Assessing Racial Redress in the Public Service
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2008
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HSRC Press
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University of Cape Town
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Abstract
Efforts to make South Africa’s public service more representative were propelled by the introduction of a non-racial democracy in 1994. The racial profile of South Africa’s public service was integral to sustaining the policy of apartheid, which was designed to promote a segregated and unequal system of social, economic and political relations between legally defined race groups. Van den Berghe (cited in Marger 1994: 402) interestingly referred to apartheid South Africa as a Herrenvolk democracy, defined paradoxically as a ‘state that provides most democratic features of political rule to whites while ruling blacks dictatorially’. More specifically, the creation of geographically separate and administratively distinct homeland territories to house South Africa’s black African population represented the pinnacle of a race-based system of public administration designed to strategically regulate the representation of the country’s black population in the public service relative to its white population.
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Reference:
Naidoo, V. (2008). Assessing Racial Redress in the Public Service. In Habib, A. & Bentley, K. (eds.) Racial Redress and Citizenship in South Africa. Cape Town: HRSC Press.