship is sometimes seen as a process of few peoples. Although some persons have innate abilities as entrepreneurs, many can also develop this capacity in their life through a learning process. According to Timmons (1999:27), entrepreneurship is a way of thinking and reasoning. At the heart of entrepreneurship are the creation and/or recognition of opportunities. What is the link between entrepreneurship and BEE? What is BEE? The term Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) started slipping into vocabulary of activists at just about the same time that black advancement was the term in vogue in the late 1970s. But it was only in the late 1980s, that it began to be used strongly as a counterpoint to the meaningless equal opportunity that had been given prominence by the corporate sector. Since the first democratic elections in South Africa, the term BEE has evolved. The BEE Commission defined BEE as a strategy aimed at substantially increasing participation at all levels in the economy. BEE is aimed at redressing the imbalances of the past by seeking to substantially and equitably transfers ownership, management and proportionate control of South Africa's financial and economic resources to the majority of its citizens. From this definition, there are key words that needs to be underlined and which explains the whole policy of BEE: BEE is a strategy aimed to redress the imbalances of the past by increasing participation in the national economy. Therefore, BEE is a mean aimed to empower previously disadvantaged persons. Many ways have been explored during the last decade with few positive results. The present paper explores the entrepreneurship as an alternative way that can be undertaken to alleviate poverty among this group of the population.The question surrounding this paper is what to focus on entrepreneurship as a remedy to improving black's lives and reduces poverty? The history of the Unites States is an example that needs further examination. More than twenty years ago MIT researcher David Birch finds that the new and growing smaller firms created 81, 5 percent of the net new jobs in America from 1969 till 1976. During 1993-1996, eight million jobs were created in US, with 77% of these by small enterprises. The conclusion that arises from Birch's findings is that job creation is driven by the birth and growth of companies. Fighting poverty among peoples through BEE can be effectively achieved through job creation. Job creation is achieved mostly by small and medium size organizations. Entrepreneurs create small and medium enterprises. Therefore, entrepreneurship as a way of thinking or reasoning help disposed people to change their social life, from poverty to wealth: a direct link between BEE and entrepreneurship. How this can be achieved? How can entrepreneurial mindset be implemented among population? This paper develops entrepreneurship as an alternative way of implementing BEE in an entrepreneurial context.

From Neglected History to Tourist Attraction: Reordering the Past in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness

The Heart of Redness comprises two narrative strands: one which is set only four years after the first democratic elections in South Africa and one that explores the 1856–57 “Cattle Killing Movement” and discloses the early encounters between the Xhosa and the British colonizers. Retrieving the past episode originated in the visions of prophetess Nongqawuse and aligning it with the contemporary discussion surrounding issues of economic and social development raised by the proposal of a tourism project for the village of Qolorha, Mda successfully articulates the complex elements that have marked past and present South African culture and society. In Mda’s novel, the village of Qolorha and the character of Nongqawuse are released from their negative association with one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the Xhosa and transformed into a tourist attraction that has the potential to contribute to the sustainable development of the local population. Mda’s rescue of Qolorha from the threat of massified tourism, and his recovery of Nongqawuse as a meaningful character for the history of the Xhosa, emphasize the importance of alternative development models and the relevance of revising biased historical narratives that often served manipulative objectives.

The burden of responsibility and the breakdown of traditional paternalism on farms in the Western Cape

The transition that followed the 1994 democratic election in South Africa brought with it a host of progressive legislation aimed at the provision of a secure environment for those previously marginalised. The Extension of Security of Tenure Act (ESTA) (1997) was an example of such progressive legislation and aimed at providing tenure security specifically for farm workers. To a large extent ESTA, and other legislation, interrupted traditional paternalism on the farms, where farmers, now faced with legislated expectations and accompanying responsibilities to comply with basic requirements for housing on the farms, started to implement strategies to lessen their responsibilities and, in the process, lessen the amount of housing available to farm workers. The implementation of ESTA and the move away from paternalism on the farms brought with it a number of unintended consequences, often resulting in the creation of a less secure environment for exactly those it was supposed to protect.

Deviance, Punishment and Logics of Subjectification during Apartheid: Insane, Political and Common-law Prisoners in a South African Gaol

In 1994, with the upcoming first non-racial democratic elections in South Africa, riots broke out in numerous prisons throughout the country. Common-law prisoners, political inmates who had not yet been granted amnesty and offenders kept in psychiatric hospitals claimed their right to vote, challenging in the same process the boundaries of South African citizenship, which was being redefined at the time. This article focuses on Pollsmoor Prison and on the Maximum Security Ward of Valkenberg Mental Hospital, both located in the Western Cape. Punishment is defined as the expression of a distinct regime of power-knowledge disseminated by local authorities such as judges and psychiatrists. The aim is to explore the extent to which the implementation of the categories of insane, political and criminal prisoners during apartheid was based on the delimitation of deviancy as issued by diverse authorities of power. These discursive categories were performative, to the extent that they described, defined and created their object in the same movement. They also constituted the framework in which resistance and initiative could be formulated within a total institution. This article therefore analyses, from the end of the 1960s to the democratic transition in the 1990s, how the apartheid regime tried to govern by circumscribing the subjectivity of the non-white populations through the use of intricate dynamics of punishment.

Ten years of Democratic Local Government Elections in South Africa: Is the Tide Turning?

Since the 2006 local elections the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has lost a total of 48 wards in by-elections and won only 15. This is a complete reversal of the party's performance between 2000 and 2006 when it lost only five wards and won 47. Does this signify a change in South African voting patterns? This chapter is based on an in-depth analysis of election data provided by the Electoral Commission of South Africa on its website. The analysis covers a ten-year period from 2000 to 2010 and includes results of the 2011 local elections. It also refers to the national elections of 1994 and 1999 to make a comparison. The analysis shows the dominance of the ANC since the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994, which it won, and continued to increase its voter support, peaking in 2004 with a 69.69% majority. Similarly, in local elections the ANC dominated in 2000 and 2006. The 2011 local elections show a slightly different picture. By-elections are also discussed, with data demonstrating a similar trend to that in the national and local elections. The period from 1994 to 2006 was a period of growth for the ANC and the period 2007 to 2010 was a period of decline, thus demonstrating a Bell Curve pattern.

The Israeli Peace Movement: A Shattered Dream (review)

Reviewed by: The Israeli Peace Movement: A Shattered Dream Benjamin Gidron The Israeli Peace Movement: A Shattered Dream, by Tamar S. Hermann. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2009. 310 pp. $85.00. The long and protracted conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians had almost a full decade of hope during the 1990s. It started with the election of Yitzhak Rabin to the post of Prime Minister in 1992, it continued with the 1993 Oslo Agreements between Israel and the PLO, to be followed by a smear campaign of the Right which led to Rabin's assassination in November 1995, and it ended abruptly with the failure of the Camp David talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and the outbreak of the Al-Aksa Intifada in 2000. Despite the murder of Prime Minister Rabin, this decade raised a lot of expectations that, in a similar manner to the long Northern Irish and South African conflicts, which experienced breakthroughs that led to their resolution in the 1990s, a similar process could and would take place around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well. The breakthrough of the Oslo Agreements (exactly like the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and the move towards democratic elections in South Africa) did not happen by a stroke of a pen; it was preceded by a concerted effort of a whole array of citizens' groups and organizations that [End Page 180] advocated a negotiated rather than a military solution to the conflict. This is the focus of Hermann's book, which not only analyzes such groups and their roles before the Oslo Accord but takes a much longer view of the Israeli Peace Movement, from the Pre-State era till the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Hermann characterizes the Israeli peace movement as "peripheral" and analyzes the reasons for such a depiction—both contextual-societal reasons and internal reasons. But she argues that despite that fact, "the movement has been a significant factor in influencing the climate of opinion in Israel by persistently putting forward some unconventional and much-contested alternative readings of the conflict, thereby cultivating the ground for the transformation from armed conflict to peace negotiations" (p. 7). As has already been shown in other studies on that subject, the role of preparing the public for the transformation from an armed conflict to the stage of negotiation is probably the most important role of non-governmental citizens' peace groups and organizations. In the height of the conflict, when the country's leadership and media used inflammatory rhetoric to characterize the "enemy" and advocated a strategy of violence to deal with it, a different characterization was heard and a different strategy proposed to deal with the conflict. This was a slowly widening crack that later served as a legitimization of the negotiations. It gave a human face to the "enemy" and actually showed that the other side also wanted to end the conflict and that negotiations were possible. Is this all the Israeli Peace Movement, composed of dozens of groups and organizations, did? Was it not a major factor to push the government towards negotiations? Even if it was, it is not possible to prove it; politicians involved in transformations tend to take the credit for such breakthroughs for themselves and are reluctant to admit that they were "pushed" by outsiders to take those bold steps. But even if the politicians are right and they were not "pushed" by citizens' groups, the role of preparing the public opinion for negotiations should not be belittled. Meeting with representatives of the "enemy," discovering willingness on the other side to negotiate, creating dialog groups or joint planning groups of Israelis and Palestinians, preparing to solve together common problems such as the environment or water—all this shows the public that peace is not only possible but a much preferred option. Without their activity the move from armed conflict to negotiations would be too abrupt and hard to accept by the population. The role of these organizations is often forgotten, and the book is partly meant to compensate for this "collective amnesia." A second focus of the book is...

‘Bang-Bang Has Been Good to Us’

This article considers the changing perceptions, expressions and representations of violence in South Africa post-1994, with particular reference to photography. Following the evolution of the documentary tradition in its relationship to the political history of South Africa, I will suggest that since the release of Nelson Mandela and the first democratic elections in South Africa, photography has taken a new turn, particularly with regard to its representation of violence, which had been its primary iconography up to that watershed moment. I will follow three arguments (from Sartre, Benjamin and Mbembe) in my explication of the ways in which violence has both altered South African society and assumed a different place in the collective mind of South Africans living in a country that is politically free but grappling with an ever-rising wave of violent crime.

Prospects and pitfalls: A review of post‐apartheid education policy research and analysis in South Africa

The 10‐year anniversary of the first democratic elections in South Africa in 2004 provoked much reflection and fuelled new policy debates on both the progress and failures of educational reform. While a myriad of achievements have been touted and are well‐known to international audiences, a swelling critique from inside South Africa shows that much work remains to be done. By glancing backward as a way to understand how to move forward, we review several important recently published books on post‐apartheid education policy to learn how policies were conceived, what went well and what went seriously wrong. In engaging this extended analysis we provide a glimpse into the unique set of circumstances and challenges faced by the South African government over the last 15 years (namely the tensions between equity and redress and global competitiveness), while offering a sustained critique of the resulting policy outcomes through a social justice lens.

DOES ATTENDANCE AT A HISTORICALLY WHITE UNIVERSITY BENEFIT NON-WHITE STUDENTS OF INTRODUCTORY ECONOMICS IN SOUTH AFRICA?

The Equality of Educational Opportunity survey (aka the Coleman Report), published in 1966 in the USA, is arguably the fountainhead of the debate promulgated within the economics of education and allied disciplines concerning the efficacy of schooling. The debate was largely due to the primary conclusion of the Coleman Report that school inputs (other than student demographics) explain little, if any, of the variance in student performance, with the implication that more money was not the solution to educational problems. While the methodology and the conclusions of the Coleman Report have been criticised in the 40 years since its publication, the fundamental question of the magnitude and extent of the consequences of educational inequalities has relevance to the South African situation. Utilising a cross-sectional data set drawn from three universities, and the theoretical framework of an education production function, this paper addresses the issue of whether, over a decade after the first democratic elections in South Africa, black, Indian and coloured students studying Introductory Microeconomics, have benefited academically from attending historically advantaged (i.e. white) universities (HAU) relative to their counterparts who are attending historically disadvantaged universities (HDU).