L´Afrique du Sud dix ans après

Transition accomplie?

Philippe GUILLAUME, Nicolas PEJOUT & Aurelia WA KABWE-SEGATTI (eds), 2004, Paris, Karthala; Johannesburg, IFAS
ISBN: 2-84586-529-5
Coll. Hommes et sociétés; Collection directed by Jean Copans

[Book in French]

For the past ten years, South Africa has been progressively coming out of the apartheid system. Although all ties with the former regime have been severed completely, managing the heavy structural legacy has made the transition a difficult as well as an ambivalent process – difficult because the expectations of the population contrast with the complexity of the stakes which have to be dealt with; and ambivalent because the transition is based on innovations as well as continuities.

The contributions gathered in this book will try to clarify the trajectory of that transition. Offered analyses share a critical look, without complacency nor contempt, on the transformations at work. Crossing disciplines and dealing with South Africa as an ordinary and standardised country that can no longer be qualified as being a ‘miracle’ or an ‘exception’, gives us an opportunity to address themes that are essential to understanding post-apartheid society: land reforms, immigration policies, educational reforms, AIDS?

This work is also an opportunity to celebrate the 10 years of the Research section of the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS) and to highlight its major contribution to constructing francophone knowledge on Southern Africa.

Philippe Guillaume, former Director of IFAS-Research (2001-2003) and Doctor in Geography, is today an independent journalist. For ten years, he has contributed to analysing urban logics in South Africa. He is the author of Johannesburg – Géographies de l’exclusion published by Karthala / IFAS 2001.

Nicolas Péjout, a doctoral researcher in Sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) of Paris, has been benefiting from an IFAS research bursary since October 2002. His research concerns the way New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT) have been used as tools to question economic, political and social power relations and structures in South Africa.

Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti is Director of IFAS-Research in Johannesburg since January 2004. English lecturer and political scientist, she obtained a Doctorate from the University of Réunion and the Centre d’Etude d’Afrique Noire (CEAN) of Bordeaux. Her research focuses on migration and public policies in South Africa.