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"Political parties South Africa KwaZulu-Natal."
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Institutionalizing Elites
This book offers a new framework for the study of political elites and an empirically rich interrogation of the realization, accumulation and exercise of institutionalized political power by political elites in the African context of the Provincial Legislature of KwaZulu-Natal.
eBook
Violence, Autochthony, and Identity Politics in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa): A Processual Perspective on Local Political Dynamics
“Political violence” is seemingly on the rise again in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The violence that began in the 1980s and reached a peak in the transition period resurfaced before the local government elections in August 2016. Krämer provides a processual understanding of local dynamics of violence in the eThekwini Municipality and situates the current episode within the historical trajectory of violent conflict. He examines how exclusionary identities get activated in local elections and argues that underlying the violence between supporters of hostile political parties are conflicting forms of autochthonous belonging and contradictory ideas about what constitutes membership in a community.
Journal Article
FROM WARLORDS TO FREEDOM FIGHTERS: POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND STATE FORMATION IN UMBUMBULU, SOUTH AFRICA
This article analyses the relationship between violence, the transition from apartheid, and contemporary state formation in South Africa. Through an ethnographic case study of the rural area of Umbumbulu outside Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, the article argues that prevailing interpretations of violence that focus on rivalry between political parties obscure the ways in which other factors -such as local power struggles among customary leaders and strongmen, state support for the rise of warlords, and the recruitment of young men through kinship and patronage networks -helped spread the violence. Local strongmen or warlords were motivated by the quest for power and economic success in their local communities as well as their beliefs in and strategic alliances with national-level political parties engaged in the struggle to end apartheid. In particular, the article focuses on a 'faction fight' in the mid-1980s and the subsequent violence that surrounded two warlords affiliated to the African National Congress in a region that was mostly dominated by Inkatha supporters. The alliances the ANC made with these warlords continued into the post-apartheid period and helped shape the ways in which power was exercised within the new political institutions of the democratic state.
Journal Article
Emergent Democracy and 'Resurgent' Tradition: Institutions, Chieftaincy and Transition in KwaZulu-Natal
This article explores chieftaincy in democratic South Africa and particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, where traditional leadership is vocal and politically embedded. Informed by institutional theories, we argue that tradition is more persistent than 'resurgent' and that the relationship between ubukhosi (chieftaincy) and wider governance structures in the province and South Africa must be seen as part of a much longer history that exhibits both continuities and discontinuities. Indeed, the article draws parallels between 'indirect rule' under colonialism and beyond, and current plans for involving traditional leaders in local governance but concludes that the analogy has limitations given the broader institutional context of post-apartheid South Africa. Drawing on historical analysis of KwaZulu-Natal and contemporary research among traditional leaders, municipal officials and councillors, as well as residents of traditional authority areas, we consider whether the current recognition of traditional authorities and the powers and functions accorded them, constitute a threat to South Africa's emergent democracy or serve as a site of stability in a politically volatile province.
Journal Article
Chris Hani's 'Country Bumpkins': Regional Networks in the African National Congress Underground, 1974-1994
This article considers the social hinterland of leading members of the ANC underground who, raised in the Transkei, came of age in the late 1970s. Earlier in the twentieth century, South Africa's Native Reserves were wellsprings of nationalist leadership. Prominent ANC leaders shared a similar regionally-focused set of familial, educational and professional connections that vaulted them to the centre of the nationalist movement. These regional networks remained important feeders for the ANC into the later apartheid era. Chris Hani recruited his leading cadres from a small pool of young men educated in Transkei's élite schools and earmarked for senior posts in the Bantustan bureaucracy. This social proximity of élite ANC cadres and leading Bantustan functionaries made the boundaries between opposition and collaboration permeable. While the ANC's attempted alliance with KwaZulu chief minister Buthelezi failed, hardening the distinction between militant nationalism and apartheid-corrupted ethnicity, its relationship with the Transkei's Bantu Holomisa is a counter-example of the blurring of these political identities.
Journal Article
Toward Electoral Security: Experiences from KwaZulu-Natal
There is a growing recognition of the dangers of electoral violence. Yet, the theoretical foundation for systematic research and for adequate policy is still underdeveloped. This article aims to develop the theoretical understandings of strategies to manage and prevent electoral violence. This is accomplished by integrating research conducted within the two academic discourses on democratization and conflict management and also by drawing on the experiences from the conflict-ridden province KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The five strategies identified are monitoring, mediation, legal measures, law enforcement and self-regulating practices. In the article, the functions and mechanisms of the strategies are discussed. In addition, we analyse the limitations and usefulness of each of the strategies in turn and also provide suggestions on how to improve electoral security.
Journal Article
Community development in a post-conflict context: fracture and depleted social capital
This paper explores and theorizes the experiences of a group of development workers involved in a community-based project in the context of post-conflict KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa. The effects of conflict on development in terms of loss of lives, livelihoods and resources have traditionally received much attention. Conflict fragments and disables social networks, relationships and systems of trust, and this conflict-induced fragmentation of the relational space in a community can have profound implications for community development and peace-building. The paper draws on findings from a recent study (John, 2009) into the Human Rights, Democracy and Development (HRDD) project, an adult education and development project in rural KZN.
Journal Article
The Political Consequences of Local Electoral Systems: Democratic Change and the Politics of Differential Citizenship in South Africa
What kind of democracy is emerging from the recent wave of democratic transitions? A spatial analysis of democratization can map the efforts of political leaders to institutionalize differential citizenship rights among different population groups to secure long-term political advantage. The design and construction of local electoral systems play a central role in establishing institutional endowments that constrain both the associational autonomy of social groups and their ability to advance claims for citizenship rights. Party leaders designed the local electoral system in KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa to shore up authoritarian clientelism in rural areas as the price for democratic expansion and coalitional opportunities in urban areas. This spatial strategy not only secured interparty advantage, but also entrenched long-term voter preferences along ethnic and regional lines.
Journal Article
Persistent Collective Violence and Early Warning Systems: The Case of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
One of the little known specifics of the democratic transition in South Africa during 1990-1994 is its system of early warning about political violence. The strong role that grassroots organizations played in monitoring affected communities and suspected perpetrators set it apart from systems that are driven primarily by academics, although academics were important for the analysis of the violence reports collected by the popular movement and for formulating warnings on trends and hot zones that the transitional government as well as the media actively demanded. This article describes the mechanisms of early warning and analyzes data from the province of KwaZulu-Natal, where high levels of political violence continued for much longer than in the rest of the country. Using regression techniques, we show that the violent behavior of the main political antagonists changed significantly after the April 1994 national elections. Also, the violence followed different causative patterns in the various subregions. Profiles derived in 1994 and 1995 informed the government's decision to postpone regional elections in KwaZulu-Natal three times before they could be held in June 1996 in a climate of relative tranquillity.
Journal Article