In his announcement of the latest Cabinet reshuffle President Zuma created an operative paradigm that informed and/or informs his governmenr and/or governance approach. He again declared that his administration is based on the ideas, views and policy injunctions of men and women who "know where our people live".
In his book "do South Africans Exist" Ivor Chipkins quotes Chantal Mouffe that "democracy always entails relations of inclusion -exclusion that speak to a notion of the political frontier". The political frontier of South Africa has been most fluid when it attempts to define 'the people' as objects of political legitimisation processes. The 'people' remains a critical concept in the definition of 'who is a South African and who is not' and very much in the dichotomous Mouffe inclusion and exclusion discourse.
President Zuma's reference to the 'people' with the criteria of where they live calls therefore for the interrogation of the geospatial make-up of the South African polity as an arena for political mobilisation. If the location of our people is anything to go home with South Africa should brace itself for a locational polity creation that will dictate to those that are outside the 'our people' polity to migrate towards where they will be known or will know "the people'.
The extent to which the freedom charter, a profoundly dominant ideological co-ordinate for most of President Zuma's policy statements, impacts on the definitional elements of the people will be reflected in the executionables that are displayed by the new cabinet members.The rearrangement of the democracy premium that must be reaasigned by politicians as manifest in expenditure trends will only be acceptable to Zuma if it reflects a shift towards where our people live.
The election manifesto of the ANC in the oncoming local government elections will provide an insider perspective of the real and actual meaning of where the 'people' live. The growing impatience with the general expectation that an approved South African leader is one that reflects an overstreched and Mandela type reconciliation is fast becoming bankrupted by a need to have a 'home grown' leader that is 'decolonised' and differently 'cultured'.
The expectation from the new incumbents is that they will at the minimum develop policies that do not only reverse the frontiers of poverty but also redesign the template of wealth creation along an inherently unequal playing ground. Some of the fundamental issues to interrogate is the neccesity of BEE and Affirmative action given the reality of a redefined polity. If Blacks are in the majority ,why are these quotas entrenched to create perpetual minority stakes/participation for Black entrants accross all charters.
The next policy earthquake should be in the resourcing of cultural institutions and particularly schools; the budget should move accordingly to induce migration of teaching talent and learner community thus scoring on the social cohesion underperformance.The urgency to create through resources a teaching and learning environment that alters the access disparities created by years of institutionalised underprivilegisation of black people is now.
Underpinning this policy movements should also be the use of property rating instruments to class equalise society thus removing the race-based classification faultlines. a non-racial class re-ordering remains an obvious antidote to the persistent apartheid based human settlement behaviour of both policy and communities.
In his book "do South Africans Exist" Ivor Chipkins quotes Chantal Mouffe that "democracy always entails relations of inclusion -exclusion that speak to a notion of the political frontier". The political frontier of South Africa has been most fluid when it attempts to define 'the people' as objects of political legitimisation processes. The 'people' remains a critical concept in the definition of 'who is a South African and who is not' and very much in the dichotomous Mouffe inclusion and exclusion discourse.
President Zuma's reference to the 'people' with the criteria of where they live calls therefore for the interrogation of the geospatial make-up of the South African polity as an arena for political mobilisation. If the location of our people is anything to go home with South Africa should brace itself for a locational polity creation that will dictate to those that are outside the 'our people' polity to migrate towards where they will be known or will know "the people'.
The extent to which the freedom charter, a profoundly dominant ideological co-ordinate for most of President Zuma's policy statements, impacts on the definitional elements of the people will be reflected in the executionables that are displayed by the new cabinet members.The rearrangement of the democracy premium that must be reaasigned by politicians as manifest in expenditure trends will only be acceptable to Zuma if it reflects a shift towards where our people live.
The election manifesto of the ANC in the oncoming local government elections will provide an insider perspective of the real and actual meaning of where the 'people' live. The growing impatience with the general expectation that an approved South African leader is one that reflects an overstreched and Mandela type reconciliation is fast becoming bankrupted by a need to have a 'home grown' leader that is 'decolonised' and differently 'cultured'.
The expectation from the new incumbents is that they will at the minimum develop policies that do not only reverse the frontiers of poverty but also redesign the template of wealth creation along an inherently unequal playing ground. Some of the fundamental issues to interrogate is the neccesity of BEE and Affirmative action given the reality of a redefined polity. If Blacks are in the majority ,why are these quotas entrenched to create perpetual minority stakes/participation for Black entrants accross all charters.
The next policy earthquake should be in the resourcing of cultural institutions and particularly schools; the budget should move accordingly to induce migration of teaching talent and learner community thus scoring on the social cohesion underperformance.The urgency to create through resources a teaching and learning environment that alters the access disparities created by years of institutionalised underprivilegisation of black people is now.
Underpinning this policy movements should also be the use of property rating instruments to class equalise society thus removing the race-based classification faultlines. a non-racial class re-ordering remains an obvious antidote to the persistent apartheid based human settlement behaviour of both policy and communities.
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