Economy and society in South Africa

Abstract

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.