Greg Ruiters
Biographic Data
| ID | 91560 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Greg Ruiters |
| GIVEN NAMES | Greg |
| FAMILY NAME | Ruiters |
| SIGNATURE | RUITERS G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Western Cape |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4355-3759 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 41 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
‘Hai, Man! . . . We Don’t Have Democracy’! The Transport Crisis and Working-Class De-Citizenship in South Africa: Khayelitsha, Cape Town
Affordable and safe public transport underpins effective citizenship and freedom as well as work. Citizens expect the democratic state to be caring and reciprocal. Using in-depth interviews with residents and community leaders in Khayelitsha, we look at how worsening public and private transport – mainly mini-bus taxis – not only significantly extends the working day but also destroys political hopes – a process called de-citizenship. We show how…
A Poisoned Sense of Place: Characterising Spatial Politics in a City: The Case of Cape Town’s Property-Owning Democracy
South Africa is undergoing a rapid decline in social and political cohesion at various scales. This paper explores Cape Town’s experience of socio-territorial messages and identities deployed by the City administration and the leading party, the Democratic Alliance. I focus on relational constructions of the subjectivity of the ‘ratepayer’ and the deserving Capetownian as constructed in the City and the DA’s discourse and policy measures in juxta…
Capital's Preference for Foreign African Labour in South Africa: Reflections on Liberal Anti-xenophobia Research
In South Africa, in many economic sectors, foreign blacks are more likely to get a job than a similarly skilled black South African. This paper is about why employers prefer foreign African labour in South Africa, how this contributes to seeing South African black workers as inferior and how job hoarding networks in employment niches have emerged. We examine this in the context of literature on 'xenophobia'. Both discursive and material practices…
Constructed educational inequality, philanthropy, and power relations in educational public–private partnerships in South Africa
There is a robust debate about innovative ways to improve educational outcomes and governance in public schools located in the poorest townships in South Africa. This article looks at one recent innovation, a new model for providing basic education called ‘collaboration schools’, based on the British academy schools. We seek to understand what these partnerships between philanthropists, government, and parents entail, the specific problems the pa…
Non-Racialism: The New Form of Racial Inequality in a Neo-Apartheid South Africa
Non-racialism is a deep-rooted ideal in the history of resistance in South Africa. It is not only the basis of the post-apartheid legal order, but also crucial to the form of capitalism. This paper reinterprets non-racialism and inequality in post-1994 South Africa by revisiting conventional understandings of the nature of the state and the rule of law. It shows that racial inequality is inscribed in the non-racial form of the state. The non-raci…
‘This land is not for sale’: Post-1994 resistance art and interventionism in Cape Town's precarious publics
Turning a Blind Eye to African Refugees and Immigrants in a Tourist City: A Case-study of Blame-shifting in Cape Town
What role do municipalities play in limiting xenophobia in all its forms and what should these bodies do in promoting the integration of African immigrants? This paper analyzes a case study of Cape Town's policies and programs concerning African immigrants and refugees following the 2008 xenophobic crisis, up to 2016. Municipalities as a separate sphere of the government have their own space to address socio-political problems and to shape local …
Changing People, Changing Lives Through Public Participation and Social Transformation: A South African Case Study of a Rural Development Programme
During 2009, in what seemed to be a return to RDP-style thinking, the Comprehensive Rural \nDevelopment Programme (CRDP) was adopted nationally to tackle not only \nunderdevelopment, poverty, unemployment, and other social ills, but also to enable ‘rural \npeople to take control of their destiny’ with the support of ‘well-structured community \norganisations’ called Council of Stakeholders (CoS). Most existing studies, however, tend to \ndevalue …
The Moving Line Between State Benevolence and Control: Municipal Indigent Programmes in South Africa
Municipal indigents' are a category of poor citizens who qualify to receive certain municipal services for free in South Africa. Having registered as municipal indigents, the poor not only gain access to free basic services but also embark upon a voyage into a bureaucratic underworld where policies are changed and eligibility criteria and sanctions are unevenly applied. Various preconditions and limits on services, as well as social surveillance …
Organising Somalian, Congolese and Rwandan Migrants in a Time of Xenophobia in South Africa: Empirical and Methodological Reflections
Uneven Development and Scale Politics in Southern Africa: What We Learn from Neil Smith
Southern Africa is probably the most unevenly developed region on earth, combining the most modern technologies and an advanced working class with the world's extremes of inequality and social militancy. The two most extreme countries, both with settler–colonial populations and accumulation processes that created durable class/race/gender distortions and extreme environmental degradation, are South Africa and Zimbabwe—both of which Neil Smith vis…
Spaces of Hope: Rethinking Trade Union–Community Alliances and Citizenship in a Post-alliance Era in South Africa
A critical debate in contemporary post-1994 South Africa is the extent to which organised labour can join forces with community-based movements to construct coalitions which might be called ‘spaces of hope’ where policies more conducive to constructing an egalitarian society can be pursued. Using three organisations: the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and Housing Assembly (HA)…
The Age of Commodity
Contradictions in municipal services in contemporary South Africa: Disciplinary commodification and self-disconnections
In South Africa, the management of municipal services has been an ongoing dilemma for the new government because of what it terms `a culture' of non-payment among users. As a result, prepayment has been widely implemented in electricity, telephone and, more recently, water services. Hailed as the solution to the non-payment problem, but also as a new social `paradigm' for service delivery, prepayment has been made more palatable by the introducti…
The Right Way Up? South Africa Ten Years On
Environmental racism and justice in South Africa's transition
In current debates on transformation in South Africa, socio-spatial differentiation and the ways racism may be produced in the built environment are rarely explored. While racial boundaries have become less rigid, new proxies for racism are developing, while racial inequalities deepen. Among the privileged strata, defence of safe neighbourhoods and property values often slides into certain kinds of exclusions, which take on racial hues. This arti…
Urban struggles and defeats in 1980s South Africa: Reflections on the politics of scale
Regionalism, environment and Southern African class struggles∗
Contradictions in municipal services in contemporary South Africa: Disciplinary commodification and self-disconnections
In South Africa, the management of municipal services has been an ongoing dilemma for the new government because of what it terms `a culture' of non-payment among users. As a result, prepayment has been widely implemented in electricity, telephone and, more recently, water services. Hailed as the solution to the non-payment problem, but also as a new social `paradigm' for service delivery, prepayment has been made more palatable by the introducti…
Uneven Development and Scale Politics in Southern Africa: What We Learn from Neil Smith
Southern Africa is probably the most unevenly developed region on earth, combining the most modern technologies and an advanced working class with the world's extremes of inequality and social militancy. The two most extreme countries, both with settler–colonial populations and accumulation processes that created durable class/race/gender distortions and extreme environmental degradation, are South Africa and Zimbabwe—both of which Neil Smith vis…
Spaces of Hope: Rethinking Trade Union–Community Alliances and Citizenship in a Post-alliance Era in South Africa
A critical debate in contemporary post-1994 South Africa is the extent to which organised labour can join forces with community-based movements to construct coalitions which might be called ‘spaces of hope’ where policies more conducive to constructing an egalitarian society can be pursued. Using three organisations: the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and Housing Assembly (HA)…
Environmental racism and justice in South Africa's transition
In current debates on transformation in South Africa, socio-spatial differentiation and the ways racism may be produced in the built environment are rarely explored. While racial boundaries have become less rigid, new proxies for racism are developing, while racial inequalities deepen. Among the privileged strata, defence of safe neighbourhoods and property values often slides into certain kinds of exclusions, which take on racial hues. This arti…
The Moving Line Between State Benevolence and Control: Municipal Indigent Programmes in South Africa
Municipal indigents' are a category of poor citizens who qualify to receive certain municipal services for free in South Africa. Having registered as municipal indigents, the poor not only gain access to free basic services but also embark upon a voyage into a bureaucratic underworld where policies are changed and eligibility criteria and sanctions are unevenly applied. Various preconditions and limits on services, as well as social surveillance …
Non-Racialism: The New Form of Racial Inequality in a Neo-Apartheid South Africa
Non-racialism is a deep-rooted ideal in the history of resistance in South Africa. It is not only the basis of the post-apartheid legal order, but also crucial to the form of capitalism. This paper reinterprets non-racialism and inequality in post-1994 South Africa by revisiting conventional understandings of the nature of the state and the rule of law. It shows that racial inequality is inscribed in the non-racial form of the state. The non-raci…
Organising Somalian, Congolese and Rwandan Migrants in a Time of Xenophobia in South Africa: Empirical and Methodological Reflections
The Right Way Up? South Africa Ten Years On
Urban struggles and defeats in 1980s South Africa: Reflections on the politics of scale
Regionalism, environment and Southern African class struggles∗
Environmental racism and justice in South Africa's transition
In current debates on transformation in South Africa, socio-spatial differentiation and the ways racism may be produced in the built environment are rarely explored. While racial boundaries have become less rigid, new proxies for racism are developing, while racial inequalities deepen. Among the privileged strata, defence of safe neighbourhoods and property values often slides into certain kinds of exclusions, which take on racial hues. This arti…
The Right Way Up? South Africa Ten Years On
Contradictions in municipal services in contemporary South Africa: Disciplinary commodification and self-disconnections
In South Africa, the management of municipal services has been an ongoing dilemma for the new government because of what it terms `a culture' of non-payment among users. As a result, prepayment has been widely implemented in electricity, telephone and, more recently, water services. Hailed as the solution to the non-payment problem, but also as a new social `paradigm' for service delivery, prepayment has been made more palatable by the introducti…
The Age of Commodity
Spaces of Hope: Rethinking Trade Union–Community Alliances and Citizenship in a Post-alliance Era in South Africa
A critical debate in contemporary post-1994 South Africa is the extent to which organised labour can join forces with community-based movements to construct coalitions which might be called ‘spaces of hope’ where policies more conducive to constructing an egalitarian society can be pursued. Using three organisations: the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and Housing Assembly (HA)…
Uneven Development and Scale Politics in Southern Africa: What We Learn from Neil Smith
Southern Africa is probably the most unevenly developed region on earth, combining the most modern technologies and an advanced working class with the world's extremes of inequality and social militancy. The two most extreme countries, both with settler–colonial populations and accumulation processes that created durable class/race/gender distortions and extreme environmental degradation, are South Africa and Zimbabwe—both of which Neil Smith vis…
The Moving Line Between State Benevolence and Control: Municipal Indigent Programmes in South Africa
Municipal indigents' are a category of poor citizens who qualify to receive certain municipal services for free in South Africa. Having registered as municipal indigents, the poor not only gain access to free basic services but also embark upon a voyage into a bureaucratic underworld where policies are changed and eligibility criteria and sanctions are unevenly applied. Various preconditions and limits on services, as well as social surveillance …
Organising Somalian, Congolese and Rwandan Migrants in a Time of Xenophobia in South Africa: Empirical and Methodological Reflections
‘This land is not for sale’: Post-1994 resistance art and interventionism in Cape Town's precarious publics
Turning a Blind Eye to African Refugees and Immigrants in a Tourist City: A Case-study of Blame-shifting in Cape Town
What role do municipalities play in limiting xenophobia in all its forms and what should these bodies do in promoting the integration of African immigrants? This paper analyzes a case study of Cape Town's policies and programs concerning African immigrants and refugees following the 2008 xenophobic crisis, up to 2016. Municipalities as a separate sphere of the government have their own space to address socio-political problems and to shape local …
Changing People, Changing Lives Through Public Participation and Social Transformation: A South African Case Study of a Rural Development Programme
During 2009, in what seemed to be a return to RDP-style thinking, the Comprehensive Rural \nDevelopment Programme (CRDP) was adopted nationally to tackle not only \nunderdevelopment, poverty, unemployment, and other social ills, but also to enable ‘rural \npeople to take control of their destiny’ with the support of ‘well-structured community \norganisations’ called Council of Stakeholders (CoS). Most existing studies, however, tend to \ndevalue …
Non-Racialism: The New Form of Racial Inequality in a Neo-Apartheid South Africa
Non-racialism is a deep-rooted ideal in the history of resistance in South Africa. It is not only the basis of the post-apartheid legal order, but also crucial to the form of capitalism. This paper reinterprets non-racialism and inequality in post-1994 South Africa by revisiting conventional understandings of the nature of the state and the rule of law. It shows that racial inequality is inscribed in the non-racial form of the state. The non-raci…
Constructed educational inequality, philanthropy, and power relations in educational public–private partnerships in South Africa
There is a robust debate about innovative ways to improve educational outcomes and governance in public schools located in the poorest townships in South Africa. This article looks at one recent innovation, a new model for providing basic education called ‘collaboration schools’, based on the British academy schools. We seek to understand what these partnerships between philanthropists, government, and parents entail, the specific problems the pa…
A Poisoned Sense of Place: Characterising Spatial Politics in a City: The Case of Cape Town’s Property-Owning Democracy
South Africa is undergoing a rapid decline in social and political cohesion at various scales. This paper explores Cape Town’s experience of socio-territorial messages and identities deployed by the City administration and the leading party, the Democratic Alliance. I focus on relational constructions of the subjectivity of the ‘ratepayer’ and the deserving Capetownian as constructed in the City and the DA’s discourse and policy measures in juxta…
Capital's Preference for Foreign African Labour in South Africa: Reflections on Liberal Anti-xenophobia Research
In South Africa, in many economic sectors, foreign blacks are more likely to get a job than a similarly skilled black South African. This paper is about why employers prefer foreign African labour in South Africa, how this contributes to seeing South African black workers as inferior and how job hoarding networks in employment niches have emerged. We examine this in the context of literature on 'xenophobia'. Both discursive and material practices…
‘Hai, Man! . . . We Don’t Have Democracy’! The Transport Crisis and Working-Class De-Citizenship in South Africa: Khayelitsha, Cape Town
Affordable and safe public transport underpins effective citizenship and freedom as well as work. Citizens expect the democratic state to be caring and reciprocal. Using in-depth interviews with residents and community leaders in Khayelitsha, we look at how worsening public and private transport – mainly mini-bus taxis – not only significantly extends the working day but also destroys political hopes – a process called de-citizenship. We show how…
Political science (17 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Economics (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Economic growth (9 works) · Legal Issues in South Africa (9 works) · South African History and Culture (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Law (8 works)