Archie Mafeje

Using a variety of different approaches, arguments and sets of data, the contributors to this book examine the complex relationship between current population growth rates and economic conditions in Africa. In recent years, the interaction between demography and the economy has been at the centre of the debate on the performance of African economies. Africa has in the past decade or so shown some of the highest population growth rates in the world, while the economic crisis has become more entrenched. Some observers blame the present crisis on rapid population increase; others regard this increase as a stimulus to economic development. What emerges is that the quality of African labour is a distinct barrier to rapid economic growth. The rate of expansion of the skill endowment of African labour is accordingly seen both as a constraint on future development and as a potential catalyst. . This book demonstrates that the process of developing factor markets in Africa has been accelerated mainly under the impact of external factors. Land, labour and credit markets have emerged and taken shape in different African economies under the impact of their integration into the international economy. These changes have far-reaching implications for demographic change in Africa. The responses of African households to such changes in the wider economy are also highlighted. Economic and Demographic Change in Africa is an appeal for further research, coupled with more systematization and exchange of knowledge.

Cape Town is dominated by the colour cleavage which exists between black and white in southern Africa and confines colour groups to separate areas and occupations. Langa is a township on the periphery of the city, very poor by comparison with most of the suburbs, and reserved for occupation by black Africans, most of them Xhosa-speaking. They are not the original occupants of the western Cape, but they have been there in appreciable numbers for a hundred years, mingling with the 'Coloured' people of mixed descent, and working along with them and white South Africans. The Africans come mostly from the eastern part of the Cape Province, where the Portuguese found them in the sixteenth century, and the Coloured people count among their ancestors the aborigines of the Cape, the Khoikhoin people, or so-called Hottentots. The white settlers established themselves in 1652.

"The Disenfranchised provides a provocative alternative view of the recent political history of South Africa and events leading up to the first democratic election and the enfranchisement of all South Africans. The book focused on the first voting experience of the previously disenfranchised and tells the story from the point of view of those disadvantaged by the apartheid regime, offering an often overlooked perspective. Significant recent political events are reinterpreted – such as CODESA and the other negotiations preceding the first representative elections in 1994."