The end of apartheid in South Africa broke down political barriers, extending to all races the formal rights of citizenship, including the right to participate in free elections and parliamentary democracy. But South Africa remains one of the most economically polarized nations in the world. In The Politics of Necessity Elke Zuern forcefully argues that working toward greater socio-economic equality—access to food, housing, land, jobs—is crucial to achieving a successful and sustainable democracy. Drawing on interviews with local residents and activists in South Africa’s impoverished townships during more than a decade of dramatic political change, Zuern tracks the development of community organizing and reveals the shifting challenges faced by poor citizens. Under apartheid, township residents began organizing to press the government to address the basic material necessities of the poor and expanded their demands to include full civil and political rights. While the movement succeeded in gaining formal political rights, democratization led to a new government that instituted neo-liberal economic reforms and sought to minimize protest. In discouraging dissent and failing to reduce economic inequality, South Africa’s new democracy has continued to disempower the poor. By comparing movements in South Africa to those in other African and Latin American states, this book identifies profound challenges to democratization. Zuern asserts the fundamental indivisibility of all human rights, showing how protest movements that call attention to socio-economic demands, though often labeled a threat to democracy, offer significant opportunities for modern democracies to evolve into systems of rule that empower all citizens.

Contesting Transformation is a sober and critical reflection on the wave of social movement struggles which have taken place in post-Apartheid South Africa. Moving beyond a social movement scholarship that has tended to romanticise emergent movements, this collection takes stock of the contradiction and complexity that is necessarily entangled in all forms of popular resistance. Through an exploration of labour strikes, legal organisations, community protest and local government elections, the contributors consider how different movements conceive of transformation and assess the extent to which these understandings challenge the narrative of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). An empirically grounded analysis from a coterie of leading researchers and analysts, Contesting Transformation is the definitive critical survey of the state of popular struggle in South Africa today.

»Dieses Buch ist der bisher wichtigste Beitrag, der aus den Debatten der letzten Jahrzehnte in der Theologie der Religionen und der Komparativen Theologie hervorgegangen ist.« (Alan Race) Religionen erheben Anspruch auf Wahrheit und definieren Identität. Aber wie erklären sie die religiöse Vielfalt? Und wie gehen sie mit ihr um? Müssen sie nicht mit dem Gedanken Ernst machen, dass Wahrheit in Vielfalt besteht? Dieses Buch zeigt, dass alle großen religiösen Traditionen zu einem solchen Umdenken in der Lage sind, ja, dass dieses bereits begonnen hat. Es entsteht ein neues Verständnis von Theologie: als eine gemeinsame, interreligiös durchzuführende Aufgabe, bei der alle einander ebenso bereichern wie herausfordern. Der Weg zu einer Theologie der Zukunft Das Fundament für ein neues Selbstverständnis der Religionen Religiöse Wahrheit und die Einheit in Vielfalt Ein neues Denken, das religiöse Differenzen verbindet