African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

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Author: search.filters.author.Lodge, TomStart date: 1990

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    South Africa: Democracy and development in a post-apartheid society
    (1994-03-28) Lodge, Tom
    Until the 1970s, South Africa represented a telling example of a fairly industrialised economy in which growth and development were facilitated by high levels of political repression. Gold mining almost from its start required huge numbers of cheap migrant labourers; gold's fixed price, the low quality of the ore and heavy capital outlays made a coercive labour system a condition of the industry's prosperity until the 1940s. The expansion of secondary industry during the Second World War enabled manufacturing to outstrip mining's contribution to GDP by 1945. This development was accompanied by accelerating urbanisation and the establishment in the main cities of a relatively skilled and increasingly well organised African working class. In certain respects, the "Apartheid" programmes of the Afrikaner Nationalist government elected in 1948 were directed at reversing the economic and social gains achieved by urbanised Africans during the previous decade. Reinforced controls on black labour mobility, intensified territorial segregation of blacks and whites, the curtailment of black collective bargaining rights, the removal of Africans' already very limited access to the franchise, and the suppression of popular political organisations, all these helped to ensure the attraction of massive flows of foreign capital into import substitution industries which the government helped to boost with walls of protective tariffs. Between 1950 and 1970, annual real GDP growth averaged at 5 per cent. In the 1970s, though, the economic costs of white supremacy began to outweigh the benefits. The denial of technical training to blacks underlay an alarming skills shortage. Low wages tightly limited the expansion of the domestic market. Increasing resources were required to staff and equip a huge public sector, much of it concerned with the administration of apartheid controls or with expensive economic projects conceived in anticipation of international embargoes on strategic imports. Moreover, controls notwithstanding, economic growth in the 1960s had nurtured a second rapid expansion of the African industrial working class, much of it in the main cities, despite the government's efforts to relocate labour and industries outside towns. This growth was matched by swelling primary and secondary school enrolments (6). By the early 1970s, black workers still lacked basic rights but with their skills, their growing literacy, and their numerical weight in the industrial economy, their bargaining power had become dramatically enhanced. During the next two decades economic recession, labour militancy, localised communal rebellions in black townships, guerilla insurgency, capital flight, credit restrictions, and the spiralling expense of militarised government all combined in 1989 to persuade the government to lift the legal restrictions on the black opposition and begin a negotiated democratisation. This history seems to add confirmation to the contention that "it is not the structural correspondence between capitalism and democracy which explains the persistence of democracy" but rather "capitalist development is associated with democracy because it transforms the class structure". Some theorists may argue that (political) "participation in the social order" is at certain stages in an economy's development a prerequisite for "sustained economic growth", but if this is the case it does not follow that states and ruling groups concede power and rights voluntarily. In South Africa democratisation is taking place because "pressures from subordinate classes have (become) strong enough to make demands for their inclusion credible". Historically, high levels of political repression facilitated capitalist economic development. In time, though, such repression became increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of social changes generated by industrialisation. Pressure from subordinate classes was undoubtedly the crucial agency in determining political transition in South Africa. Any attempt to predict the outcome of this transition must first investigate the political predispositions of popular classes as well as the institutions with which they will engage before looking at the developmental tasks which will confront a democratised government. After considering the question of whether these tasks can be tackled under democratic conditions, this essay will address the more general question, which arises from this case study, of whether democracy can help to foster development in developing countries.
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    State formation and state consolidation in post colonial Southern Africa
    (1996-08-19) Lodge, Tom
    Post colonial southern African states are distinctive for their relative administrative capacity and their fairly effective governance. Analysis of African states has identified a prevalent set of weaknesses: uncertain territorial jurisdiction, underperformance, overconsumption of restricted resources, external dependency, corruption and the privatisation of public resources by unproductive ruling groups. No southern African state is entirely free of these shortcomings but they affect the functioning of government less in this region than elsewhere in Africa. Southern African states differ characteristically from most African post-colonial states in having stronger or at least longer established traditions of legitimation and political continuity. In several countries the formation of the modern state has been facilitated by the congruence of frontiers with precolonial political boundaries: Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and in certain respects, South Africa have benefitted from this. In the cases of South Africa and Zimbabwe especially, complete sovereignty or at least considerable political autonomy for most of the century, has enabled their administrations to develop a degree of social impermeability. State autonomy is also facilitated by what are in African terms quite well developed capitalist class structures in relatively diversified economies; in especially South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Swaziland, the state is less significant than elsewhere upon the continent as a nexus of class formation and hence can function more independently of specific social forces. These qualities reflect the comparatively sophisticated bureaucratic development required to administer a labour repressive mining economy which evolved at the turn the century, fairly extensive secondary industrialisation in South Africa and Zimbabwe, and sharply differentiated social structures which include large and well organised working classes and correspondingly vigorous industrial, commercial and agricultural bourgeoisies. What follows is an elaboration of this argument which will examine in turn the salient characteristics of all the southern African states considering their functional disposition and effectiveness before discussing their social orientation and their relationships with the societies they govern.
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    Political corruption in South Africa
    (1997-08-18) Lodge, Tom
    Many people believe that widespread political corruption exists in South Africa. In a survey published by IDASA in 1996, 46 per cent of the sample consulted felt that most officials were engaged in corruption and only six per cent believed there was clean government. In another poll conducted by the World Value Survey, 15 per cent of the respondents were certain that all public servants were guilty of bribery and corruption and another 30 per cent thought that most officials were venal. The IDASA survey indicated that 41 per cent of the sample felt that public corruption was increasing. Most recently, Transparency International, an international monitoring agency, has reported on a survey which confirms a growing perception among foreign businessmen that official corruption in South Africa is widespread. These perceptions have probably been stimulated by the proliferation of press reportage on corruption as well as debates between national politicians but the evidence concerns perceptions and in itself is an unreliable indicator of the scope or seriousness of the problem except in so far as the existence of such beliefs can encourage corrupt transactions between officials and citizens. In reviewing the South African evidence this paper will attempt to answer four questions. Is the present South African political environment peculiarly susceptible to corruption? Were previous South African administrations especially corrupt? What forms has political corruption assumed since 1994 and how serious has been its incidence? Finally, does modern South African corruption mainly represent habits inherited from the past or is it a manifestation of new kinds of behaviour?
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    The African National Congress comes home
    (1992-06-08) Lodge, Tom
    Two years of legal existence have enabled the ANC to acquire 900 branches, 500 000 signed-up members, a 20-storey office block in central Johannesburg, a fresh leadership, a democratic constitution, an elaborate administration, and an annual income which in 1990 topped R90-million. Its homecoming is consequently a story of considerable if uneven achievement. In February 1990, the ANC's leaders were suddenly confronted with the challenge of adapting an authoritarian and secretive movement formed by the harsh exigencies of exile to the requirements of a South African environment shaped by the tumultuous politics of the 1980s. Two years later, the process of changing the ANC into an organisation geared to open and democratic forms of popular mobilisation is far from complete. In 1992 the ANC still struggles to absorb and reconcile the experiences of three generations of leadership: the elderly veterans who emerged from decades of confinement on Robben Island; the middle-aged managers of an insurgent bureaucracy; and, finally, the youthful architects of the most sustained and widespread rebellion in South African history. ... To understand what the ANC has become in 1992, it is essential to know what kind of organisation it was in 1990. One way of doing this is through investigating its institutional structures and internal procedures. This is the approach which characterises most studies of the exile ANC during the 1980s. This literature depicts a most intricate and elaborate organisation which can be represented as an embryonic state - a ‘government-in-waiting’. It resembled a state in several respects.