Friends and family: Social cohesion in South Africa

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 61-76

  Chipkin, Ivor ^a   Ngqulunga, Bongani ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND   (South Africa)

^b BROWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

APARTHEID; POLITICAL CONFLICT; POLITICAL IDEOLOGY; POLITICAL SYSTEM; PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION; SOCIAL CAPITAL; STATE ROLE;

AFRICA; SOUTH AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

EID: 39749168933     PISSN: 03057070     EISSN: 14653893     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03057070701832882     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. I. Wallerstein, 'Does India Exist?', in The Essential Wallerstein (New York, The New Press, 1998), pp. 310-14.
2. C. Taylor, 'Why Democracy Needs Patriotism', in For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism (Joshua Cohen, ed.) (Boston, Beacon Press, 1996), pp. 119-21.
3. Ibid., pp. 119-21.
4. D. Miller, 'In What Sense Must Socialism be Communitarian?', Social Philosophy & Policy, 6, 2 (1989), p. 59.
5. A. Abizadeh, 'Does Liberal Democracy Presuppose a Cultural Nation? Four Arguments', American Political Science Review, 96, 3 (2002), p. 496.
6. At least since the rise of social contract theory, the question of friendship, as it related to the integrity of the polis, has been on the backburner. Aristotle devoted two books of the Nicomachean Ethics to love and Plato approached it in the Symposium. There are the dialogues of Cicero and Aelred and Seneca's letters of advice. Thomas Aquinas approached the question of love and charity in his Summa Theologiae, and Montaigne wrote an essay entitled Of Friendship In the nineteenth century, Emerson reflected on friendship as did Søren Kierkegaard in Works of Love. Then there was nothing for almost a hundred years, until Freud. More recently, but not before the 1970s, the topic has again attracted attention, especially in relation to a renewed interest in Ethics. See, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (translated by T. Irwin), (Cambridge and Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, 1999).
7. See also the collection of essays on friendship by Kant et al. in Other Selves: Philosophers on Friendship (M. Pakaluk, ed.) (Indianapolis/Cambridge, Hackett Publishing Company, 1991).
8. See, for example, N. Badhwar, 'Friends as Ends in Themselves', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 48 (1987)
9. K-C. Chong, 'Egoism, Desires, Friendship', American Philosophical Quarterly, 21 (1984)
10. J. Derrida, 'The Politics of Friendship' (translated by Gabriel Motzkin), Journal of Philosophy, 85 (1988).
11. See also Alan Badiou's polemical critique of this development in Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (translated by Peter Hallward) (London and New York, Verso, 2002).
12. See J. Habermas, The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays (M. Pensky, translator and editor), (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2001).
13. See also L. Greenfeld, Nationalism. Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA & London, Harvard University Press, 1992). For already 150 years before the civil wars in England, suggests Greenfeld, sovereignty was deemed to lodge in nation-states, power and authority thought to derive from the nation-people. By the eighteenth century, this view was axiomatic for as diverse a group as Johan Gottfied Herder, John Stuart Mill and the French revolutionaries. The Committee of Public Safety, for example, opposed the cosmopolitan character of monarchical society, precisely on these grounds. 'The monarchy', it pronounced in 1794, 'had good reason to resemble the Tower of Babel [...] In a free society language must be the same for one and all'. Herder addressed a similar criticism to the Prussia of Frederick the Great: '[...] nothing was more manifestly contrary to the purposes of political government than the unnatural enlargement of states, the wild mixing of different human species and nations under one scepter'. Mill too was sceptical of the prospects of democratic government in anything less than the nation: 'Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities [because] the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities'.
14. B. Barry, cited in Abizadeh, 'Does Liberal Democracy Presuppose a Cultural Nation?', p. 502.
15. D. Miller, 'The Left, the Nation-State, and European Citizenship', Dissent (1998), p. 49.
16. D. Miller, Market, State and Community: Theoretical Foundations of Market Socialism (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 245.
17. A. Ingram, cited in Abizadeh, 'Does Liberal Democracy Presuppose a Cultural Nation?', p. 496.
18. Abizadeh, 'Does Liberal Democracy Presuppose a Cultural Nation?', p. 496.
19. See, for example, Chantal Mouffe's engagement with Schmitt in The Democratic Paradox (London and New York, Verso, 2000).
20. D. Schnapper, La communauté des citoyens: Sur l'ideé moderne de nation (Paris, Gallimard, 1994), p. 40.
21. Ibid., p. 40.
22. E. Miguel, 'Tribe or Nation? Nation Building and Public Goods in Kenya versus Tanzania', World Politics, 56 (2004), p. 327.
23. Miguel, 'Tribe or Nation?', p. 328.
24. Ibid., p. 328
25. A. Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998).
26. Readers will be familiar with the radical historiography that revolutionised South African studies from the 1970s. What is less well recorded is that this scholarship reflected an academic literature 'catching-up' with the terms and concepts that were already prevalent in ANC and Communist Party circles - in particular, the theory of National Democratic Revolution. At least since 1964, with the publication of the Road to South African Freedom, and officially from 1969, the Morogoro Conference in Tanzania, apartheid was analysed as a form of capitalist society: A 'colonialism of a special kind'. If today, academic studies appeal less and less to the categories of Marxism- Leninism, this is not true in government and alliance circles. Indeed, the three major appraisals of the postapartheid condition - the State and Social Transformation of 1996, the State, Property Relations and Transformation and most recently, the discussion document of the Central Committee of the SACP of May 2006 - all approach this question as a review of the National Democratic Revolution. What this means is that with rare, though important exceptions, a gulf has emerged between the concerns and vocabulary of university academics and the world of government and policy makers.
27. J.L. Gibson, Overcoming Apartheid. Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation? (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2004), p. 167.
28. Gibson, Overcoming Apartheid, p. 167.
29. J. Daniel, R. Southall and S. Dippenaar, 'Issues of Democracy and Governance', in U. Pillay, B. Roberts and S. Rule (eds), South African Social Attitudes: Changing Times, Diverse Voices (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2006), p. 20.
30. This is an expression that Martin Legassick uses to describe the current situation in South Africa. See, 'Armed Struggle in South Africa: Consequences of a Strategy Debate', in H. Melber (ed.), Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2003).
31. Legassick, 'Armed Struggle in South Africa', p. 172.
32. A. Habib, 'The Politics of Economic Policy-Making: Substantive Uncertainty, Political Leverage and Human Development', in P. Jones and K. Stokke (eds), Democratising Development: The Politics of Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa (Leiden and Boston, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2005), p. 41.
33. Ibid., p. 42.
34. Similar data are contained in S. Terreblanche, A History of Inequality in South Africa 1652-2002 (Durban, University of Natal Press, and Sandton, KMM Review Press, 2002).
35. This is a term used by Jo Beall, Stephen Gelb and Shireen Hassim in the title of the special issue of the Journal of Southern African Studies 31, 4 (2005) to refer to the contradictory character of South Africa's transition from apartheid.
36. D. James, A.X. Ngonini and G. M. Nkadimeng, '(Re)constituting Class?: Owners, Tenants and the Politics of Land Reform in Mpumalanga', Journal of Southern African Studies, 31, 4 (December 2005), p. 826.
37. M. Macdonald, Why Race Matters (Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2006).
38. M. Sachs, 'Voting Patterns in the 1999 and 2004 elections compared', Election Synopsis, 1, 4 (2004), p. 8.
39. This may reflect a complementary process. In the first place, a long-history of Afrikaner nationalism that rallied behind a South African identity in response to an imperial consciousness that was seemingly ambivalent towards the country. Secondly, a 'South African' identity today lends whites some ideological defence against Affirmative Action and other like interventions: 'It is not me that is holding on to a white identity. It is the government that is casting me in racial terms. I am a South African.'
40. Beall et al., 'Fragile Stability: State and Society in Democratic South Africa', p. 698.
41. South African Government, A Nation in the Making: A Discussion Document on Macro-Social Trends in South Africa (Policy Co-ordination and Advisory Services, Social Sector, The Presidency, 2006).
42. A. Altbeker, 'Puzzling Statistics: Is South Africa Really the World's Crime Capital?', SA Crime Quarterly (11 March 2005), p. 8.
43. A. du Plessis and A. Louw, 'The Tide is Turning: The 2003/04 SAPS Crime Statistics in SA', SA Crime Quarterly (12 June 2005). Available at: http://www.iss.co.za/pubs/CrimeQ/No.12/duPlessis.htm. This same report suggests that crime generally is on the decrease, though this has not yet caught up with public perceptions.
44. S. Mathews et al., '"Every Six Hours a Woman is Killed by Her Intimate Partner" A National Study of Female Homicide in South Africa', MRC Policy Brief, 5 (June 2004), p. 2.
45. K. Dunkle et al., Gender-based Violence and HIV Infection among Pregnant Women in Soweto: A Technical Report to the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID, June 2003), p. 2.
46. R. Morrell (ed.), Changing Men in Southern Africa (Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press and London and New York, Zed Books, 2001).
47. Xaba, in Changing Men in Southern Africa, p. 107.
48. E. Harvey, 'General Policy and Population Development', in L. Glanz and A. Spiegel (eds), Violence and Family Life in a Contemporary South Africa: Research and Policy Issues (Pretoria, HSRC Publishers, 1996), p. 271.
49. W.J. Schurink, 'Family Violence Policy and Intervention: Policing Strategies', in Glanz and Spiegel (eds), Violence and Family Life, p. 291.
50. A. Yaw Amoateng and L. Richter, 'The State of Families in South Africa', in J. Daniel, A. Habib, R. Southall (eds), State of the Nation 2003-2004 (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2003), pp. 242-67.
51. A. Barrientos and J. DeJong, 'Reducing Child Poverty with Cash Transfers: A Sure Thing?', Development Policy Review, 24, 5 (2006), pp. 537-52.
52. V. Hosegood, and F. Lund, The Reach of the South African Child Support Grant: Evidence from KwaZulu-Natal, CSDS Working Paper 38 (October 2003).
53. A. Arnall, J. Furtado, J. Ghazoul and C. de Swardt, 'Perceptions of Informal Safety Nets: A Case-Study from a South African Informal Settlement', Development Southern Africa, 21, 3 (2004), pp. 443-60.
54. This is a separate concern from the financial sustainability of current welfare provisions. For the moment they are being financed from windfall tax collections. Yet the size of the tax-base is not growing at the same rate as demands for welfare.
55. D.L. Sam, K. Peltzer and B. Mayer, 'The Changing Values of Children Preferences Regarding Family Size in South Africa', Applied Psychology: An International Review, 5, 3 (2005), p. 373.
56. The Presidency, Republic of South Africa, Macro-Social Report: Draft Update (May 2005). There is another way of interpreting these statistics. Declining marriage rates, especially in the African community, might have more to do with a general tolerance for out of wedlock pregnancies and the inability to afford the costs of weddings and lobola.
57. J. Steinberg, Midlands (Johannesburg and Cape Town, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2002), p. 162.
58. If this is happening are we, in effect, witnessing a process of 'retribalisation' of social relations in the rural areas and a process of accelerating individualisation in the cities?
59. C. Glaser and P. Delius, 'Sexual Socialisation in South Africa: A Historical Perspective', African Studies, 6, 1 (2002), p. 27.
60. See I. Chipkin, 'Functional and Dysfunctional Communities', Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 1 (2003), pp. 63-82.
61. The Presidency, Republic of South Africa 2005, 'Macro-Social Report: Draft Update', May 2005, slide 82.
62. S. Jensen and L. Buur, 'Everyday Policing and the Occult: Notions of "Witchcraft", Crime and the "People"', African Studies, 63, 2 (2004), p. 194.
63. The Presidency, Republic of South Africa. 'Macro-social Report: Draft Update', May 2005, slide 81.
64. L. McGregor, Khabzela: The Life and Times of a South African (Chicago, Independent Publishers Group, 2005).
65. DPLG, Reviewing the Establishment of Municipal Ward Committees in South Africa 2002/2003, compiled by Shikanda Business Solutions, 2003, Section 8-1.
66. DPLG, 'Reviewing the Establishment of Municipal Ward Committees in South Africa 2002/2003', section 8-6.
67. DPLG, Reviewing the Establishment of Municipal Ward Committees in South Africa 2004/2005, compiled by the Directorate: Institutional Development Systems, DPLG, 2004.
68. S. Booysen, The Challenges of Local Democracy (Johannesburg, AC Nielsen, 2005).
69. Amoateng and Richter, 'The State of Families in South Africa', p. 244.
70. J. Donzelot, The Policing of Families (translated from the French by R. Hurley) (Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp. 48-95.
71. L. Chisholm, 'The State of South Africa's Schools', in J. Daniel, R. Southall and J. Lutchman (eds), State of the Nation. South Africa 2004-2005 (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2004), p. 201.