National Party Government Research Articles

New life to a fairer Scotland: Exploring 25 years of Scottish regeneration policy mechanisms

In Scotland, the past 25 years has been a period of remarkable political and economic change. The 1992 closure of the Ravenscraig steelworks complex marked the end of a seminal industrial era. The 1999 opening of the Scottish Parliament was followed by the 2008 economic crash and the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence. Under various Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Scottish National Party government administrations in Westminster and Holyrood, the period has also featured a considerable diversity of approaches aimed at supporting the regeneration of disadvantaged places. This year, to celebrate its 25th anniversary, SURF organised a series of special events to explore and debate the perceived impacts and value-for-money of the main regeneration policy mechanisms that have been applied during its lifetime. This paper features an overview of the context and purpose of selected mechanisms, and highlights the feedback provided by SURF network practitioners, policy-makers and academics through the anniversary programme discussions.

The Role of “Freelance” Underground Operatives in the Struggle for Liberation in South Africa: The Case of Eastern Transvaal, 1980–1990

On 8 April 1960, the National Party (NP) government proscribed the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress. This broke the back of black political opposition in South Africa, if only temporarily. In exile, the ANC introduced four pillars of its liberation struggle against the NP government. These were the armed struggle, international solidarity, mass mobilisation and underground work. A substantial body of work has been produced on the role of the first three but very little is known about underground work. This is largely due to its covert nature. Yet underground operatives played a significant role in reviving political mobilisation in South Africa that finally led to the defeat of the oppressive regime. In this article I will use the then Eastern Transvaal (today’s Mpumalanga Province), particularly parts of the Lowveld region, as a case study to demonstrate the impact underground work had on mass political mobilisation inside the country. Drawing on oral testimonies from a number of underground operatives, I will argue that this kind of “work” was not only carried out by individuals who were connected to the ANC, but also by those who were not; i.e. by “freelance” operatives, particularly women.

Broadcasting Ambivalence: South Africa’s Radio RSA on African Independence and Udi in Rhodesia

This paper focuses on the launching of South Africa’s external radio station, Radio RSA, and analyses the ways in which its early broadcasting content reflected the National Party government’s desire to tell the world its side of the story when it came to apartheid and regional policies. The launch was announced on 27 October 1965, with broadcasts starting soon after and being expanded over the next year. The launch preceded by 15 days Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence to throw off British control and establish a white minority state with severely limited political and civil rights for the black majority. South Africa supported the Smith government politically, economically and ultimately militarily, but was deeply ambivalent about UDI and tried to maintain a neutral public, diplomatic stance and even when it sent paramilitary police units to support the Rhodesian army fight Zimbabwean guerrillas, it refused to accord official recognition to the Rhodesian regime. This ambivalent policy was reflected in the content and tone of broadcasting by Radio RSA. A large part of the station’s role was to project South Africa’s voice into Africa, Europe and North America and combat what the South African Government said were inaccurate African, European and American views on the policy of separate development and to project an image of a South Africa as a bulwark of Western civilisation holding back the tide of what it labelled communist-inspired black nationalists. Examination of Radio RSA’s broadcast will reveal the combination of subtlety and crudity in the policies of South Africa and its propaganda aimed at external audiences, with particular reference to its coverage of the early years of UDI and its attempts to use the cold war to garner Western support.

SPORT, POLITICS AND BLACK ATHLETICS IN SOUH AFRICA DURING THE APARTHEID ERA: A POLITICAL-SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

The article examines the relationship between sport and politics in South Africa from a political-sociological perspective, with a specific focus on the status of black athletics in apartheid South Africa. The narrower focus aims to outline how white civil society and the National Party government utilised athletics as a mechanism to enforce the policy of separateness/apartheid in the South African society. In the process, white dominated political structures and centralised political processes were used to dominate and regulate black athletics in South Africa (1894-1976). The structures and dynamics of black athletics were, for more than a century, manipulated and dictated for political and related reasons. The manipulation took place in three broad identifiable periods, namely: 1884-1960 – the period of “informal” segregation, when the national body, provinces and clubs used race as a mechanism to enforce cleavages in society. The second period stretches from 1960-1976, when the National Party adopted a more assertive direct role to enforce their sports policy. The last period, between 1976 and 1992, signified another direction change, when government stepped back and only set the broader framework for the regulation of athletics in South Africa. In each of the periods, the politics-sport power relationship will be explained in relation to the regulation of black athletics in the country.

Taiwan Peasant Associations and Their Credit Business Characteristics Analysis

The peasant associations in Taiwan established at the period of Japan’s colonial age, the internal organizational structure has branded with Japan’s peasant associations. Since Taiwan was liberated in 1945, after few times of reorganization and support by the nationalist party government, the peasant associations in Taiwan has become a public corporation for “Farmer’s ownership, Farmer’s governance rights, and Farmer’s benefits”, the dominated by credit business of rural finance plays an important factor in promoting the agricultural and rural modernization in the island.

Constructing the Native Taxpayerr: The Role of the South African Native Tax in Creating an Image of an African Other

‘Grand Apartheid’ formally began in 1948 with the election of the National Party government led by DF Malan but efforts to officially alienate Black Africans, whose supernumerary potential threatened European domination of South Africa, began long before that. The Natives Land Act 1913, which reserved the greater part of the country to the minority of settlers, is a crucial pillar of proto-separate development. Less well-known but, as this paper will argue, also of great significance was the Natives Taxation and Development Act 1925 (‘Natives Tax Act’). The Natives Tax Act introduced national poll and hut taxes (collectively, ‘the native tax’) which continued to be levied until 1969. By the time of the repeal of the Natives Tax Act, the native tax had become insignificant but, in the decades immediately following its introduction, the tax generated a significant body of case law. Many of these decisions were implicitly informed by a construction of the Black African as an ‘Other’, different from both Europeans and the Khoisan, the autochthonous people of the Cape of Good Hope. Drawing, in particular, on Edward Said’s conception of alterity, employed most famously in Orientalism, this paper analyses the case law relating to the Natives Tax Act to demonstrate how the judiciary was instrumental in constructing an image of the African Other. This image is principally of a ‘black’, male adult, capable of strenuous physical labour. Secondary characteristics include a propensity to laziness, non-Cartesian reasoning and sexual license. Imagined and alienated in this way, the African Other was not only a crucial factor of production, he would also become a useful construct in the attempted implementation of separation in all elements of social life in South Africa. (Social, rather than economic, it may be noted, because African labour has always made the country’s agriculture and mining industries possible.) In excursus, the paper notes the remarkable case of Elizabeth Napier, a woman prosecuted for failing to pay the native tax.

AFRIKANER REFORMED MISSIONARY ENTHUSIASTS AND THE VOORTREKKERS: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO DINGAANSDAG/GELOFTEDAG AND ALSO THE 1938 EEUFEES

The missionary discourse in Afrikaner Reformed Christianity has been controversial, because it is implicated in the development of early apartheid policies, which were subsequently implemented by National Party governments. This article does not directly concern itself with apartheid, however, but rather with the ideological backdrop against which this policy developed, i.e. Afrikaner nationalism. Afrikaner nationalism was deeply informed by a mythological reconstruction of the Voortrekkers as ideal Afrikaners. For this reason, the 1938 ox-wagon centenary Trek was a formative occasion in Afrikaner, and consequently South African history. What role did the Afrikaner missionary/evangelical discourse play within these celebrations and within commemorations of the Voortrekkers and Geloftedag more generally? With a particular focus on the early to middle twentieth century, this article demonstrates that missionary and evangelical co-optation of this discourse was indeed pronounced, at the centre of the political situation, but also containing an element of surprise and the potential for unexpected outcomes in at least a couple of cases.

Twenty years of punishment (and democracy) in South Africa: The pitfalls of governing crime through the community

This article examines how the ideology of ‘community’ is deployed to govern crime in South Africa, both by marginalised black communities and by the government. Although the turn to ‘community’ started under the National Party government in the late 1970s, there is no doubt that as a site, technology, discourse, ideology and form of governance, ‘community’ has become entrenched in the post-1994 era. Utilising empirical data drawn from ethnographic research on vigilantism in Khayelitsha, as well as archival materials in respect of ANC policies and practices before it became the governing party, I argue that rallying ‘communities’ around crime combatting has the potential to unleash violent technologies in the quest for ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’. When community members unite against an outsider they are bonded for an intense moment in a way that masks the very real problems that tear the community apart. Because violent punishment is one of the consequences of the state’s turn towards democratic localism, we should question the way in which the ‘community’ is deployed as a tool of crime prevention, and subject it to rigorous scrutiny.

Third time lucky? Establishing diplomatic relations between Russia and South Africa

Diplomatic relations between Russia and South Africa were established in 1992, before South Africa's transition to democracy was completed. This move was perceived as a betrayal by many in both countries and beyond. For many decades the Soviet Union supported the African National Congress in its fight against the apartheid regime. South Africa's National Party government, in its turn, presented the USSR as the main force behind the ‘total onslaught’ – an all-out war purportedly waged against South Africa by international communism. Yet it was with the National Party government that the Russians established diplomatic relations. This article looks into the reasons for this change of heart in Moscow and Pretoria, discusses the political forces behind the decision to establish diplomatic relations, and analyses the process that led to this event and the results of establishing diplomatic relations the way it happened and at the time it happened for both countries.

The Chinese National Party Government's Scheme of Korean Peninsula and Korea Before and After 1945 Korea's Liberation

The Chinese National Party Government's Scheme of Korean Peninsula and Korea Before and After 1945 Korea's Liberation

New Zealand’s Relationship Accord: A case study in the politics of cross-sector rapprochement

In New Zealand the Clark Labour government (1999-2008) advocated entering into a compact with the country’s community and voluntary sector. However, owing in part to the reticence of New Zealand’s national umbrella organisations, a bilateral framework agreement between government and the sector was never formalised. It was not until May 2011 that a framework document – Kia Tūtahi Standing Together: The Relationship Accord between the Communities of Aotearoa New Zealand and the Government of New Zealand – was ratified by the National Party government led by Prime Minister, John Key, thus marking the culmination of a decade-long national discussion. This paper charts that policy journey and highlights the importance of key political events and the ways in which key policy actors exploited the windows of policy opportunity associated with those events.

Mandela and the last Afrikaner leaders: A shift in power relations

The stability of the apartheid system and the Afrikaners’ monopoly of power have been the subject of exhaustive scholarly analyses; by contrast, there have been few in-depth analyses of the unexpected transfer of power by the National Party government between 1989 and 1994.There is a strong tendency to present the Afrikaner leadership from Hendrik Verwoerd to PW Botha as being so beholden to the apartheid ideology and so intransigent that they missed all opportunities to negotiate a more balanced political settlement. Virtually no attention has been given to the informal attempts the leadership on both sides made to initiate talks about an alternative to white supremacy. The treatment of Nelson Mandela in the literature represents almost the complete opposite to that of the NP leaders. He has been presented as strongly committed to a non- racial democracy and a market-oriented economy. A reassessment of Nelson Mandela’s career has only just begun.

Establishing the Crime and Corruption Commission: The reformation of Queensland's premier crime-fighting agency

On 1 July 2014, the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) commenced operations in Queensland following the passing of the Crime and Misconduct and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2014. After its resounding election win in March 2012, the new Liberal National Party government ordered a review of earlier legislation, the Crime and Misconduct Act 2001. The findings of that review, the Callinan–Aroney report, aroused considerable controversy which was exacerbated in late 2013 when the government discharged members of the Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee, the non-partisan oversight body for the Crime and Misconduct Commission, forerunner to the CCC. These agencies stemmed from the recommendations of the 1987–1989 Inquiry into crime and corruption in the State by G.E. Fitzgerald. This article includes a literature review that examines the implementation of the Fitzgerald reforms and then assesses the Callinan–Aroney report. Both that report and the subsequent Bill generated public discussion and comments, including submissions from Fitzgerald, past CMC chairpersons and commissioners, legal associations, academics and others. Many contended that while the government's stated intention was to improve effectiveness in combatting illegality, the legislation would effectively obliterate the reforms that had curbed corruption, criminality and abuse of power in the State since the 1980s.

After the deluge: Britain's new third party arrives at Westminster

The SNP's near-monopoly of Scottish representation in Westminster may give it more status than actual influence, says James Stafford. Yet its position as Scotland's ‘natural party of government’, and its gradualist pursuit of independence, can only be challenged by a Labour party that embraces bold constitutional reform.

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. …

‘The Door Creaked Shut’

In 2014 Queensland's conservative Liberal National Party government made a number of amendments to the Youth Justice Act 1992 (Qld) ('YJA'). Of critical importance is the new breach of bail offence (s 59A) and the reverse onus provision (s 59B). The effect of these changes was compounded by the removal of the sentencing principle of 'detention as a last resort' (s 150(5)). Cumulatively, these three amendments increase the likelihood of entrenching young people within the criminal justice system. Previously, where a young person committed an offence while on bail, it had been treated 'as an aggravating circumstance on the sentence for that offence'. Under the amendments, a child who is found guilty of a 'subsequent offence' (defined in s 59AA) committed while on bail, now faces two additional penalties, those being the sentence for the new or 'subsequent offence' and in addition a separate charge (and sentence) for breaching bail (s 59(2)). According to the section, the maximum penalty for the breach of bail offence is stated to be 20 penalty units or imprisonment for one year.

Afrikaner Reformed missionary enthusiasts and the Voortrekkers: with special reference to Dingaansdag/ Geloftedag and also the 1938 Eeufees

The missionary discourse in Afrikaner Reformed Christianity has been controversial, because it is implicated in the development of early apartheid policies, which were subsequently implemented by National Party governments. This article does not directly concern itself with apartheid, however, but rather with the ideological backdrop against which this policy developed, i.e. Afrikaner nationalism. Afrikaner nationalism was deeply informed by a mythological reconstruction of the Voortrekker s as ideal Afrikaners. For this reason, the 1938 ox-wagon centenary Trek was a formative occasion in Afrikaner, and consequently South African history. What role did the Afrikaner missionary/evangelical discourse play within these celebrations and within commemorations of the Voortrekker s and Geloftedag more generally? With a particular focus on the early to middle twentieth century, this article demonstrates that missionary and evangelical co-optation of this discourse was indeed pronounced, at the centre of the political situation, but also containing an element of surprise and the potential for unexpected outcomes in at least a couple of cases.

Making the Fun Stop: Youth Justice Reform in Queensland

In 2013 the newly elected conservative Liberal National Party government instigated amendments to the Youth Justice Act 1992 (Qld). Boot camps replaced court ordered youth justice conferencing. In 2014 there were more drastic changes, including opening the Children’s Court proceedings to the public, permitting publication of identifying information of repeat offenders, removing the principle of ‘detention as a last resort’, facilitating prompt transferral of 17 year olds to adult prisons and instigating new bail offences and mandatory boot camp orders for recidivist motor vehicle offenders in Townsville. This article compares these amendments to the legislative frameworks in other jurisdictions and current social research. It argues that these amendments are out of step with national and international best practice benchmarks for youth justice. Early indications are that Indigenous children are now experiencing increased rates of unsentenced remand. The article argues that the government’s policy initiatives are resulting in negative outcomes and that early and extensive evaluations of these changes are essential.

Quitrent Tenure and the Village System in the Former Ciskei Region of the Eastern Cape: Implications for Contemporary Land Reform of a Century of Social Change

Both quitrent tenure and the village model of settlement in the former Ciskei region of the Eastern Cape have been through a sequence of changes since their introduction and gradual entrenchment following the conquest of local African chiefdoms during the nineteenth century. Initially planned around mission stations west of the Kei River, in what became the Ciskei, quitrent was extended to some districts in the Transkei as well. Under the Glen Grey Act (1894), nuclear families were provided with indivisible individual plots, heritable only by the oldest male son. Over time, complex local politics and social dynamics evolved around this landholding system. This article examines developments over the years, especially following the 1936 Native Land and Trust Act, which brought the reserve areas of the Cape Province in line with those in other provinces. By the mid twentieth century most quitrent villages of the Ciskei were re-planned under countrywide ‘betterment’ planning, mainly because they were deemed to be heavily congested, ecologically vulnerable and difficult to administer. Their rehabilitation and re-planning created new residential plots, enabling the National Party government to foster a supposedly more egalitarian system by granting rights to hitherto landless families. The processes paralleled intense villagisation and the inception of ‘tribal authorities’ in the Ciskei, as it was brought under the homeland system in the apartheid years. How do we understand these wide-ranging historical processes that have shaped relationships to land in these villages? How have potential solutions to unequal land rights been articulated and negotiated at local level? What challenges have confronted post-1994 land reform policy in resolving uneven access to land within these settlements? These are the questions that this article explores.

Travelling Inspectors and the Making of Europe: Education Policy Learning and the Case of the Scottish School Inspectorate

The paper examines the case of education policy learning in Europe and argues that, contrary to dominant assumptions, education is a fruitful area for the analysis of Europeanising processes. More specifically, an examination of the case of the Scottish school inspectorate’s ‘European’ exchanges is particularly useful in relation to the study of international policy communities, their formation and particular workings, as it signals a new level of ‘political work’ (Smith, 2009): that of exporting, internationalising and then importing afresh one’s local/national knowledge, once it has successfully gone through the international ‘test’, and is therefore still relevant and future-proof (to the nation). This is exemplified well through the role of these actors who, rather than being Brussels-based Europeans, invariably assume European identity depending on its exchange value — as the paper shows, due to the current political situation in Scotland and the Scottish National Party (SNP) government’s aspiration for independence, that exchange value for Scottish actors is high.