State formation and state consolidation in post colonial Southern Africa
Date
1996-08-19
Authors
Lodge, Tom
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Abstract
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.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 19 August 1996
Keywords
Africa, Southern. Politics and government. 1975-1994., Africa, Southern. History. Autonomy and independence movements