Whites and Democracy in South Africa

2022-02-24 Political Science

Author : Roger Southall
Release : 2022-02-24
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 937/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Whites and Democracy in South Africa by : Roger Southall

Download or read book Whites and Democracy in South Africa written by Roger Southall. This book was released on 2022-02-24. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the place and role of whites in South African political life today? Are whites genuinely willing participants in a ‘non-racial democracy’, willing to forego the racial privileges of the past or, despite legal equality, have they proved reluctant to relinquish power and continue, as black activists assert, to dominate many aspects of South African society? Building upon the burgeoning body of work on whiteness, this book focuses on how whites have adapted politically to the arrival of democracy and sweeping political change in South Africa. Outlining a variety of responses in how white South Africans have sought to grapple with apartheid’s brutal history, the author shows how their memories of the past have shaped their reactions to political equality. Although the majority feared the coming of democracy, only a right-wing minority actively resisted its arrival. Others chose (and are still choosing) to emigrate, used democracy to defend ‘minority rights’ or have withdrawn into psychologically or physically demarcated social enclaves. Challenging much current thinking, Southall argues that many whites have chosen to embrace the freedoms that democracy has offered, or to adapt to its often disconcerting realities pragmatically. Examining this crucial issue against the historical context of minority rule and its defeat, the author presents a new dynamic to the continuing debate on whiteness in Africa and globally.

The Black and White Rainbow

2020-10-13 History

Author : Carolyn Holmes
Release : 2020-10-13
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 179/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Black and White Rainbow by : Carolyn Holmes

Download or read book The Black and White Rainbow written by Carolyn Holmes. This book was released on 2020-10-13. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nation-building imperatives compel citizens to focus on what makes them similar and what binds them together, forgetting what makes them different. Democratic institution building, on the other hand, requires fostering opposition through conducting multiparty elections and encouraging debate. Leaders of democratic factions, like parties or interest groups, can consolidate their power by emphasizing difference. But when held in tension, these two impulses—toward remembering difference and forgetting it, between focusing on unity and encouraging division—are mutually constitutive of sustainable democracy. Based on ethnographic and interview-based fieldwork conducted in 2012–13, The Black and White Rainbow: Reconciliation, Opposition, and Nation-Building in Democratic South Africa explores various themes of nation- and democracy-building, including the emotional and banal content of symbols of the post-apartheid state, the ways that gender and race condition nascent nationalism, the public performance of nationalism and other group-based identities, integration and sharing of space, language diversity, and the role of democratic functioning including party politics and modes of opposition. Each of these thematic chapters aims to explicate a feature of the multifaceted nature of identity-building, and link the South African case to broader literatures on both nationalism and democracy.

Transformation from Below? White Suburbia in the Transformation of Apartheid South Africa to Democracy

2015-08-06 Social Science

Author : Ursula Scheidegger
Release : 2015-08-06
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 717/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Transformation from Below? White Suburbia in the Transformation of Apartheid South Africa to Democracy by : Ursula Scheidegger

Download or read book Transformation from Below? White Suburbia in the Transformation of Apartheid South Africa to Democracy written by Ursula Scheidegger. This book was released on 2015-08-06. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa is an example of a relatively successful political transition. Nevertheless, the first democratic elections in 1994 did not change the systemic and structural inequalities, the socioeconomic legacies of discrimination or the alienation of the different population groups. At the centre of this study is the transformation potential of two formerly white neighbourhoods in Johannesburg Norwood and Orange Grove. Both neighbourhoods have experienced considerable demographic changes and the various population groups differ in terms of their expectations and their willingness to adjust to the changes provoked by the transition. At the local level, patterns of discrimination and oppression continue. Spaces, opportunities and leverage of social networks engaged in the community are influenced by the resources people are able to access. Moreover, cooperation is contested in a context of pervasive inequality because there is no incentive for privileged groups to change arrangements that benefit them. In this context of conflicting interests and unequal access to power and resources, decentralisation and the promotion of participatory structures in local communities are a problem and the reliance on local networks as agents of development is questionable.

The White Africans

2012-04-17 Political Science

Author : Gerald L'Ange
Release : 2012-04-17
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 91X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The White Africans by : Gerald L'Ange

Download or read book The White Africans written by Gerald L'Ange. This book was released on 2012-04-17. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The negotiated transfer of power in apartheid South Africa was the last act in the dismantling of white supremacy on the African continent. While opening a new era for the whites in Africa, it closed an earlier one that contains some of the most colourful episodes in world history. In The White Africans, South African journalist and writer Gerald L'Ange gives a warts-and-all account of the European experience in Africa, from the explorations of the 15th-century Portuguese mariners to the presidential inauguration of Nelson Mandela in 1994. The story is traced through the Europeans' exploration and settlement, through their slavery and economic exploitation, their conquest and colonisation, through decolonisation and the liberation struggles in Kenya, Algeria, the Portuguese territories, Rhodesia and Namibia to the negotiation of democracy in South Africa. Avoiding both past falsities and recent distortions, the book seeks the truth of the European experience, examines the present situation of the white Africans and looks at what might lie ahead for them.

Nostalgia after Apartheid

2020-11-30 Social Science

Author : Amber R. Reed
Release : 2020-11-30
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 79X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Nostalgia after Apartheid by : Amber R. Reed

Download or read book Nostalgia after Apartheid written by Amber R. Reed. This book was released on 2020-11-30. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this engaging book, Amber Reed provides a new perspective on South Africa’s democracy by exploring Black residents’ nostalgia for life during apartheid in the rural Eastern Cape. Reed looks at a surprising phenomenon encountered in the post-apartheid nation: despite the Department of Education mandating curricula meant to teach values of civic responsibility and liberal democracy, those who are actually responsible for teaching this material (and the students taking it) often resist what they see as the imposition of “white” values. These teachers and students do not see South African democracy as a type of freedom, but rather as destructive of their own “African culture”—whereas apartheid, at least ostensibly, allowed for cultural expression in the former rural homelands. In the Eastern Cape, Reed observes, resistance to democracy occurs alongside nostalgia for apartheid among the very citizens who were most disenfranchised by the late racist, authoritarian regime. Examining a rural town in the former Transkei homeland and the urban offices of the Sonke Gender Justice Network in Cape Town, Reed argues that nostalgic memories of a time when African culture was not under attack, combined with the socioeconomic failures of the post-apartheid state, set the stage for the current political ambivalence in South Africa. Beyond simply being a case study, however, Nostalgia after Apartheid shows how, in a global context in which nationalism and authoritarianism continue to rise, the threat posed to democracy in South Africa has far wider implications for thinking about enactments of democracy. Nostalgia after Apartheid offers a unique approach to understanding how the attempted post-apartheid reforms have failed rural Black South Africans, and how this failure has led to a nostalgia for the very conditions that once oppressed them. It will interest scholars of African studies, postcolonial studies, anthropology, and education, as well as general readers interested in South African history and politics.

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