CSSR Lunchtime Seminar: Courtney Hallink

The CSSR and the IDCPPA invite you to their weekly lunchtime seminar. This seminar will present a draft chapter on the attempt of the apartheid government to declare the independence of the Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and the Ciskei (the 'TBVC states') in the 1970s and 1980s, and the corresponding changes made to the inclusion criteria of the unemployment insurance fund. It draws from legislative acts and Hansards, as well as secondary literature. It also relies on a strong theoretical grounding, drawing from the South African Marxist tradition as well as the Luxemburgist school of thought on capital accumulation. It pulls from existing work on citizenship in post-colonial countries and highlights its power as a tool of exclusion. The presentation will argue that the case of the Bantustans represented a moment where the apartheid government manipulated citizenship legislation in the interest of capital accumulation and the protection of the social rights of 'full' South African citizens. The exclusion of Bantustan citizens from the unemployment insurance fund would reduce the cost of labour and would reduce the number of potential recipients of unemployment insurance. Black South Africans were therefore given the same legal status and corresponding rights as migrant workers from outside of South Africa.

Speaker: Courtney Hallink is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She previously completed her master's at the University of Cape Town. Her PhD research examines how unemployment insurance legislation implemented during segregation and apartheid continues to create and reinforce racial, class and gender stratification in post- apartheid South Africa. Courtney's research is situated in current debates about the extension of South Africa's social grant system to unemployed adults and the implementation of a basic income

HOSTED BY: The Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa was established in 2017 to conduct research into the factors that strengthen and sustain democracy across Africa. It is dedicated to the critical reexamination of democracy in Africa and the development of Africa-centric theory through systematic empirical research and a critical engagement with scholarship on other parts of the world.

Date: 20 September 2022
Time: 12:45pm - 2:00pm SAST
Venue: CSSR Seminar Room 4.29, CSSR Offices