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Start date: 1980Subject: search.filters.subject.South Africa. Politics and government

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    South Africa's common society
    (1991-02) Simons, Jack
    I circulated a draft paper in February 1989 with the title "South Africa's Civil War: Revolution and Counter-Revolution". It had two parts, one called "Resistance and Repression", the other "South Africa's Common Society". Together they made out a case for identifying the struggle as a civil war arising out of a revolutionary situation. The terms are complementary, not contradictory. A civil war by definition is an armed conflict between combatants who are citizens of the same state, belong to the same society, and take up arms in a struggle for political power. The most bitter and ruinous war of the last century was the civil war fought in the United States in 1861/2 between the slave-owning Confederacy and the Union of free labour states. (2) A South African example of an imperial war was Britain's war of 1899-1902 against the Boer republics, fought by an aggressive power to establish control over the whole of Southern Africa in keeping with the ambition of Cecil John Rhodes (1852-1902) to paint the map red from Cape to Cairo.
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    Ideology in organized Indian politics, 1880-1948
    (1983-03-28) Tayal, Maureen
    This paper is an attempt to place in perspective the ideologies which have helped shape South African Indian politics. The history of organized Indian politics from the 1880s to the 1940s is mainly the history of trader politics - an almost unbroken line of accommodation to the demands of the ruling white minority; or, at most, selective reformism. This line has twice been breached though. Between 1907 and 1913, and again in the 1940s, a radical leadership emerged in the Transvaal and Natal which attempted to transform Indian politics. The process of transformation began at the level of ideology. Thus the two periods of radicalism are useful focal points: they demand an examination of not only the new ideologies, but also the old. No attempt is made here to discuss the course of the passive resistance movements which were the end result of Indian radicalism, except insofar as is necessary to explore some of the issues which this paper has sought to address: the articulation of trader and radical ideologies; the potential of radical ideologies to forge cross-class or, indeed crossrace alliances; the extent to which that potential was realized, and the role of the Indian lower middle classes in that realization. The paper begins, however, with a discussion of Indian social stratification at the turn of the century, and in the 1940s. This is meant, first of all, to provide the background to an understanding of the nature of the essentially conservative, entrenched political parties which the radicals attempted to transform. The discussion also illuminates the conditions under which radicalism emerged. Finally it sketches the social and economic conditions of the mass of the Indian people in order to identify their specific interests. The varying extent to which, and the way in which, those interests were represented by Indian politics at different times is in itself a significant commentary on changes in the content of their ideological underpinning.
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    The construction of apartheid, 1948-1961
    (1988-08) Posel, Deborah
    What was distinctive about Apartheid in the 1950s,as compared with the 1960s? How was it constructed, and how did it change? Much of the academic and journalistic literature on Apartheid pre-'reform' depicts it as the product of a single, long-term 'grand plan', pursued systematically and unfalteringly by the National Party (NP) since its accession to power in 1948. Such views are challenged in this paper, which argues that although the Apartheid state has certainly been characterised by a singular degree of co-ordination, planning and coercion, the construction of Apartheid has not been a wholly linear, systematic or monolithic project. The state's uncertainties, conflicts, weaknesses, changes and failures, although far less visible than its cohesiveness and triumphs, have also made their mark on the construction of Apartheid. Moreover, some (but obviously not all) of the premises and objectives of Apartheid changed in fundamental ways at the onset of the 1960s. (The presentation of these arguments is very brief and schematic, being a summary of large chunks of my doctoral thesis.)
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    Legitimation and control: Ideological struggles within the South African state
    (1983-08-08) Greenberg, Stanley
    In June 1979, Piet Koornhof, minister for Cooperation and Development, proclaimed before the National Press Club in Washington that "apartheid is dead." He may have been grandstanding, of course, but Koornhof's words also resonated at home where doubts about ideological orthodoxy were being expressed both within and outside the state. The Bureau for Economic Policy and Analysis at the University of Pretoria, with well-developed contacts within the government and the Afrikaner business community, reported in July 1980 that the "failure of socio-economic growth in the territories of the Black national states ... is becoming embarrassing." (1) The head of the bureau, Jan Lombard, referred to "separate development" as a 'sinking philosophy." (2) The perception has spread to yet more official "think tanks": BENSO has published articles that now refer to the failure of the "development paradigm." Little wonder, then, that outside observers, like John Saul and Stephen Gelb and Stanley Greenberg, have begun to write of an "organic crisis" or a "crisis of hegemony." (4) To understand the ideological ferment in South Africa -- and move beyond generalized statements about crisis (5) -- it will be necessary to elaborate the thematic aspects of a disintegrating, dominant ideology and of an emergent, and still fragmentary market-based substitute. This ideological transformation, we shall see, is rooted in political struggles within the state that center on these thematic changes and that depend profoundly on "connections" with actors and struggles outside the state.
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    Local imperatives and imperial policy: The sources of Lord Carnarvon's South African Confederation policy
    (1986-08) Cope, Richard
    In February 1876 the General Manager of the Standard Bank of South Africa wrote that there was "a general spirit of enterprise abroad, which some ten years ago would hardly have been considered possible in such a country." It is a commonplace that the discovery of diamonds in 1867 set in train an economic transformation in South Africa, but its political effects were no less important. In the 1870s an attempt was made to construct a 'confederation' under the British flag, which it was intended would extend to the Zambezi in the north and to the Portuguese lines on the east and west coasts. To those whose interests lay in the development of a modern capitalist economy in South Africa, Boer republics and Black polities alike were anachronistic and obstructive, and the necessity for incorporating both into a united and efficient British dominion seemed imperative. In an article published in 1974 Anthony Atmore and Shula Marks argued that these "local imperatives" rather than Carnarvon's strategic preoccupations were the crucial forces pushing in the direction of confederation. I have sought to demonstrate elsewhere by an examination of the relevant evidence that Carnarvon's reasons for confederation were not strategic in nature, as Robinson and Gallagher and Goodfellow claimed,but that they were the sort of socio-economic considerations identified by Atmore and Marks. In this article I examine the question of how imperial policy came to correspond so closely to these 'local imperatives'.
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    Towards rupture or stasis? An Analysis of the 1981 South African general election
    (1981-08-24) Charney, Craig
    The results of the 1981 white general election in South Africa seemed paradoxical to many observers. After three decades in which white politics appeared dominated by the unchallengeable hegemony of the ruling National Party, white party politics seemed to have taken on a new turbulence and uncertainty. The Sunday Times reported, "Nat Voters Bolt to the Right", while the Transvaler headlined a "Leftwards swing". Very few seats actually changed hands, yet many commentators sensed that the election was a watershed. The confusing aspects of the election resulted from the play of contradictory political and social forces. This paper contends that the old ethnic-based class alliances which formed the basis of the white South African party system are unravelling. Though power did not change hands, the 1981 election traced the outline of a possible class realignment of white political forces, with potentially far-reaching consequences. In the aftermath, nothing seemed to have changed, but nothing would ever be quite the same. To illuminate the changes underway, we will begin with a discussion of the background to the election, then skip ahead to consider the patterns of change evident in the election results. This is followed by an examination of survey data to discern the emerging class division, and of how the strategy of the parties promoted or retarded its expression. The paper concludes with the implications of the new trends in the white electorate for the future of white politics in South Africa.