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5 - Colonial and apartheid South Africa: social work complicity and resistance
- Edited by Vasilios Ioakimidis, University of Essex, Aaron Wyllie, University of Essex
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- Book:
- Social Work's Histories of Complicity and Resistance
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 20 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 14 June 2023, pp 73-94
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
South African social work has its historical roots not only in violent and racist coloniality but also in its brutal continuity – that of repressive apartheid. Despite social work being defined as a social justice profession, its historiography points to a range of ideological positions in discourse, knowledge and practice. These positions mean variations in levels of complicity, sense of responsibility and resistance to matters of injustice, oppression and crimes against humanity.
Colonisation of South Africa by the British and Dutch achieved gains for race-based mercantile capitalism through the violent enslavement of local people and ‘importation’ of thousands. This creation of a Black, servile working class served the interests of White capital during the 19th century, forming the basis for apartheid's legislated racism and inequality which would come to structure South Africa society (Seekings, 2008; Sewpaul, 2013). South African social work, developing from this context of growing inequality and social problems, developed in the early 20th century. Given the classand race-based structuring of society through colonisation, its early roots and formalisation focused only on the White group (Harms-Smith, 2014).
Various moments and conjunctures before and during the period of apartheid as a crime against humanity emerge. These, among many, seem important for investigating the meanings and actions of complicity, responsibility and resistance, and so this chapter details some of these important antecedents and conjunctures. This task is difficult because textual (and other) discourses occupy the broadest range of ideological positions. The same events, personalities and moments in history are described in contradictory and multiplicities of ways; as writers we must constantly revisit discourses and explore dissenting voices. The other difficulty arises from the personalisation of algorithms in our web-based searches for scholarship (Bozdag, 2013). What we find is often what we wish to see, and so we must be conscious of and find ways to resist this tendency.
10 - Social Work and COVID-19 in South Africa
- Edited by Michael Lavalette, Liverpool Hope University, Vasilios Ioakimidis, University of Essex, Iain Ferguson
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- Book:
- Social Work and the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 23 March 2021
- Print publication:
- 19 October 2020, pp 73-80
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Summary
COVID-19 in South Africa
Lockdown was imposed in South Africa on 23rd March 2020 in the context of a society structured by the highest levels of inequality in the world (IMF 2020), extreme levels of poverty, hunger, inadequate housing security and unemployment. Globally, South Africa is defined as one of the emerging epicentres of hunger during COVID-19 (OXFAM 2020). The structural conditions perpetuated by post-Apartheid neoliberal macro-economic policies were “forged under the past race-based colonial and apartheid regimes” (Bhorat et al. 2020). Four months on, having embraced a stringent set of lockdown policies early on (Arendt, Robinson and Gabriel 2020), it is said that there is hope that the country will not experience the devastation seen elsewhere globally (Karim 2020). However, it is evident that the ‘peak’ of the pandemic is slowly approaching and South Africa now has the 5th highest infection rate globally (BBC 27 July 2020).
At the start of the pandemic in South Africa, the government was lauded as a ‘standout’ in the region for its early response to the pandemic, which slowed down the rate of infections. Various actions were said, early on, to have explained the relative success of the strategy; namely, what was seen to be excellent communication, leveraging of previous health crisis experience, adopting a science-based approach, working with religious and traditional leaders and unifying the political class (Devermont and Makulu 2020).
According to the chair of the Ministerial Advisory Committee, the government's early intervention delayed the peak of the crisis through the declaration of the State of Disaster and following a staged approach of gradual easing of the ‘lockdown’. It relied on a “high-level advisory committee with 51 clinicians, virologists, epidemiologists, mathematical modellers, public health practitioners, and other experts”, for advice and guidance (Karim 2020).
However, these responses occurred in the face of extreme challenges. These included the extreme levels of poverty and inequality and low trust in the government (Devermont and Makulu 2020). Preventive hygiene measures are almost impossible in vulnerable, overcrowded communities already overburdened by HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
Realities such as overcrowding, densely populated townships, informal settlements and shack dwellings meant that social distancing was a luxury. In many contexts, there is still no access to running water and families share communal toilets and water pumps or taps (SERI 2018).