Research Articles (Centre for Africa Studies)
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Item Open Access Continuity and change: an evaluation of the democracy-foreign policy nexus in post-apartheid South Africa(Faculty of the Humanities, University of the Free State, 2010-09) Hudson, HeidiIf foreign policy is viewed as an “intermestic” arena where the external meets the internal, then it becomes possible to see how internal domestic factors drive foreign policy making. In this context the democracy-foreign policy nexus and the role of governmental and non-governmental foreign policy actors help to reconcile ideals and interests and put foreign policy contradictions into perspective. The desirability of democratic participation in foreign policy is taken as a given, but agency has to go beyond representation to include issues of participation and political dialogue. The focus of this article is the democratic deficit of the Mbeki foreign policy (1999-2008), with some reference to the Zuma administration. The way in which foreign policy was personalised under the presidency of Mbeki was instrumental in closing the space for meaningful participation in the foreign policy processes. The article concludes that democratic foreign policy making is impeded by an overall deterioration in the quality of democracy in post-apartheid South Africa. It further contends that there is more continuity than change across the Mbeki and Zuma administrations’ policy orientations (both domestic and foreign) and warns that the challenges which Mbeki faced in terms of democratic consolidation may be exacerbated in the Zuma period if certain demons are not tackled head on.Item Open Access The rhetorical imprint from a constructivist perspective(Department of Communication Science, University of the Free State, 2014) Cawood, Stephanie; De Wet, Johann C.The rhetorical imprint, ideal for probing the rhetoric of a single rhetor, is defined as a unified set of characteristics that function at the manifest and latent levels of rhetoric. From a constructivist viewpoint, this concept is indicative of individual conceptual processes and structures. The constructivist lens is derived from George Kelly’s construct theory and his conception of a personal construal system governing human cognition and communication. Constructs develop from primitive constructs derived from human biology, while construct development is bound to embodied experience where the body mediates individual experience and provides content to the primitive constructs. The personal construal system resides in the cognitive unconscious and has a deep-seated and complex metaphorical structure, which is reproduced in the rhetorical imprint. A rhetorical imprint is dynamic and will evolve in concert with the personal construal system to make sense of the world, while remaining internally coherent. In a constructivist understanding of communication, sophisticated personal construal systems produce sophisticated communication, a crucial element of the rhetorical imprint. The rhetorical imprint corresponds to the classical canon of inventio where habitual topoi, metaphorical mental common-places from where available means of persuasion are sought, leave an indelible impression of a rhetor’s individuality in rhetoric.