The Zuma Administration: Critical Challenges, a collection of essays concerning the challenges facing the current government under Jacob Zuma, was launched last week in Cape Town.
The book is edited by Kwandiwe Kondlo and Masuphye Maserumule – both present at the launch. Their work seeks to stimulate debate and thinking, to challenge entrenched views and perceptions and to break new ground. Interpreting the dynamics since the birth of democracy in South Africa in1994, through the era of the Mbeki administration and the transition to the Zuma administration, it provides fresh perspectives on the questions of land reform, rural development, service delivery, intergovernmental relations, and poverty reduction in South Africa.
In light of president Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address this week, HSRC Press invites you to the launch of a collection of essays from varying perspectives that rigorously engages with the challenges facing South Africa’s government.
The Zuma Administration: Critical Challenges seeks to stimulate debate and thinking, to challenge entrenched views and perceptions and to break new ground. Interpreting the dynamics since the birth of democracy in South Africa in1994, through the era of the Mbeki administration and the transition to the Zuma administration, it provides fresh perspectives on the questions of land reform, rural development, service delivery, intergovernmental relations, and poverty reduction in South Africa.
Steering clear of biography, the book deals with the micro-mechanics of governance. It is written for policy-makers, scholars in the field of administration and governance and everyone with an interest in the political economy and public administration of South Africa.
The issues that this book deals with are high on the research agenda of the Human Sciences Research Council’s Democracy and Governance research programme and are in line with its pursuit of informing policy development in South Africa.
We hope to see you at the launch:
Event Details
Date: Friday, 12 February 2010
Time: 12:00 PM for 12:30 PM
Venue: Townhouse Conference Centre, 60 Corporation St
Cape Town | Map
Kwandiwe Kondlo, co-editor of Zuma Administration: Critical Challenges, features in a recent article by Sabelo Ndlangisa on President Zuma’s restructuring of government. Kondlo, the cited political analyst, is especially critical of the focus on large structures in place of daily routine:
President Jacob Zuma has made the Presidency take the position of a ministry in his restructuring of government.
Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel now forms part of the infrastructure cluster. It is a worrying tendency to “seek to put line-function ministries on the same pedestal as the Presidency”, policy specialist Joel Netshitenzhe told the ANC’s Gauteng executive committee this month.
This collection of essays from varying perspectives, The Zuma Administration: Critical Challenges rigorously engages with the issues facing the new South African government. The contributors provide a view into the future and explore the responsibilities that the Zuma administration must take on.
The monograph seeks to stimulate debate and thinking, to challenge entrenched views and perceptions and to break new ground. Interpreting the dynamics since the birth of democracy in South Africa in1994, through the era of the Mbeki administration and the transition to the Zuma administration, it provides fresh perspectives on the questions of land reform, rural development, service delivery, intergovernmental relations, and poverty reduction in South Africa.
Steering clear of biography, the book deals with the micro-mechanics of governance. It is written for policy-makers, scholars in the field of administration and governance and everyone with an interest in the political economy and public administration of South Africa.
The issues that this book deals with are high on the research agenda of the Human Sciences Research Council’s Democracy and Governance research programme and are in line with its pursuit of informing policy development in South Africa.
About the Authors
Dr Kwandiwe Kondlo is Executive Director of the Democracy and Governance Programme at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and a visiting adjunct professor at the School for Public and Development Management at University of Witwatersrand .
Mashupye Herbet Maserumule is a senior lecturer at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT). Maserumule is co-editor of the book, Cases in Public Administration and Management: A South African Perspective (Heinemann), and managing editor of the Journal for Local Government Management. He is chairperson of the Gauteng chapter of the South African Association of Public Administration and Management (SAAPAM-Gauteng) and a member of the Audit Committee of Kungwini Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa.
In much of Africa, people look to trade unions for leadership, especially at times of economic downturn. Although Africa’s wage-workers are relatively few in comparison to those in the informal economy, their experience of organisation and mass mobilisation and their position in the modern economy give them a strategic role in the politics of democratisation and development.
Trade Unions and Party Politics: Labour movements in Africa examines the political role of trade unions in seven African countries and the various ways in which they seek to influence political parties and the state. Whereas some, like the Nigeria Labour Congress, push for a political party of their own, others, such as COSATU in South Africa, opt to engage with the power struggles in the ruling party. In Namibia and Uganda unions have been incorporated by a one-party dominated state while in Ghana, unions insist on being autonomous. There is also a move towards autonomy in Senegal, despite the plurality of unions with party affiliations. In the case of Zimbabwe, unions took the lead in creating an alternative alliance in opposition to a repressive state. Trade Unions and Party Politics provides a finely tuned critique of the impact achieved by these strategies, within the context of both the unique forces shaping them and the looming shadow of the new global economy.
With contributions by established researchers, all of them engaged scholars and seasoned labour activists in the countries studied, the volume makes a major contribution to understanding the dilemmas facing unions in contemporary Africa. While examining the relationship of trade unions to party politics, the contributions also provide new insights into the relationship of trade union action to the politics of national liberation, a theme that has not received sufficient attention in the existing literature.
Contents
Preface
Acronyms and abbreviations
1. Trade unions and party politics
Björn Beckman and Lloyd Sachikonye
2. Autonomy or political affiliation? Senegalese trade unions faced with economic and political reforms
Alfred Inis Ndiaye
3. Disengagement from party politics: Achievements and challenges for the Ghana Trades Union Congress
Emmanuel O. Akwetey with David Dorkenoo
4. The failure of Nigeria’s Labour Party
Björn Beckman and Salihu Lukman
5. Trade unions, liberalisation and politics in Uganda
John-Jean Barya
6. The labour movement and democratisation in Zimbabwe
Lovemore Matombo and Lloyd M. Sachikonye
7. Unions and parties in South Africa: Cosatu and the ANC in the wake of Polokwane
Roger Southall and Edward Webster
8. Serving workers or serving the party? Trade unions and politics in Namibia
Herbert Jauch
9. Trade unions and the politics of national liberation in Africa: An appraisal
Sakhela Buhlungu
Contributors
Index
About the authors
Björn Beckman is a professor of Political Science at Stockholm University in Sweden. He has written extensively on African trade unions, state and civil society, especially on Nigerian union politics. He co-authored Union power in the Nigerian textile industry with Gunilla Andrae (Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala 1998, CRD, Kano 1999) and co-edited Labour regimes and liberalization: The restructuring of state-society relations in Africa with L.M. Sachikonye (University of Zimbabwe publications, Harare 2001). He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Review of African Political Economy.
Lloyd M. Sachikonye is a professor in the Department of Agrarian and Labour Studies in the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, Harare. He has written extensively on labour and politics in Zimbabwe and Africa, including Democracy, civil society and the state: Social movements in southern Africa (SAPES Books, Harare, 1995), Restructuring or de-industrialising? (Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, 1999) and the collection edited with Beckman mentioned above. He is a frequent contributor to the Review of African Political Economy.
Book details
Trade Unions and Party Politics: Labour movements in Africa edited by Björn Beckman, Sakhela Buhlungu, Lloyd Sachikonye Book homepage
EAN: 9780796923066 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
The Zuma Administration: Critical Challenges, a collection of essays concerning the challenges facing the current government under Jacob Zuma, was launched last week in Cape Town.
Kwandiwe Kondlo, co-editor of 
