A critique of South Africa: The solution

South Africa: The Solution by Leon Louw and Frances Kendall Amagi Publications, Bisho (Ciskei), 1986. xvi plus 237 pages including maps, figures, diagrams, illustrations, notes, appendices and bibliography. R14,95 paperback.     

The South Africa of Today

This article is based on the address given by Miss Thompsonat the Africa Day Conference held at the Royal Society of Artson November 17, 1956.     

The Coloured People of South Africa

Miss Attles, a sister of the Prime Minister, has worked in theUnion for 37 years, first in the Railway Mission and since 1929in Claremont, a suburb of Cape Town. This article representspart of a lecture on the 30th April with the Dowager CountessBuxton in the Chair. After the discussion, the Union Governmentfilm Towards the Future was shown, giving the obverse side ofthe medal, with schools and amenities greatly in advance ofconditions in comparable areas, like the West Indies.     

South Africa Revisited

This article represents the second half of the well-known historian'saddress on the 30th March. Professor Macmillan visited Eastand South Africa in the summer of 1949, for the first time fornearly 20 years. In the interval he had visited and lived inWest Africa.     

Ubuntu as public policy in South Africa: A conceptual framework

ABSTRACT

Beginning with an overview of the origin and core elements of ubuntu, this article focuses on the idea that the analytic process required to illustrate how a social theory and a political ideal can be extracted and developed out of their constitutive elements has not been given the rigorous attention it deserves. Without such rigour it is extremely difficult to recommend a coherent conceptual framework for political action. It then suggests guidelines for policy development and implementation, confident that nuanced variations in the various understandings of ubuntu are not so fundamental as to prevent trend-data analysis and generalisation.     

The Politics of Child Prostitution in South Africa

This paper argues that policies, interventions and discourses pertaining to child prostitution have been guided by overarching political agendas that have masked the underlying structural basis of this phenomenon. These political agendas have shifted in accordance with the locus of power, control and resistance in South Africa since the nineteenth century. On the basis of a historical analysis this paper identifies distinct periods in which child prostitution was used to legitimate policies in favour of social control rather than social development. In the colonial period, child prostitution was used to justify stricter controls on adolescent and adult women's sexuality and movement by colonial and traditional patriarchal authorities. In the colonial and Apartheid periods, policies on child prostitution were informed by fears of miscegenation and sexually transmitted diseases, which were used to support the racist and oppressive legislation of sexual behaviour. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the issue of child prostitution was ‘discovered’ in the press both to deflect attention from the incarceration of juveniles during the 1987 State of Emergency and as the basis upon which liberals attacked the Apartheid state. In the latter half of the 1990s and 2000s, it was used by the African National Congress (ANC) government to attack the moral legacy left by the Apartheid state and in turn deflect responsibility for the root causes of this phenomenon. Furthermore, child prostitution was used to support stricter controls on adult sex workers and on the movement of undocumented migrants. This politicised and sensationalist approach has undermined detailed analysis of the root causes of this phenomenon and children's motivation for engaging in prostitution. For many children in South Africa it has been one means by which they can exercise their agency and power in order to ensure their survival in the face of high levels of socio-economic deprivation and rapid socio-cultural change. This paper therefore proposes a shift from policies and interventions centred on social control to social development, based on an in-depth understanding of children's agency, risk and resilience.     

India and South Africa: Shifting priorities

Ties between India and South Africa have grown rapidly over the past few years. But despite close collaboration on a range of issues and growing trade and investment ties, the relationship is a long way from reaching its full potential and there are still areas of difference between the countries. Philip Alves examines how the relationship has evolved historically, particularly since 1994, both politically and economically, and where it might be going.     

The continuing salience of race: Discrimination and diversity in South Africa

The end of apartheid has brought a resurgence of research into racial identities, attitudes and behaviour in South Africa. The legacy of systematic racial ordering and discrimination under apartheid is that South Africa remains deeply racialised, in cultural and social terms, as well as deeply unequal, in terms of the distribution of income and opportunities. South Africans continue to see themselves in the racial categories of the apartheid era, in part because these categories have become the basis for post-apartheid ‘redress’, in part because they retain cultural meaning in everyday life. South Africans continue to inhabit social worlds that are largely defined by race, and many express negative views of other racial groups. There has been little racial integration in residential areas, although schools provide an important opportunity for inter-racial interaction for middle-class children. Experimental and survey research provide little evidence of racism, however. Few people complain about racial discrimination, although many report everyday experiences that might be understood as discriminatory. Racial discrimination per se seems to be of minor importance in shaping opportunities in post-apartheid South Africa. Far more important are the disadvantages of class, exacerbated by neighbourhood effects: poor schooling, a lack of footholds in the labour market, a lack of financial capital. The relationship between race and class is now very much weaker than in the past. Overall, race remains very important in cultural and social terms, but no longer structures economic advantage and disadvantage.     

The Effects of Urbanisation in South and Central Africa

This represents the bulk of a lecture on the 10th July, underthe Chairmanship of Lord Hailey. Mr. Rheinallt Jones is Presidentof the South African Institute of Race Relations, and Advisoron Native Affairs to the Anglo-American Corporation.     

The governance of shale gas production in South Africa

The proper governance of shale gas mining in the Karoo region of South Africa is important. With an estimated 390 trillion cubic feet of recoverable shale gas, large economic gains are possible. This may dramatically change the South African energy sector; in the United States, similar explorations have led to what pundits term the ‘shale gas revolution’. The development and production of shale gas hold economic advantages, but also potential environmental costs, thus the regulation of fracking activities is an important consideration as the development of shale gas in the Karoo progresses. This study reviews the regulations imposed in other countries as well as the current regulatory framework of South Africa. This article analyses these regulations in terms of the content of fracking fluid, seismic activity and the pricing regime. Effective regulation will be key to maximise a positive impact, should shale gas development continue.     

Political compromise on land reform: A study of South Africa and Namibia

The fact that both South Africa and Namibia achieved democratic rule through a process of negotiation, rather than revolution, has had implications for the land reform programmes being implemented by both countries. The author suggests that land hunger has not been addressed and that while compromise on the issue has enabled political stability to date, this may not last.     

Fighting Tuberculosis in South Africa

Dr. Broderick is secretary of the South African National TuberculosisAssociation which is aiming at providing 8, 000 beds for tuberculotics of all races over and above what South African hospitalauthorities are planning to do in the next few years. He isa former Deputy Director of the Medical Service of the UnionDefence Force, and attended the Commonwealth Health and Tuberculosisconference in London in June.     

Reconciliation and Political Legitimacy: The Old Australia and the New South Africa

In both Australia and South Africa a state-sponsored discourse of reconciliation has been deployed as a tool of national integration and state building. This usage has tended to encourage a politics of selective memory that runs contrary to the spirit of reconciliation as recognition of different views of the nation. This article seeks to recover (and promote) a more positive concept of reconciliation by treating it as a discursive, democratic space in which different versions of the national story can be acknowledged and negotiated. The cases of Australia and South Africa are used in a mutually illuminating way to explore what "telling the truth" about the past might mean and how such "truth-telling" might help restore legitimacy to liberal states confronted with a "broken moral order".