Browsing by Subject "Politics"

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    A decade of tobacco control: The South African case of politics, health policy, health promotion and behaviour change
    (2013) Reddy, Priscilla; James, Shamagonam; Sewpaul, Ronel; Yach, Derek; Resnicow, Ken; Sifunda, Sibusiso; Mthembu, Zanele; Mbewu, Anthony
    BACKGROUND: The South African (SA) government has implemented comprehensive tobacco control measures in line with the requirements of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The effect of these measures on smoking prevalence and smoking-related attitudes, particularly among young people, is largely unknown. OBJECTIVE: To describe the impact of a comprehensive health promotion approach to tobacco control amongst SA school learners. METHODS: Four successive cross-sectional Global Youth Tobacco Surveys (GYTSs) were conducted in 1999, 2002, 2008 and 2011 among nationally representative samples of SA grades 8 - 10 school learners. We assessed the prevalence of current smoking (having smoked a cigarette on ≥1 day in the 30 days preceding the survey) and smoking-related attitudes and behaviours. RESULTS: Over the 12-year survey period current smoking among learners declined from 23.0% (1999) to 16.9% (2011) - a 26.5% reduction. Reductions in smoking prevalence were less pronounced amongst girls and amongst black learners. We observed an increase in smoking prevalence amongst learners between 2008 and 2011. Smoking-related attitudes and behaviours showed favourable changes over the survey period. CONCLUSION: These surveys demonstrate that the comprehensive and inter-sectorial tobacco control health promotion strategies implemented in SA have led to a gradual reduction in cigarette use amongst school learners. Of concern, however, are the smaller reductions in smoking prevalence amongst girls and black learners and an increase in smoking prevalence from 2008 to 2011. Additional efforts, especially for girls, are needed to ensure continued reduction in smoking prevalence amongst SA youth.
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    An evaluation of Greene's resource theory of party dominance with reference to the South African case
    (2021) Balt, Laurent; Butler, Anthony
    The African National Congress is commonly thought of as a dominant party, which poses an explanatory problem – how and why is it dominant? Greene (2007) proposes that orthodox electoral market explanations fail to explain the persistence of dominant parties, and advances that “hyperincumbency advantages” (i.e. resource and policy advantages accruing to the dominant party) best explain how dominant parties persist, and that the decline in these advantages is linked with decline in party dominance. Greene's early analyses took place before the ANC qualified as a dominant party in his model: this dissertation seeks to explain whether his theory explained the ANC's party dominance and its declining electoral and ideological dominance. Methodologically, a theory-testing case study incorporating process-tracing approach is taken. The ANC's hyperincumbency advantages are described through case studies of the party's funding mechanisms, its relations with public resources, and a specific study of patronage within the ANC during Jacob Zuma's presidency. This dissertation finds that Greene's hyperincumbency approach was insufficient to accurately explain the ANC's dominance or its decline. Firstly, the ANC's electoral and ideological declined even as its access to public resources through what Greene terms a “national patronage system” increased. Secondly, the expansion of the aggregate opposition vote has been mostly due to splits off the ANC and declining partisan alignment with the party, rather than declining resource imbalances. An historical analysis of factionalism within the ANC since 1994 is undertaken. Factional dynamics within the ANC have proven important to party dominance, as the direction of patronage became primarily targeted at winning intra-party battles, and lack of factional management repeatedly caused damaging splits off the ANC. This thesis suggests that approaches to dominant party studies should consider the importance of factional management in maintaining party dominance, as a necessary but potentially insufficient condition.
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    Contemporary U.S. Counter-terrorism Strategy toward Somalia
    (2018) Wood, Molly; Lamb, Guy
    The United States is involved in strategies of counter-terrorism in many countries around the globe. Al-Shabaab in Somalia has been a United States designated foreign terrorist organisation since 2008. The objective of this dissertation is to determine the nature of contemporary counterterrorism strategy undertaken by the United States toward Somalia and to understand how it has been determined and sustained over time. In order to identify the specific type of counter-terrorism strategy applied to that country, a typology of four counter-terrorism strategies undertaken by the United States toward other countries has been developed. The secondary but closely related question this dissertation attempts to answer is which determinants, or factors, have caused a shift or change in the United States counter-terrorism strategy in Somalia. By identifying determinants that affect strategy, the justification for a change, shift, or stayed course in strategy is made clearer. The typology and key determinants were initially assessed beyond Somalia to include insights from United States involvement in countries such as Vietnam and Afghanistan. This dissertation contends that that the United States has been engaged in the same counter-terrorism strategy against al-Shabaab since the early days of its re-engagement in the Somali conflict. Applying the typology to situational analysis dating back to as early as 2002, it becomes clear that the United States employs and has maintained a complex/combined counterterrorism strategy toward Somalia. In fact, the research conducted for this dissertation supports the overall argument that complex/combined counter-terrorism strategy is especially broad, which enables the United States to prioritise a light military footprint and low costs of involvement in combating al-Shabaab without becoming heavily involved. The malleable nature of this strategy allows the United States to shift resources and tactics with relative ease.
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    COVID-19 and the decline of autonomy: contact tracing in the age of surveillance capitalism
    (2022) Manne, Stephanie; Maluleke, Gavaza
    To develop successful COVID-19 pandemic response models, governments and policy makers are expanding on the known means of public health surveillance by collaborating with privately owned corporates and implementing new forms of surveillance technology, namely, contact tracing applications. This study examines the long-standing history of surveillance as well as the shifts in public health surveillance with the rise in technologically mediated solutions. In both research and public discourse, the overriding conversation is around the preservation of democracy and human rights and fearing the loss of “freedom” to the adoption of COVID-19 surveillance technologies. After analysing a series of academic journals and news articles that have been published since the beginning of the pandemic, this study highlights how a widespread use of such technologies has been encouraged in the name public health and safety, despite existing evidence of the shortfalls of contact tracing applications. By understanding the fundamental failures of democracy and the inequality that it perpetuates, this study argues that in the same way that the COVID-19 pandemic requires the creation of safe and unsafe bodies, so too does the system of democracy which depends upon creating fear and insecurity so that a reliance on the state is strengthened. As a result, the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating a world of technological solutionism and surveillance that yields very unequal social, political and economic power dynamics wherein biology and personal data are exploited and commodified. This study employs of the theoretical frameworks of Foucault in making sense of the politics behind pandemic response models and the guiding roles of power, governmentality and biopower. While outlining the dangers of surveillance capitalism, this study makes sense of the push to rely on and preserve the system of global capitalist democracy.
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    Democracy as a Lesser Evil: Testing the Churchill Notion of Democracy in South Africa and South Korea
    (2004) Shin, Doh; Mattes, Robert
    Winston Churchill asserted in 1947 that “democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” To date, this lesser-evil notion of democracy has been tested only in the post-communist societies of Eastern and Central Europe. As a result, little is known about how useful, or valid, this notion of democracy as a lesser evil is for analysing the popular perceptions of democracy among the mass publics of new democracies in other regions. To fill this gap in existing literature, this study analyses public opinion data from South Africa and South Korea. Our analysis of these data reveals that the Churchillian notion of democracy as a lesser evil is of limited use as an alternative paradigm for the study of democratisation, especially from the perspective of ordinary citizens in the midst of that political experience.
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    Democratic development states in Southern Africa : a study of Botswana and South Africa
    (2015) Nagar, Marcel Felicity; Akokpari, John
    In light of the growing consensus surrounding the need for the emergence of Democratic Developmental States in Africa, this thesis analyses the concept within the context of two Southern African states: Botswana and South Africa. In this regard, it critically analyses the extent to which Botswana and South Africa can be considered to be Democratic Developmental States by making use five benchmarks of a Democratic Developmental State. It does so by firstly exploring and defining the concept and theory of the Developmental State as well as the concept of the Democratic Developmental State. Secondly, the thesis surveys the contributions made by five key authors, namely, Richard Sklar, Adrian Leftwich, Mark Robinson, Gordon White and Omano Edigheji, to the topic of the Democratic Developmental State and outlines the following five benchmarks of a Democratic Developmental State: Development-Oriented Political Leadership; Effective and Well-Insulated Economic Bureaucracy; Developmental Success; Consolidated Electoral Democracy; and Popular Participation in the Development and Governance Process. Thirdly, the five benchmarks are used to critically analyse whether Botswana and South Africa can truly be regarded as Democratic Developmental States. In this regard, the thesis finds that neither state fully exhibits all five outlined benchmarks of a Democratic Developmental State: While Botswana exemplifies most of the five outlined benchmarks of a Democratic Developmental State, this thesis finds that South Africa still has a long to go before it can be regarded as a Democratic Developmental State. In this manner, this thesis provides possible recommendations which will assist both Botswana and South Africa towards becoming fully-fledged Democratic Developmental States.
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    Electoral Rules and Clientelistic Parties: A Regression Discontinuity Approach
    (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, 2015-05-28) Pellicer, Miquel; Wegner, Eva
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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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    Liberal ethics in South Africa since 1948 : power, principle and responsible action
    (1985) Godsell, R M
    This dissertation examines a four part hypothesis: (a) that liberal ethics in South Africa, particularly since the victory of the (Afrikaner) National Party in 1948, have been characterised by a sense of political powerlessness; (b) that as a consequence of this powerlessness, these ethics have been more concerned with principle, motives, conscience and internal consistency than with the consequences of liberal action; (c) that this sense of powerlessness is not justified in the social and political environment of the 1980's; and therefore, (d) that liberals should review their ethical approach with a view to developing an ethic of responsible liberal action.
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    Managing Dissent: Institutional Culture and Political Independence in the South African Broadcasting Corporation's News and Current Affairs Division
    (2007) Arndt_C; Jeremy Seekings
    Despite a fairly successful institutional transformation in the early 1990s, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), in particular its News and Current Affairs division, is widely perceived to lack political independence from the African National Congress-led government and to have neglected its role as a political watchdog in South Africa's young democracy. Most academic studies continue to be concerned with formal factors such as the SABC's institutional structure, media laws, or commercial imperatives -yet have not been able to explain the above anomaly. This paper focuses instead on the institutional culture around editorial independence which is conceptualised as comprising of beliefs (journalists' role perceptions), values (news values and the professional ethos) and internal practices (news decision-making, internal debate etc.). The main focus of analysis lies on the ways dissent is being managed within the corporation. This paper transcends the classical boundaries of political science into the neighbouring disciplines of media studies and sociology and draws specifically on (a) the literature on public broadcasting in young democracies, (b) debates around journalists' roles and professional values, and ( c) conceptualisations of institutional culture as well as power and power relations within organisations. In-depth interviews with 17 current and former SABC employees suggest that beliefs and values around editorial independence are highly contested at the SABC - in particular among staff and management and so much so that the struggle around which ones should be dominant has become part of the institutional culture itself. The resulting dissent is being managed both from above (by management and senior editors) and from below (by newsroom staff). The SABC does not seem to be subject to unusual levels of political pressure from outside. Instead, threats to editorial independence seem to originate mostly on the level of the SABC's board and senior news management. They take the form of pressure and rewards which, in combination, effectively stifle independent thinking and hence work against editorial independence and a professional ethos integral to the SABC's public broadcasting mandate. Hirschman's concepts of exit, voice, and loyalty are used to analyse how journalists respond to such pressure and rewards. While exit is not an option for many staff and voice is perceived as costly, loyalty (towards the idea of public broadcasting) does not appear to be very common either. Instead, what I call opportunistic loyalty or quiescence in the face of power seems to be the preferred way of dealing with the dilemma of individually-held values and beliefs and a dominant institutional culture that runs contrary to them. As a result debate is silenced, staff morale suffers and routine processes of news decision-making are easily manipulated by senior managers or other powerful individuals with the will to enforce their preferred values and beliefs (which in tum might have little to do with the ideals of public broadcasting). Journalists and editors seem to generally be reluctant to get involved in sensitive news decisions, to take responsibility and exercise their professional judgement which then makes the corporation potentially vulnerable to political interference from outside as well.
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    The material and political bases of lived poverty in Africa: Insights from the Afrobarometer
    (2008) Mattes, Robert
    The Afrobarometer has developed an experiential measure of lived poverty (how frequently people go without basic necessities during the course of a year) that measures a portion of the central core of the concept of poverty not captured by existing objective or subjective measures. Empirically, the measure has strong individual level construct validity and reliability within any cross national round of surveys. Yet it also displays inconsistent levels of external validity as a measure of aggregate level poverty when compared to other objective, material measures of poverty or well being. Surprisingly, however, we find that lived poverty is very strongly related to country level measures of political freedom. This finding simultaneously supports Sen's (1999) arguments about development as freedom, corroborates Halperin et al’s (2005) arguments about the “democracy advantage” in development, and increases our confidence that we are indeed measuring the experiential core of poverty.
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    Metropolitanisation and political change in South Africa
    (2006) Cameron, Robert; Alvarez, Alicia
    The International Metropolitan Observatory is an international network studying metropolitanisation. Firstly, it aims to develop a data base which will help facilitate systematic cross-national analysis of social, spatial and political shifts in metropolitan areas. Secondly, as the data base is developed, it can be used to explore hypotheses about metropolitan patterns and politics in a rigorous comparative way. A number of hypotheses were tested across the 15 country network in Phase 1 of this project. Hypothesis 1 was that metropolitan areas, consisting of cities and suburban peripheries or interlinked cities, increasingly dominate advanced industrial societies. It was also advanced that metropolitan dynamics are also increasingly present in developing countries. In South Africa this proposition was largely correct, although not to the extent that one might have imagined. Hypothesis 2 was that suburban settlement (relatively low-density ‘sprawl’) outside the central city or urban centre is increasing as a proportion of metropolitan areas, and absorbing a growing proportion of populations. If suburban settlement can be interpreted as relatively low-density outside the central cities, this hypothesis is largely valid in South Africa in that the low-density areas are increasing as a proportion of metropolitan areas. Hypothesis 3 was that with the increasing expansion beyond central city boundaries, metropolitan areas are increasingly geopolitical. In South Africa, the hypothesis that there is increasing geopolitical fragmentation in metropolitan areas is not applicable. Hypothesis 4 was that along with the above dynamics (geopolitical fragmentation), social and economic polarisation has occurred among places within metropolitan areas, especially between cities and their peripheries. The study has shown that while there is virtually no fragmentation in South African cities, social inequality has actually increased over the last 10 years. Hypothesis 5a was that the rise of middle and uppermiddle class areas outside central cities has created new bases of support for conservative parties. Election results in South Africa seem to suggest that conservative parties do have disproportionate support in low-density fringe areas. Hypothesis 5b was that new areas outside central cities demonstrate more independence from established party orientations or greater volatility. There was no available evidence to test this hypothesis in South Africa, but it is unlikely to be valid.
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    New Pentecostal churches, politics and the everyday life of university students at the University of Zimbabwe
    (2018) Gukurume, Simbarashe; van Wyk Ilana; Posel, Deborah
    In the past 15 years, there has been a concerted ‘Pentecostalisation’ of university spaces in Africa. Despite enormous growth in Pentecostal Charismatic Church membership and activities on African university campuses, and its attendant implications for academic and everyday life, there is hardly any study that explores this phenomenon. Thus, little is known about the complex entanglements between religion, politics and the dynamics of the everyday within the university campus and how this mediates students’ subjectivities. This thesis examines the lived experiences and everyday lives of university students at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ). The thesis is based on the narratives of students drawn through a qualitative methodology and more particularly, through participant observation, semi-structured and in-depth interviews over 15 months. Findings in this study revealed that university students convert and sign-up for new Pentecostal Charismatic Churches (PCCs) because they were imagined as spaces through which young people could forge supportive economic and social networks. PCCs’ gospel of prosperity and ‘spiritual warfare’ technologies were also deeply attractive to students who were caught in the hopelessness and uncertainty wrought by the country’s protracted socio-economic and political crisis. In this context, PCCs cultivate a sense of hope and optimism. However, although new PCCs reconfigure young people’s orientation to the future, many PCC promises remain elusive. The entrance of PCCs onto this university campus has also lead to institutional conflict as new churches struggle against the entrenched historical privilege of mainline churches- and the political influence of their followers in university management. New PCCs on the UZ campus have also become heavily involved in student and national politics, which further complicates their relationship with the university and the state. This thesis demonstrate the extent to which faith permeates every aspect of university experience for those who subscribe to its Pentecostal forms. I argue in this thesis that these complex linkages between faith and university life are mediated by the wider politics of the country, including linkages between the state and the university.
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    Opposition parties and the voters in South Africa's general election of 1999
    (Taylor & Francis, 2001) Mattes, R; Piombo, J
    Variance in partisan choice among South African voters can be predicted on the basis of what is known about the way voters see economic trends, evaluate government performance, perceive political parties, and rate party leaders. However, in this analysis it is demonstrated that factors related to racial divisions shape and filter how voters perceive political performance, and to some extent lead different voters to emphasize different performance criteria. But race does not affect the way voters make decisions. Thus, South Africa's opposition parties are weak not because black voters, the overwhelming majority of the electorate, operate with?a decision-making apparatus that emphasizes unity over performances or is hostile to pluralism and opposition. Rather, support for the African National Congress can be accounted for first, by positive ratings of its performance in government and second, by the fact that those black voters dissatisfied with the performance of the African National Congress (ANC) do not see a legitimate alternative among the existing opposition partie.
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    A pandemic recap: lessons we have learned
    (2021-09-10) Coccolini, Federico; Cicuttin, Enrico; Cremonini, Camilla; Tartaglia, Dario; Viaggi, Bruno; Kuriyama, Akira; Picetti, Edoardo; Ball, Chad; Abu-Zidan, Fikri; Ceresoli, Marco; Turri, Bruno; Jain, Sumita; Palombo, Carlo; Guirao, Xavier; Rodrigues, Gabriel; Gachabayov, Mahir; Machado, Fernando; Eftychios, Lostoridis; Kanj, Souha S; Di Carlo, Isidoro; Di Saverio, Salomone; Khokha, Vladimir; Kirkpatrick, Andrew; Massalou, Damien; Forfori, Francesco; Corradi, Francesco; Delibegovic, Samir; Machain Vega, Gustavo M.; Fantoni, Massimo; Demetriades, Demetrios; Kapoor, Garima; Kluger, Yoram; Ansari, Shamshul; Maier, Ron; Leppaniemi, Ari; Hardcastle, Timothy; Vereczkei, Andras; Karamagioli, Evika; Pikoulis, Emmanouil; Pistello, Mauro; Sakakushev, Boris E.; Navsaria, Pradeep H.; Galeiras, Rita; Yahya, Ali I; Osipov, Aleksei V; Dimitrov, Evgeni; Doklestić, Krstina; Pisano, Michele; Malacarne, Paolo; Carcoforo, Paolo; Sibilla, Maria G.; Kryvoruchko, Igor A; Bonavina, Luigi; Kim, Jae I; Shelat, Vishal G; Czepiel, Jacek; Maseda, Emilio; Marwah, Sanjay; Chirica, Mircea; Biancofiore, Giandomenico; Podda, Mauro; Cobianchi, Lorenzo; Ansaloni, Luca; Fugazzola, Paola; Seretis, Charalampos; Gomez, Carlos A.; Tumietto, Fabio; Malbrain, Manu; Reichert, Martin; Augustin, Goran; Amato, Bruno; Puzziello, Alessandro; Hecker, Andreas; Gemignani, Angelo; Isik, Arda; Cucchetti, Alessandro; Nacoti, Mirco; Kopelman, Doron; Mesina, Cristian; Ghannam, Wagih; Ben-Ishay, Offir; Dhingra, Sameer; Coimbra, Raul; Moore, Ernest E; Cui, Yunfeng; Quiodettis, Martha A.; Bala, Miklosh; Testini, Mario; Diaz, Jose; Girardis, Massimo; Biffl, Walter L; Hecker, Matthias; Sall, Ibrahima; Boggi, Ugo; Materazzi, Gabriele; Ghiadoni, Lorenzo; Matsumoto, Junichi; Zuidema, Wietse P; Ivatury, Rao; Enani, Mushira A; Litvin, Andrey; Al-Hasan, Majdi N.; Demetrashvili, Zaza; Baraket, Oussama; Ordoñez, Carlos A; Negoi, Ionut; Kiguba, Ronald; Memish, Ziad A; Elmangory, Mutasim M; Tolonen, Matti; Das, Korey; Ribeiro, Julival; O’Connor, Donal B; Tan, Boun K; Van Goor, Harry; Baral, Suman; De Simone, Belinda; Corbella, Davide; Brambillasca, Pietro; Scaglione, Michelangelo; Basolo, Fulvio; De’Angelis, Nicola; Bendinelli, Cino; Weber, Dieter; Pagani, Leonardo; Monti, Cinzia; Baiocchi, Gianluca; Chiarugi, Massimo; Catena, Fausto; Sartelli, Massimo
    On January 2020, the WHO Director General declared that the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The world has faced a worldwide spread crisis and is still dealing with it. The present paper represents a white paper concerning the tough lessons we have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, an international and heterogenous multidisciplinary panel of very differentiated people would like to share global experiences and lessons with all interested and especially those responsible for future healthcare decision making. With the present paper, international and heterogenous multidisciplinary panel of very differentiated people would like to share global experiences and lessons with all interested and especially those responsible for future healthcare decision making.
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    Partisan realignment in Cape Town, 1994-2004
    (2005) Seekings, Jeremy
    The Western Cape is the one part of South Africa that has experienced strong competition in democratic elections and a dramatic shift in power between political parties. Between 1994 and 2004 the initially dominant National Party lost almost all of its support, whilst support rose steadily for the African National Congress. Neither voting patterns nor shifts in the Western Cape fit neatly with a simple racial explanation of voting behaviour, because of both the heterogeneity and supposed fluidity of the ‘coloured vote’. First, coloured voters have voted for opposing parties. Secondly, it has been asserted widely that there was a swing among coloured voters from the National Party to the African National Congress. This paper explores ward-level election results and survey data on Cape Town to show that coloured voters continue to be heterogeneous in their voting behaviour but that there is little evidence that former National Party supporters have become ANC supporters. The major cause of shifting partisan power in Cape Town is not voter realignment, but rather demographic change, with differential turnout playing a role in specific elections. It is the overall electorate, rather than the individual voter, that has changed.
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    Political branding in Botswana and Malawi: electoral competition and the welfare agenda, 1994-2014
    (2015) Hamer, Samuel Frederic; Seekings, Jeremy
    Following the end of colonial rule in several southern African states, national leadership passed largely to neoliberal and patrimonial governments that proceeded to dominate the political landscape. Despite the widespread poverty that characterised much of post-colonial Africa, these governments did little to expand welfare spending beyond what colonial administrations had provided. Endemic poverty, however, has forced ruling-party governments to change tack as opposition parties in more recent years have emerged to challenge their leadership. In two such countries - Botswana and Malawi - heightened electoral competition has accompanied the efforts of presidential incumbents to demonstrate new public commitments to poverty reduction through shifts in rhetoric, symbolism, and policy emphasis. I argue that incumbents have pursued this "branding" with respect to poverty reduction in order to effectuate greater voter support for their incumbency and party. The Botswana Democratic Party has ruled uninterrupted in Botswana since independence, but opposition parties have made significant inroads during recent elections. In the midst of this heightened political competition, President Ian Khama (2008- ) has sought to increase support for the party by remarketing the country's employment-based programmes to serve new governmental objectives around employment and poverty reduction. Khama's rebranding of public employment programmes (PEPs), especially the Ipelegeng Programme, has allowed government to target underserved beneficiary groups such as the urban poor, and provided more reliable incomes to out-of-work Batswana in rural areas. Critically, the rebranding of social protection programmes has resulted in their being publicly associated more with Khama himself than with government. Public displays of empathy for the conditions of the poor moreover, as manifested during Khama's visits to disadvantaged areas, reinforced the president's image as a poverty-sensitive leader. These programmatic and non-programmatic measures have together defined Khama's social protection 'brand'; or the public emphasis that the president has placed on his social protection agenda. For their part, opposition leaders have branded themselves around a "social-democratic" approach to poverty reduction. Since the 1990s, ruling and opposition parties have converged in their social protection ideologies as the BDP has "counterbranded" in response to electoral competition by adopting opposition policy ideas. Khama's branding around personalised PEPs, in conclusion, generated strong support for himself among the rural poor especially owing to popular preferences for low-wage work over cash transfers. Analysis of Afrobarometer survey data shows that Khama's branding was insufficient to maintain the BDP vote, as the party's poor performance in the 2014 election confirmed. Both Malawian presidents between 2004 and 2014, Bingu wa Mutharika and Joyce Banda, established new political parties while in office and opted to "brand" them as prioritising poverty reduction. These brands - which had programmatic, rhetorical, and symbolic components - allowed Mutharika and Banda the possibility of achieving a broader national appeal, whereas presidential elections before 2009 had been decided on the basis of regional patronage networks.
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    The politicisation of HIV/AIDS in South Africa: Responses of the Treatment Action Campaign and South African government, 1994-2004 - A literature review
    (2009) Mackintosh, Daniel
    The HIV/AIDS epidemic became a deeply political and politicised issue throughout South African society from the 1990s. The ANC government and the country's most prominent HIV/AIDS movement, the Treatment Action Campaign, engaged one another in a political battle over HIV/AIDS policy and specifically ARVs. Highlighting a number of key international, continental and domestic factors that contributed to the politicisation of HIV/AIDS in South Africa, this review analyses the responses of government and the TAC to this highly charged environment. The literature reveals that the TAC saw HIV/AIDS primarily as a health crisis, appealing to medical science and a campaign to secure free ARV treatment for all South Africans, while the government understood the HIV/AIDS disaster through the prism of race and racism, poverty and South African public health history. Authors have also highlighted the importance of accounting for Mbeki's views and their impact on government HIV/AIDS policy. Four different paradigms are outlined through which the literature can be understood: 'biomedical-mobilisation', 'public policy', 'historical-sociological' and the 'Marxist critique'. There are no 'schools' or 'categories' associated with the TAC's response to politicisation due to their open and non-contradictory actions and therefore no 'problem' to explain. Hence this review will look at two specific TAC responses to what it perceived as government denialism; a grassroots treatment literacy campaign and the establishment of an epistemic community capable of engaging in an intensive media-based 'intellectual campaign'. Finally, this review will suggest that the initial manner in which a social issue is politicised impacts heavily on its outcomes.
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    Politics 2nd year skills development materials
    (2013-07) Duthie, Shawn
    These skills development materials are aimed at 2nd year students in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Cape Town. They cover all topics of quality academic writing, including: critical reading; formulating a book review; developing an argument; writing an introduction; methodology; finding rlevant source; writing book reviews; tips on presentation; acting on feedback; and writing exams.
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    Politics and policy outcomes on children affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa
    (IDS Bulletin, 2008) Strand, Per; Kinney, Mary; Mattes, Robert
    Global agencies working for children affected by AIDS have recently reported some progress (UNAIDS 2008). Year by year, more HIV-positive pregnant women receive medication to avoid infecting their unborn babies, increasing numbers of children in late stages of HIV infection receive antiretroviral treatment (ART), and a higher proportion of affected children enjoy some form of social protection and schooling. However, while all this is good news, countries still fail to provide basic services to the majority of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in the context of AIDS. Clearly, all stakeholders need to do more to protect children from the effects of AIDS. But how can this be done? A dominant discourse suggests that governance and politics can provide leverage to a more effective response.