Browsing by Author "Paremoer, Lauren"

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    Editorial: The political challenge of realizing the right to health
    (Wiley, 2015) Paremoer, Lauren
    In recent years, global governance institutions have operationalized their commitment to the right to health by advocating for universal health coverage (UHC) – particularly in the Global South. UHC aims to develop health systems that are efficient, well-staffed, and capable of providing affordable and appropriate medical care and essential medicines to rich and poor alike (World Health Organisation, 2014). The political priority afforded to this goal is driven by an acknowledgement that people in wealthy and poor countries alike are priced out of the “market” for health care. This has caused concern because of the negative economic effects associated with inadequate access to care. Academic research and scholarly rhetoric often justifies UHC on the grounds that it will strengthen the economic position of households (particularly households living below or just above the poverty line) and contributes to the growth prospects of national economies (World Health Organisation Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, n.d.). UHC is thus framed as an investment in human capital: Healthier citizens are more productive citizens. They are more capable of investing in their own well-being, and that of their dependents, through participation in the labor market rather than relying on public assistance.
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    Financialization of housing, social policy and inequality
    (2023) Fuchs, Pascal; Paremoer, Lauren
    The paper analyses the evidence and impact of housing financialization in South Africa. It gradually develops a mapping of the various interlinked characteristics of financialization and housing in the country. This mapping supports a structured discussion regarding the impact of housing financialization on income and wealth inequality trajectories. The identification of relevant characteristics of financialization follows a Marxist perspective on financialization, outlined by Fine (2013). Within this framework, the role of housing is understood in its capacity to absorb capital from a primary productive circuit of circulation into a secondary circuit for continued accumulation. Financialization, therefore, represents the increasing role of interest-bearing capital (IBC) and its prevalence in more fictitious forms. On this basis, the paper looks for evidence of financialization processes in the South African housing market and its implications for mortgage and housing access in low-income segments of society along with the role of public homeownership promotion policies. The analysis shows how the evidence of financialization processes, such as an increasingly relevant financial sector, short-term foreign investment inflows and increasing debt levels as well as the changing investment pattern of domestic companies impact the local housing market. In the presence of such financialization processes inequality aspects of housing are implicated through the highly exclusive mortgage access, growth of informal settlements, and repeating patterns of racially based spatial segregation. It also shows the limits of housing financialization in the country which include the lower levels of securitization of mortgage and the role of REITs in the residential property market. The various public housing policies of the past decades, which aimed at promoting homeownership for restorative justice and incentivizing private actor involvement in low-income mortgage markets, have not been able to cope with these negative trends. Increasing unemployment levels for low-skilled workers due to de-industrialization, shifting profits towards the financial sector, a volatile housing market and the dependence on generational wealth for housing access and asset-based welfare are outcomes of financialization which constitute a divergent impacts on income groups and exacerbate existing inequalities. These developments further challenge the effectiveness of the chosen public policies in the low-income housing market. Furthermore, the vigorous promotion of private actor involvement, such as banks and housing developers, by national and local governments and the broad privatization of public housing provided a basis for the further commodification and financialization of housing in South Africa. The replication and expansion of inequalities in South Africa in the past decades after its democratic transition can be seen as a social reproduction of uneven social class relations under financialized capitalism.
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    ‘Joining late': exploring the impact of the Late Joiner Penalty (LJP) imposed by South African medical aid schemes
    (2021) Moodaley, Natasha; Paremoer, Lauren
    This study explores how black women in paid employment experience the Late Joiner Penalty (LJP) that has been imposed on them by the Medical Schemes Act of 1998. Using various theories of citizenship, this research explores ways in which women are still excluded from obtaining full citizenship rights. The researcher applied a qualitative approach and conducted one-on-one in-depth interviews to generate meaningful data. The findings of the study reveal that women experience work precarity in various forms, which has been heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Women are subject to periods of “waithood” with delays that may impact their economic stability and growth. In addition, strong themes of control exerted by medical aids, healthcare practitioners and male partners reinforce the ways in which women are denied full access to citizenship. Furthermore, medical aid is gendered and forces women to organise their productive lives around their reproductive obligations. The LJP revealed no risk for the scheme but appears only to endeavour to exploit those who have been historically marginalised. Moreover, the lack of knowledge of the LJP, the finer details and the long-term implications of joining a medical aid scheme for poorer working-class families are problematic and consistent with current hegemonic practices that reward citizens for fitting into the ideal mould. These findings were then discussed within the theoretical framework of citizenship using Barchiesi's (2007) Theory of Social Citizenship and Brown's (2016) Theory of Sacrificial Citizenship as analytical tools. The research demonstrates that neoliberal policies and legislation punish the poor through a form of poverty tax (LJP) and decrease the ability to generate financial and health security through medical aid scheme subscription. Additionally, the LJP undermines the constitutional promise of equal citizenship by effectively discriminating against citizens on the basis of age, gender and historical disadvantage.
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    Kuduro, rap and resistance: Politics of music and activism in ‘new’ hegemonic Angola
    (2019) Czegledi, Alexandra; Paremoer, Lauren
    Keywords: kuduro, rap, music, diasporic, resistance, neoliberalism, seductive power, necropower, frozen citizenship, electronic capitalism, visibility, human rights I introduce kuduro music as a vantage point to uncover the political landscape of Angola where critical voices do not emerge with ease. I argue that kuduro, the globally known and disseminated genre of dance music, has been hijacked by the dos Santos government’s populist narrative so that it has become an ideological audio-visual narrative for ‘new’ Angola. Co-option is a socio-economic practice in new, independent Angola, but also political in the sense that it brings Angolans closer to the ruling elite’s economic power. The redistribution of wealth what Kalyan Sanyal (2007) coined as reversal of primitive accumulation is a useful concept here, but it falls short of fully explaining practices of patronage. Thus, I suggest seductive power as an extended concept, in order to understand co-option as both an economic and a cultural practice. In contrast to the kuduro scene, rap and hip-hop music have remained part of underground and DIY culture in Angola. This quasi-marginal position has allowed some musicians’ artistic practice to emerge as critical voices. In this mini-dissertation, I examine Ikonoklasta and MCK’s music because they are among the most represented musicians and activists by online media. New modes of civil resistance are often attached to Ikonoklasta’s name and songs. However, the recently emerged revolutionary’s movement cannot be fully identified with the Angolan rap scene (Martin 2015). In this sense, through Ikonoklasta’s activism and music production, along with MCK’s music, I show the extent to which the Angolan government keeps a certain culture of fear alive through necropolitics which was coined by Achille Mbembe (2003). This politics of death, and consequently, that of fear jointly produce what I call ‘frozen citizenship’. Before the revolutionary youth were arrested, Ikonoklasta and MCK collaborated with Batida, the Lisbon-based kuduro musician. Moreover, following the detention of musicians, local journalists and academics in Luanda, Batida began to use its global music network and platform to tell stories about the Angolan revolutionary movement. Repurposing his world music shows and DJ sets, Batida has enabled the dissemination of local counter-narratives within transnational NGOs’ circle. Pedro Coquenão aka Batida have organised demonstrations by utilising the global infrastructure and intellectual labour of Amnesty International. To elaborate on the transnational NGO’s role, I draw on critical human rights scholarship which consider human rights language as a global hegemonic framework engaging with injustices in a depoliticizing manner. Moving away from this theoretical preconceptions, I briefly discuss the extent to which transnational NGOs such as Amnesty International, paradoxically constrains and enables local activism at the same time. Although human rights organizations seem to have little power to put pressure on the Angolan government, they have the financial and infrastructural means to disseminate images, music and stories of local activists. I argue that this visibility provides global attention and certain protection to the high-profile activists targeted by the dos Santos regime. This medium falls in the trap of global witness fever (Kurasawa 2009) which offers an escape from ‘frozen citizenship’ through positive activist practice and a politics of hope (Baridotti 2010).
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    Making a virtue out of a necessity: Promoting access to antiretroviral treatment by valorizing fair markets and consumer rights in post-apartheid South Africa
    (Taylor & Francis, 2015) Paremoer, Lauren
    This paper explores the limits of framing low-wage workers as the subjects of social rights claims. In the case I examine here, HIV/AIDS activists in South Africa successfully pressured Boehringer Ingelheim and GlaxoSmithKlein into lowering antiretroviral (ARV) prices. They did so by emphasizing the economic and political importance of ensuring low- wage workers’ access to ARVs. This significantly improved access to ARVs in the private sector, and eventually contributed to the establishment of a public sector treatment programme. However, framing workers at the centre of this rights claim, and emphasizing the importance of competitive markets and workers’ health for sustaining economic growth and reducing the social wage, risks reifying two deeply problematic notions (both of which are embraced by the post-apartheid state): firstly, that workers should take personal responsibility in ensuring their own welfare and that of their dependents; and secondly, that markets can be used to facilitate the fair distribution of essential goods and services. Both notions are deeply problematic in states where vast numbers of citizens are unlikely to ever find ‘decent’ wage-work. I argue that this case illustrates the difficulties of promoting the social dimension of citizenship by strategically embracing pro-market institutions, or by emphasizing the economic value of social rights claimants.
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    Promoting Gender Equality in the Classroom: A Comparison between Methodologies used by Equal Education and the Department of Basic Education
    (2018) Ovner, Louise; Paremoer, Lauren
    This thesis compares how the South African Government, specifically the Department of Basic Education and the NGO Equal Education to see how these organizations work to promote gender equality. The study will contribute to a systematic comparison of approaches between the Department of Basic Education and Equal Education. This thesis will contribute to the literature by emphasizing the importance of quality education, and not only providing access. The comparison is done by evaluating different projects, explicitly and implicit within the organizations through Elaine Unterhalter’s two approaches: the resourcist approach and the structuralist approach. The evaluation of these projects and interventions has helped determine to which extent gender equality is promoted in each organization, but also which approach is utilized by whom and if they are complementary or not. Currently the trends of the South African government point towards the use of mainly resourcist approaches, while Equal Education uses mainly structuralist approaches. However, the government plans to eventually create a change in the current social structure to address its usage of a mostly resourcist approach. These initiatives and projects has been defined resourcist or structuralist mainly due to their method of measure, which is a major driving force in these projects. At this time the approaches chosen by each organization affect gender equality at different depths and a hybrid between the two is a recommendation although there have been implementation issues in relation to some projects. The conclusion references the capabilities approach to determine what type of hybrid might be the most suitable for the promotion of gender equality.
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    Review of Claire Laurier Decoteau’s 'Ancestors and Antiretrovirals'
    (2015) Paremoer, Lauren
    Before South Africa became famous for implementing the largest public sector antiretroviral (ARV) treatment program in the world, it was infamous for the Mbeki government’s refusal to recognize the efficacy, safety and sustainability of ARVs and his administration’s endorsement of “vitamins and vegetables” as efficacious HIV/AIDS treatments (Cullinan & Thom 2009). The activism required to bring about this policy transformation has been extensively documented by treatment activists themselves (Geffen 2010), and by academics who have sought to explain how these struggles have reconfigured the contours of postapartheid citizenship (Robins 2010), social rights and intellectual property rights law (Pieterse 2014, Kapstein & Busby 2013), transnational activism for access to essential medicines (Mbali 2013), and the political and economic feasibility of providing free ARVs to all who need them (Nattrass 2004).
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    Social Protection in South Africa During COVID-19: Exploring the Recommendation by UN Women to 'Put Cash in Women's Hands' in Response to the Pandemic
    (2024) Vumazonke, Bulelani Janet; Paremoer, Lauren
    The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing gender disparities worldwide. Countries expanded their social protection measures in response to the socio-economic implications of the health crisis. This study explores the South African government's social protection policies, and their impact on gender inequality during the pandemic, particularly in relation to social reproduction work and labour market dynamics. It investigates the expansion of social protection programmes, with attention to the Special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) Grant, a temporary cash transfer programme for working-age individuals with no source of income. In the labour market, it examines the implementation of the COVID-19 Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme (TERS), a subsidy provided to companies by the government. The research extensively reviews existing literature, South African legislation, and particularly utilises the policy recommendation by UN Women to put cash in women's hands, as a strategy to mitigate the gender inequalities associated with the pandemic. By critically evaluating the government's strategies, the study contributes to illuminating the gendered impacts of COVID-19 in South Africa. A key finding of the mini-dissertation was that the government's social protection measures did not adequately address pre-existing gender disparities, and instead favoured men more than women. The study emphasises the necessity for a comprehensive and inclusive approach to social protection, that aims to address gender inequality and values care work. It proposes the introduction of a permanent grant targeted at women caregivers—a starting point to acknowledge the value of the social reproduction work they are accountable for