Jeremy Seekings

The continuing salience of race: Discrimination and diversity in South Africa

Abstract The end of apartheid has brought a resurgence of research into racial identities, attitudes and behaviour in South Africa. The legacy of systematic racial ordering and discrimination under apartheid is that South Africa remains deeply racialised, in cultural and social terms, as well as deeply unequal, in terms of the distribution of income and opportunities. South Africans continue to see themselves in the racial categories of the apartheid era, in part because these categories have become the basis for post-apartheid ‘redress’, in part because they retain cultural meaning in everyday life. South Africans continue to inhabit social worlds that are largely defined by race, and many express negative views of other racial groups. There has been little racial integration in residential areas, although schools provide an important opportunity for inter-racial interaction for middle-class children. Experimental and survey research provide little evidence of racism, however. Few people complain about racial discrimination, although many report everyday experiences that might be understood as discriminatory. Racial discrimination per se seems to be of minor importance in shaping opportunities in post-apartheid South Africa. Far more important are the disadvantages of class, exacerbated by neighbourhood effects: poor schooling, a lack of footholds in the labour market, a lack of financial capital. The relationship between race and class is now very much weaker than in the past. Overall, race remains very important in cultural and social terms, but no longer structures economic advantage and disadvantage.

Democracy and distribution in highly unequal economies: the case of South Africa

Given that incomes in South Africa are distributed very unequally, it might be expected that the establishment of representative democracy would result in the adoption of redistributive policies. Yet overall inequality has not declined since 1994. The electoral and party system provides uneven pressure for redistribution. The fact that poor South Africans have the vote ensures that some areas of public policy do help the poor. The post-apartheid government not only inherited a surprisingly redistributive set of social policies (welfare, education and health care), but has made changes that entail even more redistribution. But these policies do little to help a core section of the poor in South Africa: the unemployed, and especially households in which no one is working. Other public policies serve to disadvantage this marginalised constituency: labour market and other economic policies serve to steer the economy down a growth path that shuts out many of the unskilled and unemployed. The workings of these policies remain opaque, making it unlikely that poor citizens will use their vote to effect necessary policy reforms.

Class, Distribution and Redistribution in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass outline the class structure of post-apartheid South Africa and examine the redistributive consequences of the government’s economic growth path.

The Broader Importance of Welfare Reform in South Africa

Abstract On the agenda for welfare reform in South Africa are proposals to expand the public provision of welfare in radical new ways. Not only does this contrast with the prevailing global trend of retrenchment in public welfare systems, but the proposed ‘basic income grant’ in South Africa is an innovation that remains a fringe idea even in the established welfare states of the North. The very unusual agenda for welfare reform in South Africa is based on the fact that the country already has a welfare system that is exceptional in the world, including especially a non‐contributory old‐age pension that provides a guaranteed minimum income for the elderly, and financial assistance to poor parents with children and to the disabled. The basic income grant has been proposed, most recently in 2002 by the Taylor Committee of Inquiry into a Comprehensive System of Social Security for South Africa, in order to fill the gap caused by high unemployment in South Africas existing welfare system, which is otherwise already generous and redistributive. Whilst the proposed basic income grant is the key item on South Africas innovative reform agenda, the country is also making important contributions to broader debates over welfare through its mix of familial, state and private responsibilities.

Violence, violence prevention, and safety: A research agenda for South Africa

Violence is a serious problem in South Africa with many effects on health services; it presents complex research problems and requires interdisciplinary collaboration. Two key meta-questions emerge: (i) violence must be understood better to develop effective interventions; and (ii) intervention research (evaluating interventions, assessing efficacy and effectiveness, how best to scale up interventions in resource-poor settings) is necessary. A research agenda to address violence is proposed.

Citizenship and Welfare in South Africa: Deracialisation and Inequality in a Labour-Surplus Economy

ResumeDans l’Afrique du Sud d’apres-apartheid, l’egalite politique formelle coexiste avec un haut niveau d’inegalite economique. La deracialisation du marche du travail et les politiques d’aide sociale qui favorisaient les blancs sous le regime de l’apartheid n’ont mene a aucune diminution de l’inegalite en general. Ceci est du en partie au fait que ces politiques etaient fondees sur l’exclusion de portions de la population pour des raisons non seulement de classification raciale individuelle mais de marginalite economique. La race ne suffit plus a qualifier ou a disqualifier les citoyens permettant ou interdisant l’acces aux benefices accordes aux blancs sous le regime de l’apartheid. Cependant, le chomage chronique continue de disqualifier grand nombre de pauvres. Tandis que les politiques de l’etat servaient a proteger les interets de la classe ouvriere blanche sous l’apartheid, elle servaient aujourd’hui a proteger les interets de la classe ouvriere industrielle et urbaine dans son ensemble, a l’exclu...

Mandela's lost province: the African national congress and the Western Cape electorate in the 1994 South African elections

The first democratic elections in South Africa, in April 1994, resulted in a victory for the African National Congress (ANC). In two major provinces, however, the ANC was defeated. In the Western Cape the ANC lost to the National Party (NP), and in KwaZulu/Natal it lost to the Inkatha Freedom Party. Most interpretations of the elections assert the pre‐eminence of race and ethnicity. Our analysis of the ANC and the elections in the Western Cape suggests that such interpretations underestimate firstly the significance of the parties’ election strategies and campaigns, at least in this province, and secondly (and more broadly) the complexity and variety of voters’ decision‐making. Political struggles within the ANC led it to adopt an election strategy which prioritised the large number of undecided coloured voters in the province, but did so in ways that limited the partys appeal to these target voters.

The uneven development of quantitative social science in South Africa

One of the most striking contrasts between journals in South African studies . (or African studies more broadly) and journals in the social sciences in the USA or Europe is the balance between quantitative and qualitative research. In the USA, especially, a high proportion of contemporary research in political science and sociology as well as economics and development studies entails the analysis of quantitative data using ever more complex statistical techniques. In South Africa (and Africa) this kind of social science remains significantly wncferdeveloped.

Deserving individuals and groups: The post-apartheid state's justification of the shape of South Africa's system of social assistance

The constitution charges the government with the progressive realisation of the right of impoverished citizens to income security. In practice, this means that the government must have a reasonable defence of the current size and shape of its social assistance and social insurance programmes. Legal challenges have forced the state into providing such a defence of its social assistance programmes. In summary, the state justifies the current size and shape of this system primarily on the grounds that the state is targeting its scarce resources on the most ‘disadvantaged’ groups, where disadvantage is defined in terms of past opportunity not of current need. In this view, the social assistance system should help those groups of people who had fewest opportunities to provide for themselves. This argument entails a new version of the distinction between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. The state’s application of this argument in recent court papers is flawed empirically, but in making the argument the state has provided a basis for constructive debate on the shape of the welfare state.

A cut above the rest: traditional male circumcision and HIV risk among Xhosa men in Cape Town South Africa.

BackgroundRandomized clinical trials have shown that medical male circumcision substantially reduces the risk of contracting HIV. However, relatively little is known about the relationship between traditional male circumcision and HIV risk. This article examines variations in traditional circumcision practices and their relationship to HIV status. MethodsWe used data from the fifth wave of the Cape Area Panel Study (n = 473) of young adults in Cape Town, South Africa, to determine attitudes towards circumcision, whether men were circumcised, at what age, and whether their foreskin had been fully or partially removed. Probit models were estimated to determine the association between extent and age of circumcision and HIV status. ResultsThere was strong support for traditional male circumcision. 92.5% of the men reported being circumcised, with 10.5% partially circumcised. Partially circumcised men had a 7% point greater risk of being HIV positive than fully circumcised men (P < 0.05) and equal risk compared with uncircumcised men. Most (91%) men were circumcised between the ages of 17 and 22 years (mean 19.2 years), and HIV risk increased with age of circumcision (P < 0.10). ConclusionsEfforts should be made to encourage earlier circumcisions and to work with traditional surgeons to reduce the number of partial circumcisions. Data on the extent and age of circumcision are necessary for meaningful conclusions to be drawn from survey data about the relationship between circumcision and HIV status.