{"title":"RECONCILIATION FROM THE TOP DOWN? GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA, RWANDA AND BURUNDI","authors":"Cori Wielenga","doi":"10.35293/SRSA.V36I1.149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35293/SRSA.V36I1.149","url":null,"abstract":"National reconciliation has increasingly become an integral part of post-conflict recovery processes in Africa. What national reconciliation means, how it differs from interpersonal reconciliation and to what extent governments can facilitate reconciliation at all remains under debate. This article examines government institutions intended to facilitate national reconciliation processes in South Africa, Rwanda and Burundi. Rather than normatively prescribing what governments should be doing, this article seeks to examine what governments are doing as a starting point to understanding what national reconciliation is.","PeriodicalId":41892,"journal":{"name":"Strategic Review for Southern Africa","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42182359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Obituary: In Memorium: John Daniel","authors":"R. Southall","doi":"10.35293/srsa.v36i2.164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35293/srsa.v36i2.164","url":null,"abstract":"John Daniel, former professor of Political Science at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW), died at his home on 25 July 2014 after a brave struggle with cancer. He will be remembered for the major contribution to political science in South Africa, his activism in the struggle against apartheid, for his inspirational teaching, his work as a progressive editor, and for his important research for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).","PeriodicalId":41892,"journal":{"name":"Strategic Review for Southern Africa","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45355932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"PUBLIC SERVICE REFORM: KEY CHALLENGES OF EXECUTION","authors":"Y. Muthien","doi":"10.35293/SRSA.V36I2.173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35293/SRSA.V36I2.173","url":null,"abstract":"1. Introduction This article explores the key challenges to building a 'capable development state' in South Africa, as articulated in the National Development Plan (NDP). These challenges stem not only from a lack of capacity, but from a lack of coherence in framing the agenda and key success factors of a capable development state. The debate on state literature has evolved considerably from the Weberian analysis of examining state bureaucracies from a rationalist perspective--that is, focusing on the presence/absence of a coherent and hierarchical organisational logic, its efficiency and effectiveness and the existence/non-existence of a meritocratic professional bureaucracy insulated from day-to-day political interference (see van Bockel & Noordegraaf 2006). Later literature began examining the capability of the state with reference to its historical location in the existing political economy --that is, the periodisation of statehood from colonialism to modernity, class formation and political cohesion (Evans 1997; Houston & Muthien 2000). More recently, state literature has examined the capability of the state against the trajectory of democratisation and/or development (Evans 1989). Finally, there has been a closer scrutiny to the mechanics of the state engine with the growth of 'managerialism' centred in the rise of new public administration (Schwella 1991; Muthien 2000). All of these theories in essence present a mosaic of analyses of various angles of state operations. For the purposes of this article, state capability will be assessed through the level of expertise and professionalism, the governance of accountability, the effective design of organisational systems and processes, the level of skills and the quality of leadership; drawing on a hybrid of perspectives of state theory. State capability in South Africa will also be examined through the prism of public sector reform and discourses around the development to date. 2. Public sector reform Public sector reform in South Africa has come a long way since 1994 from a highly centralised 'command and control' function to a more decentralised function at three tiers of government with devolved authority to national departments, provinces and local authorities. The NDP affirms this decentralisation and goes further to make a bold call for devolving more power to the metros at local government level. As evident in the dominant post-apartheid discourse since 1994, the paradigm of public sector reform has evolved from: --democratisation and transformation of the state machinery (1994-2004), to --building a development state (2005-2013) However, public sector analysts have observed that South Africa still lacks a coherent model of public sector reform and public management (Chipkin & Lipietz 2012; Muthien 2013). It is important to emphasise that South Africa is not a 'failed state'. We have a functioning judicial system, legislature, state bureaucracy and executive. Moreover, we have pockets o","PeriodicalId":41892,"journal":{"name":"Strategic Review for Southern Africa","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42091392","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"MEDIA WAVES AND MORAL PANICKING: THE CASE OF THE FIFA WORLD CUP 2010","authors":"Monique Emser, S. Francis","doi":"10.35293/SRSA.V36I2.176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35293/SRSA.V36I2.176","url":null,"abstract":"1. Introduction In the run-up to the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, human trafficking made headline news in 27 South African newspapers. This resulted in a series of news waves pertaining to perceptions of forced prostitution and child trafficking to come during the World Cup. Evocative headlines capitalising on societal fears appeared in the local media. Out of 350 articles covering human trafficking in South African newspapers between 2006 and 2010, 82 (or 24 per cent) directly linked this sporting event with human trafficking. A sample of headlines included: \"Flesh trade fear for World Cup\" (Citizen 2006); \"Human trafficking casts shadow over 2010\" (Sunday Independent 2007); \"Human trafficking may escalate ahead of 2010 World Cup--report\" (The Weekender 2008); \"Warning on child trafficking in 2010\" (Cape Argus 2008); \"2010 exploitation: Human traffickers ready for World Cup\" (Daily News 2009); \"Human trafficking red alert: Women, children under threat as World Cup sees prostitution demand rocket\" (Daily News 2010). As with previous international sporting events, the threat of human trafficking quickly became part of public consciousness. Advocacy organisations, such as Molo Songololo, Justice Acts, Not for Sale, Doctors for Life, STOP (Stop Trafficking of People) (1) and politicians (2) publicly repeated inflated estimates of numbers of women and children who would be trafficked, brutalised and forced into a life of sexual servitude in order to meet the demands of hordes of \"sexually deviant, inebriated football fans\". It was erroneously portrayed that large sporting events--particularly football--attracted and facilitated the demand and supply of illicit sex. Based on the myth of 40 000 sex slaves who were imported from Eastern Europe into Germany, a resultant media hype and moral panic, became part of the South African World Cup discourse. We claim that media hypes based on constructed moral panics might be recycled in similar scenarios demonstrating the staying power of such media hypes and the utility of moral panics. As Vasterman (2005: 517) claims: [M]edia coverage can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. A situation becomes a real crisis because it is described as a crisis; a condition becomes an important social problem because it is described in terms of a sudden deterioration of the situation. In this way media-hype can create new realities, independent from other non-mediated realities. 2. The dark side of sex, football and South Africa Up until 2008, South Africa was ranked as a Tier 2 (Watch List) country for the fourth consecutive year by the United States (US) TIP Report for failing to \"comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking\" (UNHCR 2008). According to the report, the government failed to provide adequate data on trafficking (cases investigated and/or prosecuted), and deported and/or prosecute suspected victims without providing appropriate protective services (UNHCR 2008). Although South Africa was take","PeriodicalId":41892,"journal":{"name":"Strategic Review for Southern Africa","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42130926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mauritius’ Competitive Party Politics and Social Democratic Welfare Outcomes after Independence","authors":"Siphamandla Zondi","doi":"10.35293/srsa.v41i2.299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35293/srsa.v41i2.299","url":null,"abstract":"Mauritius has cast herself as an outlier on the African political landscape, having hosted peaceful, free and fair elections since the advent of independence in 1968 without fail. The island state of Mauritius, which lies over 2000km off the coast of East Africa, boasts a multiplicity of political parties which have added to the vibrancy of political culture in that country. Election season tends to be a hotly contested period in which various political parties, by virtue of their claims as custodians of collective and national centre left interests, jostle one another for dominance under the banner of pro-poor development. This essay considers Mauritius’ status as a social democratic welfare state by drawing the relation between the country’s competitive political culture and development successes against the backdrop of its democratic election experiences from 1968 to 2005. While election outcomes elsewhere on the continent tend to reflect the maturity of democratic spaces in which political spaces exist, in Mauritius they continue to serve as a litmus test to ascertain the level of commitment to the social cause by the ruling incumbents and aspirants alike.","PeriodicalId":41892,"journal":{"name":"Strategic Review for Southern Africa","volume":" 36","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41252469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"THOUGHTS ON XENOPHOBIA, DISRUPTIVE NATION AND \"MAN ON GROUND\"","authors":"C. Chasi","doi":"10.35293/SRSA.V38I2.254","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35293/SRSA.V38I2.254","url":null,"abstract":"Stories of Africans displaced by war taking high risks to get to an often inhospitable Western Europe are frequently in the news. But subSaharan Africa is the region which hosts the largest population of refugees in the world. Refugees who flee to sub Saharan African countries are also frequently subjected to xenophobic exclusion and violence by people who sometimes claim to be defending rights and privileges associated with national belonging. My aims are to point out new avenues for novel insights into the interrelations between xenophobia, disruption and nation by giving attractive detail and depth to the discussion using Director Akin Omotoso's Man on Ground (2011); putting forward arguments against xenophobic stereotypes and violence; pointing out some pitfalls of nation-building; and by finding and imagining human ground amidst disruptive nationhood. What is offered is a new synthesis of philosophical insights that defies distinctions between African and Western philosophy. Going beyond nativism and xenophobia, this synthesis speaks of the need and possibility to craft common human ground that enables people to become the most they can be.","PeriodicalId":41892,"journal":{"name":"Strategic Review for Southern Africa","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41647237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"THE SANDF AS A HUMAN SECURITY INSTRUMENT POST-1994","authors":"Thuso Benton Mongwaketse","doi":"10.35293/SRSA.V38I2.222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35293/SRSA.V38I2.222","url":null,"abstract":"South Africa adopted a human security orientation at the start of its democratic epoch in 1994, but its operationalisation by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) proved difficult to implement. Human security is an approach to security which prioritises the protection of the people over security of the state. One of its central tenets is that security is best achieved through development as opposed to arms. Against this backdrop, the principal objective of this article is to critically analyse and understand South Africa's official human security orientation. Two indicators, the functions performed by the SANDF as well as South Africa's strategic defence posture, were assessed to achieve the objective. The securitisation model associated with Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver was used as a theoretical framework to understand South Africa's official conception and utilisation of human security. It was found that the SANDF's operational functioning was compromised by having to perform its primary responsibilities along with secondary developmental tasks demanded by the broad mandate of human security. Furthermore, while South Africa lexically took human security and state security to be equally important, in practice the SANDF tended to prioritise state security ahead of human security both at home and abroad. Some analysts detected lack of strategic coherence in South Africa's security engagements in Africa while ignoring extensive efforts of the SANDF to bring peace, and not destabilisation, on the continent as part of the strategic defence posture. Ultimately, this article argues that the competency with which the SANDF ensures Strategic Review for Southern Africa, Vol 38, No 2 Thuso Benton Mongwaketse 29 state security must be cascaded down to the human level by taking up more secondary functions with some provisos. Alignment of defence policy and adequate resources as well as the involvement of the people will be indispensable towards realisation of true human security.","PeriodicalId":41892,"journal":{"name":"Strategic Review for Southern Africa","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42559838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bridget, Conley. Memory from the Margins: Ethiopia’s Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp 255.","authors":"Meressa Tsehaye Gebrewahd","doi":"10.35293/srsa.v41i2.309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35293/srsa.v41i2.309","url":null,"abstract":"This book consists of six chapters. The first chapter deals with the essence of “Memory from the Margins”. The second chapter discussed the ‘Ethiopian revolution and the Dergue Regime’s red terror (1974-1978)”. The third and fourth chapters also discuss post-Dergue “Transitional influences (1991-2005)” and “the shape of memory (2003-2010)”. The fifth chapter covers the “Tour as traumatic performance, 2010 to present)” and the last chapter concludes “on the memory and future transitions”. First, I would like to appreciate the author for presenting us her book about one of the key chapters in modern Ethiopian political history: the history of Red Terror and its legacy on memory, history and quest for democracy, torture, trauma, survivor docent/victims, reconciliation, museum and transitional justice as well as the ideals “reform and revolution”. This book is timely and detailed in terms of discovering the Red Terror atrocities and survivors’ trauma and capturing similar experiences in other parts of the world.","PeriodicalId":41892,"journal":{"name":"Strategic Review for Southern Africa","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44828615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"GLOBAL COLONIALITY AND THE CHALLENGES OF CREATING AFRICAN FUTURES","authors":"S. Ndlovu-Gatsheni","doi":"10.35293/SRSA.V36I2.189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35293/SRSA.V36I2.189","url":null,"abstract":"Can Africans create African futures within a modern world system structured by global coloniality? Global coloniality is a modern global power structure that has been in place since the dawn of Euro-North American-centric modernity. This modernity is genealogically and figuratively traceable to 1492 when Christopher Columbus claimed to have discovered a 'New World'. It commenced with enslavement of black people and culminated in global coloniality. Today global coloniality operates as an invisible power matrix that is shaping and sustaining asymmetrical power relations between the Global North and the Global South. Even the current global power transformations which have enabled the re-emergence of a Sinocentric economic power and deWesternisation processes including the rise of South-South power blocs such as BRICS, do not mean that the modern world system has now undergone genuine decolonisation and deimperialisation to the extent of being amenable to the creation of other futures. Global coloniality continues to frustrate decolonial initiatives aimed at creating postcolonial futures free from coloniality. The article posits that global coloniality remains one of the most important modern power structures that constrain and limit African agency. To support this proposition, the article delves deeper into an analysis of the architecture and configuration of current asymmetrical global power structures; unmasks imperial/colonial reason embedded in Euro-North American-centric epistemology as well as the problem of Eurocentrism; and unpacks the Cartesian notions of being and its relegation of African subjectivity to a perpetualstate of becoming. Within this context, Africans have emerged as fighting subjects for a new world order that is decolonised, deimperialised, open to the emergence of new humanism and African futures. ","PeriodicalId":41892,"journal":{"name":"Strategic Review for Southern Africa","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45026895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}