Aly Karam
School of Architecture and Planning
University of the Witwatersrand
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Apartheid
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Apartheid
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Timeline for some events with
national significance
 1994 Apartheid rule ends with the
democratic election on April 27th.
 1994 The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission.
 1995 July, the Rugby World Cup held
in South Africa (South Africa won
the cup).
 1996 May Constitution adopted.
 1996 May Deputy President Thabo
Mbeki gives his “I am an African”
speech after the constitution
adopted.
 1997 The government of National
Unity collapses.
 1997 President Nelson Mandela
declares he will not seek another
term.
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Timeline for some events with
national significance … continued
 1999 April, President Thabo Mbeki
democratically elected.
 2004 April, President Thabo Mbeki
re-elected.
 2007 December, The Polokwane
Conference and a Thabo Mbeki
voted out of the leadership of the
ANC.
 2008 May, President Thabo Mbeki
recalled by the party and President
Motlante assumes presidency until
the national elections.
 2009 April, President Jacob Zuma
elected president of South Africa.
 2010 June, The Football World Cup
to held in South Africa.
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Today
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South Africa’s Constitutional
Democracy
 South Africa’s Constitution presents a mixture of both
representative and participatory democracy. This mixture,
as Fakir (2004:6) explains, is ‘a form of democracy in which
citizens are actively involved in the decision-making
processes of government at different levels, on issues that
interest or affect them’.
 The main reason for introducing the participatory aspect to
democracy, as Oldfield (2008:488) puts it, is ‘to build
citizenship by making a once exclusive state inclusive, open
and responsive to the needs of the majority previously
excluded and discriminated against’ (Mohamed, 2009: 95)
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Legitimacy
 It is defined as “a generalized perception or
assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable,
proper, or appropriate within some socially
constructed system of norms, values, beliefs and
definitions” Suchman (1995:574) .
 Legitimacy is a construct of representation,
accountability (Peter, 2010).
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Citizenship vs. National Subjects
 Citizens
 Need to be humans
 Civic rights (equality
before the law; personal
liberty, freedom of speech,
belief and opinion; right to
property; right to
contract)
 Political rights (right to
elect and to be elected;
right to participate in
government)
 Socio-economic rights
(equal access to health
care and work)
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 National subjects
 Do not have some or all of
the rights of citizens.
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Citizens
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National subjects
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Citizens
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National subjects
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Identity
 A social construct
 Place, social, individual, national, religion, ethnic,
language, career, sexual, gender, etc…
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“I am an African”
(A speech byThabo Mbeki May 1996)
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I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the
trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land….
I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the
beautiful Cape…
I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land….
In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East….
I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led, the patriots that
Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to
dishonour the cause of freedom.
My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African
crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of
Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert.
I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena and the Bahamas, who sees
in the mind's eye and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant folk, death, concentration camps,
destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins.
I am the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in the world markets in diamonds,
in gold, in the same food for which my stomach yearns.
I come of those who were transported from India and China, …
Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that assertion, I shall
claim that - I am an African.
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The Road
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Thank you.
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