Manufacturing capital and the apartheid state: The case of industrial decentralisation

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented August, 1987The relationship between manufacturing capital and the policies of the post-war apartheid state has become a focal point of contention in debates between "conventional" and "revisionist" analyses. A growing corpus of literature from both camps now recognises that organised mining and agricultural capital collaborated, both before and after the war, in establishing many of the institutions of labour and political control today associated with apartheid. But accounts diverge widely when it comes to the role of manufacturing capital. Liberals have conventionally viewed the interests of manufacturing with its frequent demand for semi-skilled, settled, occupationally and geographically mobile labour, and for an expanded domestic market, as incompatible with the restrictive and coercive labour regime of apartheid. Marxist writers of the early 1970s challenged this orthodox view, arguing that apartheid played a functional and supportive role in South Africa's generally impressive record of post-war industrial growth. More recently, Greenberg and Lipton have argued that manufacturing capital has little vested interest in post-war structures of racial domination. Lipton, reasserting the old liberal orthodoxy, argues that secondary industry actively opposed apartheid; Greenberg portrays industry as passively conforming to its strictures. The following study of struggles between capital and the state over industrial decentralisation policy since World War II takes issue with these various accounts

South Africa's regional political economy: A critical analysis of reform strategy in the 1980s.

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented October, 1985Since 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

Autonomous Vehicles and Vulnerable Road-Users-Important Considerations and Requirements Based on Crash Data from Two Countries

(1) Background: Passenger vehicles equipped with advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) functionalities are becoming more prevalent within vehicle fleets. However, the full effects of offering such systems, which may allow for drivers to become less than 100% engaged with the task of driving, may have detrimental impacts on other road-users, particularly vulnerable road-users, for a variety of reasons. (2) Crash data were analysed in two countries (Great Britain and Australia) to examine some challenging traffic scenarios that are prevalent in both countries and represent scenarios in which future connected and autonomous vehicles may be challenged in terms of safe manoeuvring. (3) Road intersections are currently very common locations for vulnerable road-user accidents; traffic flows and road-user behaviours at intersections can be unpredictable, with many vehicles behaving inconsistently (e.g., red-light running and failure to stop or give way), and many vulnerable road-users taking unforeseen risks. (4) Conclusions: The challenges of unpredictable vulnerable road-user behaviour at intersections (including road-users violating traffic or safe-crossing signals, or taking other risks) combined with the lack of knowledge of CAV responses to intersection rules, could be problematic. This could be further compounded by changes to nonverbal communication that currently exist between road-users, which could become more challenging once CAVs become more widespread

Marxisms in the 21st Century

The current resurgence of Marxism is based on new sources of inspiration and creativity from movements that seek democratic, egalitarian and ecological alternatives to capitalism. The Marxism of many of these movements is neither dogmatic nor prescriptive, but rather, open, searching, utopian. It revolves around four primary factors: the importance of democracy for an emancipatory project; the ecological limits of capitalism; the crisis of global capitalism; and the learning of lessons from the failures of Marxist-inspired experiments. Marxisms in the Twenty-First Century challenges vanguardist Marxism featured in South Africa and beyond. Featuring leading thinkers from the Left, the book offers provocative ideas on interpreting our current world and serves as an excellent introduction to new ways of thinking about Marxism to students and scholars in the field. Many anti-capitalist traditions and themes - including democracy, globalisation, feminism, critique and ecology inform and shape the contributions in this volume