{"title":"‘Mutual Accommodation’: Clientelist Politics in South African School Education","authors":"S. Meny-Gibert","doi":"10.1353/trn.2022.a905641","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2022.a905641","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Whilst most post-apartheid public schools in South Africa remain significantly underfunded, the education budget nevertheless provides a significant injection of jobs and public spending into the provinces–into rural provinces with small economies especially. Based on research in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng provinces, I show how a particular form of clientelist politics has taken root in the post-apartheid school education system–one locally organised around ‘promotional’ posts in schools, and disconnected from a clear state, party, or other organisational ‘centre’. Groups of locally organised unionists operate to secure preferential access to these posts, sometimes through the use or threat of violence, sometimes through collusion with district education officials, or with community members who might benefit from access to meagre school budgets. Attempts by residents to secure livelihood strategies in the context of poverty intersect with local strategies of upward mobility on the part of ordinary teachers, and in turn connect loosely, via patterns of ‘mutual accommodation’ with strategies of elite accumulation amongst senior politicians, administrators, and union leaders. In the case of the education sectors in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng provinces at least, on which this article focuses, this constitutes a fragmented yet interlocking system of unstable governance. In this sense, I suggest that there is much in the dynamics of education governance that offers insight into wider patterns of state-society relations around the local state in South Africa.","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":"44 1","pages":"62 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84778848","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":"Water and the Politics of Rural Service Provision","authors":"Tess N. Peacock","doi":"10.1353/trn.2022.a905646","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2022.a905646","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":"24 1","pages":"117 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77061554","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":"29 Leads To Love: New and Selected Poems by Salimah Valiani (review)","authors":"C. Sandwith","doi":"10.1353/trn.2022.a905648","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2022.a905648","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":"74 1","pages":"129 - 131"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90391143","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}
Tim Gibbs, L. Phillips, William Beinart, Sinegugu Zukhulu
{"title":"Introduction: Revenues, Rule, Redistribution","authors":"Tim Gibbs, L. Phillips, William Beinart, Sinegugu Zukhulu","doi":"10.1353/trn.2022.a905638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2022.a905638","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, a new stream of research on the crisis of the state in South Africa has emerged, as revenues have faltered and ageing infrastructure cracked. Inevitably, the core of the South African economy attracts the most attention – notably the crisis of Eskom (Chipkin et al 2018, Tooze 2023). Nonetheless, it is on the poorest, rural margins of South Africa, which generally have higher rates of poverty and weaker fiscal bases, where the crisis is worst. To take one important example amongst many, according to the latest reports of the auditor general, around half South Africa’s municipalities face financial distress or insolvency: unable to manage, raise revenues and deliver basic services, such as water and electricity (Ensor 2022). Of these collapsing municipalities, the overwhelming number are ‘Category B4’ rural municipalities, typically found in the former ‘tribal Homelands/Bantustans’.","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":"27 1","pages":"2 - 20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84358416","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":"Governing in the Shadows: Angola’s Securatised State by Paula Christina Roque (review)","authors":"Claudia Gastrow","doi":"10.1353/trn.2022.a905649","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2022.a905649","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":"24 1","pages":"132 - 134"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78120793","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 Effects of Race: The Devastating Effects of Rigid Category-Thinking by Nina Jablonski and Gerhard Maré (review)","authors":"Birgit Schreiber","doi":"10.1353/trn.2022.a905647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2022.a905647","url":null,"abstract":"The scholars in this book argue their thinking and share their experiences from living ‘in a racialized world and who yearn for a human one’ (Jablonski and Maré 2018, 7) and seek to transcend their racialised lives and move the readers to appreciate a universal, more human space, where full personhood can emerge. The book is an attempt to decolonise what it means to be human and attempts to rescue being human from the grip of race. It shapes a new version of and creates ‘a new humanism and to imagine humanity otherwise’ (Jablonski and Maré 2018, 61). REvIEW NINA JAbLoNSKI ANd GERhARd MARé (EdS) (2018) the effects of Race: the devastating effects of Rigid categoRy-thinKing. AFRICAN SUN MEdIA R E V I E W : J a B L O N S K I a N D m a R é : T h E E F F E C T S O F R a C E","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":"11 1","pages":"124 - 128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75613127","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 ‘Invisible’ Property System and Revenue Collection in Former Homelands in the Context of Hybrid Governance and Access to Land And Basic Services","authors":"Avhatakali Sithagu","doi":"10.1353/trn.2022.a905642","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2022.a905642","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Municipalities in former homelands situated on land under traditional authorities cannot institute an effective revenue collection system because most of the land is outside the formal property system. The fundamental issue is that customary land rights remain ‘invisible’ to the cadastral system, which together with other components of the land administration system, connects individuals to the revenue collection system. Through ethnographic interviews conducted in the Thembisile Hani Local Municipality, a former homeland municipality, this article demonstrates how a state institution, Eskom, navigates this complex terrain. In doing so, the article contributes to a broader debate about the dynamics and shape of the municipal revenue crisis that is often said to be an obstacle to service delivery and the smooth functioning of municipalities. While most scholars focus on how communities work with or against the rigid rules of the formal property system to access basic services, this article takes a different approach. It focuses on how state and non-state institutions attempt to deliver basic services by using informal practices to navigate their formal systems: a practice that is often under-researched.","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":"98 1","pages":"76 - 92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76216286","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":"Local Municipalities, Central Fiscal Reform, and Regional Blocs: Revenue Relationships and Local Government in Limpopo, 1980–2020","authors":"Joel Pearson","doi":"10.1353/trn.2022.a905640","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2022.a905640","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article considers the changing role of the Mogalakwena Local Municipality in the political economy of the Waterberg region of Limpopo. It considers the effects that centre-led processes of municipal fiscal reform over the course of the 1980s and 1990s have had on local and regional politics, and suggest that this offers one dimension through which to understand why Limpopo has long proved a troublesome region for successive national South African governments, across the apartheid and post-apartheid decades. In the first section, I consider the outcomes of attempts by the national government to reform apartheid in the 1980s. Even as the National Party moved to introduce forms of regional government which had greater emphasis on the redistribution of revenues across racial boundaries, ‘lily-white’ Conservative Party-controlled local councils sought to entrench fiscal segregation and resist inclusion in the Regional Services Councils (RSCs). In the second section, I show how this resistance ultimately failed in the face of national transitional processes. By the end of the 1990s, the Conservative Party was a spent force. However, what resulted from the period of the local government transition fell far from the aspirations of ‘wall-to-wall democratic local government’. In the final section, I argue that post-apartheid municipal reform which has overseen an expansion of the developmental role of local government, which entrenched principles of corporate managerialism and outsourcing, has given rise to new forms of local and regional resistance against central government and party control. Against the backdrop of local economic decline, local politicians have used revenues distributed by the national treasury to build an independent political base within regional and provincial structures of the African National Congress.","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":"6 1","pages":"42 - 61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80480913","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":"‘Mutual Accommodation’: Clientelist Politics in South African School Education","authors":"S. Meny-Gibert","doi":"10.1353/trn.2022.a905643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2022.a905643","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Whilst most post-apartheid public schools in South Africa remain significantly underfunded, the education budget nevertheless provides a significant injection of jobs and public spending into the provinces–into rural provinces with small economies especially. Based on research in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng provinces, I show how a particular form of clientelist politics has taken root in the post-apartheid school education system–one locally organised around ‘promotional’ posts in schools, and disconnected from a clear state, party, or other organisational ‘centre’. Groups of locally organised unionists operate to secure preferential access to these posts, sometimes through the use or threat of violence, sometimes through collusion with district education officials, or with community members who might benefit from access to meagre school budgets. Attempts by residents to secure livelihood strategies in the context of poverty intersect with local strategies of upward mobility on the part of ordinary teachers, and in turn connect loosely, via patterns of ‘mutual accommodation’ with strategies of elite accumulation amongst senior politicians, administrators, and union leaders. In the case of the education sectors in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng provinces at least, on which this article focuses, this constitutes a fragmented yet interlocking system of unstable governance. In this sense, I suggest that there is much in the dynamics of education governance that offers insight into wider patterns of state-society relations around the local state in South Africa.","PeriodicalId":45045,"journal":{"name":"Transformation-Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa","volume":"1 1","pages":"62 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85424666","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}