Political Economy Of South Africa Research Articles

Reimagining Social Medicine from the South by Abigail H. Neely

Reviewed by: Reimagining Social Medicine from the South by Abigail H. Neely Kwaku Nti Neely, Abigail H. Reimagining Social Medicine from the South. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021. Foregrounded in social medicine (a branch in the medical field that focuses on demographic determinants of health and the biology of disease, as well as community-oriented primary care [COPC] that influenced the World Health Organization [WHO]–led primary health care for all), this book upholds the Pholela Community Health Center (PCHC) "unbecoming role." Significantly, yet, the author derives her ideas from the experiences of the proximate community—that is "the homes, landscapes, and lives—the worlds of Pholela residents" (xv). Abigail Neely, essentially, reiterates that it is conceptually impracticable to fully comprehend the global story of social medicine without the lives of the residents of Pholela, their homesteads, health, and words, since these elements proffer the possibilities and limitations of this field, and equally pushes for a more-than-human understanding of social life in illness and wellness. Arguably, in the cast of Charles van Onselen, who did a social history of the industrialized gold mining sector of the economy of South Africa and shifted the glorious attention from the mine owners to the underground miners and others in that category, Neely de-emphasizes "laudatory narratives of white male doctors who practice medicine to fight for social justice" (4) and centers Pholela residents as the people who lived in the community and made different worlds amid the vagaries of illness and wellness. She, therefore, juxtaposes the sacrosanct scientific study of PCHC with the understandings and interventions borne out of the worlds in which the Pholela people lived. Neely avers, and justifiably so, that these local and cultural understandings and interventions forged "health outcomes in ways social medicine could not always understand and treat" because "for all its many successes, the PCHC was haunted by its own faith in [End Page 220] science, both biomedical and social, as well as by broader political and economic forces at work in South Africa" (4). Elaborating on the limitations of the PCHC program, Neely discusses its inability to consider the role of the people in the development of the practice, disregard of the sociality of nonhuman things that remain integral to it, and the lack of understanding of Pholela-specific social relationships giving a deep "vision of social life in which individual actors disappear and health and illness emerge as the product of entanglements" (5). Connected to the foregoing factor is the idea of "ontological coordination"; for the residents of Pholela, "ontologies are multiple, relational, and overlapping" (4), a kind of multiplicity that reveals yet another limitation to the social medicine practiced in the Pholela vicinity. Finally, the political ecology inflected by the scholarship on racial capitalism also illuminates some of the limits of social medicine practiced in Pholela. Although the health center could assist with modifications of the homesteads of the residents in addition to offering clinical care, it hardly could change the overarching structures of racial capitalism that heavily impacted livelihoods, illness, and wellness. Neely points out that to the extent that the political economy of South Africa was stratified by race, scholarship on racial capitalism is particularly valuable for a political-ecology analysis in Pholela. According to these scholars, capitalism, as well as capital accumulation, predicated a racial hierarchy that both government policy and industrial practices reinforced. The policies and practices culminated in Apartheid ensuring astronomical profit for whites at the expense of the well-being of African laborers. Reimagining Social Medicine from the South essentially consists of four chapters that are bookended by the introduction and conclusion. In chapter 1, Neely discusses her sources that mainly include archival documents, PCHC publications, and regional ethnographies of the Nguni people. While not discounting the biases and problems of these various sources, she affirms that in varying degrees, they are helpful for understanding the vision of social medicine that the PCHC practiced. She uses these sources to tell the story of the beginnings and operations of the PCHC and concludes that "seeing like a health center meant making certain aspects of health center practice visible to the outside world, all while recognizing how...

The Political Economy of South Africa’s constitutional road to Central Bank Independence (1993–1996)

Many countries across the world, including on the African continent, legislated increased independence for their central banks since the early 1990s. The way in which this happened took different forms. In some cases these legal processes were wrapped either into constitutional reforms in the context of democratic transitions or into economic reforms that changed the strategic direction of their development. This research note provides a fresh assessment of the affirmation of central bank autonomy and independence in South Africa during the period of constitutional negotiations up to the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. Although the independence and autonomy of the SA Reserve Bank (SARB), the central bank of the country, are enshrined in its Constitution, little has been written about the ideas and processes that culminated in such inclusion in the Constitution, in itself an unusual step at that time. This note addresses this void in the literature. The affirmation of central bank autonomy and independence (CBI) from political interference coincided with similar processes at that time in other developed and middle-income developing countries. In South Africa the decision taken at the time of the constitutional negotiations to grant the SARB its independence followed on an unfortunate history of government intervention in the central bank in the 1980s. In this research note we analyse some key documents on this policy debate, previously undiscovered, and present the views of a range of key actors in the negotiations process. Some economic policy think tanks such as the Economic Trends Research Group, and the Industrial Strategy Project, did not have a view on the matter of CBI, as far as we could gather. Our conclusions, based on this new evidence, are both surprising and unexpected. SARB independence was enshrined in the Constitution, we show, as much ‘by accident than by design’.

Experiencing service learning partnership: A human development perspective of community members

Service–learning has, arguably, gained significant currency as a pedagogical and engagement mechanism within the broader discourse of universities and their role in community development. However, less emphasis has been placed on the human development dimensions of service–learning for community members, with the focus largely being on students’ experiential learning and other academic outcomes for the university. Though usually conceived as an integral part in university–community partnerships, community members’ role in the conception and implementation of service–learning initiatives is from a peripheral position. In this paper, we interrogate this lacuna by applying core tenets of the human development approach to document the experiences and perceptions of community members within a university–community service learning partnerships. From the analysis of qualitative data n = 22, we demonstrate that while service–learning enhances agency, it continues to operate within a historical context and contemporary political economy of South Africa, which obscure community members’ active participation and empowerment towards inclusive and sustainable valued outcomes.

Without the blanket of the land: agrarian change and biopolitics in post–Apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACTThis paper connects Marxist approaches to the agrarian political economy of South Africa with post-Marshallian and Foucauldian analyses of distributional regimes and late capitalist governmentality. Looking at South Africa's stalled agrarian transition through the lens of biopolitics as well as class analysis can make visible otherwise disregarded connections between processes of agrarian change and broader contests about the terms of social and economic incorporation into the South African social and political order before, during and after Apartheid. This can bring a fresh sense of the broader political implications of the course of agrarian change in South Africa, and helps contextualise the enduring salience of land as a flashpoint within South Africa's unresolved democratic transition.

Conversations of motherhood : women's writing across traditions, Ksenia Robbe

The devaluation of social reproductive labour has taken on unique and insidious forms through the functioning of the 'post'-apartheid political economy of South Africa. In particular, the non-racial and neoliberal ideology of the 'Rainbow Nation' and its various guises of 'freedom' render the forms and mechanisms of racialised and gendered oppression in South Africa increasingly more difficult to make sense of. In considering the reproduction of socially constructed materiality and experience in this country, the history of racial capitalism, and the enduring racialisation of inequality should be taken into account. It is against this context and backdrop that the centralisation of gendered experiences and representations of transcultural motherhoods by Ksenia Robbe in Conversations of motherhood: women's writing across traditions (2015) is particularly important to examine. The central thrust of the book is one concerned with representations and experiences of motherhood.

Understanding the Democratic Transition in South Africa

Author(s): Inman, Robert P.; Rubinfeld, Daniel L. | Abstract: South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy stands as one of the past century’smost important political events. The transition has been successful to this point because thenew constitution adopted a form of federal governance that has been able to provideprotection for the economic elite from maximal redistributive taxation. Appropriatelystructured, federal governance creates a “hostage game” in which the majority centralgovernment controls the tax rate but elite run province(s) control the provision of importantredistributive services to a significant fraction of lower income households. At least totoday, the political economy of South Africa has found a stable equilibrium with less thanmaximal redistributive taxation. Moreover, the move to a democratic federalist system hasimproved the economic welfare of both the white minority and the black majority. Whetherthe federal structure can continue to check maximal taxation depends crucially upon the ratenof time preference of the majority and their demands for redistributive public services. Anew, impatient and more radical majority (ANC) party threatens the current equilibrium.

Re-introducing the minerals-energy complex

Re-introducing the minerals-energy complex Vishnu Padayachee (bio) This collection of papers on the minerals-energy complex (MEC) had its origin in a workshop organised under the auspices of the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Economic Development Strategic Initiative. Just over a decade ago, Ben Fine and Zav Rustomjee co-authored what some regard as one of the most significant books on the South African economy, entitled The Political Economy of South Africa: from Minerals-Energy Complex to industrialisation (Fine and Rustomjee 1996). The book generated some debate both within academia as well as in policy circles in the context of the political developments in South Africa at that time, and the need for the new government both to understand more about the nature of the South African economy, and to think through the kind of policy framework that would be required to address the economic legacy that apartheid had left. However, it would not be unfair to say that the MEC as a way of characterising the South African system of capital accumulation was ignored and dismissed in many circles. Arguably the most robust critique of the notion of the MEC appeared in an article by the late Trevor Bell and Greg Farrell in Development Southern Africa 14(4) 1997. There Bell and Farrell argued that 'there is no historical evidence to support the contention that the MEC as a system of accumulation prevented diversification of manufacturing industry and thus retarded industrialization' (1997: px). But the MEC has seen something of a revival in academic writings in recent times: scholars including David McDonald, Gavin Capps, Patrick Bond and others, have returned to it as a foundation and framework for their thinking and analysis (see eg MacDonald (ed) Electric Capitalism. HSRC Press, 2009). Moeletsi Mbeki has used the term when he describes how unchanged the economic structure of South Africa remains after 14 years of [End Page 1] democracy and this despite the interventions of BEE. The SACP's Jeremy Cronin has invoked the term in a similar context. In 2007, 11 years after the publication of the book, EDSRI hosted a one-day workshop on the theme 'The MEC: how significant does it remain to an understanding of the nature of the political economy of South Africa?' The workshop held in June 2008 at Makaranga Lodge (Kloof) debated and discussed the ways in which the MEC has evolved, mutated in the light of factors such as the globalisation of the SA economy after apartheid; its financialisation, ie the shift to the centre of the economy of finance imperatives; the 'demise' of the Group system or mining finance-houses; the listing in London of some of South Africa's major mining and finance houses, such as Anglo-American, BHP Billiton and others; changes in the global demand and supply of some key minerals in the wake of developments in China and India, and the energy crisis then and still in some ways being experienced in South Africa. In the course of my own research on the nature of contemporary capitalism in South Africa, and in a broader joint project with my friend and colleague, Keith Hart, we have revisited the concept of the MEC. We have been struck by the compelling power and logic of its argument and analysis. At the same time, many questions remain about its significance: •. is the MEC a theory or system of accumulation? •. to what extent has it internalised developments such as the form of contemporary globalisation, as well as the shift to financialisation? •. what does it tell us about power relations and 'politics' in contemporary SA? •. finally, what does it imply for policy? Apart from this, for me, this is also an occasion to put back on the agenda some of the elements that energised and excited those of us who were participants in the heady days of progressive intellectual discourse in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. The post-apartheid intellectual debate, I would dare to suggest, has been sterile, lacking in innovative thinking, deeply divided on ideological grounds, and deadlocked: could the revival of this 'old debate' help? Vishnu Padayachee padayacheev2@ukzn.ac.za Vishnu Padayachee Vishnu Padayachee is Senior Professor...

South Africa: Increasing Opportunities for the Poor

As South Africa faces a new round of parliamentary elections in April 2009, the country confronts a host of difficult political challenges. These elections will test the country’s commitment to democratic institutions and peaceful political transitions. It will also test past public policies - policies that are criticized for falling short of delivering positive economic opportunities throughout the country - especially for the poor.In this Country Brief, Enterprise Africa! lead researcher Karol Boudreaux and program associate Johan van der Walt focus on three domestic policy issues that they believe are important to expanding opportunities for South Africa’s poor: employment, education, and security. In addition, they focus on three foreign policy issues that they believe are significant to leveraging South Africa’s unique position in international affairs: regional integration, good governance, and public and cultural diplomacy.The manner in which the country and the key political contenders - the African National Congress (ANC), the Congress of the People (COPE), and the Democratic Alliance (DA) - manage this period of transition will have a large impact on the political economy of South Africa and its surrounding region. With a new focus on expanding opportunity and good governance, the country can play an ever more meaningful role in the region, continent, and world.

An unsettled belonging: Zimbabwean farm workers in Limpopo Province, South Africa

The emplacement of displaced Zimbabweans depends on the particular political economies and the modes of belonging operating at the sites at which they find themselves. This is shown by examining the situation of Zimbabweans working or seeking work on commercial farms in northern Limpopo Province, South Africa, in the border zone with Zimbabwe. As Zimbabweans flee their country in part to find a cash currency that has more value than the Zimbabwean dollar, their Zimbabwean citizenship gives them a particular symbolic currency in these jobs. Many of the border zone farmers are keen to employ them as their desperation for work typically predisposes them to work harder and often for lower wages than South Africans. Yet this latter currency is also shaped by public debates and institutional practices regarding ‘Zimbabweans’ in the wider political economy of South Africa, which in turn inform the circulation, conditions, and vulnerabilities of these Zimbabweans on the farms.

The making of vulnerabilities: understanding the differentiated effects of HIV and AIDS among street traders in Warwick Junction, Durban, South Africa

The end of apartheid in South Africa has led to political-economic transition, the deregulation of cities, and increased population mobility, with growing numbers of people living and working in sub-standard and 'informal' urban conditions. These processes have created a fertile terrain for the rapid spread of HIV, especially in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Few studies have considered how the HIV epidemic's outcomes are interacting with other societal processes, such as globalisation and urbanisation, or how these processes collectively converge with place-specific conditions to expose, drive and compound vulnerabilities to HIV and AIDS. This paper links an analysis of the political economy of South Africa's HIV epidemic with findings from an ethnographic case study with street traders in Warwick Junction, the largest trading hub in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal.

The Political Economy of South Africa: From Minerals--Energy Complex to Industrialisation

Ben Fine and Zavareh Rustomjee, The Political Economy of South Africa: from minerals—energy complex to industrialisation.London: Hurst, 1997, 278 pp., £35.00, ISBN 1 85065 258 9 hard covers, £14.95, ISBN 1 85065 257 0 paperback. - Volume 70 Issue 1

The political economy of South Africa in the 1970s*

The 1970s was a crucial transitional period for the South African economy in a number of ways. In 1970, the National Party was at the zenith of its power, having both radically reduced the size of the parliamentary opposition and successfully repressed, for the time being, the extra parliamentary challenge to the political order. By 1980, it had conceded the incorporation of Black trade unions into the formal industrial relations system. It had also experienced a Black youth revolt, which it could not stop, and increasing international isolation as a result of its apartheid policy. Yet it was not entirely on the defensive, granting independence to four homelands between 1976 and 1981. Efforts to deepen segregation at the local government level were to continue to the early 1980s, as were attempts to incorporate Coloureds and Indians as junior partners in the state. By 1980, the National Party was under considerable pressure from forces not of its liking. But it still believed that it could accommodate these pressures within a reform process substantially on its own terms.

Book Reviews

M. P. Cowen and R. W. Shenton, Doctrines of DevelopmentPeter W. Preston, Development Theory: An IntroductionJohn Brohman, Popular Development: Rethinking the Theory and Practice of DevelopmentStuart Corbridge (ed.), Development Studies: A Reader Development and Social Diversity—Development in Practice Readers Peter Willets (ed.), The Conscience of the World. The Influence of Non‐Governmental Organisations in the UN SystemPatricia L. McCarney (ed.), Cities and Governance: New Directions in Latin America, Asia and AfricaRobin Luckham and Gordon White (eds), Democratization in the South: The Jagged WaveKunibert Raffer and Hans W. Singer, The Foreign Aid Business: Economic Assistance and Development Co‐operationWilliam Ryrie, First World, Third WorldRobert Z. Lawrence, Regionalism, Multilateralism, and Deeper IntegrationRobert Z. Lawrence, Albert Bressand and Takatoshi Ito, A Vision for the World Economy: Openness, Diversity, and CohesionJan Joost Teunissen (ed.), Regionalism and the Global Economy. The Case of AfricaLennart Petersson (ed.), Post‐Apartheid Southern Africa: Economic Challenges and Policies for the FutureBen Fine and Zavareh Rustomjee, The Political Economy of South Africa: From Minerals‐Energy Complex to IndustrialisationOwen Crankshaw, Race, Class and the Changing Division of Labour under ApartheidFinn Tarp and Peter Brixen, The South African Economy: Macroeconomic Prospects for the Medium TermDeborah F. Bryceson (ed.), Women Wielding the Hoe: Lessons from Rural Africa for Feminist Theory and Development PracticeLeif Manger with Hassan Abd el Ati, Sharif Harir, Knut Krzywinski, Ole R. Vetaas, Survival on Meagre Resources. Hadendowa Pastoralism in the Red Sea HillsEmmanuel Manzungu and Pieter van der Zaag (eds), The Practice of Smallholder Irrigation. Case Studies from ZimbabweMargaret Hall and Tom Young, Confronting Leviathan. Mozambique since IndependenceDavid Murray, Angels and Devils. Thai Politics from February 1991 to September 1992—A Struggle for Democracy?Alan R. Kluver, Legitimating the Chinese Economic Reforms: A Rhetoric of Myth and OrthodoxyWalter Hatch and Kozo Yamamura, Asia in Japan's Embrace. Building a Regional Production AllianceAlbert Berry (ed.), Poverty, Economic Reform and Income Distribution in Latin AmericaPieter de Vries, Unruly Clients in the Atlantic Zone of Costa Rica: A Study of How Bureaucrats Try and Fail to Transform Gatekeepers, Communists and Preachers into Ideal BeneficiariesChristine Barrow, The Family in the Caribbean: Themes and PerspectivesBarbara Harriss‐White, A Political Economy of Agricultural Markets in South India. Masters of the CountrysideJean Drèze and Amartya Sen, India. Economic Development and Social Opportunity

The Political Economy of South Africa. From Minerals-Energy Complex to Industrialisation by BEN FINE and ZAVAREH RUSTOMJEE. London, Hurst and Company, 1996. Pp. 278. Hb. £35.00 Pb. £14.95.

The Political Economy of South Africa. From Minerals-Energy Complex to Industrialisation by BEN FINE and ZAVAREH RUSTOMJEE. London, Hurst and Company, 1996. Pp. 278. Hb. £35.00 Pb. £14.95. - Volume 36 Issue 3

The Political Economy of South Africa from Minerals-Energy Complex to Industrialization

The Political Economy of South Africa from Minerals-Energy Complex to Industrialization

Divisions of labour: racist trade unionism in the iron, steel, engineering and metallurgical industries of post‐war South Africa

This article argues that conflict over the role of white labour in the political economy of South Africa continued in the post‐Second World War period. It shows that, with the introduction of mechanised production processes, the maintenance of the industrial colour bar was a major source of concern for leaders of white labour. This connected with a struggle within white labour over the value of interventions by the Nationalist government to extend the privileged position built up by the craft unions to Afrikaans‐speaking whites lower down the occupational ladder. The eventual compromise that was reached between Afrikaans and English‐speaking labour leaders and officials, served to reinforce the exclusion of blacks from apprenticeships. Throughout the 1960s the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of South Africa (SEIFSA) faced escalating pay demands from artisans, whose skills were becoming more thinly spread as industry advanced. SEIFSA sought to economise on labour costs by phasing white labour o...

Lobbying Incentives and the Pattern of Protection in Rich and Poor Countries

In seeking to explain why poor countries tend to choose policies that tax agriculture relative to manufacturing while rich countries do the opposite, archetypical parameters for a poor agrarian economy and a rich industrial one are inserted in a computable general equilibrium model to simulate the medium-term effects on income distribution of policies that distort the relative prices of tradables. The model includes a non-tradables sector and intermediate inputs, realistic features that ensure even greater skewness in the distributional effects of protection than simpler models suggest. The magnitude of the results helps explain the tendency for countries to change gradually from taxing to subsidizing agriculture relative to manufacturing as their economies develop. The paper draws out the implications of the analysis for agricultural and trade policy reform in the 1990s.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

The political economy of South Africa in the interwar period∗

Economic policy in South Africa in the interwar period is discussed in the context of differences between the economic power and political influence of Afrikaner as opposed to mining capital. Previous analyses have been limited by overgeneralisation, narrowness of scope and analytical methodologies which have overemphasised class agencies at the expense of actual and potential economic linkages. State economic interventions are shown to have differed in influence and in impact by area of application. No coherent policy was followed for the development of industry based on agricultural products. Instead, policies were subordinated to devolving central power to fragmented agricultural interests. Industrial policy is shown to have been confined to protection, other forms of subsidy and the creation of a state sector around heavy industry rather than being linked to a strategy of diversification out of the base provided by the activities associated with mining. Despite this lack of a conducive framework, prel...

Book Reviews

Journal Article Book Reviews Get access The Political Economy of South Africa N. Nattrass and E. Ardington (eds), Oxford University Press, Cape Town Charles Harvey Charles Harvey University of Sussex Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of African Economies, Volume 1, Issue 2, August 1992, Pages 318–320, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.jae.a036755 Published: 01 August 1992

Book reviews

Ruth Miller: Poems, Prose, Plays. Edited and introduced by Lionel Abrahams. Cape Town: Carrefour Press, 1990. The Fires of the Dead by Robert Berold. Cape Town: Carrefour Press, 1989, Interiors by Jennie Roberts. Cape Town: Carrefour Press, 1989. From Apartheid to Nation‐Building: Contemporary South African Debates by Hermann Giliomee and Lawrence Schlemmer. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1990. Distant Companions; Servants and Employers in Zambia, 1900 ‐ 1985 by Karen Hansen. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989. ’Muzukuru’ a Guerilla's Story by Paul Hotz. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1990. Perspectives of Mental Handicap in South Africa. Edited by Susan Lea and Don Foster. Durban: Butterworths, 1990. The Annotated Soul of the Ape by Eugene Marais. Introduced and Annotated by Peter Henzi. London: Penguin Books, 1990. Cultural Forces in World Politics by Ali A. Mazrui. London: James Currey, 1990. People and Violence in South Africa. Edited by Brian McKendrick and Wilma Hoffman. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1990. Education: From poverty to liberty. Edited by Bill Nasson and John Samuel. Cape Town: David Philip. 1990. The Political Economy of South Africa. Edited by Nicoli Nattrass and Elisabeth Ardington. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1990. South African Human Rights and Labour Law Yearbook 1990 Volume 1. Edited by Michael Robertson. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, Centre for Socio‐Legal Studies Durban 1990. Protecting Human Rights in a New South Africa by Albie Sachs. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1990.