Browsing by Subject "ANC"
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- ItemOpen AccessANC Decline, Social Mobilization and Political Society: Understanding South Africa's Evolving Political Culture(Taylor & Francis, 2010) Reddy, ThivenThis article examines the evolving political culture in contemporary South Africa. It draws on elite culture, neo-patrimonialism, and revisionist institutionalist perspectives to understand state weaknesses and patterns of politicization confronting South Africa’s developing democracy. While it accepts that the democratic political system and its constituent institutions are in place and function formally, a discourse of violence or threats of violence to rival political actors is commonplace. The article is structured as follows: the first part describes the increased social mobilization of disgruntled citizens who rely on a discourse of violence rather than articulating grievances through political structures; the second part focuses on those factors that ferment this kind of political culture. The article discusses the deepening economic inequality and its expression in class conflict under conditions of democracy. It then discusses the politics of the ANC as a dominant party, and in particular intra-elite conflict, ANC factionalization, and the consequent weakening of state institutions. These factors, the paper argues, encourage a politics in which political society, rather than civil society, becomes the main terrain for expressing conflict.
- ItemRestrictedThe ‘Cabbage and the Goat’: Xenophobic Violence in South Africa(Taylor & Francis, 2012) Reddy, ThivenThe paper offers a way to think through the advent of xenophobia as a feature of post 1994 South African democracy. It does so by locating it within a broader politics of a mobilized citizenry in which a ruling class has been unable to assert its hegemony. In this context of opposing wills, the very terms of reference of citizenship are contested, the elite in the society operate within an idiom of rights, and the mass of poor, radical resource distribution and recognition. The ambivalent position of the ANC as liberation movement, key actor in the founding of the new constitutionalism, and political party engaged in competitive electoral politics adds to the social unease. The resultant fragile ruling ideology has allowed local discourses to thrive based on degrees of authentic belonging.
- ItemOpen AccessSteve Biko in the intellectual history of the Eastern Cape(2013) Mangcu, XolelaThis audio lecture locates the ideas of the late Black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko, within a long trajectory beginning with the Khoi-Khoi and San wars of resistance in the Northern Cape. For anyone with an interest in the life of Steve Biko and SA history.