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ID:
157773
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| Summary/Abstract |
Municipal indigents’ are a category of poor citizens who qualify to receive certain municipal services for free in South Africa. Having registered as municipal indigents, the poor not only gain access to free basic services but also embark upon a voyage into a bureaucratic underworld where policies are changed and eligibility criteria and sanctions are unevenly applied. Various preconditions and limits on services, as well as social surveillance of indigent households, has turned indigency programmes into a ‘regime’. The policy has swung from hard cost recovery (mass disconnections) during the period 1994–2000 to ‘free’ basic services and, more recently, to social-shaming and criminalisation. This paper provides a thematic account of recent municipal indigent processes in order to explore the ‘moving boundary’ between benevolence and control regarding this crucial citizen–state interface. Based on recent interviews with government officials, a review of relevant government documents, and describing the administrative complexities, the paper reveals aspects of what the poor confront in day-to-day experiences of the state. It is argued that there are lessons for all municipalities seeking a more sustainable and democratic path to citizenship rather than an ongoing low-level war with poor citizens.
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| 2 |
ID:
178388
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| Summary/Abstract |
Non-racialism is a deep-rooted ideal in the history of resistance in South Africa. It is not only the basis of the post-apartheid legal order, but also crucial to the form of capitalism. This paper reinterprets non-racialism and inequality in post-1994 South Africa by revisiting conventional understandings of the nature of the state and the rule of law. It shows that racial inequality is inscribed in the non-racial form of the state. The non-racial democratic shell correlates with the commodity form. Scholars have neglected the shift in the form of the state after 1994, partly because they focus on policy and see the state as an external structure in a racial society.
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