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The Political Economy of Africa addresses the real possibilities for African development in the coming decades when seen in the light of the continent’s economic performance over the last half-century. This involves an effort to emancipate our thinking from the grip of western economic models that have often ignored Africa’s diversity in their rush to peddle simple nostrums of dubious merit. The book addresses the seemingly intractable economic problems of the African continent, and traces their origins. It also brings out the instances of successful economic change, and the possibilities for economic revival and renewal. As well as surveying the variety of contemporary situations, the t...
Shadow of Liberation explores the intricate twists, turns, contestations and compromises of ANC economic and social policymaking with a focus on the transition era of the 1990’s and the early years of democracy With the damning revelations by the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture on the massive corruption of the South African body politic, the timing of this book could not be more relevant. South Africans need to confront the economic and social policy choices that the liberation movement made and to see how these decisions may have facilitated the conditions for corruption to emerge and flourish. Answers are needed. Padayachee and van Niekerk focus their attention on the prim...
Durban is a remarkable place in which to test propositions about the significance of the city and the significance of change. New urban literature tends to divide very sharply between the problems faced by cities with major resources at the center and the problems faced by cities at the periphery. Many South African cities are simultaneously the site of both kinds of phenomena. These cities have strong traditions of forceful planning from above with considerable capacity to finance change. They witness industrialization, but they are also the site of massive squatter settlements and populations that fall outside the functioning of the "formal" economy. This book highlights the role of networks and the co-operation for survival by Durban's newer citizens as they make space for themselves. In an era of fundamental power shifts, the constant need for re-invention and adaptation to social and economic change, Durban is a genuine social vortex. Through the work of writers from a range of disciplines, this book focuses on the transition since the 1970s and explores contemporary challenges facing Durban.
Revisiting long-standing debates to shed new light on the transition from apartheid, Hart provides an innovative analysis of the ongoing, unstable, and unresolved crisis in South Africa today and suggests how Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution can do useful analytical and political work in South Africa and beyond.
As jobs disappear and wages flatline, paid work is an increasingly fragile basis for dignified life. This predicament, deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, is sparking urgent debates about alternatives such as a universal basic income (UBI). In this incisive new book, Hein Marais casts the debate about a UBI in the wider context of the dispossessing pressures of capitalism and the turmoil of global warming, pandemics and social upheaval. Marais surveys the meaning, history and appeal of a UBI before even-handedly weighing the case for and against it. The book explores the vexing questions a UBI raises about the relationship of paid work to social rights, about prevailing notions of entitlement...
"An unequivocally excellent work of scholarship that makes significant theoretical and empirical contributions to the understanding of 'globalization' and the working of contemporary neo-liberal capitalism. Hart is especially innovative in placing the study of Taiwanese industrialists in South Africa in relation to both the agrarian history of Taiwan and China, and the way that Taiwanese overseas firms have operated in places other than South Africa. It is a very rare combination of talents and knowledge that makes such a study possible."--James Ferguson, author of Expectations of Modernity
This, the third title in a trilogy studying transformation in post-apartheid South Africa, follows on two studies published in 2000: Infrastructure mandates for change and empowerment through service delivery.
Why are productive, development-supporting relations between business and government still so rare in Africa? Scott Taylor addresses this question, examining state-business coalitions as they emerge, and endure or collapse, in three representative countries: Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Taylor illuminates three possible trajectories: an abortive state-business coalition, as in Zambia; the emergence of a short-lived coalition, as in Zimbabwe; and a relatively successful and thus far durable coalition, as in South Africa. Though rooted in the southern African experience, his cases reflect much of the variance in outcomes throughout sub-Saharan Africa and shed light on the prospects for economic reform and development on the continent. It explores why state-business coalitions emerge (or do not) in Africa, and why they endure or collapse, drawing on three representative case studies.
This book is the first to chart the rise and fall of peacebuilding. Charting its beginnings, as an ad-hoc extension of peacekeeping responsibilities, and formalisation, as a UN-supported international project of building liberal states. Twenty years later, the grounding policy assumptions of peacebuilding - that democracy, the rule of law and free markets were a universal solution to conflict-prone states and societies - have been revealed as naïve at best, and at worst, hubristic and Eurocentric. Here, Chandler traces the disillusionment with international peacebuilding, and the discursive shifts in the self-understanding of the peacebuilding project in policy and academic debate. He chart...
'Investment in South Africa is low, real interest rates are high, the employment-intensity of growth has been relatively slow. The "employment-targeted program" advocated in this book seeks to reverse these tendencies by lowering average interest rates and channeling subsidized credit to labor-intensive, pro-poor activities, particularly small-scale agriculture and small and medium-sized enterprises. This is a bold program and by challenging conventional "inflation-targeted" economic policy, the book makes a major contribution to the debate on economic policy in South Africa.' - Keith B. Griffin, University of California-Riverside, US The people of South Africa, and the African National Cong...