Nicolas Pons-Vignon

Land, Violent Conflict and Development

Land dynamics are context specific and rapidly changing, and conflicts related to them do not systematically escalate into violence. One way of framing the discussion is to consider change in the structures of power governing the management of resources in rural areas as necessary to achieve greater efficiency and equity. Since such change will be opposed by beneficiaries of the system in place, the transformation of agriculture is bound to be marred by conflicts of various intensity levels. At the heart of these conflicts lies land because of its very high material and symbolic values. Evidence shows that (a) whether they result from pre-existing agrarian tensions or not, conflict situations in rural societies deeply affect the politics of land, and (b) whether it is at the heart of a conflict or gets dragged into it, land requires a careful approach by policy makers because it is a central element in the evolution of societies. As a result, policies pertaining to land can ... Les dynamiques foncieres sont en mutation permanente et s’inscrivent dans des contextes specifiques. S’il est vrai qu’elles provoquent des conflits, ceux-ci ne deviennent pas systematiquement violents. Pour mieux comprendre les liens entre terre et conflit, on peut s’interesser aux structures de pouvoir qui gouvernent la gestion des ressources naturelles : leur transformation est en effet une etape necessaire a l’amelioration de l’efficacite economique de l’agriculture et a la reduction des inegalites. Parce qu’elle menace les interets dominants, une telle transformation provoque toujours des conflits d’intensite variable. Or la question fonciere est au coeur de ces conflits, a cause des valeurs economique et symbolique attachees a la terre. A cet egard, deux enseignements peuvent etre retenus : d’une part, quelle que soit leur origine, les conflits dans les societes rurales affectent profondement les systemes fonciers ; d’autre part, qu’elles soient a l’origine du conflit ou ...

'The art of neoliberalism': accumulation, institutional change and social order since the end of apartheid

Analysing Chiles post-Pinochet transition, Palma identified a conundrum which equally well captures the political economy of post-apartheid South Africa:The basic political dilemma for any oligarc...

Stuck in stabilisation? South Africa's post-apartheid macro-economic policy between ideological conversion and technocratic capture

This article explores post-apartheid South Africas commitment to macro-economic orthodoxy. Its key argument is that South Africa offers an exemplary case of neoliberal deepening which has entailed three interconnected processes: ideological conversion, a stated focus on poverty and development covering a deep commitment to orthodox macro policies, entailing institutions and a set of practices, and a far-reaching state restructuring involving the emergence and consolidation of a hegemonic treasury. Drawing on an analysis of grey literature, policy documents and a series of interviews with policy-makers, the article first discusses neoliberalism in South Africa, focusing on the ‘conversion’ of key ANC leaders to neoclassical economic orthodoxy. It then turns to the central, yet under-researched, instrument of neoliberal deepening: the emergence and consolidation of a dominant national treasury with the ability to shape policy-making across all areas of state intervention. The article closes on a call to envisage concurrently ideological conversion and state formation to understand the dynamics of neoliberalism, and its paradoxical resilience in the South Africa case.

Labour market restructuring in South Africa: low wages, high insecurity

The liberation from apartheid generated great expectations of change in the workplace and the labour market (Pons-Vignon and Anseeuw 2009). This was due to the key role of trade unions in overthrowing the system of minority rule, both as a political force and through successful undermining of the racist order which had been established in workplaces (Von Holdt 2003). Apartheid geography had ensured the racial separation of dwellings; encounters (often brutal) between people considered to belong to different racial groups took place mostly in what Marx calls ‘the hidden abode of production’. The forcible commodification of Southern African peasants into wage labourers (Bernstein 1994) entailed extreme violence; it was followed by the imposition of a migrant labour system and of colour bars across workplaces. In the absence of alternative sources of income, wage employment came to occupy a central place in the reproduction of most South Africans. Yet, alongside a record-breaking unemployment rate (standing close to 35%), more and more research points to the restoration of employer power post-1994, through the widespread use of outsourcing, entailing an explosion in casual employment (Buhlungu and Bezuidenhout 2008; PonsVignon forthcoming; Webster and Von Holdt 2005). The economically liberating stable employment most South Africans aspire to has therefore not materialised, but remains the overarching objective of progressive forces in which unions continue to play a leading role (Barchiesi 2011). Yet, reading the media or the reports produced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), one could believe that the South African government has yielded to the dreaded sirens of populism, at least in the labour market. Rigid rules have allegedly been established, killing flexibility by over-protecting workers who are poorly skilled and over-unionised; a deadly mix which lies at the root of high unemployment and poverty (Klein 2012). Such arguments follow the South African (neo)liberal tradition, according to which the key to unlocking growth and reducing poverty would be to reform the labour market (making it ‘flexible’) and equip poor people with useful skills. Similar arguments were used in the early 1990s to dismiss the report of the Macro-Economic Research Group (MERG 1993) and debunked by Sender (1994). The new claims associated with this neoliberal perspective on the labour market suffer from serious empirical limitations, whether in attempts to point to ‘high’ wages as the cause of unemployment (Forslund 2013), or to claim that South

Arbeitsmarkt-Restrukturierung in Südafrika: Der Traum verzögert sich

Die Abschaffung des Apartheid-Regimes brachte grose Erwartungen bezuglich einer Veranderung des Arbeitsmarktes mit sich. Dies war bedingt durch die Schlusselrolle der Gewerkschaften beim Umsturz der Minderheitsherrschaft – sowohl als politische Macht, als auch durch die erfolgreiche Unterdruckung des rassistischen Arbeitsplatz-Systems.