The South African transition : from development to security?
This article questions some recent analyses which claim that global neoliberal discourses are disseminated to shift the focus away from development towards a greater emphasis on security issues. Taking as its point of departure the analysis of empirical material from Cape Town, the article shows that security and development in South Africa were never separate concerns.
Source: Development and change ; vol. 36, no.
3
After the ANC came to power in 1994
there was an effort to boost development efforts
rather than security. However, these
efforts were soon dwarfed by local circumstances, notably
the pressure from local state employees who felt
their jobs and lives to be under threat from
the townships, and the changing nature of
violence in the city. The first part of
the article details the practices and
discourses of state agencies; the second section
analyses the consequences of reconfigured security and
development concerns for the production of
political subjectivity in South Africa''s
townships