3 minute read
Wits University Press
Susan Booysen is a political analyst and media commentator. She is Director of Research at the Mapungubwe Institute of Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) and Visiting Professor at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her two major books on the ANC are The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power (2011) and Dominance and Decline: The ANC in the Time of Zuma (2015), both published by Wits University Press.
February 2021 328 pages • 6.14 x 9.21 Paper • 9781776146451 • $30.00S Cloth • 9781776146499 • $89.00X
Political Science Wits University Press PRECARIOUS POWER
Compliance and Discontent Under Ramaphosa’s ANC SUSAN BOOYSEN
An incisive analysis of South Africa's ANC power—as party, as government, as state
South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) is in decline, its hegemony has been weakened, its legitimacy diluted. President Cyril Ramaphosa's appointment suspended the ANC's electoral decline, it also heightened internal tensions between those who would deepen its acquired status as corrupt and captured, and those who would remodel it as redeemable. The COVID-19 pandemic deepened the fragility. ANC internal wars were moderated, but the socio-economic devastation and the state’s inability to make sufficient amends aggravated the prior fault-lines. These are the incontrovertible knowns of South African politics; what will evolve from this is less certain. In Precarious Power, renowned political scientist Susan Booysen uses in-depth research and analysis to distill that which is bound to shape South Africa's political future. Booysen focuses on contradictory party politics and internal ANC dissent that is veiled for the sake of retaining an electoral following. Also exposed is the incongruous, populist policymaking, protest politics and the use of soft law to ensure it does not alienate angry citizens, fueling further discontent and protest. The analysis of the ANC’s gentle stance on captured state institutions lest the Zumaist malcontents rebel, reveals a president who was wavering on a tightrope between serving the needs of the organisation and those of the nation. He rose to the challenge of being a national leader during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the task was immense. The ANC's power has become exceedingly precarious. Precarious Power is the name of the political game, for the foreseeable future. The comprehensive analysis in Precarious Power will appeal not only to political scientists and postgraduate students, but to all who take a keen interest in current affairs.
AND WROTE MY STORY ANYWAY
Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism BARBARA BOSWELL
Critically examines influential novels in English by eminent black female writers
Studying these writers' key engagements with nationalism, race and gender during apartheid and the transition to democracy, Barbara Boswell traces the ways in which black women's fiction criticality interrogates narrow ideas of nationalism. She examines who is included and excluded, while producing alternative visions for a more just South African society. This is an erudite analysis of ten well-known South African writers, spanning the apartheid and post-apartheid era: Miriam Tlali, Lauretta Ngcobo, Farida Karodia, Agnes Sam, Sindiwe Magona, Zoë Wicomb, Rayda Jacobs, Yvette Christiansë, Kagiso Lesego Molope, and Zukiswa Wanner. Boswell argues that black women's fiction could and should be read as a subversive site of knowledge production in a setting, which, for centuries, denied black women's voices and intellects. Reading their fiction as theory, for the first time these writers' works are placed in sustained conversation with each other, producing an arc of feminist criticism that speaks forcefully back to the abuse of a racist, white-dominated, patriarchal power.
Barbara Boswell is a feminist literary scholar and Associate Professor of English at the University of Cape Town. She is the author of Grace: A Novel (2017), which won the 2018 University of Johannesburg Debut Prize for Creative Writing.
September 2020 264 pages • 6 x 9 Paper • 9781776146185 • $30.00A Cloth • 9781776146222 • $89.00X
