Browsing by Subject "Apartheid"

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    Deconstructing profitability under apartheid: 1960-1989
    (Taylor & Francis, 2014) Nattrass, Nicoli
    This paper discusses trends in South African profitability between 1960 and 1989 (the last peak year before the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990). It is argued that where distributional conflict is a persistent feature of the economic historical landscape, or is claimed to be of central importance (as is the case with regard to the radical ‘cheap labour’ theory of capital accumulation and growth under apartheid), examining trends in profitability and the underlying forces behind it may be of some assistance to economic historians. Trends in the profit rate can be linked to institutional transformation, and deconstructing the profit rate can help isolate the relative importance of the profit share and productivity in shaping the rate of return for capitalists. The empirical analysis finds that there were different economic factors at work behind trends in profitability between 1960 and 1989, and that Marxist claims about cheap labour being the basis for supposedly rising profitability and growth under apartheid are not supported by the data. Rather, the paper highlights the role of falling capital productivity as the key determinant of falling profitability – developments which suggests that investment in the late apartheid period was misdirected in significant ways.
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    Educational inheritance and the distribution of occupations: Evidence from South Africa
    (Review of Income and Wealth, 2015-05-28) Keswell, Malcolm; Girdwood, Sarah; Leibbrandt, Murray
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    Exploring the processes of parenting in the context of multidimensional poverty when children demonstrate behavioural problems: a single case study in post-1994 Apartheid South Africa
    (2025) Cilliers, Nicola; Peters, Liesl; Gretschel, Pamela
    Background: Families are acknowledged in South African and international policy as the cornerstone of a healthy society, with parenting increasingly becoming the focus of occupational therapy intervention for children's behavioural problems. However, emerging literature from the South suggests pervasive structural and situational challenges in which parenting unfolds and must be navigated. Current conceptualisations of parenting within and beyond occupational science are left wanting with regards to understanding how parenting unfolds in these challenging contexts. Different knowledge(s) about how parenting might unfold in diverse contexts are required to inform more responsive support of families in the margins. Aim: This study sought to explore and describe the occupation of parenting when children demonstrate behavioural problems in the context of multidimensional poverty in post-1994 South Africa. This context presents with complex challenges that align well with the study's intention to contribute knowledge from the Global South. Methodology: Drawing upon a post-structuralist paradigm, the study adopted a qualitative single, intrinsic case study design. Data was collected over a 6-month period with two families, recruited purposively. They resided in the same geographical community, where many experienced several markers of poverty, and self-identified as having children with behavioural difficulties. Individual, in-depth narrative interviews served as the primary data collection method, in conjunction with several secondary data sources. Data was analysed using a narrative analytic process and direct interpretation of data sources. Findings: One overarching assertion comprising of two core assertions emerged, revealing that parenting unfolds dynamically as a process of relational emergence. This process is more and less consciously, intergenerationally and contextually enmeshed as caregivers engage with and through iterative relational complexities. Caregivers wrestle with their enmeshment in dominant discourses and practices as they work to resist and adapt these, but also often reproduce them. This wrestling shapes and is shaped by the relational agency of caregivers, children and community members as they influence and respond to everyday parenting situations. Children's behavioural problems did not emerge as a determinant of parenting practices, functioning rather as part of the relational context in which parenting unfolds. Discussion and Conclusion: Parenting as a process of relational emergence is discussed as a possible lens for understanding parenting in the margins, drawing on theories of collective occupation and occupational choice to unpack how intentionality and practical sense might operate within this process. Parenting's complexities demand further research to understand how it truly unfolds in diverse contexts and should be a focus area in undergraduate occupational therapy programmes. Parenting may be further supported in practice through appreciating plurality in parenting knowledge and experiences, and considering parenting's complexities in how support services are developed and appraised.
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    Income inequality after apartheid
    (CSSR and SALDRU, 2015-05-28) Seekings, Jeremy; Leibbrandt, Murray; Nattrass, Nicoli
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    Poverty and inequality after apartheid
    (2007) Seekings, Jeremy
    Democratic South Africa was born amidst high hopes for the reduction of income poverty and inequality from their high levels under apartheid. The reality has been disappointing: despite steady economic growth, income poverty probably rose in the late 1990s before a muted decline in the early 2000s, income inequality has probably grown, and life expectancy has declined. The proximate causes are clear: persistent unemployment and low demand for unskilled labour, strong demand for skilled labour, an unequal education system, and a social safety net that is unusually widespread but nonetheless has large holes. It is also clear that economic growth alone will not reduce poverty or inequality. Pro-poor social policies are important, but not as important as a pro-poor economic growth path. Unfortunately, there is little sign of the political conditions changing to push the state towards the promotion of a more pro-poor pattern of economic growth. There is some chance of parametric reforms of the welfare state. Overall, however, it is likely that, after another ten years of democracy, unemployment and poverty rates will remain high, despite significant redistribution through cash transfers, and incomes will continue to be distributed extremely unequally.
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    Two far South: the responses of South African and Southern Jews to Apartheid and Segregation in the 1950s and 1960s
    (2003) Mendelsohn, Adam; Shain, Milton; Phillips, Howard
    This dissertation uses the comparative historical method to compare and contrast the responses of Southern and South African Jews to apartheid and segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. It focuses on the interrelationship of the two communities with reform rabbis and international Jewish organizations. The dissertation argues that the nature of individual and institutional responses was significantly shaped by exposure to a set of factors common to the South and South Africa. The dissertation is thematic, employing a variety of case studies. The dissertation begins by examining the effect of frontier conditions on reform rabbis. The author argues that the dispersed reform pulpits prevalent in these two contexts, and the type of rabbi that they generally attracted, served to inhibit civil rights activism. Differential exposure to these conditions, together with the presence of various liberating features, determined the risks and opportunities that frontier rabbis encountered. Thereafter, the dissertation analyzes the interactions of the Southern and South African Jewish communities with northern-based national Jewish organizations (in the case of the former) and international Jewish organizations (in the case of the latter). The author compares the interplay of the Southern lodges of the B'nai B'rith with the Anti-Defamation League, and the interrelationship of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies with various overseas Jewish groups. Whereas in the first section, rabbinical responses in the South Africa and the South are analysed together, here the two communities are dealt with separately. The author argues that the responses of external organizations were shaped by pressure from constituencies in the South and South Africa. These pressures competed with other philosophical and political considerations in determining policy towards segregation and apartheid.