BOOK Southern Africa

Gavin Cawthra's African Security Governance Launched in Johannesburg

by Tshepo on 19 Mar 2010   |   

Talking at the launch of African Security Governance: Emerging Issues, editor of the book Gavin Cawthra emphasised the collaborative nature of the project, acknowledging the contributions of many different researchers at various universities throughout the African region. Cawthra also singled out the contribution of the Danish Institute of International Studies and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

The book is the result of several years of research carried out by the Southern African Defence and Security Management Network (SADSEM). It deals with the broad topic of security sector governance, and says Cawthra, they “cherry-picked a few thematic issues” in this area. He shared that as a result of the SADSEM research work Masters Degrees and post-graduate diploma programmes in governance and security have been started, in both South Africa and Namibia.

Cawthra told how the book deals with “a number of thematic issues” including the question of nuclear proliferation in Africa, or “the lack of it”; the “complex issue of intelligence reporting”, the possibilities of reforming it in Africa and the introduction of some principles of good governance in this; the prospects of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) becoming a security community in the future; the role of the South African Defence Force in Burundi; and the key question of the relationship between development and security. The book also includes studies on civil/military relations.

African Security Governance concentrates on the Southern African region but also includes studies from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Tanzania.

Cawthra shared that a book of this nature takes time to research, peer review and then edit, with the challenge then being to keep the information up to date. He ended by thanking the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung for generously sponsoring distribution of the book to African universities and libraries.

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Book details

• African Security Governance: Emerging Issues edited by Edwin Cawthra
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  EAN: 9781868144839
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Forthcoming: Constructing a Democratic Developmental State in South Africa

by Shaun on 18 Mar 2010   |   

Forthcoming April 2010 from HSRC Press

The social and economic successes of Asia have drawn global attention to the developmental state as a possible model for developing countries. In South Africa, many, including government, see this as a possible panacea to the country’s social, economic and institutional crises. However, a government committing itself to constructing a developmental state is one thing; actually implementing the necessary institutional and policy reforms to bring that into reality is another.

In this seminal collection, Constructing a Democratic Developmental State in South Africa: Potentials and Challenges, an interdisciplinary team of distinguished scholars examine how South Africa could go about building a democratic developmental state, while drawing on relevant conceptual models and useful comparative experiences from other countries. The macro- and microeconomic questions, as well as the institutional, governance and social challenges facing South Africa are lucidly analysed, as are the country’s advantages; such as its existing constitutional democracy, rents from its mineral resources and the commitment of its political leadership to creating a democratic developmental state.

Providing an eloquent and intelligent account of what the state’s primary goals should be at this point, the contributors make the case that for South Africa to become a developmental state that is both democratic and socially inclusive, economic and social policy have to be intertwined; development and democratic agendas have to be mutually reinforcing; and a competent bureaucracy needs to be built to enhance state capacity.

An authoritative and comprehensive study that illuminates the political economy of economic development, this work is invaluable for anyone interested in the political and economic future of South Africa and similar developing countries.

Contents

1. Constructing a democratic developmental state in South Africa: potentials and challenges
Omano Edigheji

PART ONE Conceptual issues and historical experiences

2. Constructing the 21st century developmental state: potentialities and pitfalls
Peter B Evans

3. From maladjusted states to democratic developmental states in Africa
Thandika Mkandawire

4. How to ‘do’ a developmental state: political, organisational and human resource requirements for the developmental state
Ha-Joon Chang

5. Limits of the authoritarian developmental state of South Korea
Eun Mee Kim

6. Foiling the Resource Curse: wealth, equality, oil and the Norwegian state
Jonathon W Moses

PART TWO Policy-making and economic governance in South Africa

7. The effect of a mainstream approach to economic and corporate governance on development in South Africa
Seeraj Mohamed

8. Can South Africa be a developmental state?
Ben Fine

9. Consolidation first: institutional reform priorities in the creation of a developmental state in South Africa
Anthony Butler

PART THREE South Africa’s macroeconomic and industrial policy landscapes

10. Towards an appropriate macroeconomic policy for a democratic developmental state in South Africa
- Kenneth Creamer

11. Competition policy, competitive rivalry and a developmental state in South Africa
Simon Roberts

PART FOUR Social policy and its institutional underpinnings in South Africa: what hope for a developmental state?

12. The South African post-apartheid bureaucracy: inner workings, contradictory rationales and the developmental state
Karl von Holdt

13. Intermediate skills development in South Africa: understanding the context, responding to the challenge
Salim Akoojee

PART FIVE Agrarian reform

14. The agrarian question and the developmental state in southern Africa
Sam Moyo

About the editor

Dr Omano Edigheji specialises in the political economy of development and is Research Director in the Policy Analysis Unit of the Human Sciences Research Council.

Book details

• Constructing a democratic developmental state in South Africa: Potentials and challenges edited by Omano Edigheji
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780796923332
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Image courtesy Human Sciences Research Council

Book Launch: Bury Me at the Marketplace edited by Chabani Manganyi and David Attwell

by Tshepo on 17 Mar 2010   |   

Wits Press and the Book Lounge are delighted to invite you to hear Harry Garuba and Chabani Manganyi discuss Bury Me at the Marketplace – the edited letters of Es’kia Mphahlele.

When Chabani Manganyi published the first edition of selected letters twenty-five years ago as a companion volume to Exiles and Homecomings: A Biography of Es’kia Mphahlele, the idea of Mphahlele’s death was remote and poetic. The title, Bury Me at the Marketplace, suggested that immortality of a kind awaited the writer, in the very coming and going of those who remember him and whose lives he touched. It suggested, too, the energy and magnanimity of Mphahlele the man, whose personality and intellect as a writer and educator would carve an indelible place for him in South Africa’s public sphere.

That death has now come and we mourn it. Manganyi’s words at the time have acquired a new significance: in the symbolic marketplace, he noted, ‘the drama of life continues relentlessly and the silence of death is unmasked for all time’. The silence of death is certainly unmasked in this volume, in its record of Mphahlele’s rich and varied life: his private words, his passions and obsessions, his arguments, his loves, hopes, achievements, and yes, even some of his failures. Here the reader will find many facets of the private man translated back into the marketplace of public memory.

Despite the personal nature of the letters, the further horizons of this volume are the contours of South Africa’s literary and cultural history, the international affiliations out of which it has been formed, particularly in the diaspora that connects South Africa to the rest of the African continent and to the black presence in Europe and the United States.

This selection of Mphahlele’s own letters has been greatly expanded; it has also been augmented by the addition of letters from Mphahlele’s correspondents, among them such luminaries as Langston Hughes and Nadine Gordimer. It seeks to illustrate the networks that shaped Mphahlele’s personal and intellectual life, the circuits of intimacy, intellectual inquiry, of friendship, scholarship and solidarity that he created and nurtured over the years. The correspondence is supplemented by introductory essays from the two editors, by two interviews conducted with Mphahlele by Manganyi and by Attwell’s insightful explanatory notes.

Please join us for the book’s launch:

Event Details

• Date: Wednesday, 24 March 2010
• Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
• Venue: The Book Lounge,
  71 Roeland street, Cape Town
• Guest Speaker: Harry Garuba
• RSVP: The Book Lounge,
  booklounge@gmail.com, 021 462 2425
  www.booklounge.co.za

Book Details

• Bury Me at the Marketplace: Es’kia Mphahlele and Company – Letters 1943–2006 edited by N Chabani Manganyi and David Attwell
  Book Homepage
  EAN: 9781868144891
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Image courtesy the New York Times

Book Launch: African Security Governance: Emerging Issues by Edwin Cawthra

by Tshepo on 16 Mar 2010   |   

Wits University Press and The Graduate School of Public and Development Management at Wits invite you to the launch of African Security Governance: Emerging Issues, edited by Gavin Cawthra.

Cawthra will discuss the results of research carried out over a number of years by the Southern African Defense and Security Management Network (SADSEM) on many new and emerging security issues. The broad discussion will include security governance.

We look forward to seeing you there:

Event Details

• Date: Thursday, 18 March 2010
• Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
• Venue: Executive Dining Room, The Graduate School of Public and Development Management, 2 St David’s Place
  Parktown Campus
  Wits University, Johannesburg | Map
• RSVP: julia.wright@wits.ac.za, 011 484 5906

Book Details

• African Security Governance: Emerging Issues by Edwin Cawthra
  EAN: 9781868144839
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The Launch of Testing Democracy and Lobby Books at Idasa

by Sophy on 15 Mar 2010   |   

Thursday night saw the launch of Idasa’s 2010 Democracy Index, Testing Democracy alongside the opening of Lobby Books, a joint indie bookshop venture that is less about competition, as we previously reported, than it is about collaboration. Lobby Books is a partnership between Mervyn Sloman, of The Book Lounge, and Henrietta Dax, of Clarke’s Books.

After the event was opened by Idasa executive director Paul Graham, UCT associate professor of law Richard Calland spoke about the importance of a bookstore at Idasa, and the creative use of the space overseen by Architect Justin Cooke.

Continuing along the theme of development, guest speaker Njabulo Ndebele outlined the context in which the Democracy Index series, established in a distinctly different political era, now finds itself. He spoke particularly of the need for a reshuffling of our nation’s priorities; a shift to putting the people of South Africa ahead of political parties.

Judith February and Neeta Misra-Dextra, the book’s editors, highlighted the findings that Ndebele described as an “attempt at a qualitative assessment of democracy and equality” with a focus on the inter-relatedness of democracy and development. Testing Democracy is the third iteration of the Idasa’s Democracy Index. May the works continue to help actuate our democratic society, still-latent for many.

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Book details

• Idasa’s Democracy Index 2010: Testing Democracy: Which way is South Africa going? edited by Judith February and Neeta Misra-Dexter
  EAN: 9781920409159
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Book Launch: Promoting mental health in scarce-resource contexts: Emerging Evidence and Practice

by Shaun on 10 Mar 2010   |   

Ike’s Books in Durban invites you to a launch and discussion of Promoting Mental Health in Scarce Resource Contexts on Wednesday the 24th of March.

About the book

Promoting mental health demands actions that improve resilience in individuals, families and communities, and ensure health enhancing policy and legislative frameworks. These actions are at the heart of human development and can assist in improving social and economic prospects for people in low-to middle income countries.

The book provides a conceptual and theoretical base for the application of mental health promotion and prevention of mental disorders in low-resource settings – offering examples of evidence-based programmes across the lifespan.

With contributions from a range of experts, including Inge Petersen, Arvin Bhana, Alan J Flisher, Leslie Swartz & Linda Richter, ‘Promoting mental health in scarce-resource contexts: Emerging evidence and practice’ is a must read text for students and practitioners, policy-makers and planners, as well as anyone with an interest in improving mental and public health in South Africa.

Event Details

• Date: Wednesday, 24 March 2010
• Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
• Venue: Ike’s Books, 48 Florida Road, Durban| Map
• RSVP: Ike’s Books, 031 303 9214

Book Details

• Promoting mental health in scarce-resource contexts: Emerging Evidence and Practice by Inge Peterson, Arvin Bhana, Alan Flisher, Leslie Swartz, Linda Richter
  Book Homepage
  EAN: 9780796923035
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Promoting Mental Health in Scare-resource Contexts: Emerging evidence and practice

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TRANS Authors Speak Out Against Lulu Xingwana

by Thando on 10 Mar 2010   |   

Contributors to TRANS: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa and representatives of Gender DynamiX, a Human Rights organisation promoting freedom of expression of gender identity, with a focus on transgender, transsexual and gender non-conforming identities, have added their voices to poets, Yvette Christiansë and Gabeba Baderoon, in expressing their concern at Minister Lulu Xingwana’s reaction towards lesbian photographer, Zanele Muholi’s work.

Special to the Jacana Media blog, Robert Hamblin and Caroline Bowley speak on this topic with passion and conviction:

***

Gender DynamiX is deeply concerned about the policing of bodies by the State. A very large part of our work is centred on examining the practices of the Department of Health (DoH) and the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) and their unethical activities towards Transgender people. We are now faced with the question whether this is becoming a government trend.

Has the Department of Arts and Culture now joined hands with the DoH and the DHA in their discriminatory practices towards gender variant bodies? Minister Xingwana’s recent behaviour regarding the work of gender activist artist Zanele Muholi adds to the gravity of what seems to be a growing conservative trend in state departments.

“Immoral, offensive and going against nation-building,” said Lulu Xingwana, the Minister of Arts and Culture about Muholi’s work. “Immoral and offensive” speaks to the old “art vs. porn” debate, as well as to peoples’ personal opinions. The point of advocacy art is not aesthetics. It is to educate, to stimulate debate, to object to it if you wish, and to give people a platform from which to voice opinions. When Xingwana publically gives an opinion, she’s doing it on behalf of us all. She is a government minister and so in condemning it outright in essence, she claims that of the entire nation echoes her opinion. It most certainly doesn’t, as recent reactions in the City Press, the Times etc. clearly show.

“Nation building,” according to our very fine constitution, includes lesbians, transgender, gender non-conforming people, and so on – and it certainly includes artists. The constitution even has room for reactionary and conservative opinions like Xingwana’s – but not as our national representative of arts and culture in this country and worldwide.

Zanele Muholi is the kind of artist you would never have experienced in the bad old days of apartheid. She’s black, she’s a lesbian, and she has very clear messages for her community – for us. Her photography tells truths many people don’t enjoy – that there are black lesbians and gender variant people in South Africa. Her work also tells us that we are allowing the ongoing rape of black lesbians in order to “cure” them and all too often, their murders. Zanele Muholi is a symbol of the inclusiveness of the constitution.

Xingwana has publicly and officially expressed her personal negative feelings about gender variant peoples’ bodies and how they should interact. The figures in Muholi’s work are clearly not engaged in sexual activity. We interpret it as the minister’s policing of bodies and the behaviour of those bodies.

There are disturbing parallels between this and the way the Department of Health discriminates against gender variant bodies, noting that discrimination is taking place in the form of exclusion / gate keeping for treatment at most government hospitals. At the Department of Home Affairs there is a clear trend where the Department is not implementing the Amendment of Act 49 of 2003. Act 49 explicitly allows trans and intersex people to amend their documentation without requiring genital surgery. This law was amended partly because of the lack of access to, and gate keeping at State Hospitals.

Gender DynamiX would like to see government officials and especially Xingwana embrace our diversity, and make a concerted effort to sensitise themselves to gender variance, to educate themselves about art activism, and to acknowledge that gender variant people too are part of the rainbow nation that we are building!

In addition, Gender DynamiX demands public acknowledgement by the Government Ministers concerned, of the vulnerability of our constituency, and of the ongoing prejudices lesbians, gays, transgender and intersex people, artists and many other marginalised groups are facing on a daily basis.

Book details

• TRANS: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa edited by Ruth Morgan, Charl Marais, Joy Rosemary Wellbeloved
  EAN: 9781920196226
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The marketplace of anxieties

by Mike Nicol on 10 Mar 2010   |   

Trawling round the net recently I came across this fascinating article by Barbara Fister called ‘Copycat Crimes: Crime Fiction and the Marketplace of Anxieties’. Fister’s an American academic librarian turned crime novelist with some trenchant things to say about our beloved genre. Here are the opening paras and a link to the full article.

Will the FIFA World Cup Be All That We Hope For, Asks Udesh Pillay

by Shaun on 09 Mar 2010   |   

It’s 93 days, 12 hours, 17 minutes and some seconds before the FIFA Soccer World Cup 2010 opens in South Africa.The stadiums are mostly complete, the tickets are being bought and many a dream is being thrown onto the water. But – will the World Cup be all that South Africans hope it will be? Dr Udesh Pillay, co-editor of Development and Dreams: The Urban Legacy of the 2010 Football World Cup is cautious. In a recent interview, he urges South Africans to adopt a more pragmatic stance on the event and its perceived benefits.

Dr Udesh Pillay, principal investigator and executive director at the Human Sciences Research Council, said the event presented many positives for the country, but its economic benefits had been overstated. Pillay's research on the World Cup has spanned almost five years and culminated in the publication of the book Development and Dreams: The Urban Legacy of the 2010 Football World Cup.

• Read the complete article in the Sunday Times

Book details

• Development and Dreams: The Urban Legacy of the 2010 Football World Cup edited by Udesh Pillay, Orli Bass, Richard Tomlinson
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780796922502
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Image courtesy GageAcademy

Mining Survey Warns of Engineering Skills Shortage

by Shaun on 08 Mar 2010   |   

A serious skills shortage could ensure that the South African mining industry lags behind when the world begins to recover from the current recession. That is the message from the third biannual Mining Survey conducted by Landelahni Business Leaders. Skills shortages are a big problem in many sectors of South African business and industry, as Johan Erasmus and Mignonne Breier document in their Skills Shortages in South Africa.

Why is it that we produce more mining engineers than all English speaking countries combined yet still have a shortage, asks Sandra Burmeister, CEO of Landelhani, in the Business Day.

According to the third biannual Mining Survey by Landelahni Business Leaders, when the world begins to climb out of recession South African mining production could be left behind.

According to the Skills Survey, the shortage could hamper future growth as training is below par, and the situation is made worse with many skilled workers leaving the country.

Landelahni CEO Sandra Burmeister says despite being a mining driven economy, South Africa failed to take advantage of the commodities boom earlier this decade.

• Read the complete article

Book details

• Skills and Shortages in South Africa: Case Studies of Key Professions edited by Johan Erasmus, Mignonne Breier
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780796922663
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