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Kgalema Motlanthe
Presenting a superb account of a man characterized by his reticence, this biography offers rare and thorough insight into the life of one of South Africa’s most powerful men: Kgalema Motlanthe. From Motlanthe’s ancestral family to his political awakenings as he discovered the African National Congress, this account traces Motlanthe’s political path to becoming the third president of the Republic of South Africa. With impeccable timing and a real sense of history, this book contains wide-ranging interviews with Motlanthe himself as well as with family members, friends, comrades, and leading figures in political organizations, civil society, academia, and the media. Unsparing in its scope, detailed in its revelations, and rigorously critical in its analysis, this biography reveals not only the complex politician but also the very human nature of the man.
Transcendent God, Rational World
Ramon Harvey revisits the Muslim theologian Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) from Samarqand and puts his system, and that of the Māturīdī school, into lively dialogue with modern thought to show that a contemporary Muslim philosophical theology (kalām jadīd) can provide original and constructive answers to perennial theological questions.
Super President: The History and Future of Executive Power in South Africa
This book begins with a simple observation: none of South Africa’s presidents since Nelson Mandela have held any ministerial portfolios. This is in contrast to the nine men who ruled the country during its Union and Apartheid eras (1910-1994), from Louis Botha to F.W. de Klerk. They had all had previously served in cabinet, in as many as 6 portfolios each, sometimes with more than one ministry under their control. Crucially, many often took up ministerial positions during their own premierships and presidencies, thereby leading from the front. This is the key difference in state performance between the pre-democratic and democratic periods, the book argues. It explains the shortcomings of ...
Patriots & Parasites
Patriots & Parasites, completed just days before Smuts's unexpected death in 2016, is her account of the momentous period in South African history known as the Transition Era, through the lens of her 25-year career as a key opposition MP and a respected legislator. With ambitious breadth and rare insight, she examines: The arduous but exhilarating work of writing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; The great experiment in catharsis that was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; The reinvigoration of racial polarisation under the Mbeki administration, and the slow burn of resentment that is coming to a head among the next generation (as manifested in the #RhodesMustFall campaign); The entrenchment of cronyism under Zuma, and the fight to protect the crucial balance of accountability enshrined in the freedom of the media and the independence of the judiciary.
Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism
The essays in Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism pose a series of related questions: How are we to understand capitalism at the millennium? Is it a singular or polythetic creature? What are we to make of the culture of neoliberalism that appears to accompany it, taking on simultaneously local and translocal forms? To what extent does it make sense to describe the present juncture in world history as an “age of revolution,” one not unlike 1789–1848 in its transformative potential? In exploring the material and cultural dimensions of the Age of Millennial Capitalism, the contributors interrogate the so-called crisis of the nation-state, how the triumph of the free mar...
South Africa's Insurgent Citizens
Twenty years on from South Africa's first democratic election, the post-apartheid political order is more fractured, and more fractious, than ever before. Police violence seems the order of the day – whether in response to a protest in Ficksburg or a public meeting outside a mine in Marikana. For many, this has signalled the end of the South African dream. Politics, they declare, is the preserve of the corrupt, the self-interested, the incompetent and the violent. They are wrong. Julian Brown argues that a new kind of politics can be seen on the streets and in the courtrooms of the country. This politics is made by a new kind of citizen – one that is neither respectful nor passive, but instead insurgent. The collapse of the dream of a consensus politics is not a cause for despair. South Africa's political order is fractured, and in its cracks new forms of activity, new leaders and new movements are emerging.
Shoot to Kill
Shoot to Kill: Police and Power in South Africa is a vivid and ambitious survey of the complex politics of security, crime and social control in South Africa. Nearly three decades after the formal end of apartheid, policing in South Africa continues to be defined by brutality, incompetence and corruption. Featuring unapologetic critiques of elite power and the stifling politics of fear, while informed by global discussions on police abolition, Shoot to Kill: Police and Power in South Africa calls for a society based on democracy and justice. Author Christopher McMichael speaks to the realities of our world increasingly defined by militarised injustice and outlines ways we can escape from this rusty cage.
The Age of Commodity
As globalization and market liberalization march forward unabated the global commons continue to be commodified and privatized at a rapid pace. In this global process, the ownership, sale and supply of water is increasingly a flashpoint for debates and conflict over privatization, and nowhere is the debate more advanced or acute than in Southern Africa. The Age of Commodity provides an overview of the debates over water in the region including a conceptual overview of water 'privatization', how it relates to human rights, macro-economic policy and GATS. The book then presents case studies of important water privatization initiatives in the region, drawing out crucial themes common to water privatization debates around the world including corruption, gender equity and donor conditionalities. This book is powerful and necessary reading in our new age of commodity.
Chiefs in South Africa
This book examines the ongoing resurgence of traditional power structures in South Africa. Oomen assesses the relation between the changing legal and socio-political position of traditional authority and customary law and what these changes can teach us about the interrelation between law, politics, and culture in the post-modern world.
History of South Africa
South Africa was born in war, has been cursed by crises and ruptures, and today stands on a precipice once again. This book explores the country’s tumultuous journey from the Second Anglo-Boer War to 2021. Drawing on diaries, letters, oral testimony and diplomatic reports, Thula Simpson follows the South African people through the battles, elections, repression, resistance, strikes, insurrections, massacres, crashes and epidemics that have shaped the nation. Tracking South Africa’s path from colony to Union and from apartheid to democracy, Simpson documents the influence of key figures including Jan Smuts, Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, P.W. Botha, Thabo Mbeki and Cyril Ramaphosa. He offers...
