Minority Protection in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Minority Protection in Post-Apartheid South Africa PDF Author: Kristin Henrard
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313012148
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Accommodation of population diversity is a vital issue for any multinational society. The legacy of Apartheid in South Africa complicates this effort considerably. Henrard introduces a theoretical framework regarding how to accommodate minority protection in the most appropriate way and analyzes the respective contributions of individual rights, minority rights, and the right to self-determination. Subsequent chapters examine the case study of post-apartheid South Africa and attempt to investigate its constitutional development. Henrard finds that provisions within the 1996 Constitution do acknowledge an interrelation between these three important factors; however, implementation of minority protection policy is often quite a different matter. In seeking appropriate means of minority protection, this study stresses inclusionism, integration, and the essential right to identity and real equality. While Henrard reviews and discusses the entire democratic transformation process in South Africa, she cautions that, because current developments are characterized by their unsettled nature, major transformation and flux, analysis of the implementation phase can be only indicative. The apartheid history does not in itself inhibit progressive stances on this important issue. Still, despite the promising nature of the 1996 Constitution, the picture that emerges in terms of policy development aimed at minority protection is ambivalent.

Minority Protection in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Minority Protection in Post-Apartheid South Africa PDF Author: Kristin Henrard
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313012148
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Accommodation of population diversity is a vital issue for any multinational society. The legacy of Apartheid in South Africa complicates this effort considerably. Henrard introduces a theoretical framework regarding how to accommodate minority protection in the most appropriate way and analyzes the respective contributions of individual rights, minority rights, and the right to self-determination. Subsequent chapters examine the case study of post-apartheid South Africa and attempt to investigate its constitutional development. Henrard finds that provisions within the 1996 Constitution do acknowledge an interrelation between these three important factors; however, implementation of minority protection policy is often quite a different matter. In seeking appropriate means of minority protection, this study stresses inclusionism, integration, and the essential right to identity and real equality. While Henrard reviews and discusses the entire democratic transformation process in South Africa, she cautions that, because current developments are characterized by their unsettled nature, major transformation and flux, analysis of the implementation phase can be only indicative. The apartheid history does not in itself inhibit progressive stances on this important issue. Still, despite the promising nature of the 1996 Constitution, the picture that emerges in terms of policy development aimed at minority protection is ambivalent.

Race and Nation in Post-apartheid South Africa

Race and Nation in Post-apartheid South Africa PDF Author: Kogila Moodley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Apartheid
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description


After Apartheid

After Apartheid PDF Author: Ian Shapiro
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813931010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Democracy came to South Africa in April 1994, when the African National Congress won a landslide victory in the first free national election in the country’s history. That definitive and peaceful transition from apartheid is often cited as a model for others to follow. The new order has since survived several transitions of ANC leadership, and it averted a potentially destabilizing constitutional crisis in 2008. Yet enormous challenges remain. Poverty and inequality are among the highest in the world. Staggering unemployment has fueled xenophobia, resulting in deadly aggression directed at refugees and migrant workers from Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Violent crime rates, particularly murder and rape, remain grotesquely high. The HIV/AIDS pandemic was shockingly mishandled at the highest levels of government, and infection rates continue to be overwhelming. Despite the country’s uplifting success of hosting Africa’s first World Cup in 2010, inefficiency and corruption remain rife, infrastructure and basic services are often semifunctional, and political opposition and a free media are under pressure. In this volume, major scholars chronicle South Africa’s achievements and challenges since the transition. The contributions, all previously unpublished, represent the state of the art in the study of South African politics, economics, law, and social policy.

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

Whites and Democracy in South Africa PDF Author: Roger Southall
Publisher: African Sun Media
ISBN: 1928314937
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
What is the place and role of whites in South African political life today? Are whites genuinely willing participants in a ‘non-racial democracy’, willing to forego the racial privileges of the past or, despite legal equality, have they proved reluctant to relinquish power and continue, as black activists assert, to dominate many aspects of South African society? Building upon the burgeoning body of work on whiteness, this book focuses on how whites have adapted politically to the arrival of democracy and sweeping political change in South Africa. Outlining a variety of responses in how white South Africans have sought to grapple with apartheid’s brutal history, the author shows how their memories of the past have shaped their reactions to political equality. Although the majority feared the coming of democracy, only a right-wing minority actively resisted its arrival. Others chose (and are still choosing) to emigrate, used democracy to defend ‘minority rights’ or have withdrawn into psychologically or physically demarcated social enclaves. Challenging much current thinking, Southall argues that many whites have chosen to embrace the freedoms that democracy has offered, or to adapt to its often disconcerting realities pragmatically. Examining this crucial issue against the historical context of minority rule and its defeat, the author presents a new dynamic to the continuing debate on whiteness in Africa and globally.

Post-apartheid Fragments

Post-apartheid Fragments PDF Author: Wessel Le Roux
Publisher: Unisa Press
ISBN: 9781868884056
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Discusses the tension between public and private and between equality and dignity; the notions of sovereignty; aesthetics; action and revolt in South Africa.

State of Transition

State of Transition PDF Author: Clive Harber
Publisher: Symposium Books Ltd
ISBN: 1873927193
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
The main purpose of this book is to provide a concise overview of educational transition – to document, discuss and analyse key changes (and continuities) in South African education since the end of apartheid. What makes this period particularly fascinating for educationalists is that the legacy of apartheid and the years of international isolation meant that educational reform had to be fundamental and wide ranging if South Africa was to become a modern, democratic state participating in the global political economy of the twenty-first century. The result was that in the final five years of the twentieth century South Africa became something of a laboratory or crucible for educational innovation. From 1948 to the early 1990s South African government was based on an institutionalised system of ‘racial’ separation and inequality formally known as apartheid. A white minority dominated a black majority in a context of stark social, political and economic differentiation. While the apartheid state used force to maintain this system, formal education was also used to try to make the basic tenets of apartheid ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ in the minds of South Africans. From the apartheid government’s point of view, the role of education was to help to perpetuate and reproduce a racist system and to encourage obedience and conformity to that system. It is not therefore surprising that in the 1970s and 1980s education also became a key site in the struggle against apartheid or that educational reform was high on the agenda of the first democratically elected government after April 1994. However, while the direction of educational reform has inevitably been strongly influenced by the nature and history of the anti-apartheid struggle inside South Africa, the global political and economic context has also played its part in shaping educational debate and policy outside South Africa. Clive Harber’s book recognises that there is a difference between planned reform and the actual nature of educational change on the ground and tries, where possible, to set reform in the contextual realities of South African education as they presently exist. It aims to understand the difficulties and ambiguities of transition as well as the overt aims and goals as enshrined in policy documents and legislation.

Elusive Equity

Elusive Equity PDF Author: Edward B. Fiske
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780796921093
Category : Discrimination in education
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description


Protecting Minority Rights in African Countries

Protecting Minority Rights in African Countries PDF Author: John M. Mbaku
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1786438615
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
In this enlightening book, John Mukum Mbaku analyses the main challenges of constitutional design and the construction of governance institutions in Africa today. He argues that the central issues are: providing each country with a constitutional order that is capable of successfully managing sectarian conflict and enhancing peaceful coexistence; protecting the rights of citizens - including those of minorities; minimizing the monopolization of political space by the majority (to the detriment of minorities); and, effectively preventing government impunity. Mbaku offers a comprehensive analysis of various approaches to the management of diversity, and shows how these approaches can inform Africa's struggle to promote peace and good governance. He explores in depth the existence of dysfunctional and anachronistic laws and institutions inherited from the colonial state, and the process through which laws and institutions are formulated or constructed, adopted, and amended. A close look at the constitutional experiences of the American Republic provides important lessons for constitutional design and constitutionalism in Africa. Additionally, comparative politics and comparative constitutional law also provide important lessons for the management of diversity in African countries. Mbaku recommends state reconstruction through constitutional design as a way for each African country to provide itself with laws and institutions that reflect the realities of each country, including the necessary mechanisms and tools for the protection of the rights of minorities.From students and scholars to NGOs, lawyers and policymakers, this unique and judicious book is an essential tool for all those seeking to understand and improve governance and development in Africa.

Language Policy and Nation-Building in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Language Policy and Nation-Building in Post-Apartheid South Africa PDF Author: Jon Orman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402088914
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
The preamble to the post-apartheid South African constitution states that ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity’ and promises to ‘lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law’ and to ‘improve the quality of life of all citizens’. This would seem to commit the South African government to, amongst other things, the implementation of policies aimed at fostering a common sense of South African national identity, at societal dev- opment and at reducing of levels of social inequality. However, in the period of more than a decade that has now elapsed since the end of apartheid, there has been widespread discontent with regard to the degree of progress made in connection with the realisation of these constitutional aspirations. The ‘limits to liberation’ in the post-apartheid era has been a theme of much recent research in the ?elds of sociology and political theory (e. g. Luckham, 1998; Robins, 2005a). Linguists have also paid considerable attention to the South African situation with the realisation that many of the factors that have prevented, and are continuing to prevent, effective progress towards the achievement of these constitutional goals are linguistic in their origin.

Media in Postapartheid South Africa

Media in Postapartheid South Africa PDF Author: Sean Jacobs
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253040574
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
In Media in Postapartheid South Africa, author Sean Jacobs turns to media politics and the consumption of media as a way to understand recent political developments in South Africa and their relations with the African continent and the world. Jacobs looks at how mass media define the physical and human geography of the society and what it means for comprehending changing notions of citizenship in postapartheid South Africa. Jacobs claims that the media have unprecedented control over the distribution of public goods, rights claims, and South Africa's integration into the global political economy in ways that were impossible under the state-controlled media that dominated the apartheid years. Jacobs takes a probing look at television commercials and the representation of South Africans, reality television shows and South African continental expansion, soap operas and postapartheid identity politics, and the internet as a space for reassertions and reconfigurations of identity. As South Africa becomes more integrated into the global economy, Jacobs argues that local media have more weight in shaping how consumers view these products in unexpected and consequential ways.