South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy

South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy PDF Author: Doctor Thiven Reddy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1783602252
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In South Africa, two unmistakable features describe post-Apartheid politics. The first is the formal framework of liberal democracy, including regular elections, multiple political parties and a range of progressive social rights. The second is the politics of the 'extraordinary', which includes a political discourse that relies on threats and the use of violence, the crude re-racialization of numerous conflicts, and protests over various popular grievances. In this highly original work, Thiven Reddy shows how conventional approaches to understanding democratization have failed to capture the complexities of South Africa's post-Apartheid transition. Rather, as a product of imperial expansion, the South African state, capitalism and citizen identities have been uniquely shaped by a particular mode of domination, namely settler colonialism. South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy is an important work that sheds light on the nature of modernity, democracy and the complex politics of contemporary South Africa.

South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy

South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy PDF Author: Doctor Thiven Reddy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1783602252
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
In South Africa, two unmistakable features describe post-Apartheid politics. The first is the formal framework of liberal democracy, including regular elections, multiple political parties and a range of progressive social rights. The second is the politics of the 'extraordinary', which includes a political discourse that relies on threats and the use of violence, the crude re-racialization of numerous conflicts, and protests over various popular grievances. In this highly original work, Thiven Reddy shows how conventional approaches to understanding democratization have failed to capture the complexities of South Africa's post-Apartheid transition. Rather, as a product of imperial expansion, the South African state, capitalism and citizen identities have been uniquely shaped by a particular mode of domination, namely settler colonialism. South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy is an important work that sheds light on the nature of modernity, democracy and the complex politics of contemporary South Africa.

South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy

South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy PDF Author: Thiven Reddy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781868149629
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
"In South Africa, two unmistakable features describe post-Apartheid politics. The first is the formal framework of liberal democracy, including regular elections, multiple political parties and a range of progressive social rights. The second is the politics of the 'extraordinary', which includes a political discourse that relies on threats and the use of violence, the crude re-racialization of numerous conflicts, and protests over various popular grievances. In this highly original work, Thiven Reddy shows how conventional approaches to understanding democratization have failed to capture the complexities of South Africa's post-Apartheid transition. Rather, as a product of imperial expansion, the South African state, capitalism and citizen identities have been uniquely shaped by a particular mode of domination, namely settler colonialism. South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy is an important work that shed light on the nature of modernity, democracy and the complex politics of contemporary South Africa."--Back cover.

South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy

South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy PDF Author: Doctor Thiven Reddy
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1783602260
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In South Africa, two unmistakable features describe post-Apartheid politics. The first is the formal framework of liberal democracy, including regular elections, multiple political parties and a range of progressive social rights. The second is the politics of the ‘extraordinary’, which includes a political discourse that relies on threats and the use of violence, the crude re-racialization of numerous conflicts, and protests over various popular grievances. In this highly original work, Thiven Reddy shows how conventional approaches to understanding democratization have failed to capture the complexities of South Africa’s post-Apartheid transition. Rather, as a product of imperial expansion, the South African state, capitalism and citizen identities have been uniquely shaped by a particular mode of domination, namely settler colonialism. South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy is an important work that sheds light on the nature of modernity, democracy and the complex politics of contemporary South Africa.

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.

The Condition of Democracy

The Condition of Democracy PDF Author: Jürgen Mackert
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000401936
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
Classical liberal democratic theory has provided crucial ideas for a still dominant and hegemonic discourse that rests on ideological conceptions of freedom, equality, peacefulness, inclusive democratic participation, and tolerance. While this may have held some truth for citizens in Western liberal-capitalist societies, such liberal ideals have never been realized in colonial, postcolonial and settler colonial contexts. Liberal democracies are not simply forms of rule in domestic national contexts but also geo-political actors. As such, they have been the drivers of processes of global oppression, colonizing and occupying countries and people, appropriating indigenous land, annihilating people with eliminatory politics right up to genocides. There can be no doubt that the West – with its civilizational Judeo-Christian idea and divine mission ‘to subdue the world’ – has destroyed other civilizations, countries, trading systems, and traditional ways of life and is responsible for the death of hundreds of millions of human beings in the course of colonizing the world from its Empires of trade through colonialism to settler colonialism and today’s politics of regime change. The book discusses the settler colonial regime that Israel has established in Palestine while still claiming to be a democracy. It discusses the failures of liberal democracy to overcome the structural and racist inequalities in post-Apartheid South Africa, and it presents hopeful outlooks on new ideas and forms of democracy in social movements in the MENA region.

Assessing Multiculturalism in Global Comparative Perspective

Assessing Multiculturalism in Global Comparative Perspective PDF Author: Yasmeen Abu-Laban
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000826864
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
In Assessing Multiculturalism in Global Comparative Perspective, a group of leading scholars come together in a multidisciplinary collection to assess multiculturalism through an international comparative perspective. Multiculturalism today faces challenges like never before, through the concurrent rise of populism and white supremacist groups, and contemporary social movements mobilizing around alternative ideas of decolonization, anti-racism and national self-determination Taking these challenges head on, and with the backdrop that the term multiculturalism originated in Canada before going global, this collection of chapters presents a global comparative view of multiculturalism, through both empirical and normative perspectives, with the overarching aim of comprehending multiculturalism’s promise, limitations, contemporary challenges, trajectory and possible futures. Collectively, the chapters provide the basis for a critical assessment of multiculturalism’s first 50 years, as well as vital insight into whether multiculturalism is best equipped to meet the distinct challenges characterizing this juncture of the 21st century. With coverage including the Americas, Europe, Oceania, Africa and Asia, and thematic coverage of citizenship, religion, security, gender, Black Lives Matter and the post-pandemic order, Assessing Multiculturalism in Global Comparative Perspective presents a comprehensively global collection that is indispensable reading for scholars and students of diversity in the 21st century.

South Africa's Insurgent Citizens

South Africa's Insurgent Citizens PDF Author: Doctor Julian Brown
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1783603003
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Twenty years on from South Africa's first democratic election, the post-apartheid political order is more fractured, and more fractious, than ever before. Police violence seems the order of the day – whether in response to a protest in Ficksburg or a public meeting outside a mine in Marikana. For many, this has signalled the end of the South African dream. Politics, they declare, is the preserve of the corrupt, the self-interested, the incompetent and the violent. They are wrong. Julian Brown argues that a new kind of politics can be seen on the streets and in the courtrooms of the country. This politics is made by a new kind of citizen – one that is neither respectful nor passive, but instead insurgent. The collapse of the dream of a consensus politics is not a cause for despair. South Africa's political order is fractured, and in its cracks new forms of activity, new leaders and new movements are emerging.

Contradictions of Democracy

Contradictions of Democracy PDF Author: Nicholas Rush Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190847212
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Despite being one of the world's most vibrant democracies, police estimate between five and ten percent of the murders in South Africa result from vigilante violence. This is puzzling given the country's celebrated transition to democracy and massive reform of the state's legal institutions. Where most studies explain vigilantism as a response to state or civic failure, in Contradictions of Democracy, Nicholas Rush Smith illustrates that vigilantism is actually a response to the processes of democratic state formation. In the context of densely networked neighborhoods, vigilante citizens often interpret the technical success of legal institutions-for instance, the arrest and subsequent release of suspects on bail-as failure and work to correct such perceived failures on their own. Smith also shows that vigilantism provides a new lens through which to understand democratic state formation. Among young men of color in some parts of South Africa, fear of extra-judicial police violence is common. Amid such fear, instead of the state seeming protective, it can appear as something akin to a massive vigilante organization. An insightful look into the high rates of vigilantism in South Africa and the general challenges of democratic state building, Contradictions of Democracy explores fundamental questions about political order, the rule of law, and democratic citizenship.

Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice

Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice PDF Author: Catherine Cole
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472127012
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In the aftermath of state-perpetrated injustice, a façade of peace can suddenly give way, and in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, post-apartheid and postcolonial framings of change have exceeded their limits. Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice reveals how the voices and visions of artists can help us see what otherwise evades perception. Embodied performance in South Africa has particular potency because apartheid was so centrally focused on the body: classifying bodies into racial categories, legislating where certain bodies could move and which bathrooms and drinking fountains certain bodies could use, and how different bodies carried meaning. The book considers key works by contemporary performing artists Brett Bailey, Gregory Maqoma, Mamela Nyamza, Robyn Orlin, Jay Pather, and Sello Pesa, artists imagining new forms and helping audiences see the contemporary moment as it is: an important intervention in a country long predicated on denial. They are also helping to conjure, anticipate, and dream a world that is otherwise. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of African studies, black performance, dance studies, transitional justice, as well as theater and performance studies.

Post-Apartheid Criticism

Post-Apartheid Criticism PDF Author: Ives S. Loukson
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839449197
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
South Africa's post-apartheid narrative is one of democracy and equality - but its flaws run deep, argues Ives S. Loukson. Disclosing prejudices about whiteness, homosexuality and democracy in the »staged society«, he claims the concept of relation as an adequate framework for the embodiment of »profane democracy« understood in Agambian terms. Its fluidity is equated to openness and transparency that are relevant dimensions for profane democracy. A demonstration of literary criticism practiced as a fecund interdisciplinary activity, Loukson's study lays the foundation for post-apartheid criticism different from post-colonial criticism.