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The Hand on the Tiller: the Politics of State and Class in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Michael MacDonald  and
Wilmot James
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Extract

Marxist scholarship on South Africa's political economy was born as a meta-theoretical critique of liberalism in the 1960s and matured into a rich tradition of its own by the 1980s. As Marxists became more focused empirically and conceptually, they presented compelling evidence for their key analytical claims and generally bettered their liberal rivals—as they saw and portrayed them—in the debate over the complicity of capitalist development in the officially mandated racism of South Africa. Whereas liberals either ignored, minimised, or denied an association, Marxists argued that capitalism and its dominant classes systematically promoted and actively underwrote apartheid in particular, and white domination in general.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 1993 , pp. 387 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 The qualification is necessary because most ‘liberal’ scholarship is not liberal in the typical sense of the term. It maintains that South Africa is composed of groups not individuals, and that political institutions must take account of the illiberal nature of the society. On the other hand, some scholarship, mostly from economists, does adopt a classically liberal, capitalist position, and it is this that is often supported by business leaders and targeted by Marxist critics.Google Scholar

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21 Empirical research is obviously needed in this extremely sensitive area, given the current lack of relevant facts and figures. But the statement is strongly supported by anecdotal evidence, and in any case it would have been out of character for the National Party not to use the state actively to develop an Afrikaner bourgeoisie, given its commitment to both capitalism and the ethnic interests of its members and supporters. Other scholars have made much the same point, notably Charney, Craig, ‘The National Party, 1982–1985: a class alliance in crisis’, in James, Wilmot (ed.), The State of Apartheid (Boulder, 1987), pp. 5–36,Google Scholar and Innes, Duncan, ‘Monopoly Capitalism in South Africa’, in South African Review Service (ed.), South African Review I (Johannesburg, 1983), pp. 171–83.Google Scholar

22 Bundy, op. cit. pp. 210–13.

23 Nolutshungu, op. cit. pp. 116–45.

24 Cf. James, Wilmot G., Our Precious Metal: African labour in South Africa's gold industry, 1970–1990 (Cape Town, London, and Bloomington, 1992).Google Scholar

25 de Klerk, F.W., ‘A Hand on the Tiller for a Long Time’, in Financial Times (London), 7 05 1991.Google Scholar

26 Note, for example, de Klerk's comments in loc. cit.: ‘If affirmative action is to mean retribution, restoration, taking away from those who have, dishing it out, I'm absolutely against it’.Google Scholar

27 See ‘One Firm Hand on the Tiller: F. W. de Klerk outlines his objectives in South Africa's negotiations for a new constitution’, and ‘De Klerk Resists Rule of Black Majority in South Africa’, in Financial Times, 26 May 1993.Google Scholar

28 See, for example, the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal (New York), 19 February 1993.

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31 Cf. MacDonald, Michael, ‘The Siren's Song: the political logic of power-sharing in South Africa’, in Journal of Southern African Studies (Oxford), 18, 4, 12 1992, pp. 709–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 See Lijphart, Arend, Democracy in Plural Societies: a comparative exploration (New Haven, 1977), pp. 75–81.Google Scholar

33 McGrath, Mike, ‘Economic Growth, Income Distribution and Social Change’, in Nattrass, Nicoli and Ardington, Elizabeth (eds.), The Political Economy of South Africa (Cape Town, 1990), pp. 94–8.Google Scholar

34 MacDonald, loc. cit. pp. 723–5.