Critics of school governing bodies (SGBs) Á both on the left and on the right Á tend to rely upon arguments that ignore significant portions of the act that created SGB Á the South African Schools Act (SASA) Á the exact nature of the changes to SGBs wrought by amendments to the act and the manner in which the courts, in interpreting the act, have both reinforced the autonomy of SGBs at the same time as they have set limits on those powers. The authors' reading takes seriously all of the provisions of SASA, its amendments and various court constructions of SASA's provisions. This close reading of the South African Constitution, SASA, SASA's amendments and the case law reveals the lineaments of a fourth level of democratic government. Even with their uneven success as a fourth tier of democratic government, SGBs reflect, in many respects, the most important interactions that citizens have with the state. The authors contend that SGBs provide a vehicle for popular political participation that is quite real, and that participation is made no less real by the strictures imposed upon them by South Africa's constitutional and regulatory order. Despite concerns about their lack of capacity, SGBs enjoy popular acceptance and participation across class and language divides. The legal status of SGBs does not merely enhance various forms of local democracy, SGBs also maintain and create effective social networks that generate new stores of social capital. The ability to provide new forms of democratic participation and to create new stores of social capital suggests that SGBs have the makings of a great, new and rather unique 'South African' political institution.
The concept of practical reason as a subjective capacity is of modern vintage. Converting the Aristotelian conceptual framework … had the advantage … of relating practical reason to the "private" happiness and "moral" autonomy of the individual. [P]ractical reason was thenceforth related to the freedom of the human being as private subject who could assume the roles of member of civil society and citizen, both national and global. … Hegel remained convinced, just like Aristotle, that society finds its unity in the political life and organisation of the state. … However, modern societies have since become so complex that these two conceptual motifsthat of a society concentrated in the state and that of society made up of individualscan no longer be applied unproblematically. … [I]n the Marxist concept of a democratically self-governing society … both the bureaucratic state and the capitalist economy were [largely] supposed to disappear. Systems theory erases even these traces. The state forms just one subsystem alongside other functionally specified social subsystems. 2… The development of constitutional democracy along the celebrated 'North Atlantic' path has certainly provided us with results worth preserving, but once those who do not have the good fortune to be the heirs of the Founding Fathers turn to their own traditions, they cannot find criteria and reasons that would allow them to distinguish what would be worth preserving from what should be rejected.
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