36 results
Contributors
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp 145-148
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Index
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp 149-159
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Acronyms and abbreviations
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp vii-viii
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Contents
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp v-v
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Chapter 3 - Power, Authority and Audacity: How the Shadow State Was Built
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp 59-100
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Uyangithengisa [you are selling me out]. Why did you let her know that u knew where she [Dudu Myeni, chairperson of SAA] was going. U will compromise the mission.
According to the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism, this text message was sent by Siyabonga Mahlangu, special legal adviser to then Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba, to then CEO and chairperson of SAA Vuyisile Kona, in December 2013. It followed a meeting at the Gupta family's Saxonwold compound, attended by Mahlangu and Kona, at which Kona was reportedly offered a R500 000 bribe, seemingly linked to a controversial Airbus fleet deal.
The text, according to amaBhungane, probably referred to a discussion Kona had with Dudu Myeni subsequent to this meeting; Myeni was appointed chairperson of SAA a week later, and her appointment, it appears, had been discussed at the Saxonwold meeting. At the time an SAA source, speaking in confidence to amaBhungane, said, ‘The “mission” was clearly this contract, all of these contracts.’ With hindsight, it is clear that ‘the mission’ became a much bigger, more ominous and carefully orchestrated long-term plan, which would unfold over the next seven-plus years, culminating in what we now know as the capture of the state.
Nearly three years later, in July 2016, Jacob Zuma, in a speech in isiZulu that received very little media coverage but which was captured in a YouTube clip, said:
If it were up to me, and I made the rules, I would ask for six months as a dictator. You would see wonders, South Africa would be straight. That's why, if you give me six months, and allow Zuma to be a dictator, you would be amazed. Absolutely. Everything would be straight. Right now to make a decision you need to consult. You need a resolution, decision, collective petition. Yoh! It's a lot of work!
But clearly the necessary work had been done because the shadow state was, by then, fully fledged. Referring to its emergence, Pravin Gordhan said at the press conference after his removal as minister of finance, ‘We have failed to join the dots.’
To ‘join the dots’ it is necessary to start with the emergence of the Gupta network, which has become the lynchpin of the relationship between the constitutional and shadow states.
Introduction
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp 1-18
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The new struggle for democracy: how civil society fought back against state capture
In the classical texts, tyranny, as opposed to despotism, refers to a form of government that breaks its own rules. This is a useful starting point for discussing political developments in South Africa in the past ten years and the civil society response to it. The ANC government under Jacob Zuma became more and more tyrannical as it set itself up against the Constitution and the rule of law in an effort to capture the state.
In moves reminiscent of events in the 1980s, independent journalists, social movements, trade unions, legal aid centres, NGOs, the churches and some academics have helped mobilise South African society against state capture. A new and varied movement has arisen, bringing together awkward partnerships between ideologically disparate groups and people. What they have nonetheless shared is a broad support for the Constitution, for democracy and for a modern, professional administration, and they are all, broadly speaking, social democratic in orientation.
The publication of the Betrayal of the Promise report, on which this book is based, constituted a key moment, helping to provide this movement with a narrative and concepts for expressing a systemic perspective on state capture that helped its readers to, in the words of former Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan, ‘join the dots’.
The particular instance of so-called ‘state capture’ that we discuss in this book is part of a familiar and recurring pattern in the history of state formation in South Africa. It is, in fact, impossible to understand the evolution of South African politics and statecraft without understanding the deeper dynamics of what we refer to today as state capture. There is a clear and direct line of sight from the origins of the state in the Cape Colony, when it was ‘captured’ by the Dutch East India Company, through to the era of Cecil Rhodes and ‘Milner's Kindergarten’ – the name popularly given to the young British civil servants who served under High Commissioner Alfred, Lord Milner – in post-Boer War South Africa.
The world that the first generations of mining magnates, the so-called Randlords, built on the Witwatersrand provided the foundation for the election victory of the National Party in 1948.
Chapter 1 - Structuring the Capture of the State
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp 19-28
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The nexus between the constitutional and shadow states depends on the integration of a range of skills similar to those present in most international corporations. The composition of the Zuma-centred power elite is, in many respects, highly organised, following the structure of what, in academic terms, is called a ‘war economy’. In a war economy the ‘shadow state’ establishes a number of informal structures which produce systems of ‘profit, power and protection’ that, in turn, serve to further their operations, making possible continued preferential access to resources and power through an exploitative economic system. The cycle can, therefore, continue.
One of the key requirements in establishing these shadow structures is the ability to secure a system of command and control over the way the resources are accessed, moved and distributed. At the outset, control must be established over the sources of extraction, including the ability to respond flexibly to any changes in the operating environment. Once access to the source of extraction is secured, networks of middlemen or brokers must be established that can move resources externally, usually transnationally, to sustain loyalty (this is critical to ensuring the survival of the network). The ability to transact within this network is facilitated by establishing political marketplaces where support is traded through the provision of access to resources.
The skills of this patronage network are localised within a number of groups. The networks consist of three elements: the controllers, the elites and the entrepreneurs (also known as brokers), as shown in Figure 1.1.
The controllers, or patrons, of resources sit at the apex and are usually the strongmen directly responsible for predation and exploitation. Their function is to secure access to and maintain control over resources. A patron or controller typically favours one group over another (or others), resulting in the exclusion of those who are out of favour. This sets up a competitive set of nodes around the patron or controller, which has the ultimate effect of rendering elites (the next layer down) unable to cooperate effectively as they fear being ousted by their partners, or falling out of favour with the patron. Jacob Zuma and the Guptas have been controllers.
Acknowledgements
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp xv-xvi
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Chapter 5 - Conclusion
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp 133-138
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
State capture by shadowy elites has profound implications for state institutions. It destroys public trust in the state and its organs, it weakens key economic agencies that are tasked with delivering development outcomes, and it erodes confidence in the economy.
When there is no trust in public institutions there is little incentive to pay tax; large companies sit on cash rather than reinvest profits towards productive use; criminality proliferates, exploiting weaknesses in intelligence and crime enforcement authorities; and both capital and skills flee the country. The majority of South Africans are bearing the brunt of these corrosive developments.
In the previous chapters we have documented the systematic repurposing of state institutions by the Zuma-centred power elite. These premeditated and coordinated activities are designed to enrich a core group of beneficiaries, to consolidate political power and to ensure the long-term survival of the rent-seeking system that has been built by this power elite over the past decade. To this end a symbiotic relationship between the constitutional state and the shadow state has been built and consolidated.
At the nexus of this symbiosis is a handful of companies and individuals connected in one way or another to the Gupta–Zuma family network. Decisions made within this nexus are executed by well-placed individuals located in the most significant centres of state power (in government, SOEs and the bureaucracy).
Former Deputy Minister of Finance Mcebisi Jonas told the public protector that he had been offered a place in this network with a R600 million bribe. This transaction reveals the clear modus operandi of those who operate within the shadow state, and how this has made it possible for them to gain control of the constitutional state.
Crucially, we have no idea how many others accepted these kinds of unimaginably enormous bribes. Those who resist are systematically removed, redeployed to other lucrative positions to silence them, placed under tremendous pressure, or hounded out by trumped up internal and/or external charges and dubious intelligence reports.
We have argued that the attempts by the Zuma-centred power elite to centralise the control of rents in order to eliminate lower-order rent-seeking competitors began in about 2012.
Chapter 2 - The Politics of Betrayal
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp 29-58
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The dawn of democracy in South Africa in 1994 delivered a promise that united the country. Nelson Mandela, at his inauguration on 10 May 1994, expressed this promise in the clearest terms. Speaking on behalf of the democratically elected ANC-led government, he vowed
to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination … [to] build [a] society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity – a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.
To deliver on this founding promise the ANC needed to use the state institutions it had inherited from the apartheid era. These institutions included national, provincial and local government administrations, SOEs, the judiciary, Parliament and the executive.
Unsurprisingly, transforming the core administrations and SOEs into vehicles for service delivery and development became a major challenge. Undertaking deep institutional reform in order to overcome the complex legacy of apartheid proved to be a daunting exercise that required extraordinary levels of dedication, technical capacity and a well-defined governance programme.
Although significant progress was made, there is now widespread dissatisfaction across society and within the ANC itself with the performance of these institutions. Whereas the promise of 1994 was to build a state that would serve the public good, the evidence suggests that state institutions are being repurposed to serve the private accumulation interests of a small, powerful elite. The deepening of the corrosive culture of corruption within the state and the efforts to graft a shadow state onto the existing constitutional state have brought the transformation programme to a halt.
It is clear that while the ideological focus of the ANC is ‘radical economic transformation’, in practice Jacob Zuma's presidency has been aimed at repurposing state institutions to consolidate a Zuma-centred power elite. Whereas the former appears to be a legitimate long-term vision to transform South Africa's economy in order to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality and unemployment, the latter – popularly referred to as state capture – threatens the viability of the state institutions that need to deliver on this long-term vision.
List of figures and tables
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp vi-vi
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Key terms
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp ix-xiv
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Frontmatter
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp i-iv
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Prologue
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp xxi-xxvi
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In mid-March 2017 Mark Swilling was travelling in business class to Johannesburg from Cape Town. He was in an aisle seat and Mcebisi Jonas, then the deputy minister of finance, was in the aisle seat on the opposite side. They had last worked together in the early 1990s when Jonas was active in the Eastern Cape, coordinating a forum focused on appropriate economic development strategies for that province.
After exchanging the usual ‘comradely’ greetings, Jonas gave Mark his iPad and said, ‘Read this and tell me what you think.’ He had already by then refused a R600 million bribe offered to him by the Gupta brothers, a move, knowing him, that came as no surprise to Mark. Mark then read a paper that in subsequent months would be read again and again by the research team – the first comprehensive overview of what all South Africans would soon come to call ‘state capture’. This was the paper that Mark gave to Ivor Chipkin at their first meeting to discuss the assembly of a team that would eventually produce the Betrayal of the Promise report. Needless to say, it was a paper that needed to be kept totally confidential.
Those who read this paper in those dark days of 2017 were all profoundly disturbed by it, and particularly frightened by the fact that it was written by a member of the Cabinet. Jonas candidly shared with Mark his deep pessimism about what was going on. He took down Mark's phone number, promising to call him. A few days later Mark got a call from Jonas asking to meet at the Sustainability Institute at Stellenbosch University.
Jonas arrived and the first thing Mark noticed was that he gave his phone to the driver before entering the building. The two hours that followed were among the most remarkable and surprising Mark had experienced since 1994. Jonas spoke about what he thought was going on. Mark desperately wanted to tape what he was saying, or take notes, but he had no idea why Jonas was there and what he needed done. Mark just absorbed what he could, describing the experience to Ivor a few days later as the sum of all fears.
When Jonas finished briefing him, Mark asked why he had come to see him. Jonas wanted to know what the academics were doing about the situation.
Shadow State
- The Politics of State Capture
- Ivor Chipkin, Mark Swilling, Haroon Bhorat, Mzukisi Qobo, Sikhulekile Duma, Lumkile Mondi, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018
-
The 2017 publication of Betrayal of the Promise, the report that detailed the systematic nature of state capture, marked a key moment in South Africa's most recent struggle for democracy. In the face of growing evidence of corruption and of the weakening of state and democratic institutions, it provided a powerful analysis of events that helped galvanise resistance within the Tripartite Alliance and across civil society. Working often secretly, the authors consolidated large amounts of evidence from a variety of sources. They showed that the Jacob Zuma administration was not simply a criminal network but part of an audacious political project to break the hold of white business on the economy and to create a new class of black industrialists. State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) such as Eskom and Transnet were central to these plans. Shadow State is an updated version of the original, explosive report that changed South Africa's recent history. It introduces a whole new language to discuss state capture, showing how SOEs were ‘repurposed’, how political power was shifting away from constitutional bodies to ‘kitchen cabinets’, and how a ‘shadow state’ at odds with the country's constitutional framework was being built.
Chapter 4 - Repurposing Governance
- Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Mark Swilling, Stellenbosch University, Haroon Bhorat, University of Cape Town, Mzukisi Qobo, University of Johannesburg, Sikhulekile Duma, University of Stellenbosch, Lumkile Mondi, University of the Witwatersrand, Camaren Peter, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, University of Cape Town, Hannah Friedenstein, Nicky Prins
-
- Book:
- Shadow State
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 17 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2018, pp 101-132
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
From conviction to ideology
The Polokwane revolt in the ANC was informed by a conviction that economic transformation as pursued after 1994 had produced an anomaly, if not a perversion: a small black elite beholden to white corporate elites, a vulnerable and over-indebted black middle class and a large African majority condemned to unemployment and dependent on welfare handouts to survive. The rise in the Gini coefficient between 1994 and 2009 lends credence to this view.
Most people in the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance believe that the RDP was jettisoned when the Gear strategy was adopted in 1996. ‘Few,’ noted Ben Turok in 2008, ‘seem to have accepted arguments such as those advanced by Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, immediately before the [Polokwane] Conference, that “Gear was the ANC government's macro-economic programme to implement the RDP”’. Gear was widely slated as a self-imposed programme of structural adjustment. As a Cosatu briefing document from 2002 put it: ‘The movement … sharply warned against the danger of promoting the interests of a new elite over and above that of the majority who stood to benefit from national liberation.’
The repudiation of the Thabo Mbeki administration at Polokwane was absolute. All six of the most senior ANC and government officials lost their positions. After Polokwane the earliest expressions of this conviction as a set of policy proposals came from the ANCYL. Articulating a vision of ‘Economic freedom in our lifetime’ – an adaptation of the famous ANC slogan from the 1940s, ‘Freedom in our lifetime’ – Julius Malema, then president of the Youth League, recalled the Freedom Charter's categorical imperative: ‘The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people.’ At the Youth League's National General Council in August 2010 he explained that ‘Nationalisation of mines is but one of the components of realising economic freedom in our lifetime, and we should never compromise on that principle’.
Nationalisation was not the only alternative to the market-friendly approaches pursued after 1994. Cosatu, for example, was exploring how the economy could be reconstructed using an investment strategy that differentiated between six types of capital: publicly owned fiscal resources, publicly owned resources in the hands of parastatals, public-sector financial institutions, socially controlled resources, retirement funds and private capital.
8 - Middle-Classing in Roodepoort: Unexpected Sites of Post-Apartheid ‘Community’
-
- By Ivor Chipkin, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
- Edited by Gerard Rosich, Peter Wagner
-
- Book:
- The Trouble with Democracy
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 05 September 2016
- Print publication:
- 18 January 2016, pp 185-211
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The last thirty years of capitalist development have, especially in what used to be called the advanced capitalist countries, generated paradoxical, if not contradictory trends. The ‘great crisis’ of 2008 was rooted in an ideological failure. Marching under the banner of the free markets, writes James K. Galbraith, the state permitted the globalisation of finance; the unrestrained growth of financial derivates, tax havens, regulatory arbitrage and the carry trades. In short, state authorities in the USA, in the UK and elsewhere acted as if the market really was a self-regulating mechanism functioning according to natural laws. The result was the first full-fledged credit collapse and debt deflation since 1930. At the very moment that governments in the West were treating markets as quasi-natural (quasi-religious) systems, capitalist firms themselves were often moving in a different direction. Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello have documented how in France, in particular, large corporations took on board the anti-capitalist critique of alienation and bureaucracy to develop new models of management and workplace organisation. The paradox is often not sufficiently noted.
This chapter argues that there was another, no less remarkable, shift in capitalism. During the 1970s, but especially from the 1980s, the bundle of rights associated with private property mutated in many countries to accommodate historically non-capitalist modes of social organisation. This chapter will unfold in three parts. In the first section, it argues that there has been an innovation in the rights of private property, especially in the area of residential property. Starting in the 1960s, though only really coming into its own in the 1980s, the rights of private property have been grafted onto a regime of communal ownership. In the condominium (or sectional title estate), individual property rights are exercised in and through a system of collective control and management. During the very period of capitalist ascendancy, in other words, historically non-capitalist forms of sociability were being elaborated from within the very holy ark of capitalism itself, the relation of private property.
Not only has a novel regime of ownership emerged as a legal instrument, but from the 1980s this legal regime has given rise to massive new social phenomena in the USA and increasingly across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The Political Stakes of Academic Research: Perspectives on Johannesburg
- Ivor Chipkin
-
- Journal:
- African Studies Review / Volume 48 / Issue 2 / September 2005
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 May 2014, pp. 87-109
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Export citation
-
This article considers a burgeoning literature on Johannesburg from the perspective of the sorts of questions it asks about the city. There is a substantial and lively literature on questions of poverty and equality, class and race. These studies are strongly informed by the idea that the mechanisms that produce such inequalities are key to understanding the nature of Johannesburg as a city: in terms of how its economy works and how political institutions function, but also in terms of what sort of city Johannesburg is and can be. I consider sociological and economic studies of the inner city that try to account for demographic shifts in the inner city and for processes of social and physical degeneration. I review urban anthropologies of inner-city society, considering in particular new forms of social and economic organization among inner-city residents. Related to these, I discuss debates among scholars about the prospects for governing the city, paying special attention to the consequences for such readings on partnerships. I also discuss an emerging literature, critical of that above, which seeks to shift analysis of the city toward studies of culture and identity. These literatures do not simply approach the city through different disciplinary lenses (sociology or economy or anthropology or cultural studies) . They come to their studies from different normative perspectives. For some, the key political question of the day is one about social and political equality in its various forms. For others, it is about the degree to which Johannesburg (or Africa) is different from or the same as other places in the world. This paper has tried to bring to the fore the political (and not simply policy) consequences of these different views. It concludes not by seeking to reconcile these perspectives, but by suggesting a way of retaining a commitment to equality and justice while not reducing them simply to questions of economy. At stake, I argue, are questions of democratic culture and of sociability.
Chapter 4 - The South African Nation
- Ivor Chipkin
-
- Book:
- Do South Africans Exist?
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 30 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 April 2007, pp 99-120
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
This chapter will argue that what made the politics of national democratic revolution a nationalist politics was that it posited the citizen as necessarily a member of a nation – as a bearer, in other words, of some or other quality of population. To get sense of our task, let us begin this investigation with a well-known speech of Thabo Mbeki, given on behalf of the African National Congress on the occasion of the adoption of the Constitution in Cape Town in May 1996. In ‘I Am an African’, Mbeki states:
I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape. … I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. … In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. … I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led, the patriots Cetshwayo and Mpephu took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom. My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert. I am the grandchild that lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena and the Bahamas … I am the child of Nongqause. … I come from those who were transported from India and China (Mbeki, 1998: 31–32).
These lines, treating the identity of the African, are punctuated with the following declaration (and elsewhere, something very similar): ‘Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest the assertion, I shall claim that I am an African!’ (Mbeki, 1998: 32). Here Mbeki deliberately invokes a term that, in the context, is profoundly ambiguous. Why does he declare ‘I am an African’ instead of ‘I am a South African’? Why does his verse slide between allusions to the continent in general and to South Africa specifically? The South African people, that is, are also the people of the continent of Africa.
Chapter 3 - African Nationalism in South Africa
- Ivor Chipkin
-
- Book:
- Do South Africans Exist?
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 30 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 April 2007, pp 63-98
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
National democratic discourse since the mid-1950s has been the preeminent expression of anti-colonial nationalism in South Africa. The year 1955 is, schematically, a moment of rupture. At least until the end of the 1940s, opposition to racial segregation and apartheid was framed in the terms of Cape liberalism and Christianity. More radical expressions of dissent found expression, not so much in and through the politics of Pan-Africanism, than in terms of Garveyism (Walshe, 1973: 24). Within the African National Congress (ANC), Garveyite ideas were especially influential in the organisation's Youth League. As late as 1948, for example, the ‘Basic Policy of the Congress Youth League’ included the Garveyite slogan ‘Africa for the Africans’, though other more-militant slogans proved to be unpopular.
A mere seven years later, there had been a sea change in the trajectory and form of nationalist struggle. We can get a sense of it by comparing the Youth League slogan above with the key statement of the Freedom Charter, adopted at the Congress of the People in June 1955. ‘South Africa belongs to all those who live in it, white and black,’ it proclaimed. Yet ambivalence regarding Garveyism within the ANC could already be detected as early as 1943. In that year, the ANC issued ‘Africans’ Claims’, the organisation's reaction to the Atlantic Charter signed in 1941. ‘Africans’ Claims’ called for the granting to Africans of ‘full citizenship rights such as are enjoyed by all Europeans in South Africa’ (ANC, 1943). It envisaged a cosmopolitan community composed of Africans and Europeans, and in this sense anticipated the Freedom Charter by more than a decade. Yet there is an important difference between the Freedom Charter and ‘Africans’ Claims’. If the latter reflected a brief (and perhaps expedient) engagement with liberalism, the Freedom Charter suggested the growing influence of Communists in the alliance, the rising importance of Marxist-Leninist concepts and terms and, most importantly, the emergence of the theory of national democratic revolution (NDR; see below) as the pre-eminent expression of African nationalism in South Africa. Today, although its concepts and practices are increasingly giving way to others, NDR's vocabulary continues to inform ANC policy statements and its lexicon, i.e. the dayto- day language of politicians and senior government officials.