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South African politics and the local government elections

08 June 2021 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath

read more Webinar on Gov Election June 2021 Web News-Block

As a public higher-education institution in South Africa with a responsibility to contribute to public discourse, the University of the Free State (UFS) will be presenting the webinar as part of the Free State Literature Festival’s online initiative, VrySpraak-digitaal. The aim of the webinar series is to discuss issues facing South Africa by engaging experts at the university and in South Africa. Some of the topics for 2021 include, among others, reimagining universities for student success; corruption; local elections, the state of business – particularly in the Free State.

In 2020, the webinar series saw the successful participation of leading experts engaging on COVID-19 and the crisis facing the country socially, economically, and politically. This year, in lieu of the Free State Arts Festival, the UFS will present the webinar virtually over a period of five months.

Third webinar presented on 29 June 2021

South African local government has often been the target of protests due to poor service delivery. This either suggests that local government is not capable of carrying out technical tasks, or that constituents are not being heard by the representatives they elected. Without capable and ethical politicians, the best institutions and policies in a country will serve no purpose if they are not protected. Institutions run the risk of being ineffective and not reaching their full potential in an environment without an ethical framework and the required human capabilities. South Africa suffers severe capability deficiencies due to poor political management that requires fixing at a political level.

Will the forthcoming local government elections be the solution to much-needed change OR will electoral reform – a somewhat far-fetched ideal – provide the platform for ultimate change?

Date: Tuesday, 29 June 2021
Topic: South African politics and the local government elections: scene setter for a capable state?
Time: 12:30-14:00
RSVP: Alicia Pienaar, pienaaran1@ufs.ac.za by 26 June 2021

Facilitator:

Prof Francis Petersen
Rector and Vice-Chancellor, UFS

Panellists:

• Dr Ferial Haffajee
Associate Editor
Daily Maverick

• Prof Susan Booysen
Director of Research
Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA)

• Mr Ebrahim Fakir
Director of Programmes
Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute (ASRI)

• Prof Sethulego Matebesi
Associate Professor and Academic Head of the Department of Sociology
University of the Free State

Bios of speakers:

Dr Ferial Haffajee

Ferial Haffajee is a South African editor and journalist. She is currently associate editor at the Daily Maverick. Previously, Ferial was editor-in-chief at the Mail & Guardian and City Press, where teams working with her won numerous investigative journalism awards. She is a regular analyst and commentator on radio, television, and elsewhere. Ferial is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and a member of the African Leadership Institute. She serves on the board of the Open Society Programme on Independent Journalism. She has won numerous awards for journalism and for her support of media freedom, including an International Press Freedom Hero award from the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2015 and the Naspers Phil Weber award in 2013 – the global company’s highest internal honour. Previously, Ferial was chairperson of the South African National Editors’ Forum and chairperson of the CNN/MultiChoice African Journalist of the Year Awards. She has served on the boards of the World Editors Forum and the Global Editors Network. She published a best-selling book called What if there were no whites in South Africa, and in 2017 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of the Free State for her journalism.

Prof Susan Booysen

Prof Susan Booysen is a political scientist, author, and analyst of South African politics. She is also Director of Research at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), emeritus professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, and visiting professor at the Wits School of Governance.

Booysen’s third book in her Wits University Press trilogy of research-driven books on the African National Congress of South Africa, Precarious Power: Compliance and discontent under Ramaphosa’s ANC, was published in March 2021. The first two parts of the set were The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power (2011) and Dominance and Decline: The ANC in the Time of Zuma (2015). Precarious Power (http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/precarious-power/) is available from South African bookshops and digitally from online stores such as Amazon’s Kindle Store and Barnes & Noble.

Booysen also edited a range of books on South and Southern African politics. Her latest edited volume for the Mapungubwe Institute is Marriages of Inconvenience: Coalition politics in South Africa (July 2021). Her previous edited books are FeesMustFall: Student Revolt, Decolonisation and Governance in South Africa (WUP, 2016) and Local Elections in South Africa: People, parties, politics (SUN Press, 2012). She co-edited Democracy and Elections in Southern Africa (2009) with Denis Kadima.

Mr Ebrahim Fakir

Ebrahim Fakir is currently Director of Programmes at the Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute (ASRI). He was awarded the 2014 Ruth First Fellowship at the University of the Witwatersrand and was a part-time lecturer in the WITS School of Governance in 2018. Until October 2016, he was head of the Political Parties and Parliamentary Programme in the Electoral Institute (EISA) [2009-2016], where he edited and published the Election Update focusing on the analysis of SA elections. He was an editorial adviser to the independent start-up media house Daily Vox and regularly contributes analysis, opinion and comment articles to POLITY, the Mail & Guardian, Sunday Times, News 24, and Business Day, among others.

Formerly a senior researcher and analyst in the Centre for Policy Studies in Johannesburg (2003-2009), he worked in both the Pretoria and Cape Town offices of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA – 1998-2003), and also in the Legislation and Oversight Division of the first democratic Parliament of the Republic of South Africa (1996-1998). Before that, he was a tutor in English Literature at the then University of Durban-Westville (1994-1996), writing for the popular press as well as for academic and policy journals on politics, development, and the state.

He read for a degree in English Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he was elected to the Student Representative Council. He was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex (2006) and a Draper Hills Summer Fellow at the Centre on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University in 2011.

Prof Sethulego Matebesi

Sethulego Matebesi is Associate Professor and Academic Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of the Free State. Matebesi’s primary research interest is social movements, community development, and mining-company-community relations. He is particularly interested in understanding the role of trust in community protests at municipal level and the conflict between mining companies and mining communities in South Africa. His recent publications include two monographs – Social licensing and mining in South Africa (2020), and Civil strife against local governance: Dynamics of community protests in South Africa (2017).

News Archive

Historians must place African history on world stage – Dr Zeleza

2017-05-30

From the left: Panellists Rev Henry Jackson,
Prof Irikidzayi Manase and Arno Van Niekerk at a book
launch and panel discussion on Africa Day hosted by the
UFS Sasol Library.
Photo: Mamosa Makaya

“African historians must take seriously the challenge of placing African history in world history, and in the history of our species, Homo sapiens.”

With these words, Dr Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Vice Chancellor of the United States International University-Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, stressed the continent’s challenge.

According to him the contest should continue to recover and reconstruct Africa’s long history. Liberating African knowledges can be done by: “Provincialising Europe that has monopolised universality, universalising Africa beyond its Eurocentric provincialisation, and engaging histories of other continents on their own terms.”

University celebrates Africa Month in various ways
Dr Zeleza delivered the ninth Africa Day Memorial Lecture, titled The Decolonisation of African Knowledges, at the University of the Free State (UFS). The lecture, hosted by the Centre for Africa Studies (CAS), took place on 24 May 2017 in the Equitas Auditorium on the Bloemfontein Campus and was one of the ways in which the UFS celebrated Africa Month.

Scholars should immerse themselves in these thoughts
Dr Zeleza focused on two issues, which he said were interconnected. They were the unfinished project of decolonising African knowledges and the continent's positioning in global knowledge production.

He said Africa’s scholars and students should “immerse themselves in the rich traditions of African social thought going back millennia”. According to him the continent’s research profile still remains weak in global terms.

“It is imperative that the various key stakeholders in African higher education from governments to the general public to parents, and to students, faculty, staff, and administrators in the academic institutions themselves, raise the value proposition of African higher education for 21st century African societies, economies, and polities.”

“Colonialism is associated with injustice
and inequality, but what happens when
our liberators become our oppressors?”

Library celebrates with panel discussion and book launch
The UFS Sasol Library celebrated Africa Day by presenting a book launch and panel discussion on 25 May 2017, on the pertinent and current political theme of land redistribution with a comparative basis of land invasions in Zimbabwe.

Prof Irikidzayi Manase discussed his book White Narratives: The Depiction of Post-2000 Land Invasions in Zimbabwe, accompanied by Rev Henry Jackson who wrote Another Farm in Africa. A perspective of the economic implications of land redistribution in South Africa was discussed by panellist Arno Van Niekerk: Senior Lecturer of Economics at the UFS Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences.

Inequality still an African problem
The content of the books are a stark reminder of the burning issues of inequality and loss of identity of those who lost their farms in Zimbabwe, a collection of memoirs by white farmers and their families. Rev Jackson gave a religious perspective on reconciliation, forgiveness and the question of land ownership, saying that healing of injustice begins with forgiveness of past transgressions.

Van Niekerk highlighted that while land issues were important, “social cohesion is affected by the economic decisions that will be made”. In closing, Prof Manase called for serious consideration of what the future may hold. “Colonialism is associated with injustice and inequality, but what happens when our liberators become our oppressors?”

The panel discussion was attended by staff and students of the university, and was lit up by robust discussions on possible historical and future solutions to the question of land, decolonisation and political power struggles in Southern Africa and lessons to be learned from Zimbabwe.

UFS celebrates Africa Month (24 May 2017)

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