City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

From revolution to rights in South Africa, social movements, NGOs & popular politics after apartheid, Steven L. Robins

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-185) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

From revolution to rights in South Africa

electronic resource /

bibliographydictionaries

Steven L. Robins

social movements, NGOs & popular politics after apartheid

This work focuses on NGO and social movement activism and popular politics during the post-apartheid period. The case studies on land, housing and AIDS activism and mobilisation were researched and written during a period characterised by the global emergence of new social movements and new forms of identity politics., Critics of liberalism in Europe and North America argue that a stress on 'rights talk' and identity politics has led to fragmentation, individualisation and depoliticisation. But are these developments really signs of 'the end of politics'? In the post-colonial, post-apartheid, neo-liberal new South Africa poor and marginalised citizens continue to struggle for land, housing and health care. They must respond to uncertainty and radical contingencies on a daily basis. This requires multiple strategies, an engaged, practised citizenship, one that links the daily struggle to well organised mobilisation around claiming rights. Robins argues for the continued importance of NGOs, social movements and other 'civil society' actors in creating new forms of citizenship and democracy. He goes beyond the sanitised prescriptions of 'good governance' so often touted by development agencies. Instead he argues for a complex, hybrid and ambiguous relationship between civil society and the state, where new negotiations around citizenship emerge. Steven L. Robins is Professor of Social Anthropology in the University of Stellenbosch and editor of Limits to Liberation after Apartheid (James Currey)