Showing items 1 - 20 of 20

An exploratory critique of the notion of social cohesion in contemporary South Africa

- Desai, Ashwin

Between Ramaphosa’s new dawn and Zuma’s long shadow : will the centre hold

- Desai, Ashwin

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin
  • Date: 2019
  • Subjects: Zuma , Ramaphosa , Black Economic Empowerment
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/407346 , uj:34285 , Citation: Desai, A. 2019: Between Ramaphosa’s new dawn and Zuma’s long shadow : will the centre hold.
  • Description: Abstract: Cyril Ramaphosa was sworn in as South Africa’s President in February 2018 after the late-night resignation of Jacob Zuma. His ascendency came in the wake of a bruising battle with Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma that saw him become head of the African National Congress (ANC) by the narrowest of margins. Ramaphosa promised a new dawn that would sweep aside the allegations of the looting of state resources under the Zuma Presidency and restore faith in the criminal justice system. This article firstly looks at the impact that the Zuma presidency has had on South African politics against the backdrop of the Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki years. The article then focuses on Ramaphosa’s coming to power and what this holds for pushing back corruption and addressing the seemingly intractable economic challenges. In this context, I use Gramsci’s ideas of the war of manoeuvre and war of position to provide an understanding of the limits and possibilities of the Ramaphosa presidency. The analysis presented is a conjunctural analysis that as Gramsci points out focusses on ‘political criticism of a day-to-day character, which has as its subject top political leaders and personalities with direct governmental responsibilities’ as opposed to organic developments that lend itself to an understanding of durable dilemmas and ‘give rise to socio-historical criticism, whose subject is wider social groupings – beyond the public figures and beyond the top leaders’ (quoted in Morton, 1997: 181)
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Between rock and the pavement: through the underworld of Durban

- Desai, Ashwin

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin
  • Date: 2016
  • Subjects: Prostitution , Drug abuse , Life history
  • Language: English
  • Type: Conference proceedings
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/92531 , uj:20239 , Citation: Desai, A. 2016. Between rock and the pavement: through the underworld of Durban.
  • Description: Abstract: This paper seeks to explore the challenges faced by two people recovering from drug addiction in Durban. Both are Black African to use the terminology of our time. One a woman, and the other, a teenager on the edge of youth. This paper uses the life history approach as a way of telling two stories, illustrating the social context in which people’s lives are blighted by drug abuse and the recurring problems associated with attempts to overcome addiction. It situates the narrative of these two lives in a city witness to the eroding of apartheid and the opening up of new spaces and challenges. Sensitive to issues of spatiality and temporality, it is a story that, while embedded in local realities, places these issues in the context of broader changes within society.
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Chinese Walls, BRICS and the Scramble for Africa

- Desai, Ashwin

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/92930 , uj:20285 , Citation: Desai, A. 2016. Chinese Walls, BRICS and the Scramble for Africa.
  • Description: Abstract: This article explores the relationship between China and Africa in the context of BRICS (a bloc comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). BRICS has been touted in some quarters as offering an alternative anti-imperialist road to the dominance of the North (the United States and the European Union) as well as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organisation (WTO). On the other hand, it has been argued that rather than challenging the present trajectory of global capitalism, BRICS acts in a sub-imperialist way, furthering global capitalism through its own regional alliances and often allying with economic super-powers. This article explores the debate, paying particular attention to the role of China in Africa.
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Cybercrime and the double-edged sword of state survelliance in South Africa

- Desai, Ashwin

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: Cybercrime , Surveillance , Liberty holdings
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/291288 , uj:31629 , Citation:
  • Description: Abstract: This article uses the recent cyber attack on one of South Africa’s largest financial institutions Liberty Holdings as an entry point to illustrate the challenge of cybercrime for the boardrooms of big capital in South Africa. This breach reinforces arguments raised for enhancing the state’s capacity to police cybercrime. Against this backdrop, the article reflects on the debate around the policing of cybercrime in South Africa, highlighting arguments that the way in which the state attempts to deal with this growing problem has also created fears of the emergence of a surveillance state with unfettered powers lodged in intelligence agencies. This debate has been sharpened by recent exposés of the corruption seemingly endemic to South African intelligence services, revelations that some of its leading personnel were gerrymandered to settle internal battles within the ruling African National Congress (ANC), and more shocking, the allegation that a key agency tasked with providing IT to the country’s entire public service might have been captured by one supplier.
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Indian South Africans and the Black Consciousness Movement under apartheid

- Desai, Ashwin

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin
  • Date: 2014-10-03
  • Subjects: Black Consciousness Movement , Indians - South Africa , Apartheid - South Africa
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: uj:5595 , ISSN 09739572 , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/14298
  • Description: In the late 1960s, “non-white” university students marched out of the white dominated but, at that stage, still multi-racial, National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). They formed the South African Students Organisation (SASO) and began formulating an ideology called Black Consciousness (BC). At its heart, the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) called for the unity of South Africa’s oppressed, which they defined as African, Coloured and Indian. Those who were not students found a home in the Black People’s Convention (BPC). Many students of Indian origin joined SASO and played leading roles in the development of the BCM. This article traces these developments, paying particular attention to Indian women, seeking to understand their motivations in joining the movement, and record their experiences inside the BCM. Their story has to date been largely ignored, primarily because the Indian male members of BCM who stood trial and went to Robben Island during this period have tended to overwhelm the narrative, and in more recent times, the post-apartheid liberation story has been dominated by the journey of the African National Congress (ANC).
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Migrants and violence in South Africa : the April 2015 xenophobic attacks in Durban

- Desai, Ashwin

Of Faustian pacts and mega-projects : the politics and economics of the port expansion in the South Basin of Durban, South Africa

- Desai, Ashwin

Race, place and everyday life in contemporary South Africa : Wentworth, Durban

- Desai, Ashwin

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: Wentworth , Flats , Neighbourhood
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/289515 , uj:31413 , Citation: Desai, A. 2018. Race, place and everyday life in contemporary South Africa : Wentworth, Durban. Urban Forum (2018) 29:369–381 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-018-9350-7
  • Description: Abstract: Local government in South Africa witnessed major deracialisation and the emergence of large metros post-1994. In Durban for example, there was the creation of eThekwini metro that brought 40 separate jurisdictions under the banner of one administration (Freund, Urban Forum, 21(3), 283–298, 2010). Despite this administrative deracialisation, apartheid group areas have largely remained intact. Drawing on primary qualitative data research and participant observation, this article explores issues of place, belonging and identity in the flatlands of Wentworth, a place set aside for coloureds in the early 1960s. Residents’ attitudes towards Wentworth are complex and often contradictory: feelings of alienation contend with a deep attachment to place and a sense that the flats are an asset to be handed down to the next generation. What emerges from interviews conducted with the residents is that the demise of legally demarcated racial boundaries has reinforced a kind of ‘territorial belonging’, as Wentonians increasingly feel alienated from the broader body politic (Bauder, Antipode, 48(2), 252–271, 2016: 255).
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Service delivery and the war within : Wentworth, Durban, South Africa

- Desai, Ashwin

South Africa’s race to return to global sport : results and prospects on home-ground – the case of Cricket

- Desai, Ashwin, Maharaj, Brij

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin , Maharaj, Brij
  • Date: 2020
  • Subjects: Apartheid , Cricket , Transformation
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/427156 , uj:36667 , Desai, A., Maharaj, B.: South Africa’s race to return to global sport : results and prospects on home-ground – the case of Cricket
  • Description: Abstract: The collapse of apartheid in the 1990s saw the rapid re-entry of South Africa into international sporting fields. This move, backed by the African National Congress (ANC) and given Nelson Mandela’s endorsement, was seen as a strategy to attain two objectives; to cut off the White right wing threat by placating the fears of the White population, and to bring in revenue that would be used to redress the legacy of apartheid sport. This article seeks, through a case study of cricket, to assess the effects of this strategy, especially in relation to the latter goal of redressing inherited socio-spatial inequalities. A key contention of this article is that spatial apartheid and inherited racial boundaries has remained in play, and this has influenced who could be selected to place professional cricket and who is excluded. Two and a half decades since cricketing unity, race is still with us, but so is class.
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Speculators and Scoundrels in South Africa’sSecondary circuit of capital: a turbulent investment climate at Durban’s Point Waterfront

- Desai, Ashwin, Bond, Patrick

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin , Bond, Patrick
  • Date: 2019
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/407481 , uj:34301 , Citation: Desai, A., Bond, P. 2019: Speculators and Scoundrels in South Africa’sSecondary circuit of capital: a turbulent investment climate at Durban’s Point Waterfront.
  • Description: Abstract: The Point Waterfront is one of the most stunning pieces of real estate in the city of Durban. Not more than two square miles in size, it is bounded on one side by the harbor and the Indian Ocean on the other. Protecting the area is the Bluff that lies on the south side of the harbor entrance. To the west rise the residential and then commercial buildings of central Durban. Along the coast to the north are Durban’s famous beaches – which when working well are South Africa’s most democratic spaces in terms of racial and class desegregation. Today there are extremely high hopes for redeveloping this historic site, one spotted from the sea by Vasco da Gama when he sailed by in 1497, and subsequently once the sand bar was cleared, the entryway to the continent’s largest container port. One of the most famous scenes of white-on-white violence in South Africa unfolded here in 1842: the month- long siege of the Point’s Fort Victoria at the British Colony Port Natal (now Durban, also called eThekwini Metro) by what later came to be known as Afrikaners. Now, mayor Zandile Gumede predicts, redevelopment of “The Point Waterfront will completely change the landscape of Durban and position it as a global city and boost tourism profile. Cities are viewed as critical economic nodes and as stable to attract investment.”2 The revitalization process had begun about three years earlier, when Point property developer Herman Chalupsky claimed it would soon be “on par with Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront, the Docklands in London, New York’s Meatpacking District, San Francisco’s Pier 68 and other rejuvenated dockside areas across the world. We are very excited because this will be the most sought-after area in all of Durban.”3 Unfortunately for Gumede, those seeking real estate investment opportunities were looking less favorably at the Point than anywhere else in bankable South Africa. A December 2018 property survey labeled the Point Waterfront “the weakest-performing suburb countrywide,” as a typical unit lost 21 percent of value in real terms over the prior five years. According to Lew Geffen Sotheby’s International Realty, “Prices could be beyond the budget of the young professionals who are the natural target market… The state of surrounding Central Business District areas — rejuvenation has been promised but hasn’t happened — will have contributed to lack of interest. And the Waterfront cannot be accessed without passing through the CBD, which is a deterrent for some buyers.
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The 2016 local government elections in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa : is Jesus on his way?

- Desai, Ashwin

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin
  • Date: 2017
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/224033 , uj:22552 , Citation: Desai, A. 2016. The 2016 local government elections in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa : is Jesus on his way?
  • Description: Abstract: Post-1994, the African National Congress (ANC) has increasingly allied itself to traditional authorities in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). Part of the reason for this has been to undermine the support base of the Inkatha Freedom Party. In more recent times, the alliance between chiefs and the ANC has seen them linked to mining interests, often running roughshod over local forms of resistance. In addition, the August 2016 local government elections showed a weakening of ANC support in some of these rural hotspots of KZN, thus creating the possibilities for activists to build alliances anew.
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The digital University : of March hares and tortoises

- Desai, Ashwin

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin
  • Date: 2020
  • Subjects: Online learning , Knowledge , Big data
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/463849 , uj:41411 , Citation: Desai, A. 2020. The digital University : of March hares and tortoises.
  • Description: Abstract: The learning environment of universities is changing dramatically with the coming of Covid-19. Universities were summarily evacuated and plans put in place to ensure online teaching. In some senses, this was the quickening of a trend that was already unfolding, while for others it signalled new territory. This article explores the coming of online education by highlighting the experiences of lecturers who have already taught courses while raising questions about disciplinary boundaries and knowledge production. It situates this discussion by exploring the challenges to the traditional notions of the role of universities and the changing orientations of the academy against the backdrop of the global juggernaut of privatised higher education.
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The Gupta’s, the public protectors report and capital accumulation in South Africa

- Desai, Ashwin, Vahed, Goolam

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin , Vahed, Goolam
  • Date: 2017
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/254664 , uj:26666
  • Description: Abstract: The relationship between South African President Jacob Zuma and his family, and the Guptas, possibly the richest family of Indian origin at present in South Africa, has made persistent national and increasingly international headlines in the media over the past few years. The Gupta family, who arrived in South Africa from India just prior to the country’s first non-racial democratic elections in 1994, are accused of colluding with Zuma in the removal and appointment of government ministers, as well as the directors of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in order to secure lucrative state contracts. This article examines the allegedly corrupt relationship between the Zumas and the Guptas to probe key issues in post-apartheid South African society: corruption, state capture, inequality, class formation, Black Economic Empowerment, and White Monopoly Capital. It argues that corruption has negative consequences such as creating despondency amongst the populace leading to capital flight and creating the possibilities for state capture as well as further deepening inequality. , Citation: Desai, A. & Vahed, G. 2017. The Gupta’s, the public protectors report and capital accumulation in South Africa.
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The Natal Indian Congress, the Mass Democratic Movement and the struggle to defeat Apartheid : 1980-1994

- Desai, Ashwin, Vahed, Goolam

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin , Vahed, Goolam
  • Date: 2015-06-17
  • Subjects: Mass Democratic Movement , Natal Indian Congress , Black Consciousness Movement , Apartheid - South Africa
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: uj:5602 , ISSN 02589346 , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/14332
  • Description: The Natal Indian Congress (NIC) was revived in 1971 in the context of what has become known as the ‘Durban moment’. This period also witnessed the emergence of the Black Consciousness Movement and an independent trade union movement inspired by the 1973 Durban strikes. Despite a government crackdown and opposition from anti-apartheid groups that asserted that ethnic identities were a relic of the past, the NIC attracted younger activists through the 1970s and by the early 1980s, had survived the banning and detention of its leadership to become involved in civic struggles over housing and education, and in mobilizing against government-created political structures. It also played a pivotal role in the United Democratic Front formed in 1983. This did not mean that the NIC was monolithic. The 1980s spawned vibrant and often vicious debates within the NIC over participation in government-created structures, allegations of cabals and, as democracy dawned, differing opinions of the future of an organization that first came into being in the last decade of the nineteenth century. In critically interrogating this crucial period between 1980 and 1994, when mass-based struggle was renewed, two states of emergency were imposed and apartheid eventually ended, this article adds to the growing historiography of the anti-apartheid struggle by focusing on an important but neglected aspect of that story. It focuses on the internal workings of the NIC and the relationship between the NIC, the emergent Mass Democratic Movement and the African National Congress (ANC) in the context of broader political and economic changes
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The present in the past : maritime crime waves off the coast of Durban, South Africa

- Desai, Ashwin

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin
  • Date: 2016
  • Subjects: Durban , Maritime , Apartheid state
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/216807 , uj:21557 , Citation: Desai, A. 2016. The present in the past : maritime crime waves off the coast of Durban, South Africa.
  • Description: Abstract: A crucial resource the apartheid state needed to import was oil. As an embargo took hold through the 1970s, methods were sought to circumvent it through the use of intermediaries and the construction of pipelines off the Durban coast for the speedy off-loading and transport of oil to the economic heartland, some 500 kilometres inland. This paper casts a net into that period, illustrating how the apartheid state made common cause with the most ruthless of traders, some of whom developed ingenious ways to make considerable amounts of money indirectly fuelling a pariah state’s violent repression of its people. In particular, the paper focuses on a ship called the Salem, which sank off the coast of Senegal in January 1980. The case of the Salem illustrates the global networks that existed in the illicit oil trade, the lengths the state would go to by relying on brokers to break the embargo and also explores maritime insurance scams, of which the sinking of the Salem was one of the biggest in maritime history. The final section of the paper brings the story up to the present to show how pipelines off the Durban coast and the selling of oil reserves are still the site for nefarious schemes of one sort or another.
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The race chase : the colour of cricket transformation in South Africa

- Desai, Ashwin

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin
  • Date: 2019
  • Subjects: Proteas , Cricket , Quotas
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/395327 , uj:32774 , Citation: Desai, A. 2019. The race chase : the colour of cricket transformation in South Africa.
  • Description: Abstract: South African cricket (re)entered international cricket in 1991, a few years before the country’s first democratic elections. A tour of India was a prelude to playing in the 1992 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. From the outset of “unity”, cricket was lauded for its transformation programme and for making a decisive break with the past. This break was epitomised by the team being called the Proteas rather than the Springboks. Despite this and on-going efforts to transform the team into a more representative one, issues of racism and racial representation have continued to haunt the game. Questions are persistently raised about racial targets and interference in selection from on high. At local level, Cricket South Africa (CSA) has now made it mandatory that franchises and semi-professional teams be obliged to include six players of colour, of whom three must be Black Africans, raising concerns about deliberate racial engineering. These apprehensions have been exacerbated by increasing calls for national teams to reflect the racial demographics of the country. This article looks at issues of race and representivity in South African cricket postunity, seeking to probe allegations of racism, as well as how CSA has approached issues of racial representation in the form of quotas and the possible effects of this on the game.
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The Zuma moment : between tender-based capitalists and radical economic transformation

- Desai, Ashwin

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: State capture , Radical economic transformation , Monopoly capital
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/291743 , uj:31692 , Citation: Desai, A. 2018. The Zuma moment : between tender-based capitalists and radical economic transformation.
  • Description: Abstract: The Jacob Zuma Presidency (2009-2017) was dogged by persistent allegations of corruption and the looting of State Owned Enterprises (SOE’s) by those allied to him. It led to allegations of state capture that placed the Gupta family at the centre of this project. These allegations have been highly contested, with Zuma supporters arguing that he has come under attack because of his support for the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), which they hold challenges Western imperial interests. Alongside this are those aligned to the Gupta family, arguing that the real culprits of state capture, both historically and in contemporary South Africa, is White Monopoly Capital (WMC), through its ability to determine macro-economic policy. At the heart of this contest is what has come to be known as tender-based capitalists who sought to use access to SOE’s for the accumulation of capital. This process has been defended on the basis that it has the potential to lead a radical economic transformation (RET) that that can challenge the power of WMC. Others have held that this argument is a mere fig leaf for the looting of state coffers, eroding its capacity for deeper developmental initiatives and fostering a parasitic class. This article that focusses on this debate that entered the heart of the African National Congress (ANC) and threatened to tear it apart takes the form of a conjunctural analysis; conjuncture defined as an amalgam ‘of circumstances, a convergence of events, an intersection of contingencies and necessities, a complex, overdetermined state of affairs-usually...
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“Die ou ballie is net so ‘n naai soos ons” : race place and gangs in a Durban township

- Desai, Ashwin

  • Authors: Desai, Ashwin
  • Date: 2016
  • Subjects: Gangs - South Africa - Durban , Drug traffic - South Africa - Durban
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/218043 , uj:21721 , Citation: Desai, A. 2016. “Die ou ballie is net so ‘n naai soos ons” : race place and gangs in a Durban township.
  • Description: Abstract: There are many aspects of any community’s collective life that are difficult to penetrate. Gangs are one of them. This is exacerbated when one is trying to interview gang members in the midst of violent conflicts fuelled by age old feuds and the trade in illicit drugs. Police are on high alert and gang members particularly edgy. It helps if a researcher is already known in a community and has established networks. In the case of Wentworth, my primary work over the last year has been to construct family histories concentrating on the question of racial identity. In the midst of this research, there was a burst of gang violence that resulted in two murders. I spent a long time talking, debating and interviewing gang members, relying on old style ethnographic fieldwork that involves, as Mintz reflects, “the same willingness to be uncomfortable, to drink bad booze, to be bored by one’s drinking companions, and to be bitten by mosquitoes as always” (2000: 170). The more information I collected, the more I started to reflect on Walter Benjamin’s idea of the destructive character. It is typical Benjamin, full of nuance and subtlety, and I used it as a basis to understand the gang members’ sense of themselves, their mission and how they viewed their defence of “their” turf. This latter aspect emerged time and again in many forms, with Wentworth seen as both a place of danger and place of refuge. The theoretical underpinning for this article is the notion of space as a social creation rather than the “passive locus of social relations” (Lefebvre, 1991: 11, 26) and that our task is to understand “by what social process(es) is place constructed?” (Harvey, 1996: 261).
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