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Mapungubwe Reconsidered
The Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape is one of the profound treasures of southern Africas social and archaeological history, appropriately declared a World Heritage (Unesco) in 2003. Contained within this landscape is indispensable information on precolonial state formation, social hierarchies, architecture of stone-walled towns, mineral processing and intercontinental trade. And yet, the Mapungubwe state rose, towered over its environs, and then declined long before European colonial incursions. What exactly were the social dynamics in this polity? What technologies did it utilise? How did it relate to neighbouring unable to sustain itself? In this combined edition of two MISTRA publications, now jointly titled Mapungubwe Reconsidered: A Living Legacy, MISTRA seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge about Mapungubwe, straddling such issues as the relationships between humans and the environment, management of mineral endowments and the form and impact of southern Africas global intercourse in this historical period.
Rise and Decline and Rise of China
Running like a red thread through this book are the manifestations of Sino-African relations dating back many centuries. In this way, The Rise and Decline and Rise of China: Searching for an Organising Philosophy takes forward the work MISTRA conducted on the Mapungubwe society, one of the advanced states that existed in southern Africa some 800 years ago. What makes this research report unique, though, is that the treatment of these issues has been undertaken primarily from an African perspective.
Resurgent Resource Nationalism
The period between 2001 and 2008 saw the longest commodities boom in recent history. Resource-rich countries across the world developed more interest in the profits, control and ownership of their natural resources. South Africa, which did not benefit much from the boom in commodity prices, wasnonetheless affected by the emergent resource nationalism trend, and it became the focus of the governing party’s 2010 National General Council, which ultimately resulted in the constitution of a committee to review the country’s policy and legislative framework regarding ‘natural wealth beneaththe soil’. Although the resurgence of resource nationalism is a recent phenomenon, the idea of state ...
20 Years of South African Democracy
The main focus of the conference was projective reflections into the next two decades of democracy. It aimed to deal with the theoretical perspectives underpinning the state of South Africa in two decades of democracy and, most importantly, prospects for the future.
Nation Formation and Social Cohesion
Nation Formation and Social Cohesion is the publication of a MISTRA research project that set out to examine different interpretations and meanings that diverse social actors attach to the calls and prospects for nation formation and social cohesion. The publication links theories of nation formation and social cohesion to actual practices, both focused on the attainment of a just society founded on the irreducible equality of all its members on the one hand, and the factors militating against achieving this, on the other. Ethnographic research in four provinces provides the substance or practice to the theoretical framing of the discourse. The study proceeds by interrogating the theoretical...
Traditional Leaders in a Democracy
Post-1994, South Africa's traditional leaders have fought for recognition, and positioned themselves as major players in the South African political landscape. Yet their role in a democracy is contested, with leaders often accused of abusing power, disregarding human rights, expropriating resources and promoting tribalism. Some argue that democracy and traditional leadership are irredeemably opposed and cannot co-exist. Meanwhile, shifts in the political economy of the former bantustans - the introduction of platinum mining in particular - have attracted new interests and conflicts to these areas, with chiefs often designated as custodians of community interests. This edited volume explores how chieftancy is practised, experienced and contested in contemporary South Africa. It includes case studies of how those living under the authority of chiefs, in a modern democracy, negotiate or resist this authority in their respective areas. Chapters in this book are organised around three major sites of contest: leadership, land and law.
The Rise and Decline and Rise of China
The Rise and Decline and Rise of China: Searching for an Organising Philosophy represents a new and promising approach to Africa/China relations. What is most impressive is that it is an encounter between African and Chinese thought, but this encounter is not just a set of stale comparisons of philosophical beliefs. This study places the concepts and attitudes in both China and Africa in their socio-political contexts, in an attempt to provide a sophisticated, sensitive, and usable history. This attempt yields dividends, especially for the primary audience of Africans, as it gives a way of learning from the vast history of Chinese experience without reducing African experience to insignificance or irrelevance (as has happened so often in dialogues between Africa and the West). This book will be of interest to anyone from within Africa interested in engaging with China as a complex and nuanced place, a place of challenge, creativity, and opportunity.
Essays on the Evolution of the Post-Apartheid State
This book critically examines the challenges, successes, and failures of the post-1994 South African state against the humane values enshrined in its constitution: nonracial democracy and respect for all generations of human rights—civil, political, social, economic, resources and the environment and gender and communication. The book sheds light on the difficulties faced by the State when trying to bring together a diverse society comprised of traditional South African, Western-based and "other" African (immigrant) cultures into a cohesive nation with a common South African identity. The views of the essays may not be entirely consistent and the issues they raise may be contentious. This merely affirms the truism that the State is a contested terrain. The aim of this book is to deepen the search for an understanding of the theory of the State as it applies to a transforming society such as ours and to trudge the dividing line between theory and practice so they can feed into each other in a progressive spiral towards the desired end-state.
