This thesis investigates the role of national identity in economic development in the context of post-apartheid South Africa. It draws on research carried out during 1997-1998 on a supply-side project in the plastics industry - the Workplace Challenge. The key empirical sections of the thesis are formed by in-depth case-studies of two factories which implemented the Workplace Challenge. This is linked to industry-level pressures and analysis of national-level discourses to illustrate how macro-level processes are reflected in micro contexts. After an introductory chapter, the research question is framed, in Chapter Two, by means of an interdisciplinary review of theories of nationalism, identity (particularly social identity theory), and economic development. It is suggested that the existence of a superordinate-level identity - such as that held by citizens of a 'new' South Africa - provides a potential resource, in the form of unity and motivation, that can be brought to bear in the process of economic development. Chapter Three examines the methodology used to investigate this research question. Chapter Four considers the national context of post-apartheid South Africa. Particular attention is paid to the national-building project undertaken since the democratic elections of 1994, the government's economic development strategy, and the main institutions of labour and capital. The Workplace Challenge project, which aims to raise productivity by improving shopfloor relations, is introduced in Chapter Five along with a description of the plastics industry where the project was implemented. Chapters Six and Seven present detailed case studies on the progress of the Workplace Challenge in two East Rand plastics factories. Background on the factories, the initial views of management and workers, and key developments during the year of implementation are outlined. An analysis of these developments is then undertaken. Chapter Eight provides a conclusion. Drawing from the research undertaken, it is argued that the new national identity in South Africa has provided resources for processes of economic change in micro-level institutions. However, given the constructed nature of this new identity, this resource can only be mobilised on a sustainable basis if change is aligned with shared symbolic understandings and an acceptance that resources are equitably distributed by all those subscribing to the new identity.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This dissertation examines the development of Holocaust education in South Africa, specifically in the period of political transition to democracy and the two decades after apartheid. The history of placing the Holocaust in post-apartheid South Africa shows the dynamics and tensions of identity construction by the state, communities and individuals as the country emerged from a history of violent conflict. Holocaust education was claimed by the newly democratic state as a vehicle of reconciliation. Using archival material, interviews and secondary sources, I examine how a minority community’s project of building a permanent Holocaust centre, came to be considered as part of a national project of reconciliation. I consider the impact of this framing of Holocaust education and the tensions that arose as the Cape Town Holocaust Centre’s founders attempted to define and contain, the place of apartheid in Holocaust memory. Holocaust education shaped the development of post-apartheid identities. It contributed to a collective memory of apartheid by suggesting a particular collective memory of the Holocaust. The Cape Town Holocaust Centre provided the South African Jewish community with a legitimate identity in post-apartheid South Africa and a way to bypass an examination of the implications of having benefited from apartheid. I examine the tensions and contradictions within this construction of the collective memory of the Holocaust and apartheid, and consider the implications for the process of justice, memory and history in South Africa as it emerged from apartheid.

Magister Artium - MA / My research involves a nuanced exploration of 'citizenship', through examining the liberatory potential of young women's use of social media and performance of embodied subjectivities in the post-Apartheid imaginary. By tracing expressions of self, specifically women’s highly imaginative efforts to represent what selfhood means to them and how it shapes their realities, I question conventional understandings of civic participation. The forms of communication and self-expression that many young women in Cape Town pursue are often considered apolitical, frivolous or trivial. By comprehensively exploring self-expression as a participant, I show that it is often richly but complicatedly politicized. My analysis is based on four women’s narratives and meaning-making processes, although my methodological approach involves detailed attention to my own location and interactions with participants. Guided by feminist explorations of the relevance of standpoint theorizing, I seek to understand the various visual and textual ways in which a small group of young women in Cape Town is currently making sense of their social identities, understandings of freedom and potential as social actors. I also draw on methodological work that questions the tendency, even among many feminist researchers, to reduce the knowledge of their participants to manageable data. In so doing, my aim is to try to make sense of the content and forms of young women's knowledge making on their own terms.

This dissertation concerns the history of land politics in South Africa and, equally, land as a vehicle for understanding the transition from apartheid to the post-apartheid order. In 2004, after a decade in power, the ANC government’s failure to carry out widespread land reform began to test the country’s democratic possibilities. In the lead up to that year’s national election, social movements urged landless people to boycott the polls and occupy land instead as part of a “No Land! No Vote!” campaign. With this clash as its entry point for analysis, this dissertation examines historical factors that have shaped South Africa’s neoliberal democracy and prospects for redistribution. It offers insights into some of the most significant questions facing the country: What is the historical relationship between land dispossession, citizenship, and politics in South Africa? And why, well into the Mbeki years, was the country unable, or unwilling, to reckon with it? Broad in scope, this dissertation examines a number of institutions that shaped the politics of land, economic development, and citizenship in South Africa over the last century. It is particularly focused on period of the 1940s-2004, encompassing the apartheid era and the first ten years of democracy. I begin by recasting the history of apartheid pass laws in the mid-twentieth century, widening the scope beyond their role in containing labor mobility and controlling access to cities. I show how vagrancy laws were one piece of a continuum that stretched through jails and prisons to rural plantations, supplying labor to farms and subsidizing agricultural development. Later chapters examine how, beginning in the 1970s, the World Bank and other international institutions helped shape the contours of land and housing policies and the relationship between states and citizens. My research also shows how, during the apartheid transition and through the Mandela and Mbeki administrations, private prisons and harsh criminal justice reforms became integral parts of neoliberal economic development. This dissertation weaves together the history that has shaped South Africa’s ‘dispossessed democracy’ and concludes with a discussion of the implications for social movements and political change.

Thesis (M. Dev.) -- University of Limpopo, 2018 / The post-apartheid socio-cultural, economic and political dispensation in South Africa have prompted a high-level perceived potential inclusion in sport-participating in different aspect of self-development regardless of culture, economic and social difference across the nation. However, little is understood, from an empirical viewpoint, about the potential challenges and limits towards the successful participation in sport in South Africa. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between socio-cultural factors and sport participation at Germiston High School in the Gauteng Province. A quantitative research was conducted using case study research design method. A Non-probability sampling method was done through purposive sampling method to select Grade 8 to Grade 12 students from. Data collection was done using self-administered questionnaires. There were one hundred and forty-seven students that participated in a survey of self-administered questionnaires at Germiston High School. The findings of the study reveal that sport-participation is highly linked to socio-cultural and economic aspects among students. For students, teachers are expected to be involved in sport-participation and be of the forefront of inclusiveness. It also was found that sport preference among students is linked to their important others. Thus, a full experience of sport-participation through resources available at school is compromised for many students. Schools, the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture together with sponsors and parents are encouraged to intervene in promoting sport participation.

Thesis (M.A. (Political Science))--University of Limpopo, 2007 / Since 1913 black South Africans have been forcefully dispossessed of land under the racist land laws of the successive white South African governments. In 1994 the black government began to pass land laws that were supposed to provide blacks with land ownership rights. Ten years later blacks have re-claimed less than four percent of the eighty seven percent of the land they were dispossessed of. The failure to return dispossessed land to blacks is attributed to the ideology of the current government with respect to its land policy. This study attempts to fill the void regarding the ideological implications of the land reform policy of the post-apartheid government. We speculate that neo-liberal implications are dominant within this policy. Social democracy can overcome the failure of the policy as it is cost-effective and efficient and attempts to achieve social justice. It can therefore afford dispossessed and landless blacks land ownership.

<p>The thesis concerns History teaching in South Africa 1966-2006. Focus lies on the usage of History as a tool of power and empowerment. Primary sources for the survey are textbooks, curricula’s and syllabuses. From a theoretical perspective the thesis discusses power, usage of history and pedagogic literature. The survey is done in a qualitative, hermeneutic way in order to find, discuss and explain underlying structures in the collected data. The thesis results show that History teaching in South Africa was based on an idea of a shared historical consciousness, apartheid, which legitimised the hegemony of the white people. The educational system was an important tool of power and empowerment for the government. The apartheid ideology was reproduced by the pedagogic literature. Today History is a part of Social Sciences and the subject has a focus on natural sciences and technology, which results in certain dilemmas educational-wise.</p>

Thesis (MSS(Sociology))-University of Pretoria, 2006. / Abstract in English and Afrikaans. Includes bibliographical references.

<p>Although transformation processes are making progress in addressing racial inequality in post-apartheid South Africa, white South Africans are, in many repects, still privileged, economically, in terms of access to services, land, education and particularly in the case of English-speaking whites, language. This study is an exploration of everyday situations of inequality as they have been experienced from a position of advantage. As a qualitative, phenomenological study, the aim was to derive the psychological essence of the experience of being privileged as white English-speaking young adult within the context of post-apartheid South African everyday life.</p>

<p>Intercultural communication (ICC) is one of the most relevant fields for investigation in post-colonial Africa and post-apartheid South Africa, given the movements between people from African countries and the wide range of attractions, both economic and social, that South Africa holds for people from other African countries. This study reports on intercultural communication in post-democratic South Africa in an era marked by what Appadurai (1990) calls &lsquo / flows&rsquo / . Greenmarket Square in the heart of Cape Town, well known as a hub for informal traders, local people and tourists, was chosen as the site for this study, because of the rich cultural diversity of the role-players. The principal aim of this research is to examine how people from different cultural backgrounds in this particular space of Greenmarket Square communicate with one another, and where the &lsquo / intercultural fault-lines&rsquo / (Olahan, 2000) occur, keeping in mind how ICC could be improved in such a space. My position as a trader in the market placed me in an ideal &lsquo / insider&rsquo / position to do the research. The theory of spatiality (Vigouroux, 2005 / Blommaert et al. 2005) was used to show how the space of Greenmarket Square affected intercultural communication. Discourse analysis was also applied to the data to show how the various roleplayers were socially constructed by others. Saville-Troike&rsquo / s (1989) ethnography of communicative events was also used to bring out other barriers that were not identified by spatiality and discourse analysis. Aspects like scene, key, message form and content, the observed rules for interaction and where these rules were broken and to what effect as well as the norms for interpretation were considered during the analysis of this qualitative data. The analysis showed that spatiality, social constructions of &lsquo / the other&rsquo / and other factors like nonverbal communication and differences between communicative styles in high and low context cultures (LCC/HCC), had a major impact on intercultural communication at Greenmarket Square, frequently leading to complete breakdowns in communication. Many of the traders interviewed acknowledged that they needed to improve their competence in intercultural communication. The study concludes with a number of recommendations on how people can become more &ldquo / interculturally competent&rdquo / (Katan, 2004) in a globalized world.</p>