African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

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Author: search.filters.author.Schlemmer, Lawrence

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    White politics: Opportunity or constraint
    (1990-03-19) Schlemmer, Lawrence
    The context within which political conflict plays itself out in South Africa has changed dramatically since FW de Klerk's speech to the opening of parliament on 2 February this year. The wide-ranging announcements have impacted on all political actors operating both within and outside the country. For the white political parties in South Africa, one of the consequences of the speech has been the disturbance of the traditional alignments and relationships between them. Some analysts now argue that South Africa has already seen Its last white election and conclude that not only has the Conservative Party no chance of ever gaining power, but that the Democratic Party must Inevitably crumble under the pressure of an accommodation between the NP and the ANC. Gerrit Viljoen's recent statement that the NP was “not very likely to be in control” in ten years time reinforces this line of analysis (Citizen 7 February 1990). These are some of the conventional wisdoms colouring the current perspectives of "white" politics. This paper takes issue with some of these perspectives by examining the dimensions of the fluidity In white politics and evaluating the potential role that changing white political orientations may play in the newly emerging politics in South Africa. The analysis of the likely trends in white politics is based on the election and referendum results during the decade of the 1980s. White political attitudes remain an important factor especially since F.W. de Klerk has committed himself to holding either a referendum or an election to endorse any new constitution.
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    Economy and society in South Africa
    (2011-05-09) Schlemmer, Lawrence
    Between 1974 and the time of writing, dramatic political events in the Southern African region have tended to shift the ongoing debate on the economy and change in South Africa somewhat into the background. There has been a primacy accorded to the political rather than the economic in discussions of change. However, the events over the period since the Portuguese coup in 1974 until the time of writing will have to be seen in retrospect as having changed the political environment of Southern Africa rather than as having introduced changes of a meaningful kind within South Africa. Not that the South African political climate has been unaffected. Far from it; the very recent (mid-1976) disturbances in Soweto, other Black townships and in black educational institutions as well as a minor spate of political trials and detentions way very well attest to a heightened restiveness among South African Blacks partly as a consequence of events in Southern Africa. Yet a lull in the tempo of events seems inevitable with White Rhodesia preparing for a long drawn-out resistance to Black incursions and responses in South West Africa - Namibia dominated by the same Major issue of extended, inconclusive querilla warfare and what are likely to be extensive constitutional debates.