After Apartheid: Reinventing South Africa?

Democracy came to South Africa in April 1994, when the AfricanNational Congress won a landslide victory in the first free national election in thecountry's history. That definitive and peaceful transition from apartheid is oftencited as a model for others to follow. The new order has since survived severaltransitions of ANC leadership, and it averted a potentially destabilizingconstitutional crisis in 2008. Yet enormous challenges remain. Poverty andinequality are among the highest in the world. Staggering unemployment has fueledxenophobia, resulting in deadly aggression directed at refugees and migrant workersfrom Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Violent crime rates, particularly murder and rape, remain grotesquely high. The HIV/AIDS pandemic was shockingly mishandled at thehighest levels of government, and infection rates continue to be overwhelming.Despite the country's uplifting success of hosting Africa's first World Cup in 2010, inefficiency and corruption remain rife, infrastructure and basic services are oftensemi-functional, and political opposition and a free media are under pressure.

In this volume, major scholars chronicle SouthAfrica's achievements and challenges since the transition. The contributions, allpreviously unpublished, represent the state of the art in the study of South Africanpolitics, economics, law, and social policy.