Browsing by Subject "Post-apartheid"

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    Perceptions of class and income in post-apartheid Cape Town
    (2007) Seekings, Jeremy
    The renaissance of studies of class in post-apartheid South Africa has not produced any certainty as to the optimal delineation of classes in empirical analysis. This paper uses data from a 2005 survey in Cape Town to examine the relationships between occupational (or objective) class, self-reported (or subjective) class, race, neighbourhood income and household income. Cape Town is not an industrial city, and thus has small working classes, but (like all South African cities) it does have high unemployment. There are clear relationships between race, education and occupational class (unsurprisingly, given the history of apartheid). The relationships between occupational class, incomes and self-reported class are less clear. The paper concludes with a preliminary analysis of some of the possible consequences of class, in terms of perceptions of the social structure and of government policy, and of racial identities and attitudes.
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    Racial and class discrimination in assessments of “just desert” in post-apartheid Cape Town
    (2007) Seekings, Jeremy
    In multi-racial or otherwise multi-cultural societies, people may discriminate in the allocation of scarce resources against members of particular racial or cultural groups. This paper examines how people in post-apartheid Cape Town – a city characterized by both inequality and cultural diversity – assess the ‘desert’ of others in terms of access to social assistance from the state and employment opportunities. The paper uses attitudinal data from two sets of vignettes included in a 2005 survey of a representative sample of adults. The paper extends the findings of previous studies that a wide range of South Africans distinguish between deserving and undeserving poor on the basis, primarily, of their willingness or ability to work and their responsibility for dependents. The paper also confirms the preliminary findings of previous research that there is little racial discrimination in respondents’ assessment of how deserving the subjects were in a narrow range of vignettes, but that race and class are significant in that richer and especially rich, white respondents are more generous in their assessment of what deserving people should receive. There is stronger evidence that racial considerations are relevant with respect to popular assessments of the justice of employment decisions, although it is difficult to distinguish (using available data) between racial prejudice (on the part of the respondents) and a principled opposition to affirmative action (i.e. opposition to perceived unfair racial discrimination on the part of employers or the state).
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    A South African variety of capitalism?
    (Taylor & Francis, 2014) Nattrass, Nicoli
    This paper explores the South African political economy through the lens of a variety of capitalism (VoC) approach. It argues that attempts were made in the early post-apartheid period to forge a more social-democratic and co-ordinated variety of capitalism, but that this floundered as the government adopted neoliberal macroeconomic policies against the wishes of organised labour, and as black economic empowerment policies further undermined an already racially-fraught business sector. Organised labour was able to push for, and maintain, protective labour market policies – but this came at the cost of growing policy inconsistency notably with regard to trade liberalisation which, in the presence of growing labour-market protection, has exacerbated South Africa's unemployment crisis. Unemployment remains intractable (and with it inequality) and corruption/patrimonialism appears to be a growing problem.
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    A South African variety of capitalism?
    (Taylor & Francis, 2013) Nattrass, Nicoli
    This paper explores the South African political economy through the lens of a variety of capitalism (VoC) approach. It argues that attempts were made in the early post-apartheid period to forge a more social-democratic and co-ordinated variety of capitalism, but that this floundered as the government adopted neoliberal macroeconomic policies against the wishes of organised labour, and as black economic empowerment policies further undermined an already raciallyfraught business sector. Organised labour was able to push for, and maintain, protective labour market policies – but this came at the cost of growing policy inconsistency notably with regard to trade liberalisation which, in the presence of growing labour-market protection, has exacerbated South Africa’s unemployment crisis. Unemployment remains intractable (and with it inequality) and corruption/ patrimonialism appears to be a growing problem.
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    Who holds power in post-apartheid South Africa?
    (2007) Seekings, Jeremy
    The transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa, marked above all by the election in 1994 of a government led by the African National Congress (ANC) and headed by President Nelson Mandela, represented a milestone not only for South Africa but for Africa generally. The transition meant the end of formal colonial or settler rule in Africa.? On one level, the new South African democracy appears robust and substantive. Whilst there has been no turnover in office at the national level, free and fair legislative elections have been held regularly, with a universal franchise and multi-party competition, and there is an independent judiciary, a critical press, and a vigorous civil society.? But there are at least two grounds for questioning the quality of the new democracy. First, the strength of the ANC undermines the constitutional separation of powers and the real accountability of the executive to the electorate.? Secondly, the ANC is widely accused of having 'betrayed' the working-class and poor by adopting neo-liberal policies that serve the interests of capital and therefore represent a continuity from the apartheid era. Whilst there is some merit in each critique, the formal procedures of representative democracy are not inconsequential, and (more importantly) a range of classes and interest-groups besides 'capital' wield power, albeit in different ways.