UWCScholar :: Browsing by Author "Pillay, Suren"

Browsing by Author "Pillay, Suren"

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Anxious urbanity: xenophobia, the native subject and the refugee camp
(Routledge Taylor Francis Group, 2013) Pillay, Suren
Could we think of the black subject under apartheid as a refugee, and might this condition be the paradigmatic metaphor for thinking about the postcolonial African predicament of citizenship? This paper considers the xenophobic violence that occurred in South Africa in 2008 and recasts that event by thinking about the plight of the refugee as part of what it argues is a genealogy of �anxious urbanity.� This, the paper suggests, has defined the urban subject of colonial and apartheid modes of governmentality and has consequences for how we think about the postcolonial present of citizenship.
The Arab spring and the politics of gender: Assessing campaigns for women’s rights in Egypt and Tunisia
(University of the Western Cape, 2022) Fredericks, Lauren Raylene; Pillay, Suren
The Arab Spring or, as some call it, Arab Awakening, started in December 2010. The reasons for the Arab Spring were numerous and diverse. For some time, sections of Arab societies have confronted the suppression of free discourse, human rights abuse monetary mismanagement, corruption and stifling of political disagreement. As endless broadcast scenes from the Arab Spring affirmed, many women were on the barricades during the uprisings.
Crime, community and the governance of violence in post-apartheid South Africa
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2008) Pillay, Suren
The South African government has embarked on a programme ofencouraging social cohesion in South Africa first to address concerns stemmingfrom high levels of violent crime which characterise the society, and second, tofoster positive national identity in a complex, heterogeneous, racialised andstratified nation. Through a discussion of the impact of violent crime on emergentforms of community, this paper argues that the practices of communities evolvingin the post-apartheid period show tendencies toward fragmentation rather thanunification, undermining efforts of �nation-building�.
Liminality, papers and belonging amongst Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa
(University of the Western Cape, 2020) Nyakabawu, Shingirai; Pillay, Suren; Ellis, William
Introduced in 2010, the Dispensation Zimbabwe Program (DZP) regularised undocumented Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa. When DZP was closed, the Zimbabwe Special Permit was introduced, which was also replaced by the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit. This thesis examines the lived experiences of Zimbabwean migrants from the time they arrived in South Africa without papers, visas, or permits. It then examines the processes of acquiring DZP papers, processes of replacing it, and how conditions on the permits reinforce a particular notion of belonging for Zimbabwean immigrants. I draw on work inspired by the anthropologist Victor Turner�s (1967) concept of liminality to show that Zimbabwean migrants had been going through various phases of uncertain legal statuses which are all liminal.
Liminality, Papers and Belonging amongst Zimbabwean Immigrants in South Africa
(University of the Western Cape, 2020) Nyakabawu, Shingirai; Pillay, Suren
Introduced in 2010, the Dispensation Zimbabwe Program (DZP) regularised undocumented Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa. When DZP was closed, the Zimbabwe Special Permit was introduced, which was also replaced by the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit. This thesis examines the lived experiences of Zimbabwean migrants from the time they arrived in South Africa without papers, visas, or permits. It then examines the processes of acquiring DZP papers, processes of replacing it, and how conditions on the permits reinforce a particular notion of belonging for Zimbabwean immigrants. I draw on work inspired by the anthropologist Victor Turner�s (1967) concept of liminality to show that Zimbabwean migrants had been going through various phases of uncertain legal statuses which are all liminal. Through accounts of lived experiences and biographical narratives of migrants who see themselves as �entrepreneurs� in Cape Town, I consider how migrant�s experience the structural effects of documentation and having or not having �papers�. It starts with a state of �illegality� because of being an undocumented migrant in South Africa. It proceeds to �amnesty� from deportation following the announcement of DZP. It then proceeds to the filling of application forms for legalisation at Home Affairs. The DZP permits make them �liminal citizens� in that they got political citizenship by virtue of being documented, but at the same time, the migrants do not enjoy full citizenship status economically. There is also �legal suspension� as in the period between applications for replacement of the permit with another for example from Zimbabwe Special Permit (ZSP) to Zimbabwe Exemption Permit (ZEP). The imposition of conditions in permits that it will not be renewed or extended throws them into a condition of �temporary conditional legality�. As a result, the liminality experienced is both existential and juridical. Juridical liminality results from uncertain legal status whether the migrant is documented or not. Juridical liminality is inherent in law and immigration policy. Existential liminality is because the uncertain legal status permeates all aspects of Zimbabwean immigrants� lives and delimits their range of action in different spheres. This includes jobs, transnational capabilities, business, family, housing, and schooling for their children. Most studies on migration do not extend their arguments beyond that permits matter as they see them as giving immediate access to social and economic rights. In this thesis, I do not only examine how a condition of being an undocumented immigrant shapes aspects of immigrants� lives but I further examine the experiences of living with temporary visas and their impact on their lives and family. Whereas in a rite of passage, the liminal stage is temporary, Zimbabweans in South Africa are living in chronic liminality. In all phases of liminal legality, the thesis demonstrates state power through documents/visas in shaping migrant lives deepening our understanding of immigrant incorporation, exclusion, citizenship and belonging.
The politics of belonging and a contest for survival: Rethinking the conflict in North and South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(University of the Western Cape, 2019) Cloete, Jacob; Pillay, Suren
I set out to rethink the ongoing conflict in North Kivu and South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). I highlight two problems with regards to the current conceptualisation of the conflict in North Kivu and South Kivu. The first is a theoretical problem and here I demonstrate that the Banyarwanda and Banyamulenge’s quest for belonging has so far been restricted to citizenship. Congolese Banyarwanda and the Banyamulenge find themselves in a peculiar situation, at various times in the postcolonial Congolese state they had recognition from above but lacked recognition from below. It is in this context that a politics of belonging developed. The second problem is with regards to the history of the conflict. I argue that most scholarly works take the 1993 conflict in North Kivu as the starting point of the conflict, but the conflict can be traced back to an earlier date. It was with this in mind that I pose the following question: Can the conflict in North and South Kivu in the DRC be considered as a politics of belonging between indigenous Congolese and Kinyarwanda speaking Congolese, and a contest for survival between Hutu and Tutsi elites? My research is qualitative and since the problem is theoretical and historical I had to think about how the conflict was presented in terms of definitions, meaning, concepts, and so on. Therefore, this research is guided by critical theory and uses a case study research design. For this purpose, I relied on both primary and secondary data. Primary data sources for this study include the following: photographs that was taken while I was deployed in the DRC as a soldier, my personal deployment diary, internet newspaper articles, research reports of the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, a focus group with expats from North Kivu and South Kivu, a questionnaire I distributed among expats from the DRC and an online discussion forum.
The post-genocidal condition: Ghosts of genocide, genocidal violence, and representation
(University of the Western Cape, 2018) Van Der Rede, Lauren; Van Bever Donker, Maurits; Pillay, Suren
As a literary intervention, The Post-Genocidal Condition: Ghosts of Genocide, Genocidal Violence, and Representation is situated at the intersection of genocide studies, psychoanalysis, and literature so as to enable a critical engagement with the question of genocide and an attempt to think beyond its formulation as phenomenon. As the dominant framework for thinking genocide within international jurisprudence, and operating as the guiding terrain for interventions by scholars such as Mamood Mamdani, Linda Melvern, and William Schabas, the presumption that genocide may be reduced to a marked beginning and end, etched out by the limits of its bloodiness, is, I argue, incomplete and thus a misdiagnosis of the problem, to various effects. Moreover, I contend that it is this misdiagnosis that has led to what I name as the post-genocidal condition: a deferred return to the latent violences of genocide; enabled often through various mechanisms of transitional justice. This intervention is not a denial that under the rubric of the crime of genocide, as an attempt to destroy in whole or in part what Raphael Lemkin referred to as an �enemy group�, millions of people have died. Rather what I posit is that the physical violence of genocide is a false limit � that the bloodiness of genocide has been mistaken for the thing-in-itself. Thus this intervention is an attempt to offer another way of thinking the question of genocide by reading it as concept, enabling a consideration of its more latent violences, its ghosts. As such, I argue that genocide is first an attack on the minds of the persons who form the targeted people or group, through the destruction of cultural apparatuses, such as books, works of art, and the language of a people, to name but a few; and is lastly an attempt to physically exterminate a people. Thus this intervention invites a return to Lemkin�s formulation of the term in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (1944); that the word genocide is meant to �signify�, and as such offers a reading of the question of genocide as signifier, understood, I suggest, in the Lacanian sense. Thus, I posit that genocide, as signifier, operates on both the levels of metaphor and metonym, and as such both condenses and displaces its violence(s). The metaphor for genocide as signifier is, furthermore, rather than the signifying chain as Lacan would have it, the network. As such genocide is marked as text, rather than work; its perpetrators not authors, as Lemkin and various pieces of legislation have described them, but writers; and those who engage with the question of genocide, to whatever degree, as readers rather than critics. Consequently, this intervention stages the question of the reach of impunity and complicity, beyond the limit of judicial guilt and innocence. Metonymically, the relational displacement at work within the network of genocide allows for a reading of the various constitutive examples of the violence(s) that, in combinations and as collective, produce a new signification, other than that of the definitional referent.
Problematizing 'victim's justice' : political reform in post-genocide Rwanda
(University of the Western cape, 2016) Bachu, Nivrata; Pillay, Suren
In this dissertation, I problematize 'victim's justice' in post-genocide Rwanda. I argue that the kind of justice that was meted out in post-genocide Rwanda, namely victors' justice and complementary to it – victims’ justice, does not allow for the political reform required to break the cycle of violence in Rwanda. In the aftermath of the 1994-Rwandan Genocide, both state and society were faced with a moral and political dilemma, because the popular agency or mass participation of perpetrators derived from the Hutu majority, who targeted the Tutsi minority, with intent to annihilate them. There were massacres of both Hutus and Tutsis, but Hutus were targeted as individuals, whereas Tutsis were targeted as a group. It is the specific ‘intent to annihilate’ Tutsis as group, that makes this a Genocide against Tutsis. I draw and develop arguments made by Mahmood Mamdani, elaborating on the specific question of ‘victims justice’ for political reform in Rwanda. Both kinds of justice were outcomes of the logic of the Nuremburg Trials. Since its inception, the legacy of the Nuremburg Trial is demonstrated in how it was idealized at the end of the Cold-War by international law and human rights regime. In essence, the historical and political context of the Nuremburg trial has been removed, as it has been produced into a template- the 'Nuremburg-styled criminal trial'. 'Criminal justice' has come to define how we think of justice after mass violence, as the most morally acceptable form of justice for the victims, and the most politically viable response for constituting a 'new political order' after mass violence. This dissertation addresses the argument made, that victors' justice and victims' justice in Rwanda, has constituted two categories, which collectivise Tutsis as victims and Hutus as perpetrators. In the context of a genocide, where the perpetrators are derived from the Hutu majority and the victims from the Tutsi minority, this present both a moral and political dilemma for Rwanda’s state-building and national reconciliation project. Criminal justice also frames mass violence as being criminal, rather than addressing it as political violence. This has troubling consequences for intervening into the cycle of violence in Rwanda. The 'cycle of violence' in Rwanda, refers to the continuation of political violence, in which 'every round of perpetrators has justified the use of violence as the only effective guarantee against being victimised yet again. Thus, intervention into the cycle of violence would mean thinking out of the logic of victimhood and pursuing an alternative kind of justice. To think of the genocide as political violence, redirects the attention to the issues that made the genocide possible. I establish the importance and necessity of critically interrogating 'victims justice' in Rwanda, by placing the 1994-Genocide in its historical and political context, with a particular focus on the legacy of colonialism. The post-colonial regimes in Rwanda, inherited the colonial institutions of rule; and the politicisation of Hutu and Tutsi into racial categories, which have shaped particular meanings for power, justice and citizenship. I demonstrate in this dissertation that critical issues found in post-genocide Rwanda today, are symptomatic of the inherited colonial legacy. I address the prevailing political crisis through an analysis on post-genocide governance; national reconciliation; the 'land question'; and the Great Lakes refugee crisis. Furthermore, I found that it was critically important for my research question, to also adopt a regional perspective, because Rwanda lies at the epicentre of the Great Lakes regional crisis. This dissertation concludes with returning to the question of political reform, and breaking the 'cycle of violence'. My suggestion is that we need to think of Mamdani's concept of survivor's justice, rather than victims' justice or victors' justice, which assist in confronting the needs of political reform that address colonial legacies.
Social and political history of Wollo Province in Ethiopia: 1769-1916
(University of the Western Cape, 2020) Melaku, Misganaw Tadesse; Pillay, Suren
Wollo, formerly referred to as ?Bete Amhara,? refers to a region of Amharic-speaking Christians. It was one of the oldest provinces of Ethiopia; located in the north-eastern part of Ethiopia at the cross- roads of the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Sudan, and central and Southern Ethiopia. Its geostrategic central position has made it a historical focal point of historical dynamics in Ethiopia. Due to its geostrategic position, many writers of the medieval period referred to Wollo as the ?center and the heartland of the Abyssinian Empire. On account of these, major historical battles among political, social, and religious forces occurred in this region leaving their own mark on it and the nature of the Ethiopian state. Before the sixteenth century, Wollo had been a center of history, political administration, religion, and religious education. As a result, numerous historical events have taken place in this province. Due to such factors, it was part of the historically dominant regions in Ethiopia. However, after the sixteenth century we see a decline in the position of Wollo. A province which was part of the center, afterwards the sixteenth century, had been downgraded to the periphery following its domination by Islam and Oromo, which were two subjects of marginalization in Ethiopian historiography. Thereafter, the province was relegated from the country�s political ground and historical narration due to ethnic, religious, and political backgrounds. In the earliest recordings of the historically dominant groups of Ethiopia, Wollo was not properly represented as it was regarded as a Muslim and Oromo province. In much of the recently recorded literature on the subaltern groups in the post-1991 period, the internal events of Wollo have been ignored. Therefore, both in the past and recently, the socio-political history of Wollo province has never been given due regard. Despite the fact that Wollo bears elements of both the historically dominant and historical subaltern of Ethiopia, it has not been provided proper representation by the narrative of the historically dominant groups, as it is not given proper place in the emergent history of the subaltern in Post-1991 Ethiopia. This paradox of Wollo belonging to both but not given due attention and representation is the corridor leading to explore the dark sides of Ethiopian historiography. Thus, this study attempts to examine why, how and in what way Wollo has been neglected from the country�s political ground and historical narration. It will also try to reconstruct the social and political history of the province in the period under study.
Southern Cameroons: fifty years of subtle violence and subjugation 1961-2016
(Universty of the Western Cape, 2022) Ambe, Anthony Nforh; Pillay, Suren
The Southern Cameroons question which has come to be known as the ‘Anglophone problem’ has drawn international attention as a result of the physical and ‘spectacular’ violence that have recently engulfed the region. Central and essential to this study is the concept of subtle violence drawn from Kevin D. Holden’s explanation of soft subtle violence which is regarded as injury by infringement. According to Holden, one of the most common encouragements to physical violence from an apparent nonviolent past evolves as a result of withholding, neglect and indifference. Here withholding, neglect and indifference would signify injury by infringement. In the case of Southern Cameroon, subtle violence could be seen as the withholding of the rights of Southern Cameroonians, the neglect of their socio-economic and infrastructural needs, and the indifference towards their plight for equality as Cameroonian citizens by the state as inscribe in the Cameroonian constitution. Many Southern Cameroonians feel subjected to the position of second class citizens in the Republic of Cameroon because of the legal, linguistic and socio-cultural identity they inherited and appropriated as a result of colonial legacies.
Understanding the democratisation process in the Middle East and North Africa after the ‘Arab Spring’: The case of Libya
(University of the Western Cape, 2019) Alahwal, Abdsalam; Pillay, Suren
In this research study, the researcher explores the democratisation process in the Middle East and North African region (MENA), with Libya as the case study. The study is based on the views of students and lecturers from universities in the three major regions of post-revolution Libya – Tripoli, Benghazi and Sabha – and examines how the relationship between democracy and revolution is perceived. The causes of the Arab Spring revolution, as well as its economic, social and political implications are presented in the study, based on reviewed literature, and the perspectives drawn from the study sample. Finally, the researcher presents the challenges and barriers to the process of democratisation after the Arab Spring.

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