The politics of the South African 'transition'

May 8, 2002
Issue 

South Africa, Limits to Change: The Political Economy of Transition
BY HEIN MARAIS
Juta Academic
Cape Town, 2001
Ordering enquires at <education@juta.co.za> or visit <http://www.juta.co.za>

REVIEW BY CHRIS BOLSMANN

Hein Marais' 1998 account of South Africa's transition from apartheid to formal democracy offered a crucial interpretation of the political economy of the South Africa today. It prefigured other important critical contributions, including Patrick Bond's Elite Transition (2000) and Ashwin Desai's The Poors of Chatsworth (2001). The revised and expanded edition of Limits to Change continues in this tradition of critical and engaging analysis.

Marais shares the hope of the South African "miracle" but juxtaposes this against the reality. Samir Amin's forward succinctly remarks that the "irony [of the South African transition] ... [is that the] working classes [are] now saddled with the task of achieving what capital, with the active support of the Western powers over several decades, failed to do so".

In chapter one, "The Origins of a divided society", a concise overview of the historical legacies of capitalist accumulation in South Africa is provided: "The accumulation path ... corresponded to those of other African colonies, with the important distinction that a large settler population, itself segmented culturally and socio-economically, soon became ascendant in the political, administrative and, later, economic realms."

In subsequent chapters, Marais explains how South Africa's capitalist development resulted in a "burgeoning, multi-dimensional crisis" which provoked a "resurgence of resistance" by South Africa's racially oppressed majority, which was marked by "the fortitude, determination and perseverance demonstrated by millions of South Africans". In response, the apartheid regime attempted three phases of "reform": in 1977-82, 1982-7, and 1987-9.

Marais argues that the South African capitalist class's central concern during the negotiations that led to the managed dismantling of the racist apartheid system and the historic 1994 elections was "transparent and aggressively expressed: the need for a market economy".

While Marais contends that despite the new African National Congress government having "some latitude in devising an alternative economic strategy" it instead chose "the triumph of orthodoxy" in the quest for "international competitiveness".

By as early as 1996, Marais maintains, "the ANC government's economic policy had acquired an overt class character. It was geared to serve the respective prerogatives of domestic and international capital and the aspirations of the emerging black bourgeoisie". He argues that the ANC had no economic policy at the time of its unbanning in 1990. The ANC would soon embraced the notion that there was "no alternative" to the "hard truths" faced "by a developing country in a world that was being reshaped by neo-liberal globalisation".

The adoption by the ANC government of the neo-liberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) economic strategy in June 1996 "sandwiched the government between two stringent and fundamental prescriptions: fiscal austerity and tax revenue would not exceed a ceiling of 25 per cent" of national income. Marais notes that GEAR has made economic growth, job creation and socio-economic equality impossible. "More than half a million (non-agricultural) jobs were lost between 1994-2000", he points out.

In chapter eight, "The politics of an alternative", Marais argues that it is necessary "to shift the analysis beyond the crude framework of a 'sell-out' or 'betrayal'". He discusses the role of the South African Communist Party and quips that its theory that apartheid South Africa represented "a colonialism of a special type" has been replaced with a theory that amounts to a "third way of a special type". Marais insists that a political strategy in South Africa today must emphasise a class struggle approach rather than class compromise.

Limits to Change is an important book for readers interested in the politics of the transition in South Africa. However, it also has resonance for those concerned with the trajectory of neo-liberalism globally. The text is dense and richly substantiated, yet it remains accessible and clear, making the subject matter lively and well argued.

[Chris Bolsmann is a student at the University of Warwick, Coventry.]

From Green Left Weekly, May 8, 2002.
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