Tài liệu What Holds Us Together docx

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Compiled by the Social Cohesion and Integration Research
Programme of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC)
Published by HSRC Press
Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa
www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za
© 2003 Human Sciences Research Council
First published 2003
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Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
David Chidester, Phillip Dexter and Wilmot James
Part I Order 21
1Sovereignty, identity and the prospects for southern Africa’s people 23
Peter Vale
2The importance of political tolerance for fostering social cohesion 42
Amanda Gouws
3Cultural justice: the pathway to reconciliation and social cohesion 67
Chirevo V Kwenda
Part II Production 81
4 Labour,globalisation and social cohesion in South Africa 83
Tony Ehrenreich
5The poverty of work and social cohesion in global exports:
the case of South African fruit 92
Stephanie Barrientos and Andrienetta Kritzinger
6Together and apart: African refugees and immigrants in
global Cape Town 120
Owen Sichone
Part III Exchange 141
7Building a new nation: solidarity,democracy and nationhood
in the age of circulatory capitalism 143
Thomas A Koelble

8Building a better world: using the positive forces in globalistion
to counteract the negative 173
Jan Hofmeyr

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Part IV Connections 193
9The family and social cohesion 195
Susan C Ziehl
10 Global tourism, marginalised communities and the
development of Cape Town’s City Bowl area 224
Sandra Klopper
11 Grounding ‘globalisation from below’:‘global citizens’ in
local spaces 242
Steven Robins
Part V Resources 275
12 Human solidarity in postcolonial, Holocaust and
African-American literature 277
Giles Gunn
13 Globalisation, identity and national policy in South Africa 295
David Chidester, Adrian Hadland and Sandra Prosalendis
Conclusion: social cohesion in South Africa 323
David Chidester, Phillip Dexter and Wilmot James
Contributors 339
Index 348
WHAT HOLDS US TOGETHER
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Preface
This book addresses the crucial question of social cohesion: what holds us

together when everything seems to be pulling us apart? Set in the context of a
changing South Africa, the book engages this question of social cohesion
under difficult globalising conditions.As the chapters demonstrate, globalisa-
tion has presented not only obstacles but also opportunities for social cohe-
sion in South Africa. This book explores both.
Following the first democratic election in 1994, South Africa became a new,
unified and democratic nation just when nations seemed to be going out of
style, when national sovereignty and integrity were being eroded by global
market forces beyond any nation’s control. In exploring the problem of
national identity,coherence and cohesion in a new South Africa,therefore,we
are immediately confronted by the effects of globalisation.
In the glow of the South African ‘miracle’, national identity seemed as easy as
one, two, three: South Africa had one flag, two national anthems and three
national sporting teams. Of course, national identity has always been more
complicated. In his classic essay,‘What is a Nation?’, Ernest Renan found that
national identity was based on a sense of collective uniformity in the present
and continuity with the past. But he also observed that a nation is a collectiv-
ity that misunderstands its own history and hates its neighbours. Is that the
kind of continuity with the past and uniformity in the present that could form
the basis for a national identity in an emerging South African nation?
As we will see in this book, national identity, social cohesion and human
coherence are being shaped at the intersection of transnational forces, cross-
cutting the local and the global. Certainly, the global market is at play. In the
light of government policy, adapting to global market forces, some of the
authors might feel a certain nostalgia for a kind of political discourse, as
recent as 1999, in which South African President,Thabo Mbeki,launching the
African Renaissance, declared, ‘We must be at the forefront of the struggle
against the god of the market, a superhuman power to which everything
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human must bow in a spirit of powerlessness’.Certainly, a few years later, such
political discourse,adopting an adversarial position against the ‘religion of the
market’, was not part of the New Economic Partnership for African
Development (Nepad) that has been at the forefront of President Mbeki’s
hopes for a unified, revitalised Africa.
Not only concerned with the global market, this book examines many other
globalising forces. Globalisation involves the transnational dynamics of glob-
al citizenship, multinational corporations, organised labour, human rights
movements, feminist movements, transnational religions, popular culture – a
whole range of cross-cutting global forces. At the same time, the authors of
this book are concerned with local forms of identity, coherence and cohesion.
In some cases, the ‘local’assumes new forms of ‘cultural citizenship’,revitalis-
ing indigenous culture in ways that are local, grounded and rooted in place
but often the ‘local’ is shaped by people who are out of place through dias-
pora, migration or exile.As the chapters of this volume illustrate,globalisation
is always experienced in local transactions of social identity, coherence and
cohesion.
These are wide ranging questions. To focus our investigation of these ques-
tions, we brought together two institutions, the Human Sciences Research
Council (HSRC) and the National Economic Development and Labour
Council (Nedlac), for a conference in August 2002.
The HSRC had recently established a new unit, the Social Cohesion and
Integration Research Programme. Dedicated to examining factors that facili-
tate or inhibit social cohesion,this HSRC unit works with the entire spectrum
of human formation, including the arts, sports, religion, history, family, edu-
cation, media and the social dimensions of science. A variety of human, cul-
tural and social resources are necessarily brought into the mix, providing
different focal points for investigating fundamental questions of human life in
South Africa.

At the same time, we had a delegation from Nedlac, which has been South
Africa’s primary institution for facilitating social dialogue among govern-
ment, business, labour and community. Seeking consensus on social and eco-
nomic policy, the practice of social dialogue suggests the possibility of broader
social agreements about what it means to be South African.
WHAT HOLDS US TOGETHER
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The point of this whole exercise was not to answer the question of what holds
us together when everything is pulling us apart, but to explore possible
co-operation between Nedlac and the HSRC, identifying areas of strategic
co-operation in research projects for the future. Nevertheless, as this book
demonstrates, we did get some answers.
Although most of the answers are provided by working academics employed
by universities,this book also includes strong statements in chapters,one by a
leader in organised labour, the other by a leader in global business, which
adopt a direct mode of address that provides a nice contrast to the complexi-
ty of academic discourse. Still, without forsaking complexity, even the aca-
demic authors in this book have sought to communicate with a wider
audience by being clear about what is at stake in social cohesion. The authors
are true to their academic disciplines: Political Studies, Sociology, Social
Anthropology, Global Studies,Literary Studies,Art History, Religious Studies,
Media Studies and Cultural Studies.At the same time,with a remarkable com-
mitment to interdisciplinary exchanges, willing to talk with each other, the
authors are primarily interested in making sense.As a result, we have a book,
with academic credibility, that is of more than merely academic interest.
For their participation in the conference that led to this book, we thank
Gretchen Humphries, Parliamentary Officer of the Federation of Unions of
South Africa; Les Kettledas, Deputy Director General, Labour Policy and

Labour Market Programmes, Department of Labour; Petronella Linders,
Divisional Co-ordinator, Economic Empowerment, South African Federal
Council on Disability; Muzi Maziya, Director, Research Policy and Planning,
Department of Labour; Khulu Mbongo, President of the South African Youth
Council and Overall Convenor for Community in Nedlac; and Borence Moabi
of the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce. Deborah Sills and
James McNamara, representing the Board of Directors,were part of this proj-
ect from the beginning. At the HSRC, vital contributions were made by Pam
Barron, Jean Whitten and Lynne Wilson of the Social Cohesion and
Integration Research Programme and Mthobeli Guma of the Social Aspects of
HIV/AIDS and Health Research Programme. In the editorial process, staff of
the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (ICRSA) – Thomas
Alberts, Raffaella Delle Donne, Federico Settler and Judy Tobler – worked
through our raw material. The staff at HSRC Press, with special thanks to
Garry Rosenberg and Mary Ralphs, transformed that material into this book.
ix
PREFACE

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As the beginning rather than the end of our collaboration, this book provides
an initial framework for the Social Fabric Initiative, a research partnership of
the Social Cohesion and Integration Research Programme of the HSRC,
Inyathelo (The South African Institute for Advancement), Nedlac, the
Western Cape Provincial Development Council,the University of the Western
Cape School of Government, and Mwengo (Mwelekeo wango-NGO Vision:
Reflection and Development Centre for Eastern and Southern Africa). As the
Social Fabric Initiative develops, we hope to learn more about what holds us
together.
David Chidester, Phillip Dexter, Wilmot James
Cape Town

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Stamp
Introduction
David Chidester, Phillip Dexter and Wilmot James
This book examines social cohesion under globalising conditions within four
contexts in contemporary South Africa – government, labour, business and
community. Although the authors come from different academic disciplines
and intellectual backgrounds, their chapters can be read as a single, coherent
story, even if that story incorporates many voices, about the challenges and
opportunities for South African social cohesion in a globalising world.
Briefly,we relate that story. Beginning with an investigation of political order,
the book examines the imported,but now pervasive,system of states in south-
ern Africa and locates South Africa within that shifting regional terrain while
considering the viability of national sovereignty, the role of tolerance in the
constitutional politics of a liberal democracy and the vitality of indigenous
forms of cultural politics. Under globalising conditions, the nation-state may
have lost some of its force as a locus of social cohesion but new orderings,
mixing alien and indigenous modes of coherence, are emerging in southern
Africa.
Moving from government to labour, from the world of politics to the world of
work,the book critically assesses new relations of production.Although South
Africa has enacted progressive legislation protecting the rights of workers,
labour rights have been profoundly affected by new developments in the glob-
al economy, multinational business and transnational migrations of workers.
A case study in the fruit industry shows the impact of changes in the global
value chain on the employment, living conditions and well-being of workers.

A case study of informal enterprises, such as car parking, hair cutting and
street vending, shows the prominent role of African migrants, refugees and
exiles in these emerging service industries. Like the demise of the state in the
political realm, the end of production as a significant factor in the global
economy may have been exaggerated. Labour value, as these chapters suggest,
remains crucial, even if the relations, modes and forces of production have
been changing.
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The global economy, for better or worse,has been the focus of celebration and
opposition. Although most analysts have distinguished between economic
and cultural globalisation, the chapters in this book dealing with the global
economy are distinguished by their efforts to link economic processes with
cultural factors in assessing globalisation. In turning to the economy, finance
and business,this book juxtaposes two assessments of the globalising world of
economic exchange.On the one hand, global capital, in its circulatory, specu-
lative mode, appears as corrosive of distinctively local, cultural values. On the
other hand, global business, in its entrepreneurial efforts to maximise cus-
tomer satisfaction, requires new forms of cross-cultural communication and
mutual recognition that valorise diverse cultural values. Not all readers, and
certainly not all of the authors, will agree with this suggestion that economic
globalisation is generally destructive of cultural values when it appears as
speculative financial investments in global markets, but enhances cultural
values when it takes the form of entrepreneurial, cross-cultural business
ventures.Still, the attempt to weave together economic and cultural globalisa-
tions is important for any assessment of the impact of globalising forces on
social cohesion in South Africa.
Coming home to local connections, the book considers social cohesion
within the family, the urban street cultures and new social movements with-

in South Africa. Arguably, the family, however constituted, is the primary
locus of social cohesion. Over the past fifty years, the viability (and desir-
ability) of the ‘conventional’ nuclear family has been the subject of consid-
erable debate in Europe and North America. In South Africa, the intimate
community of the family remains relatively unexplored territory in the
social sciences. Extended and stretched, the family seems to have shown
remarkable resilience, which is being severely tested, however, by the global
AIDS pandemic.
Taking to the streets,urban youth,with distinctive styles of music,poetry and
visual arts, as well as the urban homeless, who have developed various entre-
preneurial enterprises in the city,have been subject to a kind of‘urban cleans-
ing’ in the interests of global tourism. Making the city safe, efficient and
‘beautiful’ for global tourists, urban policy has further marginalised the most
marginalised members of society. New forms of ‘globalisation from below’,
however, have been evident in the emergence of new social movements, with
international links and exchanges, which have reversed the old saying,‘Think
WHAT HOLDS US TOGETHER
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globally,act locally’,by negotiating local issues of empowerment housing,and
social services by acting in global collaborations.
In all of these intersections of the global and the local, resources are at stake,
not merely material resources, but also the human resources of imagination,
creativity and identity. As anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has proposed,
globalisation has accelerated the pace and scope of transnational movements
of money, technology and people, but it has also generated new images of
human possibility and new ideals of human solidarity (Appadurai 1996:
27–47).Moving beyond the simple assertion of human solidarity based on the
assumption that all people share a common, underlying humanity, this book

situates the symbolic, cultural and social resources for negotiating human
identity,individually and collectively, within a changing South Africa and in a
globalising world. Although the South African ‘miracle’ of the 1990s, with its
negotiated revolution against apartheid, has been held up as a model for the
world, the ordeals of imagination undergone by those who have survived
colonialism, genocide or slavery can also inform our understanding of human
solidarity under impossible conditions. In the effort to forge a post-apartheid
national unity, the South African government is faced with the challenge of
imagining new forms of social cohesion, with both local roots and global
extensions, which engage a diversity of social identities, cultural heritages and
human aspirations.
In recent analysis,human,cultural and social resources have been captured by the
term,‘social capital’, the resources accumulated in social networks, informed by
trust, which enable practices of reciprocity and mutual support. Several authors
of this book use (and criticise) the notion of social capital. In a concluding chap-
ter, we will collect these reflections in an assessment of social capital as an indica-
tor of social cohesion in South Africa. Even in a globalising world, not all capital,
especially not all of the many forms of social capital, has necessarily come from
elsewhere or gone off shore. Still, we need to ask: how does social capital actually
work in South Africa in specific local situations and under globalising conditions?
Order
In the first section of this book, the authors deal broadly with issues of gover-
nance, locating social cohesion, in the first instance, in the political order of
power relations.
INTRODUCTION
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As political scientist, Peter Vale, shows in his chapter on the ‘sovereignty’ of
states in southern Africa, the modern state, built on the European model of

the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648,a model which is supposedly in decline with-
in a globalising world, is only in its infancy in southern Africa, although these
states certainly had a difficult conception,gestation and birth in the region. In
the formula provided by the great sociologist, Max Weber, the modern state is
the organised exercise of legitimate force, coercion and violence over a terri-
tory.Sovereignty,in this formulation,raises crucial questions about how these
assumptions about territory, force and legitimacy, so integral to the modern
state,have actually operated in southern Africa.In tracing a genealogy of state
formation, Peter Vale takes us quickly, but effectively, back through colonial,
imperial, apartheid and Cold-War phases in what might be regarded as a pre-
history of the state in southern Africa. In all of these phases, the territory of
states, or proto-states, has been determined by ongoing projects in creating
and maintaining boundaries, demarcating insiders and outsiders, while
investing the often violent reinforcement of those boundaries with an aura of
legitimacy, always echoing the nineteenth-century colonial slogan,
‘Christianity, civilisation and commerce’, in ways that remain profoundly
unconvincing. The state’s crisis of legitimacy, therefore, cannot merely be
attributed to new global forces beyond national control. In southern Africa,
the legitimacy of the state has always been suspect.
In a number of the chapters in this volume, authors will invoke the state as a
crucial actor in establishing the conditions necessary for social cohesion in
South Africa. Within the framework provided by one of the most progressive
constitutions in the world, the South African state must provide civic educa-
tion, ensure workers’ rights, facilitate international business and provide
social services against the advice of globalising forces variously identified as
the neo-liberal agenda, the World Bank, or the Washington Consensus. As
Peter Vale suggests, however, the state in southern Africa is not an obvious
agent for social cohesion. In the genealogy of the region, southern African
states,with their arbitrary boundaries, entrenched coercion and tenuous legit-
imacy, provide no solid ground. Instead of social cohesion, insecurity and

instability, fear and anxiety, seem to be the legacy of the modern state in
southern Africa. Even a new South Africa, negotiated out of the regional
destabilisation practised by the apartheid regime, has to bear that legacy,
especially when it is expected to police the region.While calling the state into
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question, Peter Vale also points to more fluid, boundary-crossing formations,
such as African-initiated churches,which might provide different grounds for
understanding regional relations, networks and exchanges that are not con-
tained by the territorial boundaries, organised coercion or claims to legitima-
cy exercised by the various states in southern Africa.
Assuming the legitimacy of the South African state, which is sanctioned by
democratic elections and constitutional protections, the free participation of
citizens in this constitutional democracy requires a public sphere charac-
terised by tolerance of different political positions.Political scientist,Amanda
Gouws,who has conducted extensive empirical research on tolerance in South
Africa, highlights the importance of tolerance for social cohesion. In a mini-
malist definition, such as that proposed by the ethicist David Little, tolerance
appears when people encounter beliefs and practices they find abhorrent but
refrain from violence (Little 2001: 9). Certainly, this minimalist notion of
tolerance, which refuses to resort to violence, force or coercion in relation to
objectionable political alternatives, must be a basic condition for democratic
political participation. However, as Amanda Gouws shows, this simple
requirement of democracy becomes difficult for people to sustain when they
perceive their opponents not only as different but also as threatening.Political
intolerance, in this sense, is not merely a failure to allow for difference; it is a
defensive reaction to real or perceived dangers.
In addition to providing documentation of her empirical research into polit-

ical tolerance in South Africa,Amanda Gouws charts a course for the difficult,
but necessary, work of dealing with intolerance in a democratic society.
Considering both local and comparative findings, she reports that controlled
interventions have been more successful in moving people from tolerance
to intolerance than from intolerance to tolerance. Similarly discouraging,
educational programmes designed to foster tolerance have often been
counterproductive, resulting in reinforced stereotypes, intensified anxieties,
and increased intolerance of political,cultural and religious difference.Never-
theless, since tolerance is an essential ingredient for social cohesion in a
democratic society, Amanda Gouws confronts South African educators with
the enormous challenge which has been taken up, sometimes successfully, by
educators elsewhere,of developing new forms of civic education that actually
enable learners to be tolerant of difference.
INTRODUCTION
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This minimal definition of tolerance, of course, is not sufficiently rich to
weave together a cohesive social fabric. A more profound form of tolerance
resides in the capacity to develop respect, understanding and mutual recogni-
tion of others. In his examination of cultural justice, historian of religions,
Chirevo Kwenda, takes us from tolerance to respect in the cultural politics of
southern Africa.Defining culture in simple,yet potent terms,as ‘that which is
taken for granted’, a ‘comfort zone’ of everyday, ordinary ways of living,
Kwenda develops an important insight: the cohesion of the social order in
southern Africa depends not upon state sovereignty, liberal democracy, the
advance of modernity or the global economy, but upon millions of African
people being willing to sacrifice what they take for granted, bearing the
uncomfortable burden of speaking and acting in unfamiliar cultural idioms
within all of the areas of everyday life.In this analysis,Africans are not passive

victims of cultural imperialism, although they have certainly been subject to
coercive interventions,but active agents in negotiating unfamiliar, strange and
alien cultural terrain. The entire system would collapse, Kwenda suggests, if
Africans were not willing to suspend ‘that which is taken for granted’and bear
the burden of unfamiliar cultural formations. Cultural justice, according to
Chirevo Kwenda, requires, at a minimum, that this burden of the unfamiliar
needs to be shared more equitably by people from different cultural back-
grounds across the society. South African national language policy, which in
principle recognises eleven official languages,might be a step in this direction.
However, Kwenda points to a range of indigenous cultural resources that have
been rendered ‘unfamiliar’ in South African politics, political discourse and
public institutions, but might be revitalised as effective cultural media of
communication, recognition and reconciliation.‘Praise therapy’, in Kwenda’s
terms, is an indigenous cultural politics. As a ritualised rhetoric of affirma-
tion, but also of criticism, indigenous African praise singing operates in the
family, the community, the polity and even in relations with the natural
environment. As therapy, praise singing seeks social healing, in this respect,
recalling one of the objectives of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. Where the TRC collected narratives of pain, however, the cult-
ural politics of praise, as developed by Chirevo Kwenda, might more directly
address the pain of people alienated by the ‘unfamiliar’ within the economic,
social and political order of South Africa.
WHAT HOLDS US TOGETHER
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Production
In the second section,the book turns to considerations of labour, working con-
ditions and relations of production in South Africa under changing global con-
ditions. Here also pain is evident, pain that is reflected in rising numbers of

unemployed, increasing poverty and declining standards of living for working
families. Statistics, of course, are not the whole story, since,as Tony Ehrenreich
observes, ‘statistics do not bleed. Working families do’. Nevertheless, through
empirical and ethnographic research, the chapters in this section indicate
important features of the world of work in a globalising South Africa.
As General Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)
in the Western Cape, Tony Ehrenreich has been actively involved in advancing
the rights of workers.Accordingly, his chapter in this book is a political inter-
vention in current debates over labour rights and working conditions. South
African labour legislation, he recognises, has made enormous strides in pro-
tecting the rights of workers.South African law has entrenched workers’rights
as basic human rights. Putting the matter bluntly, however, Ehrenreich
observes that labour rights mean very little to people without jobs.
Globalisation, as experienced by workers in South Africa, has entailed the
harsh effects of shedding jobs in compliance with ‘global’ economic policies
generated by the World Bank, the IMF and other agents of the ‘neo-liberal
agenda’. Accordingly, Ehrenreich’s reading of the impact of globalisation on
South Africa, with special attention to its effects on labour, is critical.
While staking out Cosatu’s position in the debate over the government’s eco-
nomic policy, Ehrenreich challenges the assumptions behind the Growth,
Employment and Redistrubution Strategy (GEAR) and Nepad, which he
regards as perpetuating the failed formula of the neo-liberal agenda, and sug-
gests a number of important points for any consideration of social cohesion
in a globalising South Africa.First,although globalisation has undermined the
sovereignty of the state, the state is necessary to counteract the corrosive
effects of globalisation. Only the state, in his view, has the power and the
capacity to protect South Africa’s people from the appropriation, exploitation
and further entrenchment of inequality attending the advance of globalisa-
tion. While affirming a fundamental ‘revolution of resources’ as a long-term
goal for South Africa, Ehrenreich points to a number of immediate measures

– social expenditure, social security grants and social wages – in which the
INTRODUCTION
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state could be an essential force in protecting South African workers. Second,
while focusing on labour, Ehrenreich insists that the interest of workers is cen-
tral to social cohesion. In many societies, he notes, the inequities of poverty
and wealth in South Africa could only be expected to result in social conflict
and even chaos. Remarkably, this has not been the case in South Africa. Still,
we cannot take this situation for granted.Again, emphasising the social, Tony
Ehrenreich identifies social dialogue, social responsibility and the cultivation
of social values as urgent priorities for South Africa.
From the perspective of labour,the social dialogue about globalisation is only
beginning in South Africa. Empirical research, from sociology and social
anthropology, is obviously necessary for informing that social dialogue. In
reporting on their ongoing research on labour in the South African fruit
industry, Stephanie Barrientos and Andrienetta Kritzinger provide detailed,
compelling evidence of the effects of globalisation on the employment, work-
ing conditions, material well-being and sense of social cohesion of workers.
Incorporated within the ‘global value chain’of this export market, workers in
the fruit industry have been profoundly reorganised by globalisation. In the
interests of quality and international standards, some workers have been ele-
vated, while other workers – in the interests of rationalisation of costs – have
been marginalised as occasional, seasonal and temporary, essentially being
recast as migrant labourers in their own country. As a result, a ‘hierarchy of
employment’ has emerged, combining features of an earlier farm labour sys-
tem with new demands of global markets, which has had profound effects on
the terms and conditions in which farm workers experience social cohesion.
In meticulous, revealing detail, Barrientos and Kritzinger document the

impact of the global fruit market on the working conditions of labourers in
the fruit industry in the Western Cape.In different ways, workers on the farm
or in the packhouse, in residence or in transit, experience the effects of the
‘global value chain’ in new ways as defining their situations. With respect to
social cohesion, these global effects have altered the conditions within which
workers might develop a sense of belonging within the world of work. For all
of its structural problems,the notion of the ‘farm as family’persists as a frame
of reference for belonging in the fruit industry, inscribing a distinction
between ‘family’ and ‘strangers’. Under globalising conditions, however, with
the increase of migrant, temporary or ‘flexible’ labour, the number of
strangers, and the potential for estrangement in the workplace, has only
WHAT HOLDS US TOGETHER
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increased in ways that undermine social cohesion.This dialectic of family and
strangers, as the research of Barrientos and Kritzinger demonstrates,is crucial
for our understanding of social cohesion in the world of work.
Foreigners,of course,enter South Africa as strangers. Migrants, refugees,exiles
and other foreigners from the rest of Africa have increasingly been moving into
South African cities. In standard theories of globalisation, which stress the
force of ‘Westernisation’ in a globalising world, we often forget the simultane-
ous processes of ‘Easternisation’ and ‘Africanisation’ that are also going on
in the transnational movement of people, economic activity and cultural
practices all over the world. Raising this theoretical problem, Owen Sichone
considers the work of African migrants in Cape Town in the emerging service
industries of car parking, hair cutting and street vending. Based on a prelimi-
nary ethnographic survey of these fluid and shifting urban industries, Sichone
indicates some of the ways in which these recent immigrants find distinctive
local niches while maintaining transnational networks. From Congolese car

guards to Somali cigarette dealers, these ‘foreign natives’ have become an
integral part of urban economic activity in ‘global’Cape Town in South Africa.
Xenophobia, as Owen Sichone notes, has recently intensified under these
globalising conditions. South Africans, as Africans, engage other Africans
through a veil of stereotypes but also with situational anxieties about foreign-
ers taking their jobs or stealing their potential sexual partners. Xenophobia,
however, as Sichone suggests, operates in counterpoint to a Xenophilia, an
idealisation of the foreigner, particularly in the case of some women,who per-
ceive foreign men as being, potentially, less abusive and more generous than
local men. Although harsh experience has not necessarily born out this
assumption, the ethnographic profile outlined by Owen Sichone suggests that
the new service industries provided by foreign Africans are often sustained by
local sexual, marriage and family relations. In this respect, once again, we are
reminded that the world of work, even the displaced world of immigrant,
informal labour, depends upon social networks that operate, like the intima-
cy of a family, on the basis of trust.
Exchange
The question of trust, as we have noted, has been prominent in recent analy-
sis of social cohesion. Under the term, ‘social capital’, analysts have tried to
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capture the resources that people accumulate within the networks, fabric, or
cohesion of social relations. In the section on economic exchange, two chap-
ters of this book directly address this fundamental question of trust from a
South African perspective in the global economy.
What is the global economy? During 1998, two international leaders, one
from the United States, the other from Cuba, came to South Africa to deal
with this question. In their speeches before the South African Parliament, Bill

Clinton and Fidel Castro reminded us that the ongoing exchanges of a glob-
alising world continue to be represented in strikingly different ways.
According to President Clinton in his address of 26 March 1998, the United
States and South Africa share a common purpose, which he traced back to
‘the principles that are enshrined in our [US] Constitution’, and a common
future leading ‘out of the darkness and into the glorious light’.Situating inter-
national relations between the US and South Africa within the narrative struc-
ture framed by that inspiring past and bright future, Clinton employed a
single recurring metaphor – the partnership – to represent the current reali-
ties of the global economy.‘As the new South Africa emerges,’Clinton said,‘we
seek a genuine partnership based on mutual respect and mutual reward.’ As
partners, the two countries would not always agree about everything, he
advised, since disagreements even arise in the most intimate ‘family partner-
ships’. Nevertheless, with ‘African partners’, Clinton proposed, the US and
South Africa can ‘build together new partnerships’, that will benefit everyone
in a global economy, based on mutual recognition and reciprocity. According
to President Clinton, therefore, the global economy in which the US and
South Africa operated should be understood as a partnership.
1
By contrast, when Fidel Castro addressed the South African Parliament on 4
September 1998,he employed a different metaphor – the casino – to represent
the reality of the global economy.The world,according to Castro,‘has become
an enormous gambling house’. With $1.5 trillion at play in world markets
every day, Castro observed,the global casino is a confidence game underwrit-
ten by the ‘eternal deceit’ of the international financial, banking and trade
arrangements through which ‘money has become a fiction’. Based on decep-
tion and illusion, like an alchemist’s dream of turning paper into gold, the
global gambling house has stripped values of any real material basis. Like any
casino,this global game is rigged so that only the house wins.‘Sooner or later,’
Castro noted,‘the world will have to pay the price.’

2
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So what is the global economy, a partnership or a casino? At the risk of over-
simplifying their contributions, the authors of the chapters in this section take
opposing sides on this question. The political scientist Thomas Koelble
advances a detailed, situated critique of ‘social capital’ in a South African
economy subject to the fortunes and misfortunes of the ‘circulatory capital-
ism’that runs the global casino of financial speculation. The global entrepre-
neur, with a background in the study of religion, the humanities and the social
sciences,Jan Hofmeyr,while recognising the corrosive effects of globalisation,
argues that global business raises new possibilities for intercultural communi-
cation, understanding and even partnership in making the world a better,
happier place.
In Thomas Koelble’s insightful, incisive analysis, the challenge of social cohe-
sion, in a global era of speculative, circulatory or ‘casino’ capitalism, is placed
in striking relief. With attention to local detail within South Africa, Koelble
assesses the usefulness of two theoretical frameworks for understanding the
South African situation. On the one hand, Koelble focuses on the analysis of
‘social capital’ developed by Robert Putnam, whose work has gained a certain
degree of popularity in social analysis, in which he seeks to identify social
cohesion in those voluntary associations operating between the coercion of
the state and the demands of the market in which people freely participate in
civil society (Putnam 1993).Although we will return to the question of social
capital in the conclusion to this book, we should note that Thomas Koelble
advances a critique, in principle, of any formulation of social cohesion that
would factor out the state or the economy from civil society. On the other
hand, the theoretical framework for participatory democracy provided by

Alain Touraine, which is worked out in his book, Can We Live Together?,sug-
gests,for Koelble,a theory of democracy, even in a globalising world,in which
people are called upon to struggle with the tensions – enforced by states,
enforced by markets – between the reality of social difference and the demo-
cratic aspirations for social equality (Touraine 2000).
In the context of a transitional South Africa, with its historical legacy of
inequality, separation and segregation on the basis of race, any mediation
between social difference and social equality would be welcomed. Clearly,
such mediation is no easy task.Still,these chapters contribute to clarifying the
challenge. Thomas Koelble argues that global ‘casino’ capitalism provides no
solution since it is, essentially, an extension of the problem of entrenched
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inequality, an endemic consequence of globalisation that other critics have
called ‘global apartheid’. Jan Hofmeyr, however, insists that some aspects of
globalisation, especially in international business, can lead to new ways of
being, acting and doing business in the world that actually advance human
happiness.
Recognising the corrosive effects of‘casino’capitalism, Hofmeyr traces a com-
pelling outline of the possibilities of ‘partnership’ in doing business, even in
doing global capitalist business, by taking seriously the human dynamics of
intercultural relations. Doing global business, according to Hofmeyr,
demands discipline,accountability and public scrutiny but it also requires cul-
tivating virtues of ‘business care’ in dealing with people from diverse cultural
backgrounds. In the conduct of international business, something as basic as
good manners is essential for creating a context of trust in business dealings.
Underlying this respect for diversity, Hofmeyr argues, must be the recognition
of a shared, common humanity which consists of basic human needs, such as

food, comfort, friendship, mating and meaningful work that are tapped by
multinational business. As Hofmeyr observes, global business activity reveals
our common humanity in, and through, the processes of developing respect
for cultural diversity. While he is acutely aware of the economic and cultural
pain inflicted by globalisation,Jan Hofmeyr argues that the intercultural con-
tacts,relations and exchanges are also providing unprecedented opportunities
for increasing human happiness.
3
Connections
Classical social analysis has distinguished between two basic modes of social
cohesion: one based on kinship, the other based on contract. These two ways
of achieving social cohesion have been given various designations – mechan-
ical solidarity versus organic solidarity; ascribed identity versus achieved
identity; or the face-to-face relations of Gemeinschaft versus the abstract,
impersonal and negotiated relations of Gesellschaft.But all of these contrasts
seem to be based on distinguishing between the kinds of social connections
that are apparently ‘given’ in relations of kinship but necessarily negotiated,
contested, agreed and achieved in contractual relations. As Thomas Koelble
remarks, however,these two options,the ‘mechanical’based on perceived sim-
ilarities and the ‘organic’ based on the co-ordination of differences, appear in
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any network of social relations. Furthermore, as we will see in the chapters in
this section, kinship can be negotiated and contracts, whether underwritten
by international human rights instruments or the international tourist indus-
try, can appear as if they are simply ‘given’as unavoidable facts about how the
world works.
The family, it might be argued, is the most intimate, immediate context for

social cohesion. Several authors in this book touch on important features of
South African family life. As Chirevo Kwenda observes, indigenous African
rituals of conception, praising family lineages, reinforce a sense of the family
as a network of inclusion that embraces ancestors, the living and the unborn.
In their chapters, Tony Ehrenreich emphasises the struggles of working fami-
lies, while Owen Sichone indicates the importance of marriage and family for
the survival of new immigrants in South Africa.
In her extended discussion of the family and social cohesion in South Africa,
sociologist Susan Ziehl reviews the longstanding controversy over the mean-
ing of the family in social analysis. Over the past fifty years, as Ziehl recounts,
the family has variously been understood as the stable locus for primary
socialisation, the dysfunctional domain of repression, whether psychological
or patriarchal, and the threatened, embattled site of basic values, ‘family val-
ues’, necessary for keeping societal crisis at bay. All of these accounts of the
family, as Ziehl notes, involve moral judgements, since they presume some
normative version of what ‘the family’ought to be. These arguments about the
state of the family have clearly been informed by historical formations of
domesticity, with their distinctive organisation, architecture and normativity,
which emerged in Europe. What is the state of the family in South Africa?
According to Susan Ziehl, empirical research on South African family demo-
graphics is extremely limited, although some highly suggestive work has been
done by social anthropologists. Nevertheless, based on her research, Ziehl is
able to compare family patterns in South Africa with data from the US and the
UK, finding, as might be expected, that the model of the extended family is
much more prevalent in South Africa. The implications of this finding for
housing policy, health services, the constitutional recognition of ‘alternative’
family systems, as found in Muslim and traditional African personal law, and
a host of other public concerns, await further investigation. As Susan Ziehl
argues, however, basic demographic data about family patterns in South
Africa will be crucial to these deliberations.

INTRODUCTION
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Documenting and illustrating the ongoing negotiations over cultural identity
in the urban space of Cape Town, art historian and cultural analyst, Sandra
Klopper, highlights the ongoing tension in the life of the city between local
forms of human survival,human expression,and even human flourishing and
the demands of the global economy. More specifically, she identifies global
tourism, with its almost apocalyptic, cargo-cult promise of redemption for
the South African economy, as the catalyst for a coalition of business and gov-
ernment in cleaning up the streets.Dirt,as the anthropologist,Mary Douglas,
taught us, is ‘matter out of place’,a thoroughly contextual,culturally negotiat-
ed engagement with the organisation of things (1966). In Cape Town, what
registers as ‘dirt’, as ‘matter out of place’, in the global tourist industry?
As Sandra Klopper shows,in evocative detail,some of the most creative,inno-
vative forces in the city are rendered as nothing more than ‘dirt’, destined for
a kind of‘urban cleansing’,within this urban aesthetics of business,municipal
government and global tourism. Urban youth, developing vibrant musical
and visual art forms, try to find a place in the city. Urban homeless, engaged
in various enterprises, from recycling to selling, try to find a place in the city.
Both the youth and the homeless of the city of Cape Town have been inspired
by and have even been in communication with people similarly positioned in
urban environments elsewhere in the world.As a result, their local marginal-
isation, resonating with these international connections, has a global flavour.
For the local municipal and business interests of the city, however, globalisa-
tion primarily signifies the economic opportunities promised by global
tourism.As Klopper shows,economic globalisation, in this respect, also bears
a strong aesthetic, cultural and, ultimately, human significance. In the global-
ising interests of efficiency and effectiveness, but also in conformity to global

standards of‘beauty’,which are largely derived from the global ‘Disneyisation’
of the aesthetic imagination, Cape Town prepares for tourists by erasing the
traces of the youth, the homeless and other social ‘dirt’ from the city.
4
In the
analysis provided by Sandra Klopper, we enter an aesthetic politics, reverber-
ating with basic human questions of the good,the true and the beautiful that
must be confronted in any negotiations over social cohesion in the city.
In the Western Cape, the ongoing, contested negotiations over human and
civil rights are not solely controlled by the owners of urban property or rural
land. In his insightful analysis of new social movements among the homeless,
the landless and the marginalised in South Africa, social anthropologist,
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