Ethnic Continuities and a State of Exception: Goodwill Zwelithini, Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Jacob Zuma [Paperback]

This book alerts readers to the dangers of tradition as a formal, structured politics, which enriches a narrowly elite minority while overriding democratic rights in South Africa.

Gerhard Mar? is Emeritus Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. During his tenure, he served as Chair of Sociology and was Founding Director of the Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity. He is the author, most recently, of the award-winning Declassified: Moving beyond the Dead End of Race in South Africa.

This book alerts readers to the dangers of tradition as a formal, structured politics, which enriches a narrowly elite minority while overriding democratic rights, effecting a state of exception for the governance of millions who are rendered as subjects in South Africa. Gerhard Mar? sets his focus on three powerful men  Goodwill Zwelithini, Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Jacob Zuma  to illustrate how, from different social locations, each has relied on claims to Zulu tradition to occupy powerful and financially rewarding positions.

Print edition not for sale in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Preface 1. Durban Strikes, 1973: Characters Assembled 2. Ethnicity Mobilised, Ethnicity Employed 3. Consolidating: 1970s and 1980s 4. Peaceful Change in a Civil War? 5. Continuities: Post-Apartheid or Post-1994 South Africa? Conclusion, Select Bibliography, Index