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Changes and continuities in the labour process on commercial farms in post-Apartheid South Africa : studies from Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal Provinces

  • Authors: Kheswa, Nomzamo Sybil
  • Date: 2014
  • Subjects: Agricultural laborers -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Agricultural laborers -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal , Agricultural wages -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Agricultural wages -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal , Eastern Cape (South Africa) -- Rural conditions , KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) -- Rural conditions , Agricultural laborers -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape -- Social conditions , Agricultural laborers -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal -- Social conditions , Agricultural laborers -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Agricultural laborers -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal , Apartheid -- South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:3366 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011978 , Agricultural laborers -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Agricultural laborers -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal , Agricultural wages -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Agricultural wages -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal , Eastern Cape (South Africa) -- Rural conditions , KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) -- Rural conditions , Agricultural laborers -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape -- Social conditions , Agricultural laborers -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal -- Social conditions , Agricultural laborers -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Agricultural laborers -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal , Apartheid -- South Africa
  • Description: This thesis examines the agricultural labour process on commercial farms in post-apartheid South Africa with a particular focus on systems of labour control on these farms. Considerable literature exists about the labour process in capitalist society but the capitalist labour process does not exist in any pure form. Rather, different labour processes exist and the specific form they take depends on spatial and temporal conditions. Additionally, labour processes are often economic sector-specific. Because of variation in capitalist labour processes, differences in systems of labour control (or labour control regimes) also arise. Historically, up until the end of apartheid in 1994, the labour control regime on commercial farms in South Africa was marked by a paternalistic despotism of a racialised kind. This in part reflected the fact that commercial farms were simultaneously sites of both economic production and social reproduction and, further, they were very privatised agrarian spaces largely unregulated (specifically with regard to labour) by the state. Since the end of apartheid, commercial farms have been subjected to multiple pressures. Notably, the South African state has strongly intervened in labour relations on commercial farms, and commercial farms have been subjected to ongoing neo-liberal restructuring. This has led to the prospects of changes in the prevailing labour control system on commercial farms. In this context, the thesis pursues the following key objective: to understand changes and continuities in the labour process on commercial farms – and particularly labour control systems – subsequent to the end of apartheid in South Africa. It does so with reference to four farms in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal Provinces.
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  • Date Issued: 2014

Objecting to apartheid: the history of the end conscription campaign

  • Authors: Jones, David
  • Date: 2013
  • Subjects: End Conscription Campaign (South Africa) , Apartheid -- South Africa , Government, Resistance to South Africa , Conscientious objection South Africa , South Africa -- Social conditions , South Africa -- Politics and government
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA (History)
  • Identifier: vital:11538 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/d1005998 , End Conscription Campaign (South Africa) , Apartheid -- South Africa , Government, Resistance to South Africa , Conscientious objection South Africa , South Africa -- Social conditions , South Africa -- Politics and government
  • Description: It is important that the story of organisations like the End Conscription Campaign be recorded. The narrative of the struggle against apartheid has become a site of contestation. As the downfall of apartheid is still a relatively recent event, the history is still in the process of formation. There is much contestation over the relative contributions of different groups within the struggle. This is an important debate as it informs and shapes the politics of the present. A new official narrative is emerging which accentuates the role of particular groupings, portraying them as the heroes and the leaders of the struggle. A new elite have laid exclusive claim to the heritage of the struggle and are using this narrative to justify their hold on power through the creation of highly centralised political structures in which positions of power are reserved for loyal cadres and independent thinking and questioning are seen as a threat. A complementary tradition of grassroots democracy, of open debate and transparency, of “people’s power”, of accountability of leadership to the people fostered in the struggle is being lost. It is important to contest this narrative. We need to remember that the downfall of apartheid was brought about by a myriad combination of factors and forces. Current academic interpretations emphasize that no one group or organisation, no matter how significant its contribution, was solely responsible. There was no military victory or other decisive event which brought the collapse of the system, rather a sapping of will to pay the ever increasing cost to maintain it. The struggle against apartheid involved a groundswell, popular uprising in which the initiative came not from centralised political structures, orchestrating a grand revolt, but from ordinary South Africans who were reacting to the oppressive nature of a brutally discriminatory system which sought to control every aspect of their lives.4 Leaders and structures emerged organically as communities organised themselves around issues that affected them. Organisations that emerged were highly democratic and accountable to their members. There was no grand plan or centralised control of the process. As Walter Benjamin warned in a different context, but applicable here: “All rulers are the heirs of those who have conquered before them.” He feared that what he referred to as a historicist view constructed a version of history as a triumphal parade of progress. “Whoever has emerged victorious” he reminds us “participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice the spoils are carried along in the procession.” 5 He was warning of just such a tendency, which has been repeated so often in the past, for the victors to construct a version of history which ends up justifying a new tyranny. To counter this tendency it is important that other histories of the struggle are told – that the stories of other groups, which are marginalised by the new hegemonic discourse, are recorded.This aim of this dissertation is thus two-fold. Firstly it aims to investigate “the story” of the End Conscription Campaign, which has largely been seen as a white anti-apartheid liberal organisation. The objective is to provide a detailed historical account and periodisation of the organisation to fill in the gaps and challenge the distortions of a new emerging “official” discourse.Secondly within this framework, and by using the activities and strategies of the organisation as evidence for its suppositions, the question of the role played by the ECC in the struggle.
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  • Date Issued: 2013

An evaluation of political participation by coloured people, 1994-2009

  • Authors: Bloemiers, Gary
  • Date: 2012
  • Subjects: Colored people (South Africa) , Political participation , Racially mixed people -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:8184 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1008078 , Colored people (South Africa) , Political participation , Racially mixed people -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa
  • Description: The aim of the study was to gain an understanding of the level of political participation of Coloured people in the northern areas of Port Elizabeth. The focus was to investigate and identify if political apathy exists among Coloureds in the northern areas of Port Elizabeth and the reasons thereof, if it existed. The northern area of Port Elizabeth is a historically Coloured area created with the imposition of the segregation policies of the apartheid government. The study attempted to explore means to improve political participation of Coloured people in Port Elizabeth. Coloured people have played an important role in the political landscape in South Africa during the colonial and apartheid period. The voting power of the Coloured people during the colonial and apartheid period have been a determining factor in shaping the political landscape. The study commences with a broad overview of the political participation and political identity of Coloured people during the colonial and apartheid periods, including the current political dispensation. The study also included the analysis of secondary information in the form of statistical data in respect of election results from the 1999 elections through to the 2009 national elections. Data was collected by using qualitative and quantitative methods referred to as methodological triangulation. The qualitative method comprised face-to-face semi-structured interviews with political and community leaders in the northern areas that gained information on the levels of political participation and the extent of political disengagement. The quantitative method included a questionnaire that established views of respondents regarding levels of political participation and apathy to determine the levels of political disengagement. The interviews elicited valuable information on political participation of Coloured people before and after 1994. Information was also gained on the existence and the reasons for the perceived political apathy. Valuable insight was gained as to how Coloured people view the importance of political participation and the results indicated the limited participation beyond elections. Recommendations are made on the importance of civil society participation, the visibility of political parties and the importance of political education and how it can contribute to increased political participation.
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  • Date Issued: 2012

Social policy and the state in South Africa: pathways for human capability development

  • Authors: Monyai, Priscilla B
  • Date: 2011
  • Subjects: Human capital -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa , Equality -- South Africa , Poverty -- South Africa , Political participation -- South Africa , South Africa -- Economic conditions , South Africa -- Social conditions
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD (Social Science Dev)
  • Identifier: vital:11439 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/d1007230 , Human capital -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa , Equality -- South Africa , Poverty -- South Africa , Political participation -- South Africa , South Africa -- Economic conditions , South Africa -- Social conditions
  • Description: The main focus of this thesis is the challenges that are facing social policy development and implementation in South Africa in relation to the enhancement of human capability. The study adopted a historical approach to assess the model of social policy in South Africa and identified that social relations of domination inherited from the apartheid era continuing to produce inequalities in opportunities. Social policy under the democratic government has not managed to address social inequalities and the main drivers of poverty in the form of income poverty, asset poverty and capability poverty which are the underlying factors reproducing deprivation and destitution of the majority of the population Although South Africa prides itself of a stable democracy, social inequalities continue to undermine the benefits of social citizenship because political participation in the midst of unequal access to economic and social resources undermine the value of citizenship. Also, inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth, and in the control of economic production undermine political equality which is an ethic upon which social rights are predicated. As a result, state interventions are lacking inherent potential to build human capability for people to live the life that they have reason to value. The paradox of social policy in South Africa is that the majority of those who are marginalised are those who were excluded by the apartheid regime even though state intervention is claimed to be targeting them. This points to the failure of incremental equalisation of opportunities within a context of stark social inequities. It is also an indication that the economic growth path delivered by the political transition is working to reinforce the inherited legacy of deprivation and it is avoiding questions related to the structural nature of poverty and inequalities. Therefore, a transformative social policy is an imperative for South Africa. Such a framework of social policy should be premised upon a notion of human security in order to built human capability. Human security focuses on the security of individuals and communities to strengthen human development. It emphasises on civil, political and socioeconomic rights for individual citizens to participate fully in the process of governance. Although this thesis is a case study of social policy in South Africa, it can be used to appreciate the role of social policy in other developing countries, particularly the impact of political decision making on social distribution. Poverty and social inequalities are growing problems in developing countries and so is the importance of putting these problems under the spotlight for political attention.
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  • Date Issued: 2011

The right to organise: critiquing the role of trade unions in shaping work relations in post-apartheid South Africa

  • Authors: Nyathi, Mthokozisi
  • Date: 2011
  • Subjects: Labor unions -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa , Industrial relations -- South Africa , Labor unions -- Law and legislation -- South Africa , Labor -- South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , LLM
  • Identifier: vital:3690 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003205 , Labor unions -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa , Industrial relations -- South Africa , Labor unions -- Law and legislation -- South Africa , Labor -- South Africa
  • Description: Organised labour continues to play a prominent role in shaping employment relations in South Africa. The individual worker is powerless and in a weaker bargaining position against his employer. The advent of democracy was accompanied by numerous interventions to level the historically uneven bargaining field. The trade union movement has made and consolidated significant gains since the advent of democracy. It however faces a plethora of new challenges, such as the negative forces of globalisation, declining membership (often associated with high levels of unemployment and the changing nature of work from standard to atypical employment), the resurfacing of adversarialism in the bargaining process, and numerous shortcomings inherent in forums established to facilitate corporatism. Business is intensifying its calls for investor-friendly policies, which effectively mean a relaxation of labour policies. The trade union movement faces an enormous task of rebuilding confidence and credibility among its members and at the same time showing some commitment to other social actors, government and business, that it is committed to contribute to economic growth and employment creation. The central focus of this thesis will be to highlight the gains made by the trade union movement, the numerous challenges threatening their existence, and how they have attempted to redefine their role in the face of these challenges. It will attempt to offer advice on how trade unions can continue to play a prominent role in shaping relations of work in South Africa. The study begins with a historical overview of trade unionism in South Africa. It then attempts to establish how trade unions have made use of the institution of collective bargaining, the importance of organisational rights to the trade union movement, the effectiveness of industrial action, and the emerging challenges threatening the vibrancy of trade unions. The overall aim is to assess whether the trade union movement is still a force to be reckoned with and its future role in influencing employment relations in South Africa.
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  • Date Issued: 2011

Bare life in the Bantustans (of the Eastern Cape): re-membering the centinnial South African nation-state

  • Authors: Westaway, Ashley
  • Date: 2009
  • Subjects: Democracy -- South Africa , Homelands (South Africa) , Apartheid -- South Africa , Right of property -- South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD (History)
  • Identifier: vital:11535 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/149 , Democracy -- South Africa , Homelands (South Africa) , Apartheid -- South Africa , Right of property -- South Africa
  • Description: This thesis argues that 1994 did not mark a point of absolute discontinuity in the history of South Africa. More specifically, it asserts that 1994 did not signal the end of segregationism; instead of democracy leading to national integration, the Bantustans are still governed and managed differently from the rest of the country. Consequently, it is no surprise that they remain mired in pervasive, debilitating poverty fifteen years after 1994. In insisting that contemporary South Africa is old (rather than new), the thesis seeks to make a contribution to political struggles that aim to bring to an end the segregationist past-in-the-present. The thesis is arranged in seven chapters. The first chapter considers the crisis that has engulfed South Africa historiography since 1994. It traces the roots of the crisis back to some of the fundamentals of the discipline of history, such as empiricism, neutrality and historicism. It suggests that the way to end the crisis, to re-assert the relevance of history, is for historians to re-invoke the practice of producing histories of the present, in an interested, deliberate manner. Chapter 2 narrows down the focus of the thesis to (past and present) property. It suggests that instead of understanding the constitutional protection of property rights and installation of a restitution process as the product of a compromise between adversarial negotiators, these outcomes are more correctly understood as emanating from consensus. The third chapter outlines the implementation of the restitution programme from 1994 to 2008. The productive value of restitution over this period is found not in what it has delivered to the claimants (supposedly the beneficiaries of the programme), but rather in its discursive effects related to citizenship in the new South Africa. Chapter 4 considers the exclusion of dispossession that was implemented in the Bantustans from the restitution programme. It argues that this decision was not an oversight on the part of the post-1994 government. Instead it was consistent with all other key policy decisions taken in the recent period. The Bantustans have been treated differently from the rest of South Africa; they have been deliberately under-developed, fabricated as welfare zones, and subjected to arbitrary customary rule. Whereas Chapters 2 to 4 look at the production of historical truth on the side of domination, Chapter 6 and 7 consider production on the side of resistance. Specifically, they describe and analyse the attempts of an NGO to establish the truths of betterment as dispossession, and post-1994 prejudice against the victims of betterment dispossession. They serve as case studies of third party-led processes that seek to produce truth-effects from within a prevailing truth regime. The final chapter attempts to bring many of the threads that weave through the thesis together, by means of a critical consideration of human rights discourse. The chapter calls on intellectuals to establish truths in relation to the history of ongoing human wrongs in South Africa (as opposed to the rainbow narrative of human rights) Finally, the thesis includes a postscript, comprising technical summaries of each of the chapters.
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  • Date Issued: 2009

Discourses surrounding 'race', equity, disadvantage and transformation in times of rapid social change : higher education in post-apartheid South Africa

  • Authors: Robus, Donovan
  • Date: 2005
  • Subjects: Rhodes University , University of Fort Hare , Universities and colleges -- Mergers -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education and state -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa , Discourse analysis -- Methodology , Discrimination in education -- South Africa , Educational change -- South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
  • Identifier: vital:3142 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007196 , Rhodes University , University of Fort Hare , Universities and colleges -- Mergers -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education and state -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa , Discourse analysis -- Methodology , Discrimination in education -- South Africa , Educational change -- South Africa
  • Description: Since the dismantling of Apartheid in South Africa in 1994, the South African socio-political and economic landscape has been characterised by rapid change. In the ten years since the 'new' democratic South Africa emerged, transformation has become a dominant discourse that has driven much action and practice in a variety of public areas. One of the areas of focus for transformation has been Higher Education whereby the Department of Education aimed to do away with disparity caused by Apartheid segregation by reducing the number of Higher Education institutions from 36 to 21. This research draws on Foucauldian theory and post-colonial theories (in particular Edward Said and Frantz Fanon), and the concept of racialisation in an analysis of the incorporation of Rhodes University's East London campus into the University of Fort Hare. Ian Parker's discourse analytic approach which suggests that discourses support institutions, reproduce power relations and have ideological effects, was utilised to analyse the talk of students and staff at the three sites affected by the incorporation (viz. Rhodes, Grahamstown, Rhodes, East London and Fort Hare) as well as newspaper articles and public statements made by the two institutions. What emerged was that in post-Apartheid South Africa, institutional and geographic space is still racialised with virtually no reference to the historical and contextual foundations from which this emerged being made. In positioning space and institutions in this racialised manner a discourse of 'white' excellence and 'black' failure emerges with the notion of competence gaining legitimacy through an appeal to academic standards. In addition to this, transformation emerges as a signifier of shifting boundaries in a post-Apartheid society where racialised institutional, spatial and social boundaries evidently still exist discursively.
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  • Date Issued: 2005

The foreign policy orientation and national role conceptions of a post-apartheid South Africa: options and scenarios

  • Authors: Landsberg, Chris
  • Date: 1995
  • Subjects: South Africa -- Foreign relations -- 1989-1994 , Apartheid -- South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2793 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003003 , South Africa -- Foreign relations -- 1989-1994 , Apartheid -- South Africa
  • Description: This thesis should essentially be considered as an exposition of the foreign policy of a "new", apartheid-free South Africa in a post-Cold War international arena, arguing for a pro-active and prudent foreign policy. An important goal of the study is to make as dispassionate and rational as possible a contribution to the debate on South Africa's future foreign policy, national roles and external relations. A further aim of the study shall be to deduce relevant results of perpetual and viable foreign policy orientations and national role models within the framework of policy alternatives to South Africa's decision-makers in the future.
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  • Date Issued: 1995

South African anti-apartheid documentaries 1977-1987: some theoretical excursions

  • Authors: Steenveld, Lynette Noreen
  • Date: 1991
  • Subjects: Documentary films -- South Africa -- History and criticism , Apartheid -- South Africa , Anti-apartheid movements -- South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:3484 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002939 , Documentary films -- South Africa -- History and criticism , Apartheid -- South Africa , Anti-apartheid movements -- South Africa
  • Description: This study examines anti-apartheid documentary production in South Africa between 1977 and 1987. These documentaries were produced by a variety of producers in order to record aspects of South Africa's contemporary social history, and as a means of contributing - in some way - to changing the conditions described. While the 'content' of the documentaries is historical and social, and their intention political, this study is aimed at elucidating how a documentary, as a representational system, produces meaning. The study is therefore located within the discourse of film studies. My study is based on the theory that a documentary is the embodiment of several relationships: the relationship between social reality and documentary producers; the social relationships engaged in, in the production of the text; the relationship between the text and its audience 1, and the relationship between the audience and its social context. This informs my methodological approach in which analysis appropriate to each area of study is used. Using secondary sources obtained through standard library research, I pursue social and historical analysis of the 1970s and 1980s in order to contextualise both the producers of the documentaries, and their audience. The social relations of production of a text are examined using material gathered through extensive interviews with the producers and published secondary material. How this impinges on the documentary is ascertained through detailed textual analysis of 30 documentaries. For analytical clarity each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of documentary - although I do show how the various relationships impinge on each other. This research finds that the documentaries faithfully reflect the anti-apartheid ideology dominant in the extra-parliamentary opposition in the period under discussion - to the extent that all forms of consciousness are framed by this discourse. An examination of the textual strategies used shows that they are bound by the conventions of broadcast television. They therefore construct a spectator-text relationship which is not consistent with the political concern that democratic relationships be established as the basis of a post-apartheid society. In other words, there is an inconsistency between the ideology espoused, and the way in which film- and videomakers, in their specialised field of production, practise their politics. This can be attributed to the over-riding political intention of the documentarists 'to record' what is happening, and to establish a popular archive which can be used by extra-parliamentary opposition groups in their struggle against apartheid.
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  • Date Issued: 1991
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