EL SISTEMA CURTENSE Amplitud de los dominios.
III. LOS RESULTADOS DE LA CRISIS
23. GRUNDMANN HEREJÍAS CULTAS Y HEREJÍAS POPULARES EN LA EDAD MEDIA
We, the people of South Africa, Recognise the injustices of our past; Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity. 350
These words appear on the preamble of the South African constitution, which was passed not in 1787, as was the case with the American constitution, but just over 20 years ago in December 1996. Yet, governance methods and strategies relating to foreign national spaza shops reflected few of these principles. While South African law predominantly remains consistent with political rights principles set out in the constitution, governance actors to a large degree prioritised economic interests or expediency over these principles when devising interventions. For example, state representatives frequently condoned informal agreements that undermined the rule of law and discriminated against foreign nationals. A number of South African traders were prepared to loot, murder or threaten their competition to advance their business interests, and NGOs and the UNHCR mediated agreements that undermined refugee
and asylum seekers rights, despite having the advancement of human rights amongst their core mandates. All these efforts elevated the economic demands of South African spaza shopkeepers over the political rights concerns. Only the city’s law enforcement department and a few foreign national community representatives explicity showed discomfort with the fact that interventions entailed discriminating against certain groups in the basis of their nationality and ethnic origin. When referred to, the constitution was seen more as an inconvenient hurdle or a source of provocation against South African traders, than of a set of shared goals to forward.
Economic concerns were not only at the forefront of governance interventions in respect of foreign national spaza shopkeepers. They also made up a vital component of the general logic of broader society. For example, many township residents were prepared to attack and loot foreign national spaza shops to demonstrate their economic discontent to political leaders. These interests overrode those relating to the rights and well being of traders. Even those objecting to and stymying governance interventions did not do so not out of concern for polttical freedoms and constitutional rights, but rather for personal economic reasons. For instance, landlords complained about potential loss of rent and the destruction to their properties by looters, and many community leaders could be relied on on condition that their pockets were adequately lined. Economic factors, not political freedoms lay at the crux of their decision-making. These forms of reasoning and mind-sets – largely devoid of political rights principles and constitutional concerns – saw further conflicts emerge between the differing economic interests of varied stakeholders.
These dynamics indicate that the constitution’s foundational principles of ‘dignity, equality and freedom’351 were not aligned to the demands and beliefs of wide sector
of South African society. They signalled a break with the values so prevalent in the country’s early years of democracy, and reflects that diverse segments of South African society see overt discrimination against specified groups, not as repugnant, but as a necessary and justifiable way of ensuring social harmony. Instead many governance strategies reflected an apartheid-era sentiment of separate development where business rights in certain neighbourhoods became designated to certain population groups. Only this time these arrangements were not formally legislated,
351 Section 7(1) of the Constitution states that ‘This Bill of Rights is a cornerstone of democracy in South Africa. It enshrines the rights of all people in our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom.’
but overseen informally through NGOs, local civic bodies, and state departments alike. This has implications for political freedom in South Africa, as regimes that discriminate against certain groups, flout the law, and show a lack of concern for diversity and people’s basic dignity, inhibit people’s engagement in public affairs as free and equal participants.
Instead of the constitutional and political rights values set out above, the governance of foreign national spaza shopkeepers demonstrates that the South African political sphere has become largely preoccupied with economic questions, which frequently override the inclusive and liberatory values of the anti-apartheid struggle and the country’s early democracy. This scenario is not specific to South Africa and the governance of foreign national spaza shopkeepers. A number of theorists have described that the entry of private economic concerns into the political sphere as a general phenomenon of the modern age. In particular Arendt’s theory of the ‘social’ and Foucault and Agamben’s accounts of ‘biopolitics’ all critique how matters relating to sustaining life now feature strongly in the political realm. Although they used distinct terms, all three theorists base their theories on the same notion that ancient Greek distinction between the public sphere of politics and the private realm of the household has become blurred in modern times. The former realm was traditionally housed political speech and action, while the latter domain encompassed all economic matters related to the maintenance of life and the survival of the species.
For example, Arendt argues that the ‘social’ sphere is a consequence of the ancient Greek philosophical distinction between the public and private spheres having become obscured in modern times. She states that:
The distinction between a private and a public sphere of life corresponds to the household and the political realms, which have existed as distinct, separate entities at least since the rise of the ancient city-state; but the emergence of the social realm, which is neither private nor public, strictly speaking, is a relatively new phenomenon whose origin coincided with the emergence of the modern age and which found its political form in the nation- state.352
She describes that this phenomenon, that is: ‘The emergence of society—the rise of housekeeping, its activities, problems, and organizational devices—from the shadowy interior of the household into the light of the public sphere, has… blurred the old borderline between private and political’.353
Similarly, Foucault argues that ‘biopolitics’ is the phenomenon of political power taking on role of ‘administering life’.354 He states that: ‘For millennia, man remained
what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question’.355Agamben also describes ‘biopolitics’ as the blurring of the
ancient Greek distinction between the private and public spheres. For him ‘the entry of zoē. into the sphere of the polis - the politicization of bare life as such - constitutes the decisive event of modernity and signals a radical transformation of the political- philosophical categories of classical thought’.356 While South African theorists frequently emphasize the role of economic concerns in the treatment of foreign nationals in the country,357 detailed theories of the social – as set out by Arendt Foucault and Agamben - have not been explored in detail in this context. It is this theoretical orientation that guides the thesis in examining the political implications of the governance of foreign national spaza businesses.
However, all three theorists were or are based in the West and never claimed that their theories had broader application than Europe and America. This calls for an urgent revisit of their theories to assess the degree to which they address key features of governance in postcolonial and developing countries such as South Africa. Furthermore because their accounts of the social vary in terms of subject matter and style, it is also necessary to investigate which of their theories are most suitable to the thesis’s focus on the political implications of governance activities. The following sections thus set out Arendt, Foucault and Agamben’s theories of the social, and examine their applicability to the thesis’ topic and context.