Nation-building In South Africa Research Articles

Civil Society, COVID-19 Pandemic and State Corruption implications for Nation Building in South Africa

Civil Society, COVID-19 Pandemic and State Corruption implications for Nation Building in South Africa

Local Economic Development, Women's Empowerment, and Nation-Building in South Africa: Insight from the COVID-19 period

Local Economic Development, Women's Empowerment, and Nation-Building in South Africa: Insight from the COVID-19 period

Coalition Governance: Unchartered Waters in South African Political Landscape

Coalition governance in South Africa is adjudged as an opportunity for nation-building and social compact, which intends to jettison the apartheid legacy of racial and social separation. Coalition governance in South Africa quintessentially demonstrates a maturing nation-building project whereby political parties embrace a cohesive spirit for democratic governance and citizenship representation. However, the lack of consensus about a developmental posture to drive nation-building in South Africa put different political parties on antithetical dissimulations that undermine effective coalition governance in both national and local governmental spheres. An era of dominant party hegemony is approaching its final demise, which challenges political parties to build workable and collaborative consensus toward leading South Africa out of its current developmental stagnation. The study examines the challenges and opportunities of coalition governance in South Africa. The objective of the paper is to understand how coalition building can be a leverage for Nation building in the context of South African political structure. A qualitative study is undertaken by analyzing strategic and policy documents of political parties and journal articles to examine challenges and opportunities for coalition governance in South Africa. The thematic content analysis examines emerging patterns from primary and secondary documentary sources to generate relevant themes that influence and guide conceptualization, challenges, and opportunities for coalition governance in South Africa. Findings revealed that a major challenge for coalition governance in South Africa is political brinkmanship by political parties who negotiate in bad faith, demanding more concessions than votes garnered from election results, which demonstrates political immaturity. However, a positive aspect of coalition governance might be for parties to formalize binding coalition agreements that can serve as conflict management mechanisms that can compel parties to demonstrate reciprocal accountability during governance.

Coalition Governance: Unchartered Waters in South African Political Landscape

Coalition governance in South Africa is adjudged as an opportunity for nation-building and social compact, which intends to jettison the apartheid legacy of racial and social separation. Coalition governance in South Africa quintessentially demonstrates a maturing nation-building project whereby political parties embrace a cohesive spirit for democratic governance and citizenship representation. However, the lack of consensus about a developmental posture to drive nation-building in South Africa put different political parties on antithetical dissimulations that undermine effective coalition governance in both national and local governmental spheres. An era of dominant party hegemony is approaching its final demise, which challenges political parties to build workable and collaborative consensus toward leading South Africa out of its current developmental stagnation. The study examines the challenges and opportunities of coalition governance in South Africa. The objective of the paper is to understand how coalition building can be a leverage for Nation building in the context of South African political structure. A qualitative study is undertaken by analyzing strategic and policy documents of political parties and journal articles to examine challenges and opportunities for coalition governance in South Africa. The thematic content analysis examines emerging patterns from primary and secondary documentary sources to generate relevant themes that influence and guide conceptualization, challenges, and opportunities for coalition governance in South Africa. Findings revealed that a major challenge for coalition governance in South Africa is political brinkmanship by political parties who negotiate in bad faith, demanding more concessions than votes garnered from election results, which demonstrates political immaturity. However, a positive aspect of coalition governance might be for parties to formalize binding coalition agreements that can serve as conflict management mechanisms that can compel parties to demonstrate reciprocal accountability during governance.

Difficult relationships: how will compulsory School History and an Ubuntu-based curriculum help nation-building in South Africa?

Difficult relationships: how will compulsory School History and an Ubuntu-based curriculum help nation-building in South Africa?

Leadership in a time of transition: An analogy between post-exilic Judah/Yehud and post-apartheid South Africa

There are certain analogies between the post-exilic community in Judah (or Persian Yehud) and post-apartheid South Africa. According to the OT two prominent leaders took responsibility for the rebuilding of post-exilic Judah: the governor Zerubbabel and the high priest Joshua (cf. Ezra, Neh, Hag and Zech). Two prominent leaders made a major contribution in post-apartheid South Africa: president Nelson Mandela as political leader and bishop Desmond Tutu as religious leader. This article will make a comparison between these two different communities and their leaders. The article will briefly discuss the respective leaders and will focus on the following analogies: both communities had an influential political leader and a religious leader; the diarchic model of leadership lasted only a few years in Judah and in South Africa; the concept of forgiveness played a significant role in both communities (cf. Zech 3 and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission); there was a temple building process in Judah and a process of nation building in South Africa.

Ubuntu journalism and nation-building magic

This article explores ideas around nation building, as constructed through the ethos as well as practice of ubuntu journalism. We make the argument that by invoking ubuntu as an underlying ethos for a reporting ethic and practice, the news media contribute to a magical idea of nationhood and nation building in South Africa. While not denying that ubuntu is instrumental to nation building, the study contributes new understandings of both the general artifice, and the nation-building productivity, of what we label ‘magical ubuntu’. The intent here is to describe the postcolonial magic in which ubuntu is implicated, with special regard for the magical functions that relate to the construction of nationhood in contemporary South Africa.

Twenty Years of Social Cohesion and Nation-Building in South Africa

Social cohesion is seen to be an urgent pursuit in post-apartheid South Africa, and is often invoked as a means to achieve a just and equal society, to quell xenophobic sentiment or violence, and to encourage support for a united nation. Even though, at its crux, the pursuit of a socially cohesive society is fundamentally about a compact between the government and the governed, the content of social cohesion is very much articulated by government as its ‘template’ for nation-building, directed at the populace for enacting such a vision. This article considers the changing nature of the social cohesion discourse in South Africa over the first two decades after democracy. It shows how the notion has evolved over time to contextualise social policy concepts emergent elsewhere, but ultimately has become inextricably connected to nation-building. The article argues that this formulation is deeply political. The social cohesion project, being so intimately connected with nation-building, essentially instantiates a version of nation that is based on and produces a narrative that seeks to solidify the African National Congress’s hegemony.

The Exploitation of Public Representations in the Tuition of History in a Post-Apartheid South Africa: Ecosystem·

For many decades South African education and the teaching of History in particular, has been characterised by desegregation in an effort to accommodate the diverse nature of society. During the apartheid era, the decentralisation of education provided racially defined communities the legal means to preserve their privileges, that the teaching of a 'segregated' History in South African high schools was more successful at meeting the demand for racial desegregation than for achieving the ideal of social integration. The above is an indication that throughout the country's history, segregation has been a constant feature of South African society a nd therefore, of its education. To date, consensus has not been reached regarding the most effective ways in which high schools should address the issue of utilising public representations in the teaching, as well as in the learning of History as a school subject in post-apartheid South Africa. In attempting to bypass the above-mentioned challenges, the article presents an explanatory study and focuses on the perceptions held by History students in the five Mangaung High Schools on the utilisation of public representations in the teaching of South African History. Furthermore, through the experiences and observations by these learners, the article argues that if History is properly t aught, for example, by utilising public representations as focus evidence in the reconstruction of the past, this could be a helpful tool for the attainment of reconciliation and nation building in South Africa. Through the observation by the learners sampled for this project, the researchers were trying to establish the impact of utilising public representations in the teaching of South African History and how often this method is used by educators.

Post-agreement societies and inter-ethnic competition: A comparative study of the Protestant community of Londonderry and the white population of Pretoria

Northern Ireland and South Africa are societies in a process of transition. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and the multi-racial elections in 1994 signified new eras in each country. Although successful in addressing the problem of political violence, how effective have these settlements been at the level of improving inter-ethnic relations and promoting the kind of shared identity that can begin to transcend the twin problems of sectarianism and racism? This article conducts a comparative examination of two urban minority groups viz the Protestant community of Londonderry and the white population of Pretoria. It uses the concept of ‘alienation’ as a way of exploring concerns that have been voiced by these groups who feel themselves to be culturally under threat. Notwithstanding these settlements, the article highlights the continued importance of ethno-symbolism for different groups and draws our attention to the nature of inter-ethnic competition in the post-agreement period. In addition to pointing to the durability of ethnic identity, it focuses on an issue that has the capacity to ignite inter-ethnic and inter-racial dispute. Whilst the issue keeps the ethnic fracture visible in Northern Ireland, it frustrates attempts at nation-building in South Africa.

Symbolic Reparation, Heritage and Political Transition in South Africa’s Eastern Cape

This article first examines the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendation of symbolic reparation for apartheid, and its effect on South African heritage. Second, it considers the relationship between public history and civic nation building in South Africa, as well as problems in trying to develop an inclusive public history through museums. Case studies drawn from Grahamstown and Mthatha in the Eastern Cape are explored as examples of the redevelopment of the old and establishment of the new public history as part of the negotiated transition.

Postapartheid Justice: Can Cosmopolitanism and Nation-Building Be Reconciled?

South African plaintiffs are suing numerous multinational corporations under the American Alien Tort Claims Act for aiding and abetting apartheid's crimes against humanity. This article argues that Re South African Apartheid Litigation should be understood as a cosmopolitan re-membering of the nation. This interpretation runs counter to theoretical and political presumptions of an inherent antagonism between cosmopolitanism and nationhood. The apparent divide between cosmopolitanism and nation-building is bridged by the concept of victimhood. Insofar as nation-building in South Africa depends upon the restoration of victims, so too is cosmopolitanism victim-centered in its commitment to prevent harm and suffering. The apartheid litigants enact the duality of cosmopolitanism: they press for justice on the basis of cosmopolitan right, yet they do so in part because of their continued marginalization in the “new” South Africa with respect to issues of “truth” and reparation. Following on the “unfinished business” of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the apartheid litigation illustrates the intersection of cosmopolitanism with national memory and belonging.

The heritage of struggle: a dialogue with Raymond Suttner's ancestral fidelity

Talking to the ancestors: national heritage, the Freedom Charter and nation-building in South Africa in 2005. Raymond Suttner, Development Southern Africa , 2006, 23(1): 3–29. It is very easy to be...

The dichotomies that enslave us: engaging with Raymond Suttner's view of our national heritage

Talking to the ancestors: national heritage, the Freedom Charter and nation-building in South Africa in 2005. Raymond Suttner, Development Southern Africa , 2006, 23(1): 3–29. This review essay app...

Talking to the ancestors: national heritage, the Freedom Charter and nation-building in South Africa in 2005

The Freedom Charter has a significant place in South African liberation history. This paper is a re-reading of the document in 21st century conditions and locates its ideas within contexts that have not previously been brought into debate. In particular, it argues that the Freedom Charter is part of national heritage, but of a special kind relating to its being part of a ‘democratic stream’. This is because of its mass democratic mode of creation and resultant product. It also interrogates the notion of ‘The People’ and what ‘The People’ think, bringing into focus unacknowledged knowledge, especially the questions of orality and communication with ancestors. The notion of ‘brotherhood’ as used in the Charter is examined as connoting more than a gender-related concept–a specific way of human beings relating to one another, akin to that of siblings, signifying cooperation rather than individual isolation or competitiveness. This and questions of gender are addressed in the context of nation-building. This paper is a slightly revised version of the Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture delivered in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, 1, 2 and 3 November 2005.

Nation Building and the Construction of Identity: Xenophobia in South Africa

This article examines the process of nation building in South Africa and its effect on the rise of xenophobia. It explores the ways in which South Africa’s efforts, since the elections of 1994, to construct a non-racial national identity have led to the exclusion of and the denial of rights to non-citizens. Looking at the history of immigration policy in South Africa, it argues that increased levels of xenophobia among South Africans represent an ever-widening gap between the country’s attempts to restructure itself constitutionally (by altering its laws) and culturally (by changing the people’s perception of what it means to be South African).

The 1995 Rugby World Cup and the politics of nation-building in South Africa

The 1995 Rugby World Cup was held in South Africa just one year after the country's first democratic elections. Throughout the tournament, the importance of competition victory for the South African team — playing under the banner of `One Team, One Nation' and endorsed by President Mandela — was articulated by the team, the local media, politicians and by its supporters in terms of its centrality to the project of nation-building. This discourse dominated all others. What made this articulation of the event all the more remarkable was the historic connection of the game with Afrikaner popular culture and with the political interests of the previous apartheid regime. Drawing on Dyan and Katz's (1992) model of the `media event', the article examines the processes behind this attempt to rearticulate the meaning of `South African rugby' away from narrow, race-specific interests towards those of the newly elected non-racial ANC-led government's nation-building project.

Sport en nasiebou in Suid-Afrika: die betekenis van die 1995 Rugby Wěreldbeker

In this article on ‘Sport and nation building in South Africa: the signification of the 1995 Rugby World Cup’, the authors state that rugby in South Africa has traditionally had a particular set of associations. South African journalist Drew Forest has pointed out that while rugby was ironically a bequest of imperial Britain, ‘the sport has always been an Afrikaner nationalist project, a form of collective self-assertion against a hostile and uncomprehending world’. However, the 1995 Rugby World Cup Series, held in South Africa just one year after the country's first non-racial elections, was used by different interest groups to promote the Mandela government's nation-building project. In this article the authors examine the ways in which the meanings of the game were re-articulated to offer a momentary salve - for some - in a country still deeply divided by class, race and gender.

The experience of nation‐building: some lessons for South Africa

Only three or four years ago the argument of this paper would have run along more or less the following lines: the crisis of the post-colonial state in Asia and particularly Africa lies in its 'artificiality'. Alternative terms used to describe them would be 'weak', 'soft', 'suspended', or as possessing 'juridical' as opposed to 'empirical' statehood.' A more recent term much in vogue even does away with the niceties of placing these new states on a continuum 'soft' versus some standard of 'hardness', 'suspended' as opposed to some state of 'rootedness' whereby they could at least aspire to eventually conforming to the norm. Many states in the Third World are now considered to be 'failed' states.2 While the labels are often applied in terms of the failure of Third World states to initiate and sustain a process of economic development in their territories, or to develop depoliticised, rational bureaucratic/administrative structures along Western lines which would allow for the successful implementation of decisions emanating from the political centre in the peripheral areas, it is also argued that one of the main causes of their weakness lies in their inability to build nations out of the ethnically diverse societies they inherited at independence. The resulting problems of the politicisation of ethnicity, mono-ethnic control of the state apparatus and the related problems of secessionism and irredentism, are ultimately rooted in a crisis of legitimacy on the part of the state in Africa and Asia, an inability to create a central focus for the loyalties of their citizens who are seen to be trapped in their 'pre-modern' parochialisms. Any discussion of nation-building in South Africa would therefore take place against the backdrop of this pessimistic scenario. The sub-text of this discourse was that there was a finished product against which these deviants were measured, paradigmatic cases which set the norm against which one evaluated the internal cohesiveness of Third World states, namely the Western European state and its overseas offspring in North America and the Antipodes. In teleological terms the state in the West had, in a sense, arrived. Its internal legitimacy in territorial terms was uncontested