South Africa's regional political economy: A critical analysis of reform strategy in the 1980s.
Date
1985-10
Authors
Cobbett, William
Glaser, Daryl
Hindson, D. C.
Swilling, Mark
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
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.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented October, 1985
Keywords
South Africa. Economic conditions