Overview
The embrace of socio-economic rights in South Africa has featured prominently in scholarship on constitution making, legal jurisprudence, and social mobilization. But the development has attracted critics who claim that this turn to rights has not generated social transformation in practice. This book sets out to assess one part of the puzzle and asks what has been the role and impact of socio-economic strategies used by civil society actors. Focusing on a range of socio-economic rights and national trends in law and political economy, the book's authors show how socio-economic rights have influenced the development of civil society discourse and action. The evidence suggests that some strategies have achieved material and political impact but this is conditional on the nature of the claim, degree of mobilization and alliance building, and underlying constraints.
Reviews
Dugard, Cousins, Langford, and Madlingozi clear voices that understand the power and limitation of rights language have edited a pioneering work that should both inspire and chastise the South African human rights movement. They insightfully show a state and civil society seduced by the medium of economic and social rights, and how rights-based strategies can be dynamic, but also vulnerable to capture by the status quo. One cannot but conclude that the South African laboratory proves that the rights discourse is not a path for total liberation from human privation. --Makau Mutua, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar, SUNY Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York Conceptually appealing, and theoretically innovative and provocative, this volume is an important, timely, and exciting contribution to the scholarly literature regarding the pursuit of social and economic rights in South Africa, and particularly the question whether the South African rights based approach serves as either a model to be emulated, or as a cautionary tale. The contributors raise the compelling question, namely, why the South African constitution, with its expansive incorporation of social and economic rights and so heralded internationally, has failed to generate the social transformation embedded in this incorporation. Utilising a comparative lens, with an impressive methodology and a comprehensive interdisciplinary bibliography, the contributors highlight the extent to which civil society actors with their new armoury of socio-economic rights strategies and tactics have been able to close the dissonance between the constitutional promise and empirical reality. -Penelope Andrews, President and Dean, Albany Law School South Africa long has been an inspiration to the world for its struggle against apartheid, peaceful transition to a multiracial democracy, and new constitution with a comprehensive declaration of rights interpreted by a distinguished Constitutional Court. Many have waited eagerly to see how the promise would be realized. Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa: Symbols or Substance? offers the most illuminating answers to date. With great theoretical sophistication and unparalleled empirical data, it charts the complex ways in which rights and social movements are mutually constitutive in the engagement with such diverse issues as land, health care, the delivery of water, sanitation and electricity, the environment, access to information, gender, and immigration. Everyone interested in understanding how struggles for socio-economic rights differ from the more familiar earlier contests over legal and political rights must read this book. --Richard Abel Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, Author of Politics by Other Means: Law in the Struggle against Apartheid, 1980-94 This volume makes an extraordinary contribution to the increasingly sophisticated literature on socio-economic rights globally. Rooted in a deeply contextual approach to the conditions under which civil society engages the ideas, laws and institutions through which socio-economic resources are struggled for and produced, Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa: Symbols or Substance? offers important insights into the complexity of understanding and achieving these rights. The different contributions offer both insights into a vast range of different socio-economic resources from land, water and housing to work, welfare and social security yet the volume successfully roots these various resource struggles in the political economy of post-apartheid South Africa. At the same time the volume highlights a range of theoretical questions that are key to the task of untangling the interactions of structural conditions, institutional cultures and social forms of mobilization necessary to study and understand issues of capacity, causation and the possibility of alternative strategies that might be deployed in civil society to access these resources. Langford, Cousins, Dugard and Madlingozi must be congratulated on bringing together such a rich range of contributions that transform and deepen our understanding of socio-economic rights in South Africa and beyond. --Heinz Klug, Evjue-Bascom Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School
Conceptually appealing, and theoretically innovative and provocative, this volume is an important, timely, and exciting contribution to the scholarly literature regarding the pursuit of social and economic rights in South Africa, and particularly the question whether the South African rights based approach serves as either a model to be emulated, or as a cautionary tale. The contributors raise the compelling question, namely, why the South African constitution, with its expansive incorporation of social and economic rights and so heralded internationally, has failed to generate the social transformation embedded in this incorporation. Utilising a comparative lens, with an impressive methodology and a comprehensive interdisciplinary bibliography, the contributors highlight the extent to which civil society actors with their new armoury of socio-economic rights strategies and tactics have been able to close the dissonance between the constitutional promise and empirical reality. -Penelope Andrews, President and Dean, Albany Law School Dugard, Cousins, Langford, and Madlingozi clear voices that understand the power and limitation of rights language have edited a pioneering work that should both inspire and chastise the South African human rights movement. They insightfully show a state and civil society seduced by the medium of economic and social rights, and how rights-based strategies can be dynamic, but also vulnerable to capture by the status quo. One cannot but conclude that the South African laboratory proves that the rights discourse is not a path for total liberation from human privation. --Makau Mutua, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar, SUNY Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York South Africa long has been an inspiration to the world for its struggle against apartheid, peaceful transition to a multiracial democracy, and new constitution with a comprehensive declaration of rights interpreted by a distinguished Constitutional Court. Many have waited eagerly to see how the promise would be realized. Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa: Symbols or Substance? offers the most illuminating answers to date. With great theoretical sophistication and unparalleled empirical data, it charts the complex ways in which rights and social movements are mutually constitutive in the engagement with such diverse issues as land, health care, the delivery of water, sanitation and electricity, the environment, access to information, gender, and immigration. Everyone interested in understanding how struggles for socio-economic rights differ from the more familiar earlier contests over legal and political rights must read this book. --Richard Abel Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, Author of Politics by Other Means: Law in the Struggle against Apartheid, 1980-94 This volume makes an extraordinary contribution to the increasingly sophisticated literature on socio-economic rights globally. Rooted in a deeply contextual approach to the conditions under which civil society engages the ideas, laws and institutions through which socio-economic resources are struggled for and produced, Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa: Symbols or Substance? offers important insights into the complexity of understanding and achieving these rights. The different contributions offer both insights into a vast range of different socio-economic resources from land, water and housing to work, welfare and social security yet the volume successfully roots these various resource struggles in the political economy of post-apartheid South Africa. At the same time the volume highlights a range of theoretical questions that are key to the task of untangling the interactions of structural conditions, institutional cultures and social forms of mobilization necessary to study and understand issues of capacity, causation and the possibility of alternative strategies that might be deployed in civil society to access these resources. Langford, Cousins, Dugard and Madlingozi must be congratulated on bringing together such a rich range of contributions that transform and deepen our understanding of socio-economic rights in South Africa and beyond. --Heinz Klug, Evjue-Bascom Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School
Dugard, Cousins, Langford, and Madlingozi clear voices that understand the power and limitation of rights language have edited a pioneering work that should both inspire and chastise the South African human rights movement. They insightfully show a state and civil society seduced by the medium of economic and social rights, and how rights-based strategies can be dynamic, but also vulnerable to capture by the status quo. One cannot but conclude that the South African laboratory proves that the rights discourse is not a path for total liberation from human privation. --Makau Mutua, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar, SUNY Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York Conceptually appealing, and theoretically innovative and provocative, this volume is an important, timely, and exciting contribution to the scholarly literature regarding the pursuit of social and economic rights in South Africa, and particularly the question whether the South African rights based approach serves as either a model to be emulated, or as a cautionary tale. The contributors raise the compelling question, namely, why the South African constitution, with its expansive incorporation of social and economic rights and so heralded internationally, has failed to generate the social transformation embedded in this incorporation. Utilising a comparative lens, with an impressive methodology and a comprehensive interdisciplinary bibliography, the contributors highlight the extent to which civil society actors with their new armoury of socio-economic rights strategies and tactics have been able to close the dissonance between the constitutional promise and empirical reality. -Penelope Andrews, President and Dean, Albany Law School This volume makes an extraordinary contribution to the increasingly sophisticated literature on socio-economic rights globally. Rooted in a deeply contextual approach to the conditions under which civil society engages the ideas, laws and institutions through which socio-economic resources are struggled for and produced, Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa: Symbols or Substance? offers important insights into the complexity of understanding and achieving these rights. The different contributions offer both insights into a vast range of different socio-economic resources from land, water and housing to work, welfare and social security yet the volume successfully roots these various resource struggles in the political economy of post-apartheid South Africa. At the same time the volume highlights a range of theoretical questions that are key to the task of untangling the interactions of structural conditions, institutional cultures and social forms of mobilization necessary to study and understand issues of capacity, causation and the possibility of alternative strategies that might be deployed in civil society to access these resources. Langford, Cousins, Dugard and Madlingozi must be congratulated on bringing together such a rich range of contributions that transform and deepen our understanding of socio-economic rights in South Africa and beyond. --Heinz Klug, Evjue-Bascom Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School South Africa long has been an inspiration to the world for its struggle against apartheid, peaceful transition to a multiracial democracy, and new constitution with a comprehensive declaration of rights interpreted by a distinguished Constitutional Court. Many have waited eagerly to see how the promise would be realized. Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa: Symbols or Substance? offers the most illuminating answers to date. With great theoretical sophistication and unparalleled empirical data, it charts the complex ways in which rights and social movements are mutually constitutive in the engagement with such diverse issues as land, health care, the delivery of water, sanitation and electricity, the environment, access to information, gender, and immigration. Everyone interested in understanding how struggles for socio-economic rights differ from the more familiar earlier contests over legal and political rights must read this book. --Richard Abel Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, Author of Politics by Other Means: Law in the Struggle against Apartheid, 1980-94
