Are South Africans Free? - Hardcover

[Hamilton] is very good at defining the historical issues that have created a country ... His description of how the ANC has lead South Africa into what statistically seems to be a worse off position than the country they inherited is rigorous and largely without fault ... [an] excellent evaluation of the current state of South Africa. * Blackman's Review, A New South African Literary Review * The form and depth of [the author's] explorations ... makes the book worth reading for those who engage more closely with South African realities today. * Africa Spectrum * Hamilton argues that post-apartheid freedom implies more than liberation from political oppression: it requires effective power. He argues his case with analytical acuity, imagination, and rare precision. * Saul Dubow, School of History, Queen Mary, University of London, UK. * Pulls no punches and, in near to scornful language, tears apart the constitution and post-1996 politics as beholden to a human rights discourse of which the greatest danger is that it creates the false belief that individuals have the power to change their lot ... His axiom that freedom only comes from power to assess one 's own situation correctly and then control the agents one uses to go against society's norms to change that situation provides useful and easily comprehensible tools for analysis ... thank heavens for a scientist who shies from the almost ritualistic contortions some observers adopt to reduce every issue to the constructs of apartheid. -- Hans Pienaar * Business Day, South Africa * Are South Africans Free? interweaves the political concepts of freedom and representation with empirical evidence to construct a powerful analysis of the deep-seated problems facing South Africa as a young democracy. It demonstrates the value of political theory for understanding the threats posed to democracy by the absence of genuine freedom, at the same time as it challenges political theorists to look beyond the often idealised world of human rights discourse to the concrete material, social and political conditions of South Africa. The book also provides some novel suggestions regarding how the challenges facing this nation can be met, enabling South Africans at last to achieve true liberation from the domination, poverty and violence that are the legacy of a brutal colonial past. * David James, Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. * In Are South Africans Free? Lawrence Hamilton advances a bold vision of a free South Africa based on more than a liberal constitution and individual rights, and yet also wary of the oppressive hegemony of `people's power'. It is a vision of freedom through power; that is freedom through a state democratically revived by new institutions of representation. These institutions recognise the inevitable gap between rulers and ruled, but look to make this gap a space of accountability such that citizens can genuinely influence social and economy policy. Hamilton's vision is a street-wise, twenty-first century republicanism: tempering the reality that freedom is indivisible and that political community must be defended, with the recognition that people are different and that power must be constrained. * Laurence Piper, Department of Political Studies, University of the Western Cape, South Africa * With great urgency and acuity, Hamilton brings illustrates the need to reconfigure the power relations which arrange our particular social order ... What makes his study persuasive is his figuring of social pathology in terms of freedom. -- Joshua Maserow * Aerodrome: Words and People (website) *

Despite South Africa's successful transition to democracy and lauded constitution, political freedom for the majority of South Africans remains elusive. The poor and unemployed majority are poorly represented and lack power and thus freedom. Under these conditions, the freedom of the privileged minority is also seriously impaired due to the costs of maintaining their relative security and well-being. Lawrence Hamilton is an internationally-known political theorist, who has spent ten years teaching in South African universities. In this unique book he brings ideas - political and philosophical - to the fore to understand a contemporary political conundrum. He outlines the persistent, unresolved problems characterizing contemporary South Africa: poverty and quality of life statistics that are appalling for a middle-income country, levels of inequality that make South Africa one of the most unequal places in the world, skewed economic and political representation that reproduces elites rather than generating opportunities for all and an electoral system that implements the idea of proportional representation so literally that it undermines meaningful representation. Are South Africans Free? aims not only to explain the current state of South Africa but to provide positive new directions and suggestions for institutional change. Hamilton argues that freedom as power in South Africa does not depend on good will, charity or duty, and it goes beyond the complete realization of the political and civil liberties currently safeguarded in its constitution. Such change will depend on courageous leadership, active citizenship, new forms of representation and a macroeconomic policy that offers radical redistribution of actual and potential wealth.