Nationalism without a nation: the rise and fall of Zulu nationalism in South Africa’s transition to democracy, 1975–99

During South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy the most virulent opposition to change came from Zulu nationalism. Post‐apartheid, however, Zulu nationalism has largely waned. This is because Zulu nationalism was instrumentally invoked and jettisoned by the Inkatha Freedom Party. Beginning in 1975, Inkatha embraced a ‘third way’ resistance politics between ‘acquiescence’ in apartheid and ‘impossible’ militant resistance. It was only later that Inkatha turned to Zuluness when it was out‐competed by the ANC and allies, first over the leadership of resistance politics and secondly during the transition. After 1994 the inclusion of the IFP in democratic government made old strategies redundant and thus it abandoned Zulu nationalism. Moreover, while a widespread sense of Zuluness exists, the meanings attached to it vary to the extent that the Zulu nation cannot exist. Thus the Zulu nationalism of the transition was an elite‐driven political nationalism prosecuted without a popularly imagined Zulu nation.     

‘The Bay and the Ocean’: A History of the ANC in Swaziland, 1960–1979

Abstract

South African political refugees first began arriving in Swaziland in significant numbers in the late 1950s. In the mid-1960s the ANC tried to recruit these refugees to engage in operational activities but with little success. After Swazi independence in 1968 the kingdom's rulers were too scared of South African retaliation to provide active support for the ANC's armed struggle. Meanwhile ANC members in Swaziland were cut off from ANC structures in central Africa because the kingdom was landlocked between white-ruled South Africa and Mozambique. This changed following the army coup in Lisbon in 1974 which led to Mozambican independence. Mozambique's provisional government allowed the ANC access to Swaziland. The ANC sent Thabo Mbeki to try and establish links with activists in South Africa, but whilst he made some progress, this was reversed by police countermeasures early in 1976. A rump of activists left behind after Mbeki's expulsion led ANC efforts to handle the exodus of youths into Swaziland after the June 1976 Soweto uprising. In the late 1970s Swaziland formed part of what the ANC referred to as the ‘Eastern Front’ of its liberation struggle. In trying to stop ANC infiltrations South Africa made use of an extensive network of highly-placed agents in the Swazi establishment. However this collaboration proved ineffective in stopping the ANC because, even if it wished to, Swaziland lacked the resources to prevent its territory being used, whilst there were also many prominent Swazis, including King Sobhuza II, whose sympathies lay with the ANC. By the end of the 1970s ANC activity in Swaziland had grown to such a scale that it began to unnerve the Swazi authorities. This set the stage for the closing of the ‘Eastern Front’ in the early 1980s.     

南非民主进程的顿挫与延续——略论博塔的改革总战略

博塔任南非政府首脑期间,面对索韦托暴动引起的政治、经济与社会动荡和国内外的新形势,提出和推行改革总战略：对不适应南非现代化建设和政治稳定的现存制度进行改革;坚决镇压反抗白人统治、破坏社会秩序的行为;全力营造一个有利于改革总战略的国际环境。其目的是维护白人统治和种族隔离制度。他的改革在沃斯特的种族政策调整与德克勒克的民主改革之间架起了一座桥梁,起到了承前启后的作用,将南非的改革进程带入一个新阶段,一定程度上改善了黑人的处境。但博塔的镇压造成国内局势紧张并迅速恶化,以至于到了几乎失控的程度,改革进程陷入停顿。     

Moral Panic and Cultural Mobilization: Responses to Transition,Crime and HIV/AIDS in KwaZulu‐Natal

This article discusses the micropolitics behind the murder of an ANC councillor in a KwaZulu‐Natal slum area in 1999, and the forms of violence which have continued in the aftermath of apartheid. The history of violence is traced back to struggles between the IFP and the ANC in the 1980s which interacted with differences in generational, moral and cultural outlook, as well as with conflicts between Zulu‐speaking residents and immigrants from the Transkei. Since apartheid was dismantled, similar patterns of conflict have persisted, but now within a local context in which one political party holds almost total sway. Post‐apartheid violence is related to rivalries around local state resources in a situation of continued poverty, and to moral and ideological disagreements which, since 1994, have been intensified by the HIV/AIDS epidemic as well as by an escalation of local crime. Strategies for the moral rehabilitation of local society, such as virginity testing, are discussed, as is the controversy around them, rooted in oppositions between youth and elders, and between different cultural styles. Finally, the mismatch between the concentration of political power at municipal ward level and the diversity of positions expressed in local civil society is raised as a reason why disagreements have continued to involve violent conflict.     

基层自治：中国民主政治的特点和优势及其路径选择

党的十七大首次把“基层群众自治制度”写进代表大会的报告之中。把“基层群众自治制度”与人民代表大会制度、中国共产党领导的多党合作和政治协商制度、民族区域自治制度并列纳入中国特色社会主义政治制度范畴,它表明我国基层民主自治具有在党和政府的主导下坚持正确的方向、关注民生、直接反映民众的利益诉求、注重制度创新与继承的统一、追求与经济社会相适应的最终发展目标的特点和优势。为了最大限度地体现这一特点和优势,必须努力探索实现基层民主自治的最佳路径。     

毛泽东巩固人民民主专政的思想轨迹

建国以来 ,毛泽东率领全党全国人民为巩固人民民主专政的国家政权 ,在政治、经济、思想文化建设等方面进行了极其艰难、复杂、曲折的探索。我们应该严肃地、实事求是地、全面准确地、科学地进一步加以认真的总结和研究。因为它关系着对党和国家近 30年的历史评价 ,关系着 1 0亿中国人民在共产党领导下努力探索社会主义建设道路的伟大实践的评价。     

论鄂豫皖根据地对抗日战争胜利的历史贡献

鄂豫皖根据地创立于土地革命战争时期,为全国第二大革命根据地。由该根据地诞生的红军部队,历经浴火斗争,在抗日战争爆发后分别改编为八路军和新四军主力部队,成为中共领导的重要抗日武装力量。根据地重视干部培养和人才集聚,为抗日斗争和日后中共建政,培养了大批干部人才。鄂豫皖根据地虽然长期孤悬敌后,但是在中共组织的坚强领导下,抗日武装队伍不断壮大,游击战争始终得以坚持,有力打击和牵制了敌伪顽力量,根据地成为中共抗日武装东进南下的桥头堡,为抗日战争的最终胜利以及中共"绾毂中原"在全国取得胜利,发挥了重要的战略作用。     

Legacy Underplayed or Ignored? Tsietsi Mashinini: The Forgotten Warrior of South Africa's Liberation Struggle

Tsietsi Mashinini symbolises youth resistance to racism and imperialism after he heroically led the June 16 1976 Soweto student uprisings that defied South Africa's apartheid government. Subsequently, the United Nations condemned apartheid as a crime against humanity, but Tsietsi became a political exile at the tender age of 19. In exile, he formed the South African Youth Revolutionary Council (SAYRCO) together with his comrades from the Soweto Students Representative Council (SSRC) that was banned by Pretoria in 1977 along with numerous other organisations. Ironically, Tsietsi's individual and collective legacy is underplayed or ignored in contemporary South Africa. His illustrious role has only grudgingly been recognised long after South Africa achieved liberal democracy in 1994. Yet Tsietsi's heroism and legacy inspired the students that he led when confronting the apartheid system. Like Tsietsi, thousands left the country to join the anti-apartheid liberation struggle. Thus, his activities remain etched deeply in their minds whenever they reflect on his legacy annually during the 1976 uprising's anniversary, now called Youth Day. Others put increasing pressure on apartheid at home until it relinquished power through negotiations. This article examines Tsietsi Mashinini's legacy and his contribution to South Africa's freedom struggle based on a review of the literature, historical records and media reports, theoretical reflection guided by Rational Choice Theory and Game Theory, and an analysis of the awards given to freedom struggle stalwarts and other South African luminaries. It concludes with observations on Tsietsi Mashinini's legacy, with the author's contention that his legacy—underplayed or ignored—will forever haunt post-1994 South Africa's democracy.     

What Happened to the “Promised Land”? A Fanonian Perspective on Post‐Apartheid South Africa

Abstract: This paper reviews post‐apartheid South Africa through Fanon's critical analysis of decolonization. Since, for Fanon, apartheid represented the purest form of the Manichean politics of space that characterizes colonialism, a Fanonian perspective on South Africa asks to what extent has the geographical layout of apartheid been remapped? Addressing this question necessitates shifting the “geography of reason” from technical discourses of policy‐makers to the lived reality of the “damned of the earth”. From this perspective, Fanon's critique becomes relevant in two ways, first as a prism to understand the rise of xenophobic violence as a symptom of the degeneration of the idea of South Africa's “promised land” and second as a way to listen to a new grassroots shack dweller movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, that is challenging both neoliberal and progressive assumptions by advocating a quite different geographic layout for a “truly democratic” society.     

THE OWL OF MINERVA AND THE IRONIC FATE OF THE PROGRESSIVE PRAXIS OF RADICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY IN POST‐APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

Despite its title and stated objectives this edited volume does not provide a broad and inclusive survey of post‐apartheid South African historiographical developments. Its main topic is the unexpected demise in the post‐apartheid context of the radical or revisionist approach that had invigorated and transformed the humanities and social studies during the 1970s and 1980s. In the context of the anti‐apartheid struggle the radical historians had developed a plausible model of praxis for progressive scholarship, yet in the new post‐apartheid democratic South Africa radical historical scholarship itself encountered a crisis of survival. This should not be confused with a general “crisis” of historical scholarship in South Africa, as some of the uneven contributions to this volume contend, as that remains an active and diversely productive field due also to substantial contributions by historians not based in South Africa. If the dramatic and ironic fate of radical historical scholarship in the context of the transition to a post‐apartheid democracy is the volume's primary topic, then it unfortunately fails to provide serious and sustained critical reflection on the origins and possible explanations for that crisis. A marked feature of the accounts of “history making” provided in this volume is the (former) radical historians' lack of self‐reflexivity and the scant interest shown in the underlying history of their own intellectual trajectories.     

On the identity of NATO

Although we may well be missing the point about NATO if we conceptualize it as just another military alliance, defining NATO as a community of liberal democratic values and norms is problematic. A distinction must be made between a community of values linked to particular experiences and a particular context and a community based on democratic principles. What has kept NATO together beyond the Cold War is a sense of shared history and fate. If such a 'value-hypothesis' about NATO is correct, the continued survival of the organization does not depend only on the marginal costs of maintaining it continuing to outweigh those of creating a new organization. The future of NATO will also depend on the extent to which it is possible to restore (or reestablish) a sense of shared fate and mutual confidence across the Atlantic.     

Expanding Women's Co-operatives in China through Institutional Linkages

This article examines the institutional linkages between three women workers' co-operatives, the first women's credit co-operative in China, and the co-operative support organization, the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Co-operatives (ICCIC). The study shows that Chinese women in rural areas have increasingly adopted co-operatives as a form of organization in their efforts to address the problem of their lack of access to resources, including land, credit, jobs, training and information, and to participate in the mainstream economy as an organized force. This article demonstrates that stronger institutional linkages between local offices of the All-China Women's Federation and the ICCIC encourage the growth of women's co-operative activities. It raises two sets of policy issues that are central to the development of co-operatives and women's banking: the continued growth of these activities will depend upon the government adopting legislation to define the legal framework governing co-operative relations and management systems, and establishing gender-inclusive policies to increase credit to women's income-generating activities.     

Corporatism as Ethnic Compromise: Labour Relations in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract. Conventional wisdom associates corporatism with undemocratic elite collusion, or worse, with the fascist order of Mussolini, Franco or Perq?n. However, another form of corporatism involves institutionalised bargaining between representatives of organised interest groups. This democratic corporatism engages in trade-offs between labour unions, business and state bureaucrats. Where these groups largely coincide with different ethnic constituencies, as in South Africa, the outcome of their bargaining also amounts to an ethnic compromise. This analysis explores the scope, potential and limitations of corporatist labour relations in the new South Africa. Embraced by the African National Congress (ANC) government, legalised codetermination none the less encounters strong reservation from both socialist union leaders as well as the white business establishment. Alienated workers feel shortchanged by elite deals which are also resented by fragmented business sectors. How far state representatives can mediate between different ethno-racial/class interests and realise the promise of less adversarial relations for mutually beneficial growth and stability is being probed with an analysis of the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac). Liberal South African analysts fear a one-party dominant state, because of likely future ANC hegemony and ethnic voting habits. This legitimate anxiety, however, needs to be balanced by the important checks placed on the ANC by corporatism. Even a poorly implemented corporatism of consensus seeking, it is argued, proves better than an ethno-racial adversarialism of an alternative to the non-racial ANC.     

South Africa: The politics of pre‐negotiations, 1989–1991

The international community has hailed South African state president, F.W. de Klerk, a ‘liberator’. De Klerk liberalised the political process and deracialised aspects of state and society. But how committed to racial reform are be and his government? The regime's policies, strategies and tactics over the last two years raise many concerns that the international community has either baulked or simply ignored. The argument that the government must be rewarded and encouraged is fallacious. The South African government reacts only to pressure. The international community acted prematurely by lifting some sanctions and is undermining the prospects for a post‐apartheid society based on equal rights.     

Campaigning Against Apartheid: The Rise,Fall and Legacies of the South Africa United Front 1960–1962

ABSTRACT

The international struggle against apartheid that emerged during the second half of the twentieth century made the system of legalised racial oppression in South Africa one of the world’s great moral causes. Looking back at the anti-apartheid struggle, a defining characteristic was the scope of the worldwide efforts to condemn, co-ordinate, and isolate the country. In March 1961, the international campaign against apartheid achieved its first major success when Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd chose to withdraw South Africa from the Commonwealth following vocal protests at the Heads of State Summit held in London. As a consequence, it appeared albeit briefly, that external pressure would effectively serve as a catalyst for achieving far-reaching and immediate political change in South Africa. The global campaign, centred on South Africa remaining in the Commonwealth, was the first of its kind launched by South Africa’s national liberation movements, and signalled the beginning of thirty years of continued protest and lobbying. The contributions from one organisation that had a role in launching and co-ordinating this particular transnational campaign, the South Africa United Front (SAUF), an alliance of liberation groups, have been largely forgotten. Leading members of the SAUF claimed the organisation had a key part in South Africa’s subsequent exit from the Commonwealth, and the purpose of this article is to explore the validity of such assertions, as well as the role and impact it had in generating a groundswell of opposition to apartheid in the early 1960s. Although the SAUF’s demands for South Africa to leave the Commonwealth were ultimately fulfilled, the documentary evidence suggests that its campaigning activities and impact were not a decisive factor; however the long-term significance of the SAUF, and the position it had in the rise of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) has not been fully recognised. As such, the events around the campaign for South Africa’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth act as a microcosm of developments that would define the international struggle against apartheid.     

The long shadow of apartheid: a critical assessment of heritage transformation in South Africa 25 years on

ABSTRACT

Based on insights gained from two decades of research on South African heritage and monuments, this paper critically reflects on the status quo of heritage transformation in South Africa 25 years after the end of apartheid. It assesses new directions in national heritage policy and government strategy in relation to recent developments around post-apartheid heritage and the popular demand for a removal of ‘colonial statues’, which gained impetus from the #Rhodes Must Fall campaign. It is argued that the government’s approach to heritage transformation and most notably its treatment of white minority heritage, dominated by the ‘juxtaposition model’, has had limited success. The paper illustrates how heritage and the memory of the past are entangled with socio-political and economic realities in the present, which in turn is overshadowed by the long-term effects of apartheid and impacted by global or transnational considerations, such as foreign investment and tourism.     

Afrikaner Nationalism in Action: F. C. Erasmus and South Africa's Defence Forces 1948–1959

Abstract. F. C. Erasmus became South Africa's defence minister in 1948 after two decades as the leading political organiser for the National Party. Although an architect of the Nationalists' post‐war victory, he was not considered a minister of the first rank. Erasmus initiated a process of ridding the defence force of officers who he believed were associated with the government of the Anglophile Jan Smuts and replacing them with party supporters. As a result, the military often lost experienced and talented officers, many with combat exposure. Erasmus felt that the armed services had been too British in ethos and appearance. He inaugurated tighter regulations on bilingualism, introduced Boer rank titles, launched new uniforms and original medals and decorations, to the acclaim of the Afrikaner Volk. His purpose was to have a defence force which was uniquely ‘South African’.     

Character, ‘Ordered Liberty’, and the Mission to Civilise: British Moral Justification of Empire, 1870–1914

In a path-breaking study of the thought of Sir Henry Maine, Karuna Mantena has recently argued that the overthrow, in the second half of the nineteenth century, of the liberal imperialism promoted by Macaulay and James Mill meant that the ‘civilising mission’ became a mere alibi for continued British rule in the empire and that it was drained of all moral content. The article demonstrates, using a wide range of contemporary sources, that, although many British imperialists thought that Asian and African civilisations might never progress to the point of enjoying constitutional government, they did believe that it was the purpose of British rule to bring to their colonial subjects the benefits of what they called ‘ordered liberty’. This they saw as the foundation of Britain's own greatness and as essentially a moral force. Nonetheless, the article goes on to show that one purpose of the civilising mission was to strengthen empire sentiment at home, and thus to underwrite the moral authority of the gentlemanly elites who ran it. The latter feared that the advent of democracy in Britain might otherwise undermine ordered liberty at home and weaken the commitment to the imperial cause.     

Difficult but Not Impossible: The ANC's Decentralization Strategy in South Africa

As the neo‐liberal project has spread across the globe, decentralization has been a key component of it. In South Africa, the neo‐liberal macro‐economic strategy of the African National Congress (ANC) involves support for fiscal and administrative decentralization partly as a way to bring the private sector into basic service delivery and supposedly to make local government more efficient and effective. However, the ANC also sees decentralization as a way to empower the historically disadvantaged black population. Community‐based public–private partnerships have been one of the chief initiatives in this regard. In the metropolitan municipality of Port Elizabeth, small black contracting companies have been hired and trained to dispose of waste, construct roads and build houses. While not free of tensions and problems, this approach to decentralization has fostered a form of democratic development. This article uses examples from the Port Elizabeth experience to test and reflect upon a number of issues which are raised in the literature on decentralization.     

A Bible,an Ax,and a Tablet: Tocqueville's Newspapers and Everyday Political Discourse

The relationship between the free press and democracy is at the core of much modern political theory. With the advent of digital media and the decline of newspapers, there is a need to reexamine this relationship. Tocqueville was an astute observer of the importance of newspapers to democratic life and the drawbacks of the medium. This article examines the central features of Tocqueville's view of newspapers, the issues he saw with the tone of newspapers in Jacksonian America, and the value of newspapers. I argue that this analysis shows the importance of a free press to democratic life but that digital media often lacks the local element that Tocqueville saw as an essential feature of newspapers, and this deficiency is problematic for maintaining democratic liberty.