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The primary motivation for this research, in which a qualitative method was employed, was to examine political apathy amongst students at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. The secondary motivation was to question whether youth political apathy threatens the consolidation of democracy. The researchers arranged four focus groups at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. A purposive sampling technique was utilised. All 50 participants in the study were Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University undergraduate and postgraduate black students, with ages ranging from 21 to 35 years. The researchers encouraged participants to have maximum participation in the focus group deliberations. The researchers also made use of elite interviews in the study. The findings of this study suggest that political apathy does exist amongst students at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Most of the participants in the focus groups indicated that young people in post-apartheid South Africa have no interest in politics.

This article examines the contradictions and complexities of the model of development pursuit by the African National Congress (ANC) government in post-apartheid-South Africa. The article intends to shed some light on the current economic trajectory of South Africa by arguing that although there are some elements of neo-liberalism in government policies, namely: privatisation of services, inflation targeting and Public-Private Partnerships. However, the expansion of the size and the role of the South African state, are anti-neo-liberal. This is a qualitative literature assessment article; because it is based on desktop research. This article is located within the Marxism and Leninism tradition as a standpoint theory. This ontological approach is chosen owing to its meticulousness in teasing out the complexities of the capitalist mode of production. The aim of this article is to lay bare the different aspects of the mixedbag approach of development employed by the South African government by asserting that is not simply neo-liberal in nature though to some extent it is inspired by market-friendly policies. This also indicates the gaps in the discourse with regard to the implementation of neo-liberalism in South Africa. This article contributes to the South African political economy debate by arguing that neo-liberalism has contradictions and complexities; it is not simplistic and straightforward.

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