Donation to benefit nine South African universities

A BOOK edited and co-authored by Professor Ursula van Beek, the founder and Director of Transformation Research Unit (TRU) at the Political Science Department at Stellenbosch University, will now be made available to nine public universities in South Africa thanks to the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS).

“By their generous donation KAS helps us to convey to a wider body of students and staff the necessity to combine theoretical and empirical approaches when dealing with complex political, social and economic issues.

“The book reports on a project based on comparative methodology, where in-depth case studies refer to empirical findings, thus illustrating the vital importance of building theory in reference to data, and vice versa,” said Van Beek.

Democracy under Threat:

A Crisis of Legitimacy? is the latest addition to a series of four books on democracy produced by TRU.

TRU focuses on examining South African democracy comparatively in the regional southern African and global contexts from a political, economic and social perspective.

According to Christina Teichmann, a project manager at KAS’s office in Cape Town, the aim of this donation is to continue KAS’s work to “promote democracy, good governance and the rule of law through political education and training, not only in Germany but worldwide”.

“This book makes an important contribution in this regard by providing valuable insights into the current state and quality of democracy in various countries around the globe,” Teichmann said.

“By donating this book to universities in South Africa, KAS hopes to assist in making the important research findings of Professor van Beek and the other contributing authors better accessible to students and university staff.”

The latest Afrobarometer Survey indicates that while the “majority of South Africans still prefer democracy to any other form of governance”, a growing number of individuals are willing to “trade off democracy for an authoritarian regime if the latter can provide jobs, housing and better education”.

“Many South Africans feel that democracy has not delivered because their lives have not significantly changed for the better since the end of apartheid. Additionally, state capture and corruption on the highest political level have eroded peoples’ trust in government institutions and democratic processes. This has led to a widespread receptiveness to radical and non-democratic messages, often voiced with strong racial undertones,” said Teichmann.

According to Van Beek “many of the problems – whether connected to globalisation or not – that South Africa faces today are not unique to our country but also affect other younger democracies around the world, and even those that are well established”.

The US under President Donald Trump’s rule is just one such example.

Many South Africans feel that democracy has not delivered as their lives have not improved