Surplus,excess, dirt: slavery and the production of disposability in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Centuries before apartheid, South Africa was fundamentally shaped by 176 years of slavery, a period of racialised and gendered brutality that lasted from 1658 to 1834. Enslaved people were brought to the Cape by the Dutch East India Company from African and Asian territories around the Indian Ocean, and eventually came to constitute the majority of the population of the Colony. Françoise Vergès (2005 Vergès, F. 2005. “One World, Many Maps.” Interventions 7 (3): 342–345. doi:10.1080/13698010500268155.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) asserts that slavery in South Africa generated “processes of disposability” that transformed enslaved people and indigenous Africans, the majority of the population, into “surplus” and expendable objects. The scale of this expendability is difficult to discern today because of the invisibility of slavery in conceptions of the country’s history. In this article, I use the lens of “dirt” to render such “processes of disposability” visible. I do so by analysing two texts in which African bodies are portrayed as filthy, menacing and contaminating – the novel Unconfessed and a television advertisement titled “Papa Wag Vir Jou” (“Daddy’s Waiting for You”) – which I situate within a discussion of South Africa’s extraordinarily high rates of incarceration and sexual violence. I point to the seamless continuity in industrial levels of imprisonment employed by the colonial and the modern South African state.     

Access to education in Africa: responding to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities mandates that disabled people should have full rights to education in inclusive settings. However, to ensure that educational polices and settings are designed to meet this criterion seems challenging to African countries that have ratified this Convention. This article arises from the 2nd African Network of Evidence-to-Action on Disability Symposium. This fluid network was established to address the gap between research and practice in the region. The article reports proceedings and the emerging themes from the Education, Training and Work Commission; one of the six commissions of this Symposium, focusing specifically on the education aspect. It also challenges various stakeholders to move from evidence to action to ensure the educational rights of disabled people in inclusive settings.     

Liberalisation Failed: Understanding Persistent State Power in the Burkinabè Cotton Sector from 1990 to 2004

The literature characterises African states as unable to subvert pressure from the World Bank to liberalise their economies. This article contradicts this narrative by showing how Burkina Faso adopted a cotton‐sector liberalisation plan that retained significant state control. It argues that French influence, the sequence of regional liberalisations, and an ideological shift at the World Bank opened up political space for Burkina Faso to propose alternative and more moderate liberalisation reforms – in this case, the inclusion of a producers' organisation in cotton governance rather than a privatisation of cotton‐sector activities. Heavy involvement in the formation of the producers' organisation allowed the Burkinabè state to retain control of its cotton sector, paradoxically, via the full implementation of its liberalisation reforms.     

Light public–private partnerships in the water supply sector: Malawi and other case studies from sub‐Saharan Africa

The article analyzes light forms of Public–Private Partnership (PPP), namely management and service contracts, in the water supply sector of sub‐Saharan Africa, based on original research in Malawi and on a review of five additional case studies. We refer to information asymmetries and contract theory to explain the observed performances of the PPPs. The article considers the incentives to engage in the partnership and to commit effort, together with the challenges which can prevent effort from translating into actual results. The study concludes that some problems encountered by light PPP experiences are intrinsic to their incentive structure and discusses the policy implications of light PPPs promotion in the context of the Aid Effectiveness debate.     

Identifying regular blocks in valued networks: A heuristic applied to the St. Marks carbon flow data,and international trade in cereal products

While the concept of regular equivalence is equally applicable to dichotomous as well as valued networks, the identification of regular blocks in regular blockmodels is somewhat problematic when dealing with valued networks. Applying the standard procedure for identifying ties in such blockmodels, a procedure perhaps most suited for dichotomous networks, does tend to generate block images and reduced graphs that differ from intuitive notions of such structures.     

Taking Stock of Monitoring and Evaluation Arrangements in the Context of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: Evidence from 20 Aid‐Dependent Countries in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Shifts in thinking and practice concerning aid have posed serious challenges in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for both donors and recipients, but progress in reform remains slow. An important first step in any initiative involving M&E capacity development is the diagnosis of the systems' current status. This article presents a diagnostic checklist that captures issues of M&E policy: indicators, data collection and methodology; organisation; capacity‐building; participation of nongovernmental actors; and use. It applies it to a review of the PRSP M&E arrangements of 20 aid‐dependent countries in sub‐Saharan Africa to demonstrate comparative strengths and weaknesses.     

Scale shift in international tax justice: comparing the UK and Australia from 2008 to 2016

ABSTRACT

International tax justice issues, such as corporate tax avoidance, have gained particular salience over the past decade in an environment of financial instability and government austerity. Civil society involvement has ranged from trade unions and NGOs calling for parliamentary inquiries to civil disobedience by less established actors. Since the international financial crisis, how have levels of contentious collective action around these issues waxed and waned? Is contentiousness associated most with domestic politics or global media events like the Panama Papers? This paper uses an original hand-coded dataset from five national newspapers in the United Kingdom and Australia between 2008 and 2016. Political claims analysis (PCA) was used to collect all instances of claims around international tax justice and compare the types of actions and the different frames used by civil society actors. In both countries, mobilising grievances are generated most strongly in the period after domestic austerity policies are introduced. The qualitative coding provides evidence of accompanying frame alignment in these periods, as international taxation is problematized in terms of national revenue, demonstrating scale shift from the global to the national political stage.     

Through community eyes: the transition of international organizations from community aid to development in postconflict Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone experienced an 11-year civil war, brutalizing its people and destroying its communities. With the cessation of violence, international organizations helped to secure peace, deliver aid and supplies, and, after, assist with development projects. This grounded theory study, which aims to understand the role these organizations played from the viewpoint of community members in 2 communities, posits that community members’ regard of international organizations lessened as their efforts transitioned from securing the peace and relief efforts to aid for development. Highlighted are the successes and challenges of this work and a broad discussion of implications and recommendations.