Migrant Labour After Apartheid
Migrant Labour After Apartheid

Author: Leslie John Bank

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780796925794

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"Migrant Labour after Apartheid focuses on internal migrants and migration, rather than cross border migration into South Africa. It cautions against a linear narrative of change and urban transition. The book is divided into two parts. The first half investigates urbanisation processes from the perspective of internal migration. Several of the chapters make use of recently available survey data collected in a national longitudinal study to describe patterns and trends in labour migration, the economic returns to migration, and the links between the migration of adults and the often-ignored migration of children. The last three chapters of this section shine a spotlight on conditions of migrant workers in destination areas by focusing on Marikana and mining on the platinum belt. The second half of the book explores the double rootedness of migrants through the lens of the rural hinterland from which migration often occurs. The chapters here focus on the Eastern Cape as a case study of a region from which (particularly longer-distance) labour migration has been very common. The contributions describe the limited opportunities for livelihood strategies in the countryside, which encourage outmigration, but also note the accelerated rates of household investment, especially in the built environment in the former homelands. Migrant Labour after Apartheid identifies pockets of relative economic dynamism, especially around former homeland towns, and reflects on the continued importance of rural spaces as places of belonging, identity and investment for social and cultural reproduction." --Publisher's description.

A History of African Popular Culture
A History of African Popular Culture

Author: Karin Barber

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-01-11

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1107016894

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A journey through the history of African popular culture from the seventeenth century to the present day.

From 'Foreign Natives' to 'Native Foreigners'. Explaining Xenophobia in Post-apartheid South Africa
From 'Foreign Natives' to 'Native Foreigners'. Explaining Xenophobia in Post-apartheid South Africa

Author: M. Neocosmos

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 2869782004

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Xenophobia is a political discourse. As such, its historical development as well as the conditions of its existence must be elucidated in terms of the practices and prescriptions that structure the field of politics. In South Africa, its history is connected to the manner citizenship has been conceived and fought over during the past fifty years at least. Migrant labour was de-nationalised by the apartheid state, while African nationalism saw it as the very foundation of that oppressive system. However, only those who could show a family connection with the colonial/apartheid formation of South Africa could claim citizenship at liberation. Others were excluded and seen as unjustified claimants to national resources. Xenophobia's current conditions of existence are to be found in the politics of a post-apartheid nationalism were state prescriptions founded on indigeneity have been allowed to dominate uncontested in condition of passive citizenship. The de-politicisation of a population, which had been able to assert its agency during the 1980s, through a discourse of 'human rights' in particular, has contributed to this passivity. State liberal politics have remained largely unchallenged. As in other cases of post-colonial transition in Africa, the hegemony of xenophobic discourse, the book shows, is to be sought in the character of the state consensus. Only a rethinking of citizenship as an active political identity can re-institute political agency and hence begin to provide alternative prescriptions to the political consensus of state-induced exclusion.

Nostalgia after Apartheid
Nostalgia after Apartheid

Author: Amber R. Reed

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2020-11-30

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 026810879X

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In this engaging book, Amber Reed provides a new perspective on South Africa’s democracy by exploring Black residents’ nostalgia for life during apartheid in the rural Eastern Cape. Reed looks at a surprising phenomenon encountered in the post-apartheid nation: despite the Department of Education mandating curricula meant to teach values of civic responsibility and liberal democracy, those who are actually responsible for teaching this material (and the students taking it) often resist what they see as the imposition of “white” values. These teachers and students do not see South African democracy as a type of freedom, but rather as destructive of their own “African culture”—whereas apartheid, at least ostensibly, allowed for cultural expression in the former rural homelands. In the Eastern Cape, Reed observes, resistance to democracy occurs alongside nostalgia for apartheid among the very citizens who were most disenfranchised by the late racist, authoritarian regime. Examining a rural town in the former Transkei homeland and the urban offices of the Sonke Gender Justice Network in Cape Town, Reed argues that nostalgic memories of a time when African culture was not under attack, combined with the socioeconomic failures of the post-apartheid state, set the stage for the current political ambivalence in South Africa. Beyond simply being a case study, however, Nostalgia after Apartheid shows how, in a global context in which nationalism and authoritarianism continue to rise, the threat posed to democracy in South Africa has far wider implications for thinking about enactments of democracy. Nostalgia after Apartheid offers a unique approach to understanding how the attempted post-apartheid reforms have failed rural Black South Africans, and how this failure has led to a nostalgia for the very conditions that once oppressed them. It will interest scholars of African studies, postcolonial studies, anthropology, and education, as well as general readers interested in South African history and politics.

Just Work?
Just Work?

Author: A. A. Choudry

Publisher: Wildcat

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780745335834

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As the struggle against neoliberalism becomes ever more global, Just Work will be the definitive book on the growing social and political power of one its major forces: migrant labor. From trade unions in South Africa to resistance in oppressive Gulf states, migrating forest workers in the Czech Republic, and illegal workers' organizations in Hong Kong, Just Work brings together a wealth of lived experiences and frontline struggles for the first time. Highlighting developments in the wake of austerity and attacks on traditional forms of labor organizing, the contributors show how workers are finding new and innovative ways of resisting. The result is both a rich analysis of where the movement stands today and a reminder of the potentially explosive power of migrant workers in the years to come.

Covid and Custom in Rural South Africa
Covid and Custom in Rural South Africa

Author: Leslie Bank

Publisher: Hurst Publishers

Published: 2022-06-09

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 1787388727

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This book explores the impact of Covid-19, and the associated state lockdown, on rural lives in a former homeland in South Africa. The 2020 Disaster Management Act saw the state sweep through rural areas, targeting funerals and other customary practices as potential ‘super-spreader’ events. This unprecedented clampdown produced widespread disruption, fear and anxiety. The authors build on path-breaking work concerning local responses to West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, and examine the HIV/AIDS pandemic, to understand the impact of the Covid crisis on these communities, and on rural Africa more broadly. To shed light on the role of custom and ritual in rural social change during the pandemic, Covid and Custom in Rural South Africa applies long-term historical and ethnographic research; theories of people’s science, local knowledge and the human economy; and fieldwork conducted in ten rural South African communities during lockdown. The volume highlights differences between developments in Southern Africa and elsewhere on the continent, while exploring how the former apartheid homelands–commonly, yet problematically, represented as former ‘labour reserves’–have since been reconstituted as new home-spaces. In short, it explains why rural people have been so angered by the state’s assault on their cultural practices and institutions in the time of Covid.

Border Jumping and Migration Control in Southern Africa
Border Jumping and Migration Control in Southern Africa

Author: Francis Musoni

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2020-04-07

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 0253047161

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With the end of apartheid rule in South Africa and the ongoing economic crisis in Zimbabwe, the border between these Southern African countries has become one of the busiest inland ports of entry in the world. As border crossers wait for clearance, crime, violence, and illegal entries have become rampant. Francis Musoni observes that border jumping has become a way of life for many of those who live on both sides of the Limpopo River and he explores the reasons for this, including searches for better paying jobs and access to food and clothing at affordable prices. Musoni sets these actions into a framework of illegality. He considers how countries have failed to secure their borders, why passports are denied to travelers, and how border jumping has become a phenomenon with a long history, especially in Africa. Musoni emphasizes cross-border travelers' active participation in the making of this history and how clandestine mobility has presented opportunity and creative possibilities for those who are willing to take the risk.

Contemporary Migration to South Africa
Contemporary Migration to South Africa

Author: Aurelia Segatti

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2011-08-23

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 0821387677

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Building on global interest in migration development, the volume draws attention to one of the most important migration systems in sub-Saharan Africa. It reviews South Africa’s approach to international migration in the post-apartheid period from a regional development perspective, highlighting key policy issues, debates, and consequences. The authors find at least three areas where migration is resulting in important development impacts. First, by offering options to those affected by conflict and crises in a region that has limited formal disaster management and social protection systems. Second, by mitigating shortcomings and distortions in regional labour markets. Third, by providing support to struggling rural economies and ever expanding urban areas in terms of livelihoods and social capital transfers. Chapter One consists of a study of the country’s historical experience of migration and, in particular, analyses the changes in official attitudes throughout the twentieth century, indicating the roots of contemporary ideas and policy dilemmas. Chapters Two, Three, Four and Five complement this analysis of the South African State’s capacity to reform and manage the South African migration situation by looking at often neglected dimensions: the first explores the question of skilled labour, a crucial question given the unbalanced structure of the South African labour market; the second examines the impact of migration on local government in South African cities and specifically implications for urban planning, service delivery, health, security, and political accountability; the third analyses the nature of undocumented migration to South Africa and the challenges it raises to both State and non-State actors; The book concludes with an examination of health as a critical issue when examining the relationship between migration and development in South Africa, in light of recent empirical data.