The power and limits of the emergency state

Abstract

This paper is an assessment of the strategies, structures and resources that the Emergency State has deployed to fight its battles on the "political terrain" (1). We intend demonstrating that a new set of strategies are being implemented in response to the failure in the face of mass resistance of the early "total strategy" reforms. While capital and the popular classes have pursued in their own ways a range of strategies to transform apartheid, the state (and the interests that dominate it) has been able to mobilise enormous resources and coordinate ambitious policies to respond to these challenges.