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Chapter 11 - Rising Violence: The Crisis of Broken Individuals
- Muxe Nkondo
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- Book:
- Social Memory as a Force for Social and Economic Transformation
- Published by:
- University of South Africa
- Published online:
- 11 November 2021
- Print publication:
- 26 March 2021, pp 117-130
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Summary
Introduction
There is a terrifying epidemic of all types of violence in democratic South Africa, whether in homes, on the road or in parliament. Everyday disputes between strangers frequently turn deadly. Domestic violence has spiraled (South African Police Service [SAPS], 2018a; Statistics South Africa [StatsSA], 2018b). Violence against women and children has reached alarming levels (SAPS, 2018a; StatsSA, 2018b). Gang violence has risen to new heights (SAPS, 2018). Race-related violence has spiked (Bohler-Muller et al., 2017; South African Human Rights Commission [SAHRC], 2018; Savides, 2016). Xenophobic violence regularly flares up in townships (Gauteng City Region Observatory, 2014; Human Sciences Research Council [HSRC], 2018). Incidents of mob violence— where community members take the law into their own hands and violently “punish” alleged criminals—are all too frequent (SAPS, 2018).
The incidence of violence within supposedly “safe” institutions such as schools, churches and care institutions has risen dramatically (SAPS, 2018). Violence in places established to care for the vulnerable, ill and weak, has reached shocking levels. Violence in workplaces has become the norm. Suicide rates have jumped to new heights (Naidoo, 2018; World Health Organisation [WHO], 2014). There has been a rise in self-harm also, with South Africa now having one of the highest levels of suicide (WHO, 2014). Violence is “deeply rooted” in the social, cultural, economic and political fabric of South Africa (WHO, 2002, p. 3). High levels of inequality, unemployment, social exclusion and marginalisation have contributed to high levels of violence (Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation [CSVR], 2010; Institute for Justice and Reconciliation [IJR], 2013).
Widespread social acceptance of violence as a means of solving disputes has contributed to a culture of violence. South Africa is a country beset by exclusion, marginalisation and division (CSVR, 2002; National Planning Commission [NPC], 2010; Wale, 2013). These are fault lines which divide people between insiders and outsiders, those who have power and those who are powerless, and those who have weapons and those who do not. Such fault lines engender violence (CSVR, 2002, p. 8).
This chapter argues that, in many parts of South Africa, “the established social order has broken down”, democratic norms of acceptable individual behaviour are not widely shared and alternative norms of behaviour such as gangsterism, which encourages violence, hold powerful sway (CSVR, 2010; WHO, 2002, p. 60).
Chapter 9 - Broken Corporate Governance: South Africa's municipal state-owned entities and agencies
- from PART II - SECTORS AND LOCATIONS
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- By William Gumede, School of Public Policy, Central European University, Budapest.
- David Everatt
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- Book:
- Governance and the Postcolony
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 25 October 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 August 2019, pp 194-213
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
Municipalities in South Africa are increasingly making use of state-owned municipal entities and agencies to deliver public services. This follows global trends in which city and municipal public sectors, facing intense pressure to deliver economic and social development, with increasingly limited resources, yet perceived as shackled by bureaucratic constraints, decreasing income and lacking entrepreneurial nous, increasingly use alternative service delivery (ASD) methods (Stumm 1997; Jessop 2003; Wilkins 2003).
In 1994, the ANC government set about transforming the apartheid-era public service from a racially exclusive entity in terms of staff, public service delivery and ethos, to one that is developmental, efficient, democratic, and racially inclusive in both delivery and make-up (Fraser-Moleketi and Saloojee 2008; Gumede 2015). While transforming, the public service had also, at national, provincial and municipal level, to dramatically increase the quantity and quality of service delivery, as well as reduce historical public service delivery backlogs.
However, it soon became clear that at municipal level, massive capacity constraints, limited financial and human resources, and ongoing institutional weaknesses hamstrung public service delivery. ANC government policymakers started looking at alternative ways of delivering public service efficiently, cheaply and quickly, beyond the weak municipalities (Stacey 1997; SACP 1999; Khumalo, Ntlokonkulu and Rapoo 2003; Gumede 2005).
From 1996 onwards, the ANC government at municipal level increasingly used state-owned entities and agencies, run along business lines yet still owned by municipalities, either by restructuring existing ones or creating new ones, to deliver public services. The irony is that by 2016, many of these entities were so inefficient, corrupt and poorly managed that new Democratic Alliance (DA) Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba threatened, in the case of the Johannesburg city-owned entities, to close them down, and incorporate the staff back into the city's public service (Mashaba 2016). This chapter will look at the reasons for the broken governance of South Africa's municipal-owned entities.
THE DIVERSE LANDSCAPE OF MUNICIPAL ENTITIES AND AGENCIES
Municipal entities are essentially ring-fenced businesses (IoDSA 2010) which have a mandate to deliver a specific public service, can operate autonomously from the municipality, and ideally would have fewer bureaucratic constraints to innovate and improve performance (Peters 2012: 255). Most municipal entities concentrate on local social and economic development, tourism, social housing, and the provision of water, power and cleaning services.
Chapter 8 - Unfinished revolutions: The North African uprisings and notes on South Africa
- from PART THREE - THE REVOLT – ‘RISING AGAINST THE LIBERATORS’, SOUTH AFRICA IN AFRICA
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- By William Gumede, William Gumede is an associate professor in the Wits School of Governance as well as a senior associate and program director at the Africa Asia Centre in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.
- Edited by Susan Booysen
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- Book:
- Fees Must Fall
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 20 April 2018
- Print publication:
- 31 October 2016, pp 169-190
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
On Saturday 18 December 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a youth selling fruit and vegetables at a street stall in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, set himself alight, after police confiscated his produce. The twenty-six-year-old Bouazizi had a university degree but had struggled to find work, so set up a stall, without a licence. The police demanded a bribe. When he refused, the police confiscated his scales, and slapped him and insulted his late father (see Whitaker 2010; Lageman 2016). When Bouazizi tried to lay a complaint at the government offices he was refused entry. In frustration he set himself alight. Youths angry at Bouazizi's treatment started rioting, smashing cars, shops and official buildings.
The burning figure of Bouazizi and the protests in sympathy with him were posted on social media, Facebook and mobile phones across the country (Daragahi 2011; Whitaker 2010; National Public Radio 2011). Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab television station, broadcast activists’ recordings (Daragahi 2011; Whitaker 2010; National Public Radio 2011). As in the case of South Africa's 2015–2016 student revolt, the protests by a diverse collection of youth (inclusive of students) spread using social media via mobile phones to disseminate the message of revolt and government brutality. Unlike in South Africa – where the protesters took aim, alternately, at university fees and the continuing apartheid legacy of stark racial inequalities in higher education – the North African protesters took aim at the government, and demanded the fall of the Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He fled a month after the protest started. The protests in Tunisia then spread across North Africa – and several regimes collapsed under the force of the protest. In South Africa, the government was shaken yet remained in power unambiguously.
The North African youth had a broad set of demands for national political, social and economic change. A combination of the delayed effects of the 2007–2008 global financial and Eurozone crisis, rising inequality and high levels of corruption, combined with oppressive regimes, pushed together young people, with little prospects of jobs, and financially hard-pressed middle classes, to call on regimes run by small elites who controlled almost every sphere of society for democratic, social and economic reforms that would end the disenfranchisement of their rights (Gumede 2011; AfDB 2011; ESCWA 2103; Boutayeb and Helmert 2011).