Transformative Power of Civil Society
TRANFORMATIVE POWER OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN SOUTH AFRICA.
Apartheid divided people and was in favour of white people and left the majority of black people poor. This created inequality between black people and white people, thus this resulted in the people in the people who are disadvantaged by apartheid to form civil societies to help fight poverty themselves. This essay will critically discuss whether civil society has transformative potential in south Africa and also to what extent does it have transformative potential, that is if it has transformative potential. This paper will discuss this by looking at what at what civil society is, looking at development and how ordinary people challenge forced development (top down) by engaging in civil society. In this paper three case studies namely the Victoria mxenge and amadiba crisis committee and the xenophobia protest will be used as examples to analyze the topic further. Essentially this paper will attempt to show that civil society is both transformative and non-transformative.
Development has been debated by social scientist and they came up with different theories of development. Development theories are trying to equalize the inequalities that were created by apartheid and anlyse and find reasons about why things are like this in south Africa. The theories of development include modernization theory, dependency theory, people centred development theory and sen’s development theory. Modernization theory implies that western culture is more superior and modernization theory looks at the different levels of technological development across the globe and explores development in terms of inequality ( Graaf, 2001). According to Davids (2005) modernization theory focuses on the fact that if the less developed country wants to develop then it should follow the developed countries.
According to davids (2005,09) “modernization theory regards western culture to all others”. This notion of modernization takes us back to
Apartheid divided people and was in favour of white people and left the majority of black people poor. This created inequality between black people and white people, thus this resulted in the people in the people who are disadvantaged by apartheid to form civil societies to help fight poverty themselves. This essay will critically discuss whether civil society has transformative potential in south Africa and also to what extent does it have transformative potential, that is if it has transformative potential. This paper will discuss this by looking at what at what civil society is, looking at development and how ordinary people challenge forced development (top down) by engaging in civil society. In this paper three case studies namely the Victoria mxenge and amadiba crisis committee and the xenophobia protest will be used as examples to analyze the topic further. Essentially this paper will attempt to show that civil society is both transformative and non-transformative.
Development has been debated by social scientist and they came up with different theories of development. Development theories are trying to equalize the inequalities that were created by apartheid and anlyse and find reasons about why things are like this in south Africa. The theories of development include modernization theory, dependency theory, people centred development theory and sen’s development theory. Modernization theory implies that western culture is more superior and modernization theory looks at the different levels of technological development across the globe and explores development in terms of inequality ( Graaf, 2001). According to Davids (2005) modernization theory focuses on the fact that if the less developed country wants to develop then it should follow the developed countries.
According to davids (2005,09) “modernization theory regards western culture to all others”. This notion of modernization takes us back to
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