Township Politics

Township Politics
Author: Mzwanele Mayekiso
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 1996
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0853459657

A collection of unabridged articles on accounting theory from the British quarterly journal, Accounting Research, published between 1948 and 1958. Topics include the classification of assets; theory of foreign branch accounts; cost and cost accounting; the economic and accounting concepts of profit; revenue and revenue accounts; costing terminology; and the formal principles of public company accounting. No index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Township Politics: Civic Struggles for a New South Africa

Township Politics: Civic Struggles for a New South Africa
Author: Mzwanele Mayekiso
Publisher: UJ Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2023-02-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 177642428X

This insider’s account of an extraordinary period of national political transition is also a primer on a new radical philosophy, the street–smart Marxism that developed in South Africa’s sprawling townships between 1985 and 1995 and rendered them ungovernable for the apartheid state. Mzwanele Mayekiso, a young leader of the “civics”—as South Africa’s popular community organizations are called—spent almost three years in prison as a result of the civics’ militant organizing. Here, he interlaces his personal story with caustic assessments of apartheid’s hand–picked township leaders, with rebuttals of armchair academics, and with impassioned but self–critical analyses of the civics’ struggles and tactics. He ends with a vision of an international urban social movement that, he argues, must be a crucial component of any emancipatory project.

The African National Congress and Participatory Democracy

The African National Congress and Participatory Democracy
Author: Heidi Brooks
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2019-08-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030257444

This book examines the development of democratic thought in the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, with a focus on the movement’s ideas about participatory democracy. It makes particular reference to two key periods: the 1980s ‘people’s power’ movement and the subsequent years of policy formulation from 1990 when the ANC began to design and implement a system of participatory democracy alongside a representative government. Through the examination of historic documents and in-depth interviews with former ANC activists, government officials and those involved in policy development, the author explores the inspiration for the party’s commitment to establishing participatory democracy. The book combines democratic theory and political and intellectual history to look at the role of popular participation as part of a broader trajectory of the ANC’s democratic thought. It critically engages with concepts used in the party’s participatory discourse with a view to deepening our understanding of how ideas have shaped the construction of South Africa’s democracy.

Alexandra

Alexandra
Author: Noor Nieftagodien
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 534
Release: 2008-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1776141237

Alexandra: A History is a social and political history of one of South Africa’s oldest townships. It begins with the founding of Alexandra as a freehold township in 1912 and traces its growth as a centre of black working-class life through the early years before the Nationalist government, through the struggles of the apartheid era and into the present day. Declared as a location for ‘natives and coloureds’, Alexandra became home to a diverse population where stand owners, tenants, squatters, hostel-dwellers, workers and migrants from every corner of the country converged to make a new life for themselves near the economic hub of Johannesburg. The stories of ordinary people are at the core of the township’s history. Based on numerous life-history interviews with residents and previously unexamined archive sources, the book portrays in vivid detail the daily struggles and tribulations of the people of Alexandra. A significant focus is the rich history of political resistance, in which political organisations and civic movements organised bus boycotts, anti-removal and anti-pass campaigns, and mobilised for housing and a better life for the township’s residents. But the book also tells the stories of daily life, of the making of urban cultures and of the infamous Spoilers and Msomi gangs. Over weekends Alexandra came alive as soccer matches, church services and shebeens vie for the attention of residents. Alexandra: A History highlights the social complexities of the township, which at times caused tension between different segments of the population. Above all else, despite a long history of hardship and adversity, the community spirit of the people of Alexandra, expressed in a fiercely loyal love of their township home, has repeatedly triumphed and endured.

Beyond Our Wildest Dreams

Beyond Our Wildest Dreams
Author: Ineke van Kessel
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780813918686

The 1980s in South Africa were marked by protest, violent confrontation, and international sanctions. Internally, the country saw a bewildering growth of grassroots organizations--including trade unions, civic associations in the black townships, student and other youth organizations, church-based groups, and women's movements--many of which operated under the umbrella of the United Democratic Front (UDF). "Beyond Our Wildest Dreams" explores the often conflicted relationship between the UDF's large-scale resistance to apartheid and its everyday struggles at the local level. In hindsight, the UDF can be seen as a transitional front, preparing the ground for leaders of the liberation movement to return from exile or prison and take over power. But the founding fathers of the UDF initially had far more modest ambitions. Interviews with Cachalia and other leading personalities in the UDF examine the organization's workings at the national level, while stories of ordinary people, collected by the author, illuminate the grassroots activism so important to the UDF's success. Even in South Africa, writes Ineke van Kessel, who covered the anti-apartheid movement as a journalist, resistance was not the obvious option for ordinary citizens. Van Kessel shows how these people were mobilized into forming a radical social movement that developed a highly flexible and innovative form of resistance that ultimately ended apartheid. --From publisher's description.

Neoliberal Apartheid

Neoliberal Apartheid
Author: Andy Clarno
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 022643009X

This is the first comparative analysis of the political transitions in South Africa and Palestine since the 1990s. Clarno s study is grounded in impressive ethnographic fieldwork, taking him from South African townships to Palestinian refugee camps, where he talked to a wide array of informants, from local residents to policymakers, political activists, business representatives, and local and international security personnel. The resulting inquiry accounts for the simultaneous development of extreme inequality, racialized poverty, and advanced strategies for securing the powerful and policing the poor in South Africa and Palestine/Israel over the last 20 years. Clarno places these transitions in a global context while arguing that a new form of neoliberal apartheid has emerged in both countries. The width and depth of Clarno s research, combined with wide-ranging first-hand accounts of realities otherwise difficult for researchers to access, make Neoliberal Apartheid a path-breaking contribution to the study of social change, political transitions, and security dynamics in highly unequal societies. Take one example of Clarno s major themes, to wit, the issue of security. Both places have generated advanced strategies for securing the powerful and policing the racialized poor. In South Africa, racialized anxieties about black crime shape the growth of private security forces that police poor black South Africans in wealthy neighborhoods. Meanwhile, a discourse of Muslim terrorism informs the coordinated network of security forcesinvolving Israel, the United States, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authoritythat polices Palestinians in the West Bank. Overall, Clarno s pathbreaking book shows how the shifting relationship between racism, capitalism, colonialism, and empire has generated inequality and insecurity, marginalization and securitization in South Africa, Palestine/Israel, and other parts of the world."

Urban Development and Civil Society

Urban Development and Civil Society
Author: Michael Carley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134200501

The world's population is rapidly urbanizing but the affluence and development often associated with cities are far from equitably or sustainably distributed. Where it was once taken for granted that responsibility for urban development lay with the state, increasingly the emphasis has shifted to market-driven and public-private sector initiatives, which can marginalize the intended beneficiaries - the urban poor - from decision making and implementation. This text outlines the essential conditions for effective urban planning and management by placing bottom-up community initiatives at the heart of the push for equitable and sustainable development in cities. Crucially, the state must engage with both the market and civil society in pursuit of sustainable cities. Presenting a wide-ranging selection of case studies in rapidly urbanizing and transitional countries, from the poorest parts of Africa and Asia to the relatively developed United Kingdom, the authors describe and analyze innovations in how globally disadvantaged urban communities can be engaged in improving their living environments.

Cities of the Global South Reader

Cities of the Global South Reader
Author: Faranak Miraftab
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2014-10-10
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317636791

The Cities of the Global South Reader adopts a fresh and critical approach to the fi eld of urbanization in the developing world. The Reader incorporates both early and emerging debates about the diverse trajectories of urbanization processes in the context of the restructured global alignments in the last three decades. Emphasizing the historical legacies of colonialism, the Reader recognizes the entanglement of conditions and concepts often understood in binary relations: first/third worlds, wealth/poverty, development/underdevelopment, and inclusion/exclusion. By asking: “whose city? whose development?” the Reader rigorously highlights the fractures along lines of class, race, gender, and other socially and spatially constructed hierarchies in global South cities. The Reader’s thematic structure, where editorial introductions accompany selected texts, examines the issues and concerns that urban dwellers, planners, and policy makers face in the contemporary world. These include the urban economy, housing, basic services, infrastructure, the role of non-state civil society-based actors, planned interventions and contestations, the role of diaspora capital, the looming problem of adapting to climate change, and the increasing spectre of violence in a post 9/11 transnational world. The Cities of the Global South Reader pulls together a diverse set of readings from scholars across the world, some of which have been written specially for the volume, to provide an essential resource for a broad interdisciplinary readership at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in urban geography, urban sociology, and urban planning as well as disciplines related to international and development studies. Editorial commentaries that introduce the central issues for each theme summarize the state of the field and outline an associated bibliography. They will be of particular value for lecturers, students, and researchers, making the Cities of the Global South Reader a key text for those interested in understanding contemporary urbanization processes.

Evil Paradises

Evil Paradises
Author: Mike Davis
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2011-07-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1595587780

Evil Paradises, edited by Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, is a global guidebook to phantasmagoric but real places—alternate realities being constructed as “utopias” in a capitalist era unfettered by unions and state regulation. These developments—in cities, deserts, and in the middle of the sea—are worlds where consumption and inequality surpass our worst nightmares. Although they read like science fiction, the case studies are shockingly real. In Dubai, where child slavery existed until very recently, a gilded archipelago of private islands known as “The World” is literally being added to the ocean. In Medellín and Kabul, drug lords—in many ways textbook capitalists—are redefining conspicuous consumption in fortified palaces. In Hong Kong, Cairo, and even the Iranian desert, burgeoning communities of nouveaux riches have taken shelter in fantasy Californias, complete with Mickey Mouse statues, while their maids sleep in rooftop chicken coops. Meanwhile, Ted Turner rides herd over his bison in 2 million acres of private parkland. Davis and Monk have assembled an extraordinary group of urbanists, architects, historians, and visionary thinkers to reflect upon the trajectory of a civilization whose deepest ethos seems to be to consume all the resources of the earth within a single lifetime.