African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

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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.
Mishap or crisis? The apartheid economy's recent record in historical perspective
(1988-06) Moll, Terence
The South African economy has performed poorly in recent years. One line of interpretation views this poor performance as a severe and unfortunate cyclical downswing from which the economy is slowly recovering. Another by contrast regards it as symptomatic of an economic crisis; many variations between these views can be found. This is of course an ideologically-loaded issue since the 'mishap' position is associated with the South African government and the 'crisis' view with its left-wing opponents who foresee national economic recovery only once significant economic and political restructuring of society has taken place. I shall begin by describing the recent economic record of South Africa in its post-War context, and draw out some causes of the current decline. I will then consider whether the causes of decline are temporary/cyclical or long-term, whether they are likely to weaken or worsen, and how the decline as a whole should be characterised.
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.
Class conflict, communal struggle and patriotic unity: The Communist Party of South Africa during the Second World War
(1985-10-07) Lodge, Tom
The years of the Second World War witnessed a revival in the fortunes of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA). At the beginning of the war the Party's following numbered less than 300, it s influence in the trade unions was negligible, it was isolated from other political organisations among blacks, while it s efforts with whites had succeeded neither in checking the growth of fascism or Afrikaner nationalism nor in building class unity. Six years later the Party could count it s adherents in thousands rather than hundreds, it was capable of winning white local government elections, and its members presided over the largest-ever African trade union movement as well as contributing significantly to the leadership of the African and Indian Congresses. From 1945 knowledge of the Party’s development becomes vital for any understanding of the mainstream of black politics in South Africa. This paper will examine and attempt to explain the wartime expansion in the Communist Party's influence, first by referring to the social and economic conditions as well as the overall political environment of the time, and then by discussing the Party's policies and strategies’ CPSA responses to three different sets of movements or organisations will be discussed: movements of the urban poor, of peasants, and of labour. The paper will conclude with an evaluation of the Party's role and development during the period.
Rural contradictions and class consiousness: Migrant labour in historical perspective : the Ciskei in the 1880s and 90s
(1985-05) Lewis, Jack
In a recent work Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone have brought together a collection of articles intended to expand understanding "both of the overall contours of the political economy and more especially of the black experience." The theoretical discourse in which it is intended that this ‘experience’ should be analysed is explicitly that derived from Edward Thompson, both in his work on the ‘making’ of the English working class and subsequently in his attack on the methodologies of ‘structuralism’ Marks and Rathbones’ main concern is with the active ‘agency’ exerted by Africans in the process of proletarianisation. The central concept which they adopt is that of ‘consciousness’, which they define, after Thompson, as "the way in which...experiences are handle, in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value systems, ideas and institutional forms".
The state and economic development in South Africa
(1975-03) Kaplan, D.
In an earlier paper, I stressed the conceptual inadequacies prevalent in both the liberal analyses of the State in the process of South African capitalist development and in the ‘new’ literature which departs from the liberal paradigm.(1) To repeat the critique, the latter literature "is centred around the question of labour policy and is designed to show, in contradistinction to the liberal analysis, that racial and labour policy has been functional to the interests of ‘capital’ in South African economic development. Although centred on the question of labour, the latter literature has made some specific statements concerning the State and has, at least implicitly, derived a theory of capitalist development for the South African case. On both these questions, I would suggest that this literature has been largely incorrect, and this has resulted from an inadequate conceptual framework... This paper is primarily designed to give additional substance to this critique, in a number of ways.
The South African economy into the Eighties
(1979-10-22) Dagut, M.
South Africa's regional political economy: A critical analysis of reform strategy in the 1980s.
(1985-10) Cobbett, William; Glaser, Daryl; Hindson, D. C.; Swilling, Mark
Since the late 1970s the apartheid state has faced a sustained and deepening crisis of legitimation.(1) This crisis has been exacerbated by the attempt, and failure, to implement the post- Soweto 'Total Strategy' reforms - reforms which, in the case of the black people of South Africa, left the territorial and political basis of grand apartheid intact. Since the end of the short-lived boom of 1979-82, the crisis of political legitimacy has been amplified by the slide into economic depression, and the scope for concessionary economic reforms has been drastically curtailed. For some time, the state has been caught up with the immediate threat of escalating opposition in the townships, the symptoms of the deepening economic crisis and spreading international hostility to apartheid. But while this has been happening, elements within the ruling groups, both inside and outside the state, have for some time been attempting to map out a longer-term strategic offensive aimed at defusing political conflict and re-structuring the economy. Faced with a shrinking material basis for concessionary economic reform and growing mobilisation behind the demand for the extension of political rights, the country's ruling groups have begun the search for political solutions to the crisis. The schemes now being formulated take as their starting point the ultimate inevitability of political incorporation of black people into a single national state in South Africa. They aim to meet this in ways that ensure that real power remains in the hands of the ruling classes. The move towards political reforms for black people has gone beyond the stage of discussion and planning in certain areas of policy. Already an important pillar of the emerging strategy has gained expression in local government measures passed in 1985. (2) However much of what is planned has so far only appeared in general policy statements. It is also evident that important facets of the strategy are still in the stage of formulation or are deliberately being held back for the moment. The fluidity of political conditions in South Africa is such that state strategy is the subject matter of open debate and contestation, and is unusually susceptible to official reconsideration and reformulation. Nevertheless we believe it is possible to identify the major contours of an emerging strategy which has been pursued with increasing determination by reformers within the commanding heights of the state since late in 1984. This offensive is significant in that it goes well beyond the policy package associated with the Wiehahn and Riekert Commission reports, the Koornhof Bills, the new constitution, and the confederation of ethnic states - it goes beyond the 'Total Strategy' formulated by PW Botha in the late 1970s. (3) In contrast to these policies, it is based on an abandonment of the political and territorial premises of apartheid, though not necessarily of race or ethnicity, and envisages the eventual reincorporation of the bantustans into a single national South African state. The manner in which this will occur is by no means clear or decided. However, this process of political re-integration of the bantustans is intended ultimately to result in the reorganisation of the territorial basis of South Africa's economic and political system. Central to the reform strategy is the conception that the present provinces and bantustans will be superceded by metropolitan and regionally-based administrative structures through a process of merging, absorption and crosscutting of present geographical boundaries. It is this geographic outcome of the intended reform strategy that has led us to describe the complex of evolving measures as the state's regional strategy. The aim of this article is to describe, anticipate and critically analyse the outlines of the emerging regional strategy. Its three major components are new controls on labour movement and settlement, regional development policies (notably industrial decentralisation), and local and second tier government reforms and corresponding constitutional changes. We examine each of these three components and their interconnections. A central issue taken up in the paper is the debate over the possible construction of a federal system in South Africa. We examine major alternative conceptions of the basis of federalism - geographic and ethnic - and show how they correspond to or contradict other plans to divide South Africa into metropolitan and wider planning and administrative regions. The paper ends with an assessment and critical analysis of the regional strategy.

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