South Africa: Democracy and development in a post-apartheid society

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 28 March 1994Until the 1970s, South Africa represented a telling example of a fairly industrialised economy in which growth and development were facilitated by high levels of political repression. Gold mining almost from its start required huge numbers of cheap migrant labourers; gold's fixed price, the low quality of the ore and heavy capital outlays made a coercive labour system a condition of the industry's prosperity until the 1940s. The expansion of secondary industry during the Second World War enabled manufacturing to outstrip mining's contribution to GDP by 1945. This development was accompanied by accelerating urbanisation and the establishment in the main cities of a relatively skilled and increasingly well organised African working class. In certain respects, the "Apartheid" programmes of the Afrikaner Nationalist government elected in 1948 were directed at reversing the economic and social gains achieved by urbanised Africans during the previous decade. Reinforced controls on black labour mobility, intensified territorial segregation of blacks and whites, the curtailment of black collective bargaining rights, the removal of Africans' already very limited access to the franchise, and the suppression of popular political organisations, all these helped to ensure the attraction of massive flows of foreign capital into import substitution industries which the government helped to boost with walls of protective tariffs. Between 1950 and 1970, annual real GDP growth averaged at 5 per cent. In the 1970s, though, the economic costs of white supremacy began to outweigh the benefits. The denial of technical training to blacks underlay an alarming skills shortage. Low wages tightly limited the expansion of the domestic market. Increasing resources were required to staff and equip a huge public sector, much of it concerned with the administration of apartheid controls or with expensive economic projects conceived in anticipation of international embargoes on strategic imports. Moreover, controls notwithstanding, economic growth in the 1960s had nurtured a second rapid expansion of the African industrial working class, much of it in the main cities, despite the government's efforts to relocate labour and industries outside towns. This growth was matched by swelling primary and secondary school enrolments (6). By the early 1970s, black workers still lacked basic rights but with their skills, their growing literacy, and their numerical weight in the industrial economy, their bargaining power had become dramatically enhanced. During the next two decades economic recession, labour militancy, localised communal rebellions in black townships, guerilla insurgency, capital flight, credit restrictions, and the spiralling expense of militarised government all combined in 1989 to persuade the government to lift the legal restrictions on the black opposition and begin a negotiated democratisation. This history seems to add confirmation to the contention that "it is not the structural correspondence between capitalism and democracy which explains the persistence of democracy" but rather "capitalist development is associated with democracy because it transforms the class structure". Some theorists may argue that (political) "participation in the social order" is at certain stages in an economy's development a prerequisite for "sustained economic growth", but if this is the case it does not follow that states and ruling groups concede power and rights voluntarily. In South Africa democratisation is taking place because "pressures from subordinate classes have (become) strong enough to make demands for their inclusion credible". Historically, high levels of political repression facilitated capitalist economic development. In time, though, such repression became increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of social changes generated by industrialisation. Pressure from subordinate classes was undoubtedly the crucial agency in determining political transition in South Africa. Any attempt to predict the outcome of this transition must first investigate the political predispositions of popular classes as well as the institutions with which they will engage before looking at the developmental tasks which will confront a democratised government. After considering the question of whether these tasks can be tackled under democratic conditions, this essay will address the more general question, which arises from this case study, of whether democracy can help to foster development in developing countries

Political organisation and community protest: The African National Congress in the Rand Townships, 1955-1957

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented March 1978This paper will examine three instances of African protest: the attempts to resist the removals in the Johannesburg western areas, the opposition to Bantu Education and the Alexandra bus boycott of 1957. It was hoped that analyses of these movements would throw some light on the relationship of organised nationalist opposition to the less formal resistance that sprung from economic pressures rather than clearly perceived political aspirations. To have examined in detail protest in which the ANC was not obviously involved, might have provided: a more useful focus but unfortunately information on the kind of ‘informal’ protest described below is difficult to obtain from the more obvious sources which for reasons of time the research for this paper had to be limited. However an examination of the three campaigns does provide some insight into the relationship between the ANC and local interests and the extent to which it succeeded in channeling and expressing popular grievances. This may help to correct distortions which have resulted from a tendency to analyze African political opposition purely from the perspective of the nationalist movement, considering it in isolation from the general socio-economic context of black politics. The history of the ANC in the 1950s heeds to be written from a local level: how did branches operate, how were they viewed in the local community, what particular interests did they represent, was there anything socially distinct about their membership, how were the local communities structured

The Poqo insurrection

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented February 1986This paper is about one of the least successful of South Africa's revolutionary movements. Several thousand Poqo insurrectionists were arrested during the course of the 1960s. The vast majority of these were detained and convicted before they had had a chance to strike a single blow. Fewer than thirty deaths can be attributed to the activities of Poqo adherents of whom nearly the same number were sentenced to death in South African courts. The history of the Poqo uprisings is a history without a climax. Its final act takes place in the courtrooms not the barricades. Perhaps for this reason the Poqo story has lacked a chronicler. This paper is an attempt to compensate for the perfunctory treatment Poqo has received from historians. It provides a narrative of Poqo's development and a description of its social following. It then attempts to assess Poqo's historical significance

The African National Congress comes home

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 8 June 1992Two years of legal existence have enabled the ANC to acquire 900 branches, 500 000 signed-up members, a 20-storey office block in central Johannesburg, a fresh leadership, a democratic constitution, an elaborate administration, and an annual income which in 1990 topped R90-million. Its homecoming is consequently a story of considerable if uneven achievement. In February 1990, the ANC's leaders were suddenly confronted with the challenge of adapting an authoritarian and secretive movement formed by the harsh exigencies of exile to the requirements of a South African environment shaped by the tumultuous politics of the 1980s. Two years later, the process of changing the ANC into an organisation geared to open and democratic forms of popular mobilisation is far from complete. In 1992 the ANC still struggles to absorb and reconcile the experiences of three generations of leadership: the elderly veterans who emerged from decades of confinement on Robben Island; the middle-aged managers of an insurgent bureaucracy; and, finally, the youthful architects of the most sustained and widespread rebellion in South African history. ... To understand what the ANC has become in 1992, it is essential to know what kind of organisation it was in 1990. One way of doing this is through investigating its institutional structures and internal procedures. This is the approach which characterises most studies of the exile ANC during the 1980s. This literature depicts a most intricate and elaborate organisation which can be represented as an embryonic state - a ‘government-in-waiting’. It resembled a state in several respects

Class conflict, communal struggle and patriotic unity: The Communist Party of South Africa during the Second World War

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 7 October 1985The years of the Second World War witnessed a revival in the fortunes of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA). At the beginning of the war the Party's following numbered less than 300, it s influence in the trade unions was negligible, it was isolated from other political organisations among blacks, while it s efforts with whites had succeeded neither in checking the growth of fascism or Afrikaner nationalism nor in building class unity. Six years later the Party could count it s adherents in thousands rather than hundreds, it was capable of winning white local government elections, and its members presided over the largest-ever African trade union movement as well as contributing significantly to the leadership of the African and Indian Congresses. From 1945 knowledge of the Party’s development becomes vital for any understanding of the mainstream of black politics in South Africa. This paper will examine and attempt to explain the wartime expansion in the Communist Party's influence, first by referring to the social and economic conditions as well as the overall political environment of the time, and then by discussing the Party's policies and strategies’ CPSA responses to three different sets of movements or organisations will be discussed: movements of the urban poor, of peasants, and of labour. The paper will conclude with an evaluation of the Party's role and development during the period

The Paarl Insurrection

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented October 1979At half past two, early in the morning of Thursday, November 22nd, 1962, 250 men carrying axes, pangas and various self-made weapons left the Mbekweni location and marched on Paarl. On the outskirts of the city the marchers formed two groups, one destined for the prison where the intention was to release prisoners, the other to make an attack on the police station. Before the marchers reached Paarl’s boundaries, the police had already been warned of their approach by a bus driver. Police patrols were sent out and one of these encountered the marchers in Paarl’s Main Street. Having lost the advantage of surprise, the marchers in Main Street began to throw stones at cars, shop windows and any police vans which they came across on their way to the police station. The police at the station were armed with sten guns and rifles in anticipation of the attack. At ten minutes past four between 75 and a hundred men advanced on the station throwing stones. When the attackers came within twenty-five yards of the station they were fired upon and two of them were immediately killed. The marchers then broke up into smaller groups and several were arrested or shot during their retreat. Some of the men who had taken part in the assault on Paarl police station met up in Loop Street with the group that was marching on the prison. These men regrouped and embarked on an attack on the inhabitants of Loop Street. Three houses and two people in the street were attacked: a seventeen year old girl and a young man were killed and four other people were wounded. According to police evidence, five insurgents were killed and fourteen were wounded. By five o clock, the Paarl uprising was over; police reinforcements had arrived from Cape Town and the men from Mbekweni were in full retreat. This paper has two purposes. One is to provide an analysis of the causes of the Paarl disturbance. In the literature on black South African opposition movements, the events in Paarl are scarcely mentioned. This is at least partly because the participants were not politically very sophisticated or articulate; they are consequently difficult to write about. But the neglect of the events in Paarl is also attributable to a bias in much of the relevant scholarship: the emphasis of historical studies has been on black ideological response and has tended to focus on the most fluent articulants of black aspirations. There is a tendancy for the history of black South African opposition to be intellectual history and to concern itself with the thoughts, responses and actions of an elite group

'We are being punished because we are poor'. The Bus Boycotts of Evaton and Alexandra, 1955-1957

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented March 1979This article concerns itself with two bus boycotts, one well known, the other less so. They are interesting in themselves, but here it is suggested that they are relevant towards an understanding of South African black resistance in general, and in particular in the context of the 1950s when African political organisations were attempting to mobilise large numbers of people in campaigns which had the ultimate aim of hastening the collapse of the existing political structure. A problem of that period , noted by many commentators both hostile and friendly to the liberation movement, is that despite the Congress Alliance's efforts to articulate its long-term aims through immediate issues: pass laws, wages, and so forth; despite the government's lack of concern to effectively legitimise its authority in the eyes of the masses; despite this being a period of economic stagnation relative to the preceding decade, so wages rose only very slowly and probably declined in real terms, nevertheless, mass response to African political organisation was uneven and often disappointing. Ben Turok, a former activist within the Congress movement, tells us that by the second half of the 1950s, after an initial promise at the beginning of the decade, support for the national movement was falling off in urban areas; that frustration and repression were beginning to promote political apathy (Turok 1973: 333). The boycotts will therefore be discussed within the general context of the problems of political mobilisation

African refugees in the southern Mediterranean

Between 1960 and 2000, most Africans travelling across the Mediterranean were North Africans by origin, that is, Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan, moving first to France, and subsequently to Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, responding to European demand for low skilled and low paid labour. Legal Moroccan emigration between the 1960s and the 2000s had created a diaspora of 2.6 million former Moroccans in Europe. Meanwhile, 700,000 Tunisians were living in France in 2003 (Baldwin-Edwards, 2006, p. 312).peer-reviewe

State formation and state consolidation in post colonial Southern Africa

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 19 August 1996Post 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

Political corruption in South Africa

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 18 August 1997Many people believe that widespread political corruption exists in South Africa. In a survey published by IDASA in 1996, 46 per cent of the sample consulted felt that most officials were engaged in corruption and only six per cent believed there was clean government. In another poll conducted by the World Value Survey, 15 per cent of the respondents were certain that all public servants were guilty of bribery and corruption and another 30 per cent thought that most officials were venal. The IDASA survey indicated that 41 per cent of the sample felt that public corruption was increasing. Most recently, Transparency International, an international monitoring agency, has reported on a survey which confirms a growing perception among foreign businessmen that official corruption in South Africa is widespread. These perceptions have probably been stimulated by the proliferation of press reportage on corruption as well as debates between national politicians but the evidence concerns perceptions and in itself is an unreliable indicator of the scope or seriousness of the problem except in so far as the existence of such beliefs can encourage corrupt transactions between officials and citizens. In reviewing the South African evidence this paper will attempt to answer four questions. Is the present South African political environment peculiarly susceptible to corruption? Were previous South African administrations especially corrupt? What forms has political corruption assumed since 1994 and how serious has been its incidence? Finally, does modern South African corruption mainly represent habits inherited from the past or is it a manifestation of new kinds of behaviour