Neoliberalism and the State of Belonging in South Africa 3030399303, 9783030399306

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Neoliberalism and the State of Belonging in South Africa Derick A. Becker

Neoliberalism and the State of Belonging in South Africa

Derick A. Becker

Neoliberalism and the State of Belonging in South Africa

Derick A. Becker University of Nottingham Malaysia Semenyih, Malaysia

ISBN 978-3-030-39930-6    ISBN 978-3-030-39931-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39931-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Alex Linch / shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgement

To the readers of a certain age unfamiliar with life in a North American political science graduate program in the aughts, the Perestroika letter may mean little beyond its amusing title. The letter was a quiet protest; a denunciative missive against the narrow conception of research in journals controlled by mandarins of orthodoxy whose whims of publication determined careers. Even those who recall it may struggle to explain its significance. In bringing it up here I do not wish to suggest that I will add to or critique its argument. But in thinking about this book and how it came to be I cannot help but think of it as a story of what is possible in the reality of professional life in contemporary higher education. I see the story in an oddly positive sense, however. One may still find in this story a polemic or certainly a story whose narrative rests on the same creaky academic structures critiqued by Perestroika and others. But my intention is merely to trace how I got here, the path this book followed, and express my gratitude to those I’ve known along the way. This book is the product of a career born into a recession and a life chasing jobs ever since. I have lived the hustling and fragile adjunct existence and followed visiting positions across two continents over nearly a decade. In that world professional development is largely self-funded, conferences usually last minute and of questionable value. In between were fallow years that, owing to the absence of a family to care for, I used to travel and ultimately write what I present here. I have to acknowledge an odd debt to that existence for it played a role in getting to this point. I’m as proud as I can be of what I’ve produced. I’m glad in a way that professional life dragged this project out over years. Each new class I had v

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to create became an opportunity to explore another idea, a broader literature. When there’s little time to write there’s plenty of time to think. This book then is a product of what I thought I could do in the life I had: a work of theory and history that I hope crosses a few disciplinary divides to tell a story of South Africa. My thoughts here stem from long periods of reflection outside of the usual professional circuit. Seclusion is a reality, however, of funding conferences and organising grants as you travel across jobs never quite sure about the year to come. For me that is part of the story of intellectual curiosity and wandering I hope is evident here. But it is also a story of what is possible in the fractured life of many academics. In a way then it mirrors in minor the argument of this book: the possibilities within a situated existence in a given time and place. Over the years I have found myself, however temporarily, working alongside a great many people that in some way influenced me or this book. Some of my earliest thoughts were developed and shared during my time at Colgate University, a position I only found with the help of Betty Hanson whose recommendation surely secured the job. Al Yee and Fred Chernoff quietly listened to my inchoate—and probably chaotic—ideas but still managed to genuinely encourage me. The academic job hunt can shake the confidence of even stoics at times and honest encouragement is rare. Here too then I must thank Jennifer Sterling-Folker, Mark Boyer, Brian Urlacher, Sencer Yeralan, and, from an earlier time, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson. They have all pushed, challenged, and supported me along the way. Much earlier research was also greatly aided by the archives at Fort Hare and my friend Loyiso’s immense help during my doctoral research in South Africa. I also have to thank Andy Aoki at Augsburg who always managed to find a class to teach to keep my nose above water as I finished this manuscript. Intellectually my ideas owe much to my work with John Aberg and Hannah Wittmeyer. Echoes of their influence bounce throughout these pages. And while I would not want to put the blame for my thoughts on Aaron, Dan, Andrew, Kevin or Jackie, certainly how I present them owes much to our many conversations over far too many beers. It seems somehow fitting that something born of a peripatetic intellectual path should find its way to the page in a similar manner. Much of the initial writing took place during what turned out to be a two year absence from academia. The outline and first attempts were hammered out in a frigid apartment in Cusco thanks to a cheap ticket and a fundamental misunderstanding of the Southern Hemisphere’s seasons. Far greater writing proceeded when I reached Colombia. Juls and Jorge forever have my

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­ ratitude for helping make my time in Medellin gracefully productive. g Warmer weather helped put this book in the right direction. Writing flowed like this, bouncing from place to place, before I found a suitable conclusion at the line of control between Pakistan and India in the Nubra Valley. During my time in Sarajevo, thinking I’d found a touch of (in retrospect mistaken) stability, I somehow managed to organise this mess into something fit for a publisher. And throughout all of this I must extend my profound thanks for the support of my friends and family, particularly my parents, and lastly my nephews. Somehow the idea of you one day seeing my name on a book helped me just finally stop writing and give this beast to the publisher. And that’s how I got here now. This is what I have to offer you: some thoughts about the world, about the state, about the people of South Africa, and how to think about it all. It’s not perfect; but then it wouldn’t have been any fun.

Contents

Introduction: There Is No Alternative—Globalization and Post-Apartheid South Africa  1 No Island Unto Itself: Spatial Performativity and Production of the State 35 The Meaning of Belonging: Race and the Making of South Africa 81 The Politics of Discontent and the Early State: On the Origins and Death of Apartheid125 A State in Transition: The Negotiated Birth of the Post-Apartheid State159 On the State of Belonging: What a Theory of Space Tells Us About Neoliberalism and Apartheid in Contemporary South Africa223 Bibliography239 Index257

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It is hardly recognised as a truism in our field but popular and literary perceptions of the political world are often deeply revealing of a truth we, as professional scholars, seem to miss. By this I do not necessarily mean— nor mean to malign—Jutta Weldes’ (2003) work on fiction and how we understand the political. Rather I am thinking more, for example, on how the late Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail was able to tell us more about modern American presidential campaigning than most journalists could—and certainly more than could be grasped by the plethora of campaign studies. It was with this in mind that in reading Ngũgı ̃ wa Thiong’o’s novel, The Wizard of the Crow, I was struck, not just by the subtle ways in which he rendered traditional storytelling into a compellingly written narrative, but by the way in which a critical reading of African politics and life was portrayed as anything but; it was simply taken for granted that the reader and the author shared a common understanding of ‘this is how it is’. There is the sycophancy of personal politics, the truly laughable corruption, and the deep intertwining of Christianity, the traditional, and something closely approximating a psychological analysis of the place of witchcraft in the way the novel’s namesake, the Wizard of the Crow, plies his trade by accident and with a conscious nod to its ritual role if not substance in healing the afflicted. It is, however, the political that is most relevant to my purposes here. It is here that the novel is most revealing of truths that we as scholars ought to pay attention to. The novel takes place in the fictional African state of © The Author(s) 2020 D. A. Becker, Neoliberalism and the State of Belonging in South Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39931-3_1

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Aburiria under the dictatorship of ‘The Leader’ and his attempts to secure funding for an absurd monument to his megalomania, aptly called ‘marching to heaven’. The novel is deeply revealing of the ways in which race and racism are acutely felt personally, politically, and quite simply as a matter of course for the African state. It is also a reflection on how the state and the political are never merely local but global as well, economically, politically, and culturally. However far the leaders of African states may be removed from the white Western world, there remains a confounding, deep connection here with the play of politics in the African state. This is what we must pay close attention to for it speaks volumes about not simply the nature of the state in Africa but the state in general. The easiest example is the first. The fictional Aburiria, like many developing states, in order to meet its grandiose plans must seek outside help. Here wa Thiong’o merely substitutes the ‘Global Bank’ for the World Bank and the deep, if indirect, control global financial institutions exercise. No doubt the fictional Marching to Heaven is a folly of humorous proportions, but it is taken quite seriously by the Bank. Studies are launched and the politicians lay on the best pageantry to woo the bankers’ support. The project also serves as a backdrop for the opposition who seek to disrupt the Ruler’s plans as a waste of money for a poor country. Whether they are successful or not is open to interpretation for the Bank’s technocrats leave Aburiria without making a commitment. At the suggestion of one of his many sycophantic ministers, the Ruler goes to America and the headquarters of the Global Bank to both woo the West and make his case for Marching to Heaven. The Ruler is, however, snubbed at every turn in his desire to meet with his equals in the West; snubs that he takes to be clearly racist. This is portrayed most tellingly when, holed up for weeks in his sumptuous New York hotel, the leader receives the final ‘no’ from the Bank. Here the phantasmagorical beauty of the novel comes forward. As the Ruler receives the news from a visibly worried minister he begins to swell up like a balloon. He continues to swell up to fill the room uttering if… if… I were only white, they would not do this to me. The Ruler feels snubbed all around. And this is brought home again upon his return to Aburiria when he is visited by the American ambassador who dismisses the Ruler’s argument that he has been a close friend since the Cold War. He is in turn diplomatically told that the world is different now, he must make reforms, liberalise the country and the state. Capital, he is told, must have freedom to move if it is to grow. He, the Ruler, cannot expect any support until he begins to fit the new global norm.

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More tellingly for me, however, is the way this same story is told on a more personal level through the character of Tajirika, at once a mere owner of a construction firm, later elevated to head of the committee of Marching to Heaven and later higher still. This character, quite unlike the titular Wizard of the Crow, embodies for wa Thiong’o something of the truisms of a stereotypical man of modest wealth (and serious ambition) in Africa. He also serves as a focal point around which a larger story of Africa in the world is to be understood. Tajirika’s elevation to head of the Marching to Heaven committee has an immediate—and tragicomic— effect on his life. Mere minutes after receiving the phone call to confirm his new position, Tajirika begins receiving callers from all the businessmen in the country who hope to do business with him and make money from this White Elephant. Each visitor, we are told, leaves behind his ‘calling card’; a less than subtle reference to the little envelope of cash used to ingratiate oneself. He receives so many calling cards, in fact, that he stuffs three large sacks with them. Such money brings powerful visions of wealth but also fear. By the next morning his wife finds him staring into the mirror clawing at his face uttering only ‘if… if…’ This continues for some time before he is brought before the Wizard of the Crow who fantastically declares that he suffers from a debilitating case of ‘whiteache’, the desire, the need to be white but cannot. The money has brought fear that his power is but ephemeral and that true power would be sustained if… if… only he were white. This circuitous literary diversion serves a much greater point for my purposes here than is perhaps readily noticeable. At the most basic level, the author is not making a point about African life or African politics to his readers; he knows that it is simply and widely understood that life and politics are not merely local nor global but an ongoing, uneven and unequal blending of the two. Like the authors and scholars of the early Negritude movement noted, and in contrast to the later Black Consciousness Movement, Africa and the African, consciously or not, is held to a standard that is not theirs and this has profound effects on the politics of the states of Africa, not to mention the cultures. If Negritude sought to validate African civilization on the terms of the West, Black Consciousness sought to define the value of the African peoples on their own terms, for their own sense of worth without recourse to any claims of a universal standard that is indelibly Western and white. This is perhaps most apparent at the end of the novel when, having appeased the global powers that be—political and, importantly, economic—the author leaves us with a

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scene of the people, not the politicians. The novel’s protagonists, of whom I have sadly said little, are left pondering the changes in their country and how little change has really happened. Aburiria is once again in the good graces of the global community yet it remains as far away from any sense of its identity as before. The country remains locked in its own whiteache; there is a desire and a need to belong and yet the author leaves us with a story of the difficulty of belonging and being true to oneself. There is a tension in the sense of belonging to and being within the world and yet being quite clearly apart from it that is, I believe, relevant to how we understand global politics itself (see Ferguson 2006, esp. Ch 6). This tension remains at the heart of our scholarship and understanding of Africa. For Bayart (2009), Africa is defined and understood by what it isn’t long before what it is. There is a sense then that when one speaks of belonging-yet-distance the response heard is that, if you do not feel a part of the global community, it is because you have failed to do the right things, you have failed to meet global norms and thus remain at fault. The question of belonging serves as a subtext for my discussion of state-making. The question of belonging plays a role in the domestic politics and life in South Africa, as elsewhere, and in what Connolly has termed the difficulties of forming a genuine philosophy and theory of becoming in a neoliberal world (2013). I wish to focus on the empirical problems born of a form of analysis at the heart of our discipline that fails to capture the nature of politics and in particular the state for what it is rather than what it isn’t; the problem is one of engendering an accurate analysis of our object of study. The Wizard of the Crow simply shows how much we miss and how much we have to gain and, perhaps, where to begin looking for the holes in our thinking. Thus I wish to derive two broad points from this diversion and focus them on the question of the state—not simply the African state but the state in general even if I shall speak here mainly of the South African state. The first is the most obvious, it is abundantly clear that to grasp politics we must situate it within its context, which is both global and local. We must do so as an ongoing process of engagement, at times unequal and uneven but certainly present and ongoing. For those living outside of the most powerful (primarily Western) states this is obvious. International Relations scholars even have a term for it, even if we rarely engage it: the second image reversed (SIR). Though, perhaps, it should be ‘reversed-reversed’ to capture the effects that some powerful states have on the system of states itself.

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Second, if we are to situate politics and the state in context we must recognise that this is not merely political and economic but social and cultural; it is racial and it is technical; it is normative and material for the world is both a product of our making and one that is not made from a blank slate but built upon, subverted and shaped by existing patterns and processes— or what Lefebvre would call the ‘texture of space’ (1991). It is with this in mind that I wish to focus the present study on not simply the state or the politics of the state but on the processes of state-making in an interconnected world and what this may mean for politics—actual politics—today. It strikes me as rather odd that the field of International Relations has done little to heed Keohane’s (2009) call to re-engage the kind of SIR theorising that explicitly addresses the processes of the global and the local so readily apparent to the population at large. It is also quite odd that for a discipline whose sole object of study is the system of states we have done little of late to bring our understanding of the state itself up to date. The post-Cold War era has brought many changes to the field (nevermind the world itself). We are now quite ready to engage in questions of a globally integrated world (read ‘globalization’). We have also been greatly influenced by the rise of social theory and its ability to incorporate far more processes in its theorising than the rationalist/materialist dominance of the past. The present work seeks, in a small way, to correct this by seeking to understand the contemporary process of state-making in South Africa. While the work is theoretical and very much focused on one African state, the implications are much wider.

The Case for South Africa The collapse of apartheid and the development of the post-apartheid state in South Africa offers scholars a unique case for the study of the state and its formation. I would also argue that in particular it offers IR scholars a chance to study state formation in the post-cold war neoliberal era. Unconnected to the events in Europe but undoubtedly influenced by their fall out, South Africa’s transition was more than a political transition to black majority rule. Like the states of Eastern Europe, South Africa’s transition was a broadly liberal and market oriented one; the state embarked on significant socio-economic reform that would extensively reorient the state’s relationship to society and the international system. Such broad market oriented neoliberal reforms are remarkable theoretically and ­politically despite their congruence with the post-Cold War trajectory.

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Politically, the legacy of deep inequality and the secure victory of the African National Congress, in alliance with the major unions and the South African Communist Party, makes the country’s pivot to the right surprising for quite a few observers (Bond 2004; Marais 1998, 2002). Moreover, decades later inequality remains shockingly persistent1 and has given rise to a real sense of betrayal and anger (Desai 2002; see also Hart 2008). Politically South Africa’s market reforms are not and were not greeted with the same enthusiasm as the post communist states. But theoretically the state’s economic marginalisation (if due only to its smaller economy and decades of import substitution policies) and absence of major foreign debt2 leaves us with few mechanisms and linkages to explain the reforms as anything but voluntary. There are, of course, many ways to both explicate the collapse of apartheid and the rise of a more international and market oriented state. I shall address this literature later but some points are useful for framing the project. Broadly speaking, South Africa’s neoliberal turn can be understood from two not necessarily mutually exclusive approaches. One we may construe as the rational and inevitable approach. That is, politicians in South Africa have often responded to their critics that there were no alternatives to market reforms or that such policies were simply the right ones; they were a rational response to domestic and global conditions. The other view looks to the changes in the domestic economy, particularly the growing skilled labour shortage and restricted access to capital, that put pressure on the apartheid state to reform; those same interests would have, from this perspective, pushed the post-apartheid government in the same more open economy direction. That is, this view argues that conditions favoured one coalition of interests over another under apartheid and post-­ apartheid governments. Neither of these positions is entirely incorrect in my view. But, as a good critical scholar, one might ask what conditions or forces are at work to create an environment where one set of policies are more likely than others, where one is more rational, realistic than others? Was this due to international influences that rendered dirigiste policies less tenable in the glow of triumphant liberalism or was it due to the structural changes in the domestic economy or the state in toto? Each approach has 1  For a discussion on contemporary issues of race and inequality (see Nattrass and Seekings 2005). 2  Though as Levy (1999) notes, much of this debt was short term and thus subject to continued lending or refinance and whatever terms may be dictated under such conditions.

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its problems; problems worth discussing and debating at length. And I believe that much of it turns on the question of the state, its conceptualisation and theorisation, and, of course, its relations and connections with other states in the system. In the pages that follow I wish to offer an alternative approach to understanding post-apartheid South Africa and the state more broadly. To do so we must first recognise that the question is principally about the state and its organisation, which here we take to be the contingent result of its ongoing production of social and material processes. This is of course an ontological position potentially (clearly not necessarily) at odds with the previous positions outlined above. Whatever the merits of the diverse range of policies of the post-apartheid regime, however, there is no doubt the state is being remade despite profound disagreements over why, how, and of what nature. That is, the politics of South Africa reveal a direct contest over the nature of the post-apartheid state manifest in the everyday struggles to exist within it. The study of the South Africa offers an opportunity to study the processes of state-making more broadly and in an increasingly interconnected system (see Brenner 2004) that shape the politics of state-making everywhere. As soon as the word globalization was christened anew we began debating its withering effects on the state—and then debating that too. The study offered here, though, suggests that IR scholars need to pay renewed theoretical attention to the state and state-making as ongoing processes of production and not simply as a reaction to systemic events and processes— or at least not without explaining what about such processes have remade the world as we know it and how. The politics of South Africa and the clear way they transcend analytical boundaries and levels of analysis highlight the real importance of recent calls to begin the heady processes of theorising the links between domestic and international processes (Keohane 2009; Adler and Pouliot 2011). The abstract nature of the work need not distract us from the necessity of providing a framework for understanding real political processes, which must also address the question of the individual, the ultimate creator of its world. If the case can be made that we must begin thinking seriously about the state, its production in a globalizing world, and how such processes transcend the levels of analysis it seems fair to ask what further benefit may be had from casting even wider theoretical nets in search of insight. One of the primary driving forces of this project is that expanding beyond disciplinary divides and theoretical domains would not only prove fruitful but that there are also good

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grounds theoretically, empirically, and politically for a much wider approach to our understanding of the state. Where to begin? If we’re honest about the changes in state organisation that have occurred over the past several decades, we must admit that we don’t have a strong explanation for them. The problem is where to look, or at what level one will find an explanation: systemic or domestic? A purely domestic approach would reveal the contingent historicity of any transformation of the state while ignoring systemic context or how such transformations fit a pattern so to speak. The strong globalization argument—to which I do not subscribe—posits a great withering of the state in keeping with the tenets of neoliberalism’s ‘weak/small’ state model. Marxist scholars have long noted the domestic effects of systemic properties but the unidirectional causal assumptions have run up against one notable empirical problem: the uneven and syncretic adaptations and processes of state transformation. That is, whether we invoke neoliberalism as a discourse, ideology, or governmentality or whether we invoke purely material economic processes, states are showing remarkable strategies of survival, adaptation, and what Bayart (2000) calls ‘extraversion’; the agency of states to adapt, adopt, and contest the power relations inherent in global processes must be acknowledged. The ‘constructivist turn’ in IR, however, should provide context within which to address an approach to the state as an ongoing act of production, much like the larger system of states. As a work of theory, this project is intentionally eclectic (see Swedberg 2014) and wide ranging with a deliberate effort to discuss and engage with a diverse array of theories and questions that may not appear to be linked at first. Some organisation on the direction of my thought is, as such, a bit necessary for purposes of clarity. The project began simply as a study in post-apartheid policy-making, particularly the origins of the market oriented nature of South Africa’s wide ranging policies, noteworthy if only because of the significant backlash against them. But the reconciliation of the real politics of the state with a field whose research and theoretical traditions keep such issues at an abstract distance necessitated questions beyond the scope of such a modest project. The South African case to me offers a chance to rethink some deep conceptual holds and their tendency to be theoretically separated, particularly the state, the system, and the individual. Modern policy-making, like the modern state itself, is deeply enmeshed in the organisation of society. Unprecedented would be hyperbolic but the policies of the post-apartheid state are in the process of fundamentally altering its constitution and in particular the relationship between the state and the individual. This constitutes a fundamental

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r­ eorganisation of the state itself and with this the global system of states. How do we contend with this? The state is a moral project but one organised and studied, by design, to exclude a discussion of the normative. This is problematic for reasons that will become clear in time. The book that follows is by design primarily an act of theory before it is a study in the history and politics of contemporary South Africa. That being said, neither are explicitly separated in the final analysis for reasons that are important to the approach of this project. Many of South Africa’s actions and socio-economic policies have been quite successful. But for millions they have been utter failures politically calling into question the very idea and approach behind them for many. As the theoretical understanding, in my view, of South Africa’s transformation and policy development lack any good reason to necessitate current policies, nor reject alternatives, policy itself must reflect something else then. Policies are a political choice reflective of a constellation of interests and power. But they also reflect ideas and beliefs about appropriate policy. Here theory, policy, and politics mingle—or at a minimum a connection forms between what we wall off as normative from what we think of as the abstract but empirically connected model of society. Callon (2007), however, argues such policies and the knowledge that informs them are connected to the very reality they seek to correct; their unexamined biases exist deep in the fundamental assumptions about what is wrong in the first place. Undoubtedly many of the policies of the past few decades have been failures beyond South Africa as well. This has spawned, as elsewhere, a constant hum of dissent and backlash. But as elsewhere we plod along tinkering with the models and the policies in an interesting politics of ‘as if’. Despite the disconnect between policy and outcome and despite the acknowledged disconnect between theory, model and reality we continue as if each functions perfectly well or will once everything is organised properly. It’s a chimera with a sliver of reality. The ‘Two Nations’ of South Africa are real, both success and misery, which suggests promise to those in misery. The same is true the world over; select strata of individuals and select swaths of integrated geo-political spaces slowly harmonising their economic rules of engagement are indeed reaping the rewards promised by the political and economic mandarins (Harvey 2005). While its nature may be different in any given place, with regards to significant swaths of socio-economic policy formation, some groups’ interests are systemically excluded by a variety of mechanisms while others are systematically valorised. Politically, walling off normative and empirical knowledge production has the effect of removing significant policy questions from public debate

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(Ferguson 1990), which in turn allows institutions to be built, and economies to be organised around such interests and beliefs considered relevant to debate as a matter of policy. Empirically, it seems puzzling to remove from discussion things that clearly affect—if not co-constitute—such behaviour. The call to incorporate normative beliefs and values about the proper scope of action we seek to theoretically explicate is not new of course nor terribly noteworthy beyond our disciplinary confines. Interpretation and meaning are central to political processes, society itself, and, for other fields, rigorous theoretical debate. This project begins from a position that takes seriously the necessity of rethinking the boundaries that divide domestic and international politics, advocating that the ongoing development of the international system is increasingly and in uneven ways shaping the processes of state formation and sub-state political processes. Diverse theories across multiple disciplines hold significant explanatory weight at certain levels of analysis but contemporary issues know no such boundaries (nor have they ever, if we’re being honest). The literature on South Africa is large and growing and the theoretical ones even larger. As such, my contribution here is narrower and centres on the embedded neoliberal state form (see Becker and Wittmeyer 2013) as a way to understand South Africa’s post-apartheid politics as well as contributing to ongoing debates about the state in a globalizing world. Briefly, the typology of the embedded neoliberal state originates in an attempt to reconcile two literatures on the state in Africa, which I have, for reasons that will soon become clear, termed the neoliberal and the embedded state theses. The greater space here, however, allows a much wider engagement with recent developments on the state, the global economy, urbanism, and the individual. If the individual seems most out of place it shouldn’t; the organisation of the post-apartheid state is not simply a remaking of the state to mobilise the powers of the market, it is also a reorganisation of the social contract that binds the individual and the state.

On the Art of the State: Questions, Problems, Approaches IR scholars have been content to let sovereignty’s edge mark a deep theoretical divide between the system and the state in contrast to their contemporaries beyond IR (e.g. Lefebvre 1991; Bayart 2009; Brenner 2004). Though the last twenty years have seen significant changes in how IR scholars approach their subject matter, particularly concerning the social

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production of the system and the rising importance of immaterial forces like norms in explaining behaviour, our thinking is shockingly wedded to old concepts. Though we call to theorise across the systemic divide (see Keohane 2009), such developments have been slow if not negligible (see Adler and Pouliot 2011; Zarakol 2013). I wish, however, to raise a few points here that demonstrate the need to revisit some of our core concepts, in particular the state, if we are to begin the process. South Africa provides a unique opportunity to study the state in transformation and contestation and thus shed light on how we can begin to conceptualise the state in an interconnected world. Let us consider an ongoing theoretical and, if we’re honest, empirical problematique; it arises from the varying theoretical arguments for and predictions of structural isomorphism and the empirical trends of convergence in a number of areas but above all in state form. That is, whether we invoke globalization or simply take the socialisation thesis to its logical conclusion, there is a political and theoretical reason to suggest (if not fear) a global homogenisation. For purposes of clarity I will simply focus on the predictions of structural isomorphism. A number of scholars make varying arguments regarding structural convergence (i.e. isomorphism) and I am only addressing the idea in a broad sense here. That systemic processes would affect domestic organisation and lead to an ‘evolutionary’ process of selection in domestic governing structures has long since been part of the historical sociology tradition (see Tilly 1992) and thus is neither strictly a new ‘globalization’ phenomenon nor a strictly constructivist prediction. The argument is simple: all states face a security dilemma under anarchy but some forms of organisation (e.g. the central bureaucratic state) allow states to cope better than others where war weeds out weaker forms. Isomorphic arguments are not new but the central role of actor socialisation within the constructivist explanatory framework and its influence on IR theory pushes the question into one of dynamical processes. Similarly and just as importantly, ­constructivists compel us to consider the links between the spread of, say human rights norms (see Acharya 2004; Barnett and Finnemore 2004), and the spread of associated legal structures that in turn shape behaviour (or set terms of action in the case of international law). That is, the harmonisation of institutional practices reflects an ideational/ideological element in institutional changes across political boundaries. Ideas may not necessarily beget structures but neither are they separate from them. It is becoming indisputable that beliefs, ideas, norms, etc. play a role in

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s­ocialisation that helps to explain changes to domestic law. Such policy shifts under a roughly coherent set of ideas exists in other areas too notably in foreign economic policy—with much more far reaching consequences. That is, while globalization—a highly contested concept—may primarily be thought of as material economic integration, it is driven by numerous ideas on the proper scope and nature of economic interactions—more than knowledge, it is ideology (Gao 2000; Mittelman 2002; Rosenberg 2005). This makes the content of ideology as important in explaining actor behaviour as the traditional materialist emphasis of orthodox theory. The big theoretical questions linking the material and immaterial remain, however. The global spread of human rights norms is inarguable, less so their effects. But the breadth of change envisioned is less compelling than that envisioned by the spread of market oriented socio-economic norms and policies associated with economic globalization. While a shift in economic thinking may not seem so profound, a shift from a Keynesian to a neoliberal norm fundamentally alters state-society relations via a change in technocratic economic policymaking. This affects monetary, trade, development, employment policies and how people structure and organise their lives to meet their needs. Put another way, as market oriented policy is adopted, the government alters its relationship with society in ways that constitute a change in its form, its processes of governing (see Harvey 2005; Mbembe 2001; Chalfin 2010). Given the active processes to harmonise economic relations via common regulatory and wider ‘best practices’, we cannot so easily dismiss the relevance of this claim, theoretically or politically. Is this a form of isomorphism emerging from deeper and wider economic integration globally? This is not, of course, a ‘whither the state’ thesis of globalization theorists. That would suggest a weakening of the state whereas market and privatisation policy changes may slim the state, it need not compromise its sovereignty—indeed it may augment it (see Chalfin 2010). The very uneven application of market centred policies and the heterogeneity of institutional responses and processes, however, raises questions about the extent of institutional isomorphism or its nature. Many states, however, are in practice committed to the market oriented ideals embedded in such institutions as the IMF and World Bank (see Best 2010) but its effects on policy-making are as yet unevenly spread, however evident. This does not end discussion of isomorphism but it does complicate it and raises questions about purely systemic theorising on, say globalization, and its effects locally.

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Conceptual and theoretical development on how such norms and ideas shape policy-making is, at least, developing apace (see variously Keck and Sikkink 1998; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Barnett and Finnemore 2004; Milner 1997; Hibou 2004; passim). But assuming economic and human rights norms are internalised by states in a similar manner is problematic. Neoliberal ideas may be increasingly defining the scope of economic policy but our understanding of how this occurs must deal with both the unevenness of policy changes globally and the lack of extensive linkages that are often part of our explanatory framework. The extensive linkages of advanced economies that can be utilised to explain changes in those states are absent or tenuous when we turn to the developing world. This is not to suggest that they do not exist, only that their extensity is considerably less than, say, within Europe. But these developing states are arguably moving in a similar direction, however unevenly, as they seek to engage the global economy and each other. The specific historicity of a given country’s trajectory should not preclude us from noting that the patterns of economic engagement are changing, as states adopt and (importantly) adapt market oriented policies that are increasingly a part of global norms. But linking the global communities to global norms and practices is still ripe with theoretical debate. The issues discussed above are not unrelated; I believe they highlight the need to more seriously address the state-system divide if we are to begin answering fundamental questions in our field while also remaining relevant in a changing world. This poses notable theoretical challenges that I cannot hope to fully address here. But each also indicates that a prime place to begin our thinking is the state and its formation in a global context for it is changes in the state that have had profound implications for larger systemic processes and structures—not to mention society and the individual as well. Fundamental changes in the state are, according to Brenner (2004), rendering the political boundaries of statehood i­ncreasingly problematic along with the vocabularies we have to understand them. While the state is understood as the contingent result of contextually, and geographically specific social processes and histories that constitute their historicity, the processes of global integration (even capitalism, perhaps?) are adding new scalar processes of organising the state. “In addition to this ‘horizontal’ or ‘areal’ differentiation of social practices across geographical space,” according to Brenner, “there is also a ‘vertical’ differentiation in which social relations are embedded within a hierarchical scaffolding of nested territorial units stretching from the global, the supranational, and the national down-

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wards to the regional, the metropolitan, the urban, the local, and the body” (2004, 9). Like Harvey (2005), Brenner argues that the growing emphasis of neoliberal, market centric policy-making is creating a condition where states, regions, cities, as a matter of policy, principle, and ideology, compete to be more amenable to the needs of global capital; tax incentives, flexible labour laws, the regulatory environment mirror changes in infrastructure that link nodes in the global production processes. But they do not link all states and not all of a state. Effectively this is leading to significant regional differences between highly competitive, market friendly ‘spaces’ that are linked to the global forces of production and those places that are increasingly economically and physically marginalised (Brenner 2004). Most interesting for me, however, is how closely this mirrors the points raised by Ferguson (2006) who argued that Africa’s economic marginalisation paradoxically masks the ways in which the continent is indeed integrated into the global economy through processes that simultaneously define its marginality. Like the colonial French distinction between l’Afrique utile et l’Afrique inutile, the flow of capital, and thus development and integration into global markets, is defined by the needs of the market, by the search for profit, and by its very organisation. We may think of this as a form of enclave economy, economies and infrastructure centred around resource extraction within a broader state (think of the Katanga region of the Dem. Rep. Of Congo). Foreign economic investment can lead to similar ‘dual economies’ absent resources like oil or minerals; investments in commercial agriculture can similarly insert some actors (i.e. large agri-business) into the global economy but not others less capable of acting within global markets (see Becker and Wittmeyer 2013). But such investments and development do not constitute a flow, which implies money flowing into a state and developing it as a whole, perhaps as a rising tide; rather, capital ‘hops around’ where it is profitable, where its needs are met, creating islands of integration among seas of marginality. What effect is this having on the state? In Jones’ study of rural Uganda, he argues that the state in Africa is a misnomer; it exists in urban areas, in small NGO development villages or where hyper-local economies are genuinely integrated into global networks of production, often through extraction; the state, in its policy reforms, its infrastructure development, and its very organisation is becoming outward looking, extraverted, organised and competing for investment not only by businesses but by development agencies who have come to increasingly fund what’s left of the state. The result, however, is that rural Africa, l’Afrique inutile, is very

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much disconnected from both the state and the wider global economy (Jones 2011). L’Afrique utile, however, may be quite integrated. The old idea of the dual economy3 may be becoming applicable again. Yet, if we read Brenner correctly, the same thing is happening in the developed world: significant policy changes are shaping state practices that are having profound effects on the spatial organisation of our existence. Brenner’s work is focused on the advanced economies of a highly integrated Europe. But it is also grounded in an understanding of the development of modern global capitalism and its effects on the socio-economic organisation of the state—a position that can readily be extended to the developing world. I want to argue, in part, that the study of the developing world, particularly the state in Africa, offers a unique opportunity to extend Brenner’s work. Moreover, it is how we have come to understand this state itself as an object of study that is of rather revealing importance here. Within the society of states in the international system there is obvious inequality in capabilities to engage in interstate behaviour; we can and do boil this down to differences in institutions and material and financial endowment. This is often sufficient when the question is strictly systemic in form; questions of capability are relative and properly between states. The end of the Cold War, however, brought us the spectre of the weak and failed state (Kaplan 1994; Mallaby 2002; Fearon and Laitin 2004) and it is how we, particularly we in the West, understand the state conceptually that I wish to pay attention to here. The deep seated ontological and epistemological problems concerning Western scholarship of ‘the rest’, long noted by postcolonial scholars, find less traction now as our theorising makes a rationalist, materialist turn engendering a confidence in claims of weakness and failure (see Herbst 2000). This, of course, begins from a position taking the problem of the state as a given without necessarily asking how the state comes into being and produces itself regardless of perceived weakness (see Bayart 2009). As a simple question of empiricism and theory I wish to contend that how we have traditionally approached the study of the state in Africa, even as a 3  This is not quite the extreme assertion it may appear to be on the surface; both former Presidents Mbeki and Zuma of South Africa have noted the challenges facing the ‘two nations’ of South Africa. That is, demographically (and spatially) there is a growing distinction between those with the skills needed to compete in a global economy and those who, by dint of circumstance, age, and education, cannot hope to ever be competitive in a market economy.

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critique of orthodoxy, we find an arguably important way to the study the state generally. But in doing so, so too do we find the remaining rich veins of bias running deeply in our scholarship. The literature on the state in Africa is inarguably framed by a politics of negation (see Mbembe 2001) and penetration—both defined by the same economic processes and ideological shifts noted above. That is, as negations of some thing, of some form; the state defined by what it isn’t implies what it must be. We regularly study such states as simple typological gradations of failure and weakness without much attention to why a comparison to a form must exist or what its broader significance may be. The explanations given reveal larger categorical distinctions between us and them that allow us so often to engage in a body of theory for here and a body of theory for there. The weak state is a state penetrated by and susceptible to more powerful global forces or local forces beyond its control and is thus simply, categorically different. A categorical, rather than a relational break of form and type maintains a view of their global marginality politically, economically, and, importantly for my purposes here, theoretically. The marginality of Africa cannot and should not lead us to ignore the way the state there too is changing, for it is changing, as everywhere, even if that change is syncretic and necessarily incomplete. It is precisely how the state is changing and what this says about interstate processes that is most useful for my theoretical purposes in this project. Put simply, the politics and study thereof in the developing world offers a poignant extension to the robust work on the state in a global context laid out most recently by Brenner (2004).

South Africa: The Political, the Personal, the State, and the System Though often thought of in terms of backlash, the politics of many developing states appear far more deeply penetrated by global processes (Callaghy et al. 2001) than the west, almost by definition; this remains true beyond the spectacular politics of the riot often framing our understanding of the political and economic discontent in the developing world. The extractive function of these states in the global economy lends their study a keener political-economic dimension for scholars. Even beyond the narrow confines of dependency, it’s much easier to grasp the significance of the global, particularly the global economy, to the politics of a poorer state—for states that are arguably marginal to the processes of the global economy, develop-

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ing states are far more vulnerable to it. Their politics are more greatly shaped by the processes of the international system. Sometimes this is felt acutely, as in the 2009 fall of the Malagasy government after rioters protested the ill fated, massive land deal with Daewoo International. Sometimes this is felt systemically, within a general sense of being hemmed in politically and economically (see Callaghy and Ravenhill 1993). The same processes reorganising the state in the advanced economies, as such, are no less important in the developing world, though clearly different in effect. Policy-makers in the developing world contend not just with the constraints of the domestic organisation of society but so too with the weaker capability to act in the international system, most notably apropos of socioeconomic matters. Though there’s much to be said that power better understood at the margins, from the bottom rungs (see Enloe 1996), among the weapons of the weak (Scott 1985), this is but one benefit of moving our study of statemaking beyond the developed world. Instead the study of the state in the developing world provides a rich and extensive theoretical literature, particularly on the post-colonial state, that often takes for granted a more dynamical approach to the state-system dichotomy (even society-­ state-­ system) in analysis and approach. More recent scholarship in particular has both critiqued our poor understanding of the state (as one garnered solely from within the western episteme) and expanded our understanding of state-making. Such scholars see the state as embedded in both domestic and international processes moving beyond the classic Marxist assumptions of dependency and uni-directional, rigidly structural global capitalism. The work of Africanist scholars, particularly Chabal and Daloz (1999) and Bayart (2009), have begun to show that, rather than being locked in rigid structural relationships, the state—and the elites in particular—have shown a remarkable tendency to adapt their strategies from positions of weakness (see also Reno 2004); such states retain their agency, navigating their relative positions to pursue their interests in what we may perceive as novel and even contradictory ways. Take the politics of the Cold War for instance. States like Ethiopia, Somalia, and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) played one side off the other to extract money and resources, sometimes aligning with one state then another a decade later (Ottaway 1982). More interesting, however, is the way such system level strategies corresponded with the socio-political organisation of the state and the practices sustaining a form of legitimacy poorly grasped by the logic of the nation-state. The precarious post-colonial legitimacy of many

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regimes in Africa engendered compromises between competing groups fighting for control of the state, which in many cases meant elites used the resources of the state to funnel resources to supporters in a web of patron-­ client relations that were augmented by the flows of money during the Cold War. When that ended, many states (again Somalia and Zaire in particular) found such networks unsustainable. Without outside resources they collapsed in a spectacular and violent fashion—though most simply adapted. The intricate paths through which the Cold War’s collapse weaved its way across the developing world and the processes of reorganisation that followed are illuminating (see Ellis 1996). It’s during these events of the late 1980s and early 1990s that another remarkable collapse was occurring in southern Africa. In the collapse of apartheid and the creation of a democratic South Africa I want to argue that we have an opportunity to explore many of the issues, themes, and processes noted above. The end of apartheid was of profound importance not only in South Africa itself but regionally as well. These events though not of direct importance to the collapse of communist eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, were not marginal to them either. The emergence of these new states occurred in the post-Cold War world and there is good reason to explore them with this in mind. South Africa is a strong case to study state-making in a global context for a number of reasons. Like other post-Cold War transitions, South Africa too went the liberal democratic route. Its domestic and foreign policy conformed to the global norms on human rights—which was to be expected—and embraced the call to liberal market reform. The latter was not, however, to be expected. Unlike the states of the Eastern bloc with the pull of a liberal European identity, an innate rejection of a socialist past, and well developed neighbours, South Africa’s struggle against apartheid was part of the longer anti-­colonial struggle in Africa, with a far greater acceptance of a socialist form of state, and notably weaker neighbours playing influential roles. While few western scholars may profess shock at South Africa’s embrace of market oriented socio-economic policy, the country’s academics and pundits have maintained a strident debate over the merits of South Africa’s neoliberal embrace and its causes in the years following the end of apartheid (see Marais 1998; Bond 2000, 2004; Gumede 2005; passim). The partial, halting, and contested nature of this embrace is what makes South Africa a good case. It’s easy to dismiss this question of South Africa’s neoliberal turn as nothing more than the rational choices concerning sound socio-economic policy. The trend toward market reforms globally then can, from this view,

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be seen as a confirmation of the rational, cost-benefit calculus of states (see Milner and Kubota 2005). I do not wish to dismiss this lightly only to reorient how we think about it. In point of fact a common refrain amongst politicians is the dismissal of alternatives as unrealistic; there is no alternative but to heed the market and reform accordingly (or make the right noises). What I question instead is the production of this inevitability or rather the ways in which global forces operate to narrow the scope of policy options and organisational forms more often by positively and negatively defining possibilities. That is, the ‘inevitability’ of a set of policy prescriptions and potential forms is produced; it is a product, the emergent result of the countless actions of individuals, policies and states; it is a product of both behaviour and ideology, of power and class. It is also the outcome of the intimate links between power and interest and the production of knowledge that de-politicises politics by rendering policy technocratic and essentially politically disenfranchising (see Mackenzie et  al. 2007). Inevitability and ‘correct’ choices reflect a given context, which says nothing about how power shaped them. This production of inevitability within knowledge itself occludes the ways in which the particular interests of the few and particular state forms and state-society/economy relations are rendered universal. I would also like to argue that this is also very much the result of the processes of global socio-economic organisation that all states are actively, if in uneven ways, engaged upon. In Brenner’s reading of the last thirty years of European policy reforms, global economic processes have led to a scalar reorganisation of socio-political space that reflects the reconfiguring of the state to the needs of business and profit.4 He characterised this as ‘entrepreneurial governance’ whereby the ideals of market competition are translated into public policy where the policy subject is homo economicus, the consumer, and the entrepreneur. The effects, he argued, were political and spatial; they were characterised ‘by the intensification of inter-spatial competition between urban regions; and by a growing differentiation of national political space among distinctive urban and regional economies, each with their own unique, place-specific economic profiles, infrastructural configurations, institutional arrangements, and developmental trajectories’ (Brenner 2004, 3). In short, the changes to 4  We needn’t forget here, though, the ways in which political discourse itself has managed to lock the needs of the public to the interests of business by the political re-articulation of this relationship as good (see Žižek 2009).

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the organisation of the state are having such profound material and spatial impact as to shape the direction or, at the very minimum, terms of debate concerning the state and society. The rational and inevitable are in part produced by the constitutive and various other commingling processes of global and domestic organisation down to the lived experiences of the individual. Any casual observer of South African politics today would recognise the growing discontent, the sense of broken promises, the anger and sense of a stalled revolution to end apartheid in all its forms, and above all with the failure of the policies of the African National Congress to simply ‘uplift’ the majority of South Africans (see Hart 2008). This anger and resentment is not limited to the state either as the tragedy at Marikana shows. But they are linked by violence and the rationale behind it as many South Africans have gone from services denied by race to services denied by debt. The politics of post apartheid South Africa present the studied observer with a few noteworthy themes. At its broadest level, and almost from the beginning of the post apartheid state, opponents and proponents have cast the socio-economic politics of South Africa in terms of markets for proponents, and as a failed promise and anti-pure market approach by opponents. To this day one finds in the state’s politics a deep vein of neoliberal criticism despite the mixed policies of the ANC. Indeed, it is a virtual cottage industry of critical books framing post apartheid politics in such terms as Talk Left, Walk Right (Bond 2004), which captures the essence of the criticism as a failure to uphold the promises of a state ­working for the people that framed the struggle itself (and not without reason as we shall see). The chorus of criticism is met simply with A Season of Hope (Hirsch 2005) or the more disabling ‘there is no alternative’ (see Hart 2002). Thus the events at Marikana were not simply against the mining companies but against the belief that South Africa is for business and private wealth before the people. So too are the protests at the slow and often ineffective delivery of decent housing, access to water and electricity, and above all decent paying jobs. Intriguingly, while the politics are local, the critics contend that the matter is global in scope. The politics of discontent in South Africa, then, mirror in minor the contradictions, success, failure, divisive politics and anger in the developing, and increasingly it seems, developed world. This brings us to a second theme: politics as contesting visions of what this all means and what the narrative—political and economic—that explains and justifies the ongoing efforts to reorganise the state is and should be. The politics of the early

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and immediate post-transition period are notable for this open discussion of the nature of a free South Africa; it was one that clearly saw a difficult syncretism between a more social and communal view of the state and society and a freedom-in-the-market vision. Counter-intuitively, I will argue, this larger question of the nature of the state turns on the question of the subject, the object of policy, and the political subject of who counts (Rancière 2004), who belongs and what it means to exist in post apartheid South Africa (see Hart 2008). I shy away from the term ‘citizen’ and focus here more on the political subject of policy-making. That is, who is the political subject, how is it understood, and what does it do as policy in shaping the state? It is not that the political subject, the citizen, is no longer relevant. It is that one of the fundamental changes to the state—first the developed, and now increasingly developing—is less the rise of technocratic bureaucracy than the rise of anti-politics via the ways in which those subject to policy are increasingly removed from its deliberation by those with expertise. This removes from discussion normative positions present though obfuscated within claims of objective economic analysis— and the economism that renders certain views virtually inert and irrelevant and others epistemically privileged. The effect is to render politics technical making an analysis of this subject key to understanding both politics and the last element of the state formation process. But it’s also important politically as, critically, an understanding of the subject also helps uncover the way in which politics itself is neutered in the neoliberal order. However grandiose the politics, laden with calls to abstract ideals like freedom, analytically and practically the contesting visions that are the heart of politics as we understand it (see Der Derian and Shapiro 1989) are manifested as policies that in time become large processes and institutions constitutive of the state itself. Such policies shape lives by making some choices more or less likely for both society and individuals. If many in South Africa speak of a failed promise, what do they mean other than that the state promised one vision and delivered another as seen through failed service delivery? But the contest is still over that vision and the place of human in the larger social order (Hart 2008; Ferguson 2010). That vision, as a market oriented one, must inevitably contain a view to the subject of policies. At its most abstract expression, the neoliberal view renders the human into a purely economic object, a buyer, producer, or seller, that in its implementation in policy marks as a target for removal rival claims to resources or their allocation in non-market terms; such a view prioritises the view of the human as an economic actor over other,

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say, capabilities oriented views that allow for greater, non-market policies that rest on different views of the citizen-state relationship. Such a theme is not entirely novel as critical scholars have long noted this deficiency in the wider liberal view of state-society relations. Slavoj Žižek argues that at the heart of the liberal (and indeed neoliberal) discourse on human rights is a deeply market oriented of the human as an individual whose rights to be defended—above all the freedom to choose (2005). But in a market economy, he notes, such freedom is at best a pseudo choice; it is also a negative one in that the freedom to choose rests on the freedom to act as an economic actor, the means to which are narrowly and unevenly distributed, thus, limiting one’s real choices to act. Is this problematique of the human as a subject (and at times object) not evident in the contested politics of South Africa and elsewhere? Arguably it is and it opens the way to analysing the politics of the state in a novel way that too can address larger issues on the nature of the economy and, indeed, the global economy and how it is shaping state-making. To return to the questions that animate this study we are reminded that they are in part political before they are analytical and theoretical. Not political in the strictly normative sense, though; rather the purpose is to theoretically explicate the development of the South African state in a way that does not negate the production of the political as a domain of truly contested visions. That is, the ways in which the economic—and thus economic policy—is rendered as a distinct domain of society with ­fundamental laws that ‘objectively’ inform policy tend to elide from discussion issues in other domains. The effect is to render political questions into technical ones (Ferguson 1990) that shut out some views as impractical or irrelevant to this particular domain. An analytical distinction with political repercussions. As such, the desire here is to understand the politics of state-making in South Africa within an understanding of production of the social as a whole. This includes recognising the global context in which such politics and policy are formulated including, above all, the processes of the global economy. The problems presented are theoretically challenging for few theoretical precedents exist for addressing such complex issues across immense levels of analysis (cf Lefevbre 1991). But the greater challenge is disciplinary resistance, not the least of which is the resistance of the field of IR like much of political science itself to any discussion of actual politics. This is, perhaps, foundational to our theorising of the social itself and the problems of our present tendency to parcel out the social world rather than

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analyse it as a whole. But when the social is discussed and theorised we find a disturbing absence of the human, which is, one could argue, at the very centre of our enterprise as scholars. Following Hannah Arendt, before there can be ethics there must be a theory of the human; before there is politics, according to Rancière (2004), there is the question of who counts, who matters, and, more importantly, how. This is the essence of the contending visions of politics. But, as noted above, South African politics, for opponents and proponents alike, have a decidedly global dimension fought domestically. Each side is wrestling with their domestic questions in terms of the broader global economy and what it means for individuals, not to mention the state more broadly, to exist, to be. We are faced, then, with a task of understanding the production of the global economy and how this shaped politics and state-making in South Africa throughout its history. Further, the aim is to do so not by a view to social production that elides the political, the human, but in a way that recognises the imminently political nature of the global economy itself. I will hasten now to make a few clarifying remarks about the following study and the argument to be developed therein. In order to grasp the production of the social with an understanding of the human and the political choices made and not made, it is necessary to be theoretically eclectic at this stage. At the broadest level we are interested in the production of reality, the ways in which the world is made by humans and, thus, how it operates. At the outset then at least one ontological position is being staked out, namely that we produce the world. For IR scholars this is closely linked to the work of constructivists. But I wish to amend this approach with a Gramscian understanding of the social whole while recognising the processes of production inherent in constructivist thought that explain the links between the institutional, ideational, and social inherent in Gramsci’s work, most notably his concept of the historic bloc. This approach is already, if not widely, accepted in heterodox international political economy and so too goes a long way in explaining the South African state. But institutions once developed serve to govern and they do so based on the ideas of their foundation and the interpretive acts of those humans who govern. Here it is necessary to engage Foucault’s ideas on governmentality such that we may understand the interpretive acts that give meaning to the world and provide paths toward policy-making to address this world. Foucault’s insistence on asking ‘why this and not that?’ draws off his understanding of the role of power in producing not simply the world in front of

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us but how we see it and, thus, how we seek to address and govern it. While the world may be constructed, something is ultimately produced that will shape the paths available to us (Mitchell 2002). This is an important point and returns us to Gramsci’s mutually reinforcing material and ideational processes that need not be limited spatially. As we shall see, South Africa has never been isolated in its state-making. Only today it is aided by experts, foreign and domestic, who marshal evidence (and, it should be said, economic theory) to suggest policy. But as this knowledge guides the practices of policymakers and the broader economic institutions and processes of the global economy, is it not, then, implicated in its production? Arguably it is and the interpretive act of governing is also productive of that which it governs. This should not, however, suggest that this power to interpret, make, and remake the world is total or uncontested. While ideas and beliefs are important they must be acted upon and, thus, they are constantly subject to interpretation, challenge, and change. Similarly, as Hart (2008) rightly notes, meaning itself is a terrain of contestation in South Africa and thus constitutes an important site of politics. Lastly I wish to ground our study firmly on the human, which is to say that it must be grounded on some understanding of how we exist in this world, how we create possibilities and limitations, and what this means for the study of humanity. To this end the loosely phenomenological ontology of Henri Lefebvre is long overdue for an introduction into the field of International Relations. Indeed, his Production of Space is a rare book that builds from this ontology of the human to the production of global space itself. Like Heidegger before him, Lefebvre understood the essence of what makes us human is bound up with the way we exist in a mutual relationship between the self and the material world (both Lefebvre and Heidegger found deep flaws with such Cartesian dualism). To put it simply, we come to understand ourselves as dwelling in the world. To this Lefebvre noted how humans also develop abstract knowledge about the material world and increasingly apply it to make and remake the word. As societies became ever more complex, he noted, this abstractness came to dominate not only the spaces in which we inhabit but ourselves as well. We become organised as categories of things in the production of the greater whole whose parts can be known and understood by no single person and understood only in the abstract itself. This is not, in some ways, too distinct from work on culture that seeks to explicate its role in shaping human affairs via practice. That is, the abstract, the cultural, the ideational exist as lived practices acting upon us by the members of society.

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This notion of practice and the application of the abstract to human affairs provides the thread to connect the, at present, disparate theoretical propositions tendered here as well as help us cross the levels of analysis from the most abstract institutions to the most narrow individual behaviour. Lefebvre’s ontology and the place of practice in it leaves considerable room for both the interpretation/production of reality and the institutionalisation of such interpretations in the practice of governance and the processes of the global economy. It is via practice that we take our knowledge of, say, trade and remove the barriers that theory tells us hinders it, which in turn shapes trade itself. But practice leaves central the role of meaning and interpretation in human affairs and, as such, leaves open the place of politics that animates this study. The politics of post apartheid South Africa are a brutal and at times violent conflict of contending visions on not just the future of the state but the very role of the state in society itself. But on one side of these debates lies a narrow market view of the world, aligned with expert knowledge, and arrayed against the immense material resources and processes of the global economy that has produced in the mind of policy-makers that there is no alternative. While this study focuses on South Africa it should be clear that the theoretical questions raised are of importance far beyond such a single case. Whether we agree with globalization theorists and predictions of the withered state, there is undoubtedly a convergence in socio-economic policymaking that, while hardly uniform, is shaping the ongoing production of the state. Within the developed economies we see a move away from the Keynesian state toward a more competitive neoliberal one; such a transition is hardly occurring in the developing world yet the forces compelling the developed are nonetheless shaping state-making here too. In some ways this convergence around a fuzzy yet singular governmentality is conscious; as Best has shown, however incomplete, there is a move to shift global norms on the proper course of socio-economic policy development (2010). But in other ways the global shift in norms plays out in the behaviour of actors in the market as they navigate various policies across states in their production processes. Markets, in this sense, may be disciplining states in ways that confirm or support ideational and normative shifts in the global economy (see Gill 1995). It has been some time since IR scholars have turned to the state. But over forty years after Gourevitch (1978) expounded upon an approach to the state in the system, the second image reversed (SIR), little theoretical advancement has occurred, a point underscored more recently by Keohane

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(2009). I hope in some way to contribute here to those steps necessary to truly begin crossing the levels of analysis and thinking about the state in the larger international system of which it is both a producer and a product—in part. And here I am indebted to Brenner’s (2004) work on the transformation of statehood occurring in Western Europe that seeks to understand both the international context and the intriguingly syncretic outcomes. However conceived, global forces interact and engage in local ones too, which explains the lack of isomorphism today. Much of the work of Africanist and post-colonial scholars noted above is, arguably, quite commensurate with the spatial politics of Brenner’s Europe but they also challenge it and expand it in intriguing ways. Much of the work below consists in reconciling two dominant understandings of the state in Africa that I believe are of most use here: between what I term the embedded state and the neoliberal state. But the theoretical add-on, if you will, is how scholars have begun explicating the multifarious ways that marginal and weak states participate in and are marginalised by the global community—an important component missing from Brenner’s analysis. Lefebvre’s theory is very much spatial but so too is it social in that it is attuned to the spatial politics in the production of the community; the linkages that bind and constitute communities—spatially, of course—are driven by social practices, norms, and beliefs that maintain the linkages temporally and spatially. Or more simply, linkages define society but so too do the rules of conduct that constitute the processes that produce the linkages. Those communal processes are what give Brenner’s states their syncretic, local characteristics and differentiation even as some regions within states become more globally integrated on a higher scalar level. If constructivists have had any impact on IR scholarship it is in the utility of seeing the international system as a social one, not unlike its domestic analogues. And Gramscian constructivists (Bieler and Morton 2001; see also Cox 1987) have shown how we can think of the international system materially, socially, and ideationally in ways that account for inequality in agency in the system in much the same ways as it works locally. But thinking of the system socially must include more than an understanding of the unequal distribution of material and immaterial resources that shape an agent’s ability to act; it must also pay attention to the push and pull of the community within the community that plays an outsized role in defining the operation of the international system. In Gramscian thought, elites and their material power in a given society link the cultural and material aspects of the historic bloc but the consent

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granted by the rest of society suggests a role for legitimacy and belonging that are part and parcel of hegemony in practice. Ferguson and others have begun to unpack how this push and pull, this desire to belong and a recognition of one’s unequal status in defining what belonging means to a community, is a crucial component of understanding the international system socially (2006; Becker 2010). That is, elites, be they states or people, secure their position by universalising the principles and practices that maintain it; subalterns consent to such hegemony via the promises of belonging and the myth of progress. Consent and legitimacy play an underlying role in Gramsci’s thinking. Yet how does this work internationally among sovereign states? In what I hope to develop below, I wish to offer a tentative argument to this question that extends our understanding of the state in a global context. Undoubtedly spatial politics or the disciplinary effects of the market compel states to act in one way over others; yet many states quite willingly consent to coming in line with dominant norms on governance of socio-­ economic affairs even as they contest and challenge their hegemony. States may adapt and adopt norms on, say, good governance and their concomitant governance policies, but like the protesters in South Africa decrying the failure of markets to deliver what the ANC promised, states in the system use the neoliberal rhetoric to point out hypocrisy and to challenge the powerful states at their own economic game. This is more than the ‘weapons of the weak’. South Africa’s post apartheid foreign policy has shown a remarkable strategy of adoption and adaptation in pursuit of its international and regional interests. South Africa has made socio-­economic reform not simply a domestic focus to make the state lean and competitive, but a regional one as well. Framed by the syncretic discourse of the African Renaissance, the state is staking out a leadership role on the continent that blends a pan-African discourse of empowerment and unity with the normative rhetoric of neoliberalism and free markets (Becker 2010). But more than this, by embracing the dominant principles and beliefs that define membership—in good standing—in the international community, the state is making a powerful claim on full membership and status in that community and the right to be heard as any other. Just as domestic politics begins first and foremost with the question of who counts (Rancière 2004), who is the citizen, and what is just and fair, international politics is a constant negotiation over claims to its own form of citizenship and status: sovereignty (see also Strang 1996).

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States like societies are in constant production and reproduction. And much as the individual is made, remade, and makes and remakes the society of which it is a member, states are active participants in the production of the international, whatever their position in the global order. Like all social orders constituted by linkages and the processes, rules, beliefs, norms, etc. that produce and maintain such linkages, the international system is no different. However marginal some states may be to the material bases of the international system, particularly the global economy, they are part of it; they also exist under a supremacy (as opposed to hegemony [see Gill 1995]) of ideas and norms that produce, justify, and legitimate some behaviours over others. And like domestic society, international society contains its myths of progress, development and modernity that sustain patterns of material wealth distribution. Such ideas and myths of progress (i.e. development) play a powerful role in linking material wealth and poverty with ideas and norms that simultaneously justify material inequality as indicative of having made the ‘right choices’. Whether states desire to adhere to the norms and (increasingly formalised) standards of socio-economic policy/organisation as a claim on membership in global society or whether the processes of the global economy delimit paths of least resistance, South Africa suggests both may in fact explain state behaviour. I wish to argue in the sections that follow that to understand the formation of the South African state we must place the processes of state ­formation in a global and local context. As we cross the traditional levels of analysis I hope to further develop existing theories that work on varying levels by linking them through a spatially informed ontology of practice. Undoubtedly, South Africa has done much to move the state in the direction of the lean, competitive neoliberal state, however modified, contested, and incomplete. In doing so I wish to contend that three themes stand out that must be understood within the context discussed above. Whatever their origins or links to power, international ideas and norms are as much adapted as they are adopted by states. That is, as the Comaroffs have put it, external ideas are invariably received through the existing symbolic and cultural order and, thus, will, through the processes of social production, be adapted to socio-economic and socio-cultural processes of a given state (Comaroff and Comaroff 1986) and in the process change them. As Acharya (2004) argues, states make norms ‘fit’ and thus the adoption of international ideas is invariably syncretic and contingent as are the structures they produce in practice. I believe in the case of South

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Africa this is related to a second theme, the ‘there is no alternative’ that framed politics in the immediate independence years and remains in the background today. That is, the disciplinary effects of global economic processes (e.g. the market, International Financial Institutions, etc.) strongly delimited the policy options of the newly independent state. There is no sense of resignation, however. Politics is always a contest of visions of the state with actors rearticulating culturally and historically resonant symbolic narratives in favour of a policy or program. And it is here in such articulations and re-articulations around given policies that we find some evidence of the localisation of neoliberalism’s vision of the state. But it is a positive one, a constitutive one. In the concept and policies apropos of the—in vogue—notion of good governance we see the emergence of a dominant, if not hegemonic, narrative of the state coalescing around a range of policies from privatisation to decentralisation. Lastly, South Africa has embraced much of the discourse of neoliberalism and good governance in particular to articulate a foreign policy vision encapsulated in the vision of an African Renaissance. Coming full circle, the state has begun several foreign policy initiatives to promote good governance throughout the continent along with efforts at regional economic integration. The study of the history of the South African state offers us considerable insight into the processes of state-making in an increasingly interconnected world and the theoretical challenges that remain in understanding these processes. But while the developing world, including South Africa, may be marginal to the spreading network of economic ties, it is not marginal to the dominant narrative driving such linkages. The post-Cold War dominance of a neoliberal order, however contested, cannot be ignored. Like any social system, such dominant narratives engender consent and contestation by setting terms of debate and thus playing a role in shaping the legitimacy of state behaviour. If sovereignty as a principle helps define the scope of legitimate (and illegitimate) and, thus, just interstate behaviour in matters of security, so too does neoliberalism help define the scope of legitimate state behaviour by shaping what good and bad policies mean. But no system is so total in its control as to deny agency to even the most subaltern agents. South Africa’s policies, foreign and domestic, have shown how poorer and weaker states can embrace the dominant narratives in pursuit of their own interests and in so doing they show the way to a better understanding of the nature of interstate processes.

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Bibliography Acharya, A. (2004). How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism. International Organization, 58(2), 239–275. Adler, E., & Pouliot, V. (2011). International Practices. International Theory, 3(1), 1–36. Barnett, M., & Finnemore, M. (2004). Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bayart, J.  F. (2000). Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion. African Affairs, 99(395), 217–267. Bayart, J.  F. (2009). The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (2nd ed.). New York: Polity. Becker, D. (2010). The New Legitimacy and International Legitimation: Civilization and South African Foreign Policy. Foreign Policy Analysis, 6(2), 133–146. Becker, D., & Wittmeyer, H. (2013). Africa’s Land Rush and the Embedded Neoliberal State: Foreign Agricultural Investment in Ethiopia and Mozambique. Comparative Sociology, 12(6), 753–784. Best, J. (2010). Bringing Power Back in: IMF’s Constructivist Strategy in Critical Perspective. In R.  Abdelal, M.  Blyth, & C.  Parsons (Eds.), Constructing the International Economy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bieler, A., & Morton, A. D. (2001). The Gordian Knot of Agency—Structure in International Relations: A Neo-Gramscian Perspective. European Journal of International Relations, 7(1), 5–35. Bond, P. (2000). Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa. London: Pluto Press. Bond, P. (2004). Talk Left, Walk Right: South Africa’s Frustrated Global Reforms. Pietermaritzburg: University of Kwa Zulu. Brenner, N. (2004). New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood. New York: Oxford University Press. Callaghy, T. M., & Ravenhill, J. (Eds.). (1993). Hemmed In: Responses to Africa’s Economic Decline. New York: Columbia University Press. Callaghy, T.  M., Kassimir, R., & Latham, R. (Eds.). (2001). Intervention and Transnationalism in Africa: Global-Local Networks of Power. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Callon, M. (2007). What Does It Mean to Say that Economics Is Performative? In D. A. MacKenzie, F. Muniesa, & L. Siu (Eds.), Do Economists Make Markets?: On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chabal, P., & Daloz, J. P. (1999). Africa Works: Disorder as a Political Instrument. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Chalfin, B. (2010). Neoliberal Frontiers: An Ethnography of Sovereignty in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. (1986). Christianity and Colonialism in South Africa. American Ethnologist, 13(1), 1–22. Connolly, W. (2013). The Fragility of Things. Durham: Duke University Press. Cox, R.  W. (1987). Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History. New York: Columbia University Press. Der Derian, J., & Shapiro, M. (1989). International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings in World Politics. Lexington: Lexington Books. Desai, A. (2002). We Are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa. New York: New York University Press. Ellis, S. (1996). Africa After the Cold War: New Patterns of Government and Politics. Development and Change, 27(1), 1–28. Enloe, C. (1996). Margins, Silences and Bottom Rungs: How to Overcome the Underestimation of Power in the Study of International Relations. In S. Smith, K. Booth, & M. Zaleweski (Eds.), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fearon, J.  D., & Laitin, D. (2004). Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States. International Security, 28(4), 5–43. Ferguson, J. (1990). The Anti-Politics Machine. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ferguson, J. (2006). Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. London: Duke University Press. Ferguson, J. (2010). The Uses of Neoliberalism. Antipode, 4(1), 166–184. Finnemore, M., & Sikkink, K. (1998). International Norm Dynamics and Political Change. International Organization, 52(4), 887–917. Gao, B. (2000). Globalization and Ideology The Competing Images of the Contemporary Japanese Economic System in the 1990s. International Sociology, 15(3), 435–453. Gill, S. (1995). Globalization, Market Civilization, and Disciplinary Neoliberalism. Globalization, Critical Concepts in Sociology, 2, 256–281. Gourevitch, P. (1978). The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics. International Organization, 32(4), 881–912. Gumede, W. M. (2005). Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC. Cape Town: Zebra Press. Hart, G.  P. (2002). Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hart, G. (2008). The Provocations of Neoliberalism: Contesting the Nation and Liberation After Apartheid. Antipode, 40(4), 678–705. Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New  York: Oxford University Press. Herbst, J. (2000). States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hibou, B. (Ed.). (2004). Privatizing the State. New York: Columbia University Press.

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No Island Unto Itself: Spatial Performativity and Production of the State

The discussion below concerns a theory of the state but there is no reason not to acknowledge the wider discussions possible for this work, particularly as it pertains to the Second Image Reversed (see Keohane 2009). Gourevitch (1978) long ago laid the groundwork for what was hoped would be a fruitful debate between International Relations and comparative politics (Almond 1988; Caporaso 1997) in what he called second image reversed research (SIR). His desire was to examine how domestic structures (widely defined) were influenced by systemic variables rather than simply acting as variables themselves to explanation foreign policy (Gourevitch 1978, 882). In broader terms, though, his work engendered questions about how the state and system interact, which is the very purpose of this chapter and book. In addressing these questions, however, IR scholars remained and remain wedded to systemic approaches and theories that make it difficult to understand the state across the levels of analysis. This is not surprising if we look simply at the timing; two other contemporaneous works emerged to become canons of the two dominant—and systemic—approaches in IR: neorealism (Waltz 1979) and neoliberalism (Keohane and Nye 2001; Keohane 1984). This is not to say that IR scholars have not addressed the myriad ways that systemic variables, structures, and even actors (e.g. regimes and IGOs) affect states. Nor is this to say that systemic theories are incapable of saying much about interaction

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between the traditional levels of analysis.1 Indeed, the study of regimes (see Krasner 1982a, b), norms (see Acharya 2004; Cortell and Davis 2000; Klotz 1995; Florini 1996), organisations (see Barnett and Finnemore 1999; Cortell and Davis 1996; Keck and Sikkink 1998), and epistemic/transnational communities (see Haas 1990, 1992; Risse-­ Kappen 1994) all indicate the ways in which scholars have analysed how the international impacts the domestic. But it is clear that neither our general theories nor our conceptual frameworks have seriously taken up the challenge of genuine cross level analysis. And however problematic the term globalization may be, it is clear that the state is undergoing a change that we must began to think about within our theorising. Given the dominance of systemic approaches and theorising in IR it should be no surprise then that as constructivism emerged as an alternative to the ‘neos’ that it too would focus on the system (see Wendt 1987, 1992, 1999). Along with this systemic focus has come the added baggage of state centrism and coherence (see Wendt 1994, 1999; cf Zehfuss 2001). This unexamined acceptance of state coherence has, arguably, hindered theorising and research on the penetrability—and production—of the state despite the ‘constructivist turn’. By bracketing questions about state identity and formation as either outside the discussion or a result of interstate relations, systemic constructivism fails to analyse the role of domestic structures, actors, and context in shaping identity or even how the system and the domestic may interact to shape identity. Similarly, by linking interests with identity constructivists generally do not examine how interests are shaped by domestic processes as much as by international ones. There are, of course, important exceptions to this; the point is not to highlight theoretical shortcomings or failures only to point out tendencies in scholarship and the blind spots that have emerged making cross level analysis a distinct rarity. Jackson’s (2006) recent work on German reconstruction after WWII, for example, explains how international ideals and ideas were used to legitimate German behaviour to its former enemies and how domestic ideals legitimated the state’s behaviour to the populace. To understand the formation of the post WWII German state, then, requires situating it in both its domestic and international/regional contexts. Similarly, Weldes (1999) explains how the domestic political imaginary shaped the meaning and interpretation of (indeed created) US political 1  The rise of Neo-Classical Realism may portend a theoretical embrace of systemic and domestic institutions and processes (see Sterling-Folker 1997).

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interests and foreign policy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. These two works ably demonstrate the utility of examining the interaction of the domestic and international to both understand interstate and domestic politics not as separate realms but as intertwined entities. There is, of course, a long tradition of not necessarily related research that uses systemic structures, variables, and processes to explain domestic level ones. Gourevitch pointed out that two key aspects of the international system have provided the basis of considerable research explaining domestic structures and processes: war and trade (1978, 883). Both of which have been invoked by IR scholars in conceptualising the state. Aside from the general realist claim that anarchy engenders a security dilemma that is played out in foreign policy, Charles Tilly (1992) famously argued that the formation of the modern European nation-state was a product of war. The centralised bureaucracy of what became the nation-state survived over other forms because of its superior abilities in fighting wars. Recent work in historical sociology, however, has begun to flesh out the contours of a Marxist theory linking the international and the domestic in ways that transcend purely systemic theorising. Rosenberg (2006) argues that Trotsky’s theory of combined development highlights the myriad ways in which societies are embedded in webs of material and cultural systems that shape a society’s daily life. His argument is that “the conditions of reproduction which define the concrete existence of any given society are not limited to the ‘internal’ structures of social relations” but necessarily involve extended networks of institutionalised relationships beyond a given society (2006, 320). It would be difficult to argue today that war has played or plays a significant role in the post-Cold War processes of state formation. Nor can it be said to have played an important role in the formation of post-colonial states in general (though ‘violence’ in its various forms played roles). While globalization may appear to give greater prominence to trade in an interconnected world, as Rosenberg rightly notes, societies have never been hermetically sealed. Whether through war or trade or simple social contact, the political entities of the world have long influenced each other. Our theorising and conceptualisations of core concepts therein must take this into account.

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On the State: A Coherent Incoherence There are very good reasons why we ought to broadly consider cross level analysis not only of the state but a range of concepts and phenomena. The state of our field is being challenged not only theoretically but by a world that at times feels as if it is outpacing our ability to grasp it. While the argument I lay out below looks beyond levels of analysis as too static and towards a more comprehensive theory of the social production of the state, other theoretical traditions would do well to expand their thinking too. There are a wealth of questions engendered by our world and my focus is necessarily limited to the state and its ongoing transformation and production as understood by social theory. The state and processes of state-making themselves are generally—if not exclusively—seen as imminently local, bound up with processes, beliefs, and customs derived from a particular history of and in a given place that, however expansive, is far from global in scope. While Wendt’s (1999) work certainly addressed the place of state identity, its emergence from within interstate processes nevertheless left the state and its identity limited to such processes with little influence on the domestic political realm. In short, we, as IR scholars, tend bracket the state and its formation when we consider interstate issues. This is not, however, without its logic. The scope of politics concerns the community and though communities are rarely islands unto themselves, the sovereign prerogative to take politics into policy-making holds to a rigid, practical boundary of implementation. Sovereignty allows us to separate the politics of one place from another, of one political community from another. IR scholars have been content to let sovereignty’s edge mark a deep theoretical divide between the system and the state in contrast to contemporary state theorists (see, for example, Bayart 2009; Brenner 2004; see also Clapham 1996). But so too have our questions for the most part simply not required us to ask much of the state or local institutions. Perhaps I should highlight this is primarily limited to ‘our field’ as scholars in other fields, particularly anthropology, have produced remarkable work focusing on the intersection of the state and the international system (see Chalfin 2010; Escobar 2011). It should be no surprise, though, that much of this work owes a considerable debt to critical theorists such as Gramsci and his fellow travellers who have traditionally crossed both the levels of analysis and disciplinary divides. The Liberal tradition within IR can, at a minimum, claim common theoretical ground in

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­ omestic and systemic research, with its focus on institutions and materiald ist and rationalist assumptions underpinning it. And constructivism, with its basis in social theory, has its systemic and domestic analogues. Generally speaking, though, that the domestic polity could be shaped by global processes and interstate linkages traditionally has tended to have no effect on our systemic theorising nor much in the reverse either. It’s easy to dismiss this with the usual points we scholars bandy about: anarchy makes the discussion irrelevant and if not sovereignty does. In a sense, we take for granted that politics and the state are immediate and local while logically and theoretically walling off any possibility of the local and the political having a role in the systemic. Anarchy and sovereignty make for hermetic barriers. From multiple avenues the discussion is shut down. I wish to argue, however, that there is a clear need to consider domestic and international processes if we are to explain some of our bigger questions in the field; South Africa remains a strong case study for attempting to grapple with the theoretical difficulties involved as we trace its history from colonialism through the end of apartheid. The state, its formation, and ongoing transformation, then, is as important a place for theorists to begin crossing levels as it is an important concept on its own. And yet the state remains a curious and enigmatic thing. It is a highly contested concept (see variously Evans et al. 1985; Domhoff 2002; Poulantzas 2000; Jessop 1990) and one where, for reasons that do not appear to be theoretical as much as practical, there remains a split between those who study it as a thing and those who study its formation (see Tilly 1985; Mann 2012a, b). But this literature on the state, one that involves rigorous debate across disciplines, remains rather wedded to the domestic regardless of theoretical proclivity; the tendency to focus on the autonomy of the state and institutions only reinforces this. But, as will be discussed in other chapters, there is considerable evidence that even with an institutional focus there are grounds for thinking about the impact of global processes. Only Henri Lefebvre (1991), to my mind, has taken up the challenge of explicating the state and its formation in a way that directly addresses issues of interstate relations and domestic processes, though his work remains enigmatic and obscure to most IR scholars (cf Brenner 2004). For most IR scholars, if they think about the state all, the work that most readily comes to mind, however, is that of Tilly and Mann and it is their ideas that I wish to briefly discuss for they bear on the problematic question of understanding the state, its origins, and future development.

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At the risk of excessive brevity—for I am but still getting to my main points—though notably different, both Tilly and Mann share an appreciation of the organisation of the political apparatus (i.e. the state) and its evolution and development in response to problems engendered by domestic and international processes. Competition and war formed the basis for the development of the centralised bureaucratic state in Tilly’s understanding of European history. Whereas for Mann the apparatuses of the state and their development reflect solutions to problems thrown up by domestic and international processes and their origins in the economic, political, ideological, or military spheres of society. Mann’s IEMP (ideology, economic, military, and political) model is considerably more developed than Tilly’s historical sociology, however, for it allows one to begin to grasp how and when various social forces (be they ideology, political, etc) came to shape the apparatus of the state. If Tilly shows us how the development of the centralised bureaucratic state allowed for easier tax collection and the greater projection of state power such control provided, Mann demonstrates—in considerable detail—how the professionalisation of the military (notably in late eighteenth century France) preceded changes in the political, which is then influenced by it. This had the effect of both expanding the state apparatus in size—if not yet its footprint in society—and its budget while also creating what we may term a modern civil service. This had profound effects not only on what the state did but how. The nineteenth century, however, brought to the fore the economic over the military. That is, as society developed economically problems emerged that required greater attention by the state (think here of the rise of the proto-welfare state of the late nineteenth century, notably in Bismark’s Germany). In this way, Mann argues that the key constituents of any social order—the IEMP—historically play important roles at different times reflecting domestic and international contexts. And it is through this history that we come to understand the development of not just the state (for Mann, anyhow) but the modern centralised bureaucratic state. No doubt this sketch is truly but a sketch of these theorists’ work. I do not intend to set up either as a straw man or a simple foil for my own thinking so the harm appears minimal. Though Mann’s work is considerably deeper and wider—stretching over volumes—I see the two as broadly complimentary; Mann fills in where Tilly’s outreach to the IR community took him in different directions that inevitably left gaps. The only point of critique I wish to raise, for it bears on my approach, is that of process. That is, how does the state emerge from the constituent parts of society (or the

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condition of the international system) without leaving them somewhat abstracted from society? For Tilly the ‘cause’, the prime mover, if you will, is simply anarchy. Much like Realists in IR, it is simply taken for granted that anarchy compels states to think of their own security and thus whatever measures make one more secure will prevail in a kind of evolutionary selection process. That Tilly’s view may be overly determined by his European cases has been duly noted (see Ayoob 1991; Lemke 2003; see also Clapham 1996). That is, the particular security situation and system of states in Europe may have indeed led to war playing a definitive role in state development but that similar conditions have not and do not prevail in other parts of the world or periods of time in human history.2 It would, indeed, be difficult to explain the post-colonial states of Africa with this approach and one may rightly interrogate the role of an imposed state form or the means by which the existing system of sovereign states shaped the development of the African state (see Jackson and Rosberg 1982a). The role of something external and systemic beyond the simple considerations of a security dilemma are considerably more diverse and dynamical once we move beyond Europe. It is necessary to tread more carefully with Mann’s work. His IEMP model has much going for it, notably that such components—or something like the IEMP—are present in all societies arguably makes his— similar—European focus less problematic. But it does leave unquestioned how these parts emerged, what the nature of their interaction is, and how, why, or when alternatives—particularly in the ideological realm—are mooted, magnified, and made more or less realistic. The rise of nationalism in the post-colonial world, for example, is of a different beast altogether both in origin and outcome than it is and was in Europe. And yet the spread of ideas and subaltern conditions inherent in imperial relations cannot be discounted, however different the influence of ideology in practice may be. However difficult it is to situate the politics of self determination within a story of the formation of a national identity, the very ideas and philosophies that gave birth to nationalism in Europe inspired the revolts against colonialism.3 2  Comparing Europe and Asia, Hui, however, argues that the same security pressures gave rise to a Chinese empire after the Warring States period; Europe simply never reached the logical conclusion of this process ending instead in multipolarity (2005). 3  One example should suffice. As C.L.R James (1989) has argued of the San Domingo (Haitian) revolution, the American and French revolutions, with their grounding in universal claims, profoundly influenced the slave revolt and leadership of what became a free Haiti.

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The question turns on the separation of the spheres, for lack of a better term, of society and their influence on each other. The separation of the I, E, M and P is, arguably, itself problematic even without recourse to a reductive Marxism that sees an ineluctable relationship between economic and political organising. Take, for instance, the earliest origins and forms of state, say in Ancient Egypt, which it must not be forgotten was a state. It is a given that the state is predicated on a stratified society—a ruling class and the ruled—and surely the Pharaohs and the religious orders that deified them counted as both a ruling class and apparatus of rule in both ideology and institutional organisation that defined the state. According to Lefebvre (1991), it is this, at times gradual, usurpation of the absolute, the religious, and the linking of the religious and the political—sometimes literally religious space as in the deified body of the Pharaohs—that is the first move to power that we may see as autonomous; or at least laying claim to it in practice.4 The deep role of the spiritual in a pre-state society forms a social basis for its eventual use in the exercise of exclusive power, which will come to include military and perhaps economic power. Such beliefs play a role in the further development of social structures and ultimately political (and indeed material) forms of power that will exclude challenges or certainly direct their course of development. The P and the I here are thus fused, not merely intertwined as separate entities. We can see something similar in the economic. That is, economic relations, processes, and power—be it exercised through the formation of class or more broadly in social organisation (e.g. slavery or imperialism of the Roman or later European form)—have long played a role in the political. But as Polanyi (2010) and Lefebvre both note, liberalism’s abstraction of the economic, which was itself initially an ideological and philosophical challenge to the status quo, greatly informs the very possibility of a separate ‘E’ in Mann’s model. That is, the very notion of distinct social, economic, and political realms is itself ideological and the result of historical contingency in the development of liberalism itself. It also had and has profound effects on the social organisation of the political as well as the economic.

4  Compare this with the intimations on the exclusion of a state form and its possible rise in Clastre’s Society Against the State (1989). Toward the end of his confounding work on how state forms/power are avoided and indeed subverted, he suggests that it is the rise to prominence of the religious, the priests, that may presage the initial stratification of a society before economic or brute military power.

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All of this suggests a significant value to acknowledging the social and socially embedded nature of the state as an artefact. To better understand its social production we ought to focus our theoretical development on such processes of its production. This requires acknowledging the state as part of the social whole and emerging from it. Let us begin then with a key definitional point by acknowledging that the state is an ongoing social production and one that is embedded in the ongoing production of other systems and forms of social organisation, from society to the firm to the global system of states; to invoke production is to recognise the state as an active process with a clear history and evolution that itself must be explained; the state, as a social production, is thus as much normative, intended to exist by beliefs in its purpose, as it is a brute reality of material, materiel, and political authority. The state’s autonomy or embeddedness then is the result of social practices, informed by ideology and reified in material organisation and processes. But the state in its form and production is always undergoing transformation and the processes of global integration are raising interesting questions about its future. Global integration itself is not new. Rather what is new are the ideological, technological, economic, and ultimately political processes that inform the present processes of integration. If the previous era of integration was driven by the political and economic ideas of liberalism, today we must realise the central place of that inchoate body of thought neoliberalism, which is playing a powerful role in the social and economic forces we commonly attribute to globalization. By recognising the state’s production as embedded in wider processes we should in no way ignore the very disembedded outcomes produced by neo/liberalism. Neo/liberalism rests on an assumption that the economic and political are, or ought to be, autonomous and behave according to their own laws. This informs policies that engender the autonomy in practice of the economic by political, judicial, economic and other actors. But as Connolly (2013) frames it, the tendency to view the economic as an autonomous realm of self-organising processes that states must heed at their peril ignores all other organising processes in the social world (in his reading this includes the ecological as much as the social). The effect is in not merely empirically problematic it also creates a form of political disempowerment that is at once ideological and the product of institutional practices that wall off the economic as a technical domain to be protected from other processes that may hinder its self-organising nature (see also Ferguson 1990; Mitchell 2002). That the political in this body of thought

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also remains autonomous is, according to the philosopher Slavoj Zizek (2005, 2009), a chimera that supports the autonomy of the economic; the political and the social become ‘free’ in explicitly market terms. For Connolly (2013) these processes raise interesting questions for a new kind of political activism that must better account for the reality we face, which in turn requires genuinely new theorising about the social world. As much as the present work is an attempt to do such theorising regarding the state, I believe it also can help us understand the contentious nature of South African politics and, indeed, politics generally. As such the problems facing our conceptualisation and understanding of the state must address the questions of space and practice, or spatial practice as a form of social production. That such critical scholars are so emphatic about the effect global neoliberalism has on the human, the individual, as much as the social, should also point us toward a way to better develop a theory of the state as a process, as a human practice at once ideological and material. If the world is a social product and the result of social processes we would do well to take into account one other missing element here: the human. Any social theory of the state, indeed any social theory, must rest on some assumptions about the nature of the human condition and in particular how humans produce the social world that in turn helps produce the human. This need not be an explicit focus as much as a call to ensure that our thinking takes into account an understanding of the human. But I would be remiss if in laying out the problems in our understanding of the state as more easily addressed by a social theory that I did not at least acknowledge some notion of the human condition apropos of my thinking on the state. If we’re honest, much of our thinking on the state contravenes what we know of what it means to be human and what we understand of the human condition (cf Wendt 2004; Wight 2004; Schiff 2008).5 Constructivism, then, is noteworthy for attempting to rectify this in IR theory by taking into account human consciousness. But here, again, the subtext of the current body of work is informed by Lefebvre (1991), who was rather explicit in grounding his theory of the production of space, and thus the state, in a phenomenological understanding of human consciousness and being. To put this as simply as possible, our understanding of the world is informed by our engagement with it in that our understanding of o ­ urselves 5  Here I am reminded of the pure abstraction of the state in game theoretic terms as a bargained outcome devoid of both history and humanity.

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as living beings with wants and needs is also informed by the environment that shapes how such needs and desires are met (cf Heidegger 1962); being is existence and existence is dwelling in the world. This may seem small—even obtuse—but it recognises the reflective nature of our ontology and one that marks an important place for the world ready-to-­hand. But in working his way from the human to the state and eventually the global, Lefebvre felt more was needed. More—or less—precisely, Lefebvre, in extending Heidegger’s phenomenology, argued that our existence itself is spatial beginning as a body in space (Lefebvre 1991); we build our world and are in turn built by it in an ongoing process of production and change. In our most basic existence we come to see parts of the world as food, shelter, danger, and so on. It should come as no surprise then that, by way of a simple example, the archaeological record shows that the delineation of space by function was a key point in our earliest moments of becoming homo sapiens and biologists note that most higher intellects in the animal world engage in spatial reasoning, or the ability to match wants and needs with an ability to think and navigate spatially. And while space itself may be essential to our consciousness it is also essential to our social world. For Lefebvre there is no blank space that exists beyond our understanding of it. Even the geographical features of the American West that are held in deep religious significance to Native Americans demonstrates the ties between a spiritual space and the social order. In the same way a forest is never merely a forest; it is a source of food, it is a place of shelter, it is a spiritual place, and, later, a resource for capitalist development and later still something revered in the form of environmental spiritualism. In each way space is organised in an entanglement of the mental, social, and material. The state for Lefebvre is no less spatial and practiced; sovereignty delineates one people’s space from another and sets about rules for their interaction. It is, however, in what Lefebvre termed the rise of abstract space that we may return to the current project. Lefebvre does not—cannot—deny the mathematical understanding of space nor any of the ways in which knowledge production allows us greater and greater control over the world. Thinking abstractly allows us to discover natural laws as much as it allows us to more efficiently organise ourselves and our societies toward common goals. The abstract is reason applied. It is the rise of this ‘abstract space’ in late capitalism that comes to dominate all spatial practices—even daily existence. That is, abstract space not only allows us greater mastery of the material world but also allows us to organise society according to

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this knowledge; the successful mastery of the natural world lends credence to those efforts to apply similarly abstract space to the social and economic domains or even the very idea that such domains exist as separate spheres of the social world. This, according to Mitchell (2008), is part of the general Enlightenment processes of divvying the world into discrete domains of inquiry. But the resulting production of knowledge merely obscures the ways in which social needs themselves drive such knowledge production. When Mann (2012b) speaks of the development of a professional civil service it should not be forgotten that this occurs hand in hand with the development of knowledge to make bureaucracy more rational, more efficient but also develops from the needs and problems thrown up by a developing society—it is in part reflective of it. Neoliberalism, it hardly needs pointing out, is the ultimate expression of abstract space and it is clear that, through both institutions and technology, the needs of this abstract space are having profound effects on the social world and the organisation and practices of the state. But our understanding of it need not result in the same error of the occlusion of the human—in the process creating a double problem of furthering the separation of the political and the social and committing a grievous empirical error. We need only be mindful of this as we ponder that woolly concept the state.

Embedding the Neoliberal State: A Model of Process Since I draw inspiration from two bodies of thought on the contemporary state I have broadly termed ‘embedded’ and ‘neoliberal’, the typological mashup acknowledges a theoretical debt at the expense of genuine creativity. But as this rests on my theoretical reading of this body of thought, I must also admit that the embedded neoliberal state is a bit of a misnomer for other reasons that must be noted. The term ‘embedded’ readily calls to mind the classic work of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation (2010). But Polany’s embedded state (cf Ruggie 1982) was juxtaposed with his broader argument on the dis-embedded nature of the modern market transition that occurred in the late 19th and early twentieth century. That is, the transformation from one time period to another amounted to a move away from an economic order that reflected and supported, and thus was embedded within, the fabric of social organisation to one that was dis-embedded and abstracted from the social order. This transformation was both material and organisational as much as ideological owing much to the development of liberalism as a body of thought and

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in particular the development of knowledge on markets in a particularly liberal sense. That is, rather than a supportive system, liberalism sought to impose market logic on society that would transform its social organisation; it consciously called for a separation of social, the political, and economic spheres of life. While the development of economics as a body of knowledge is built on this separation, the original impetus was as much political (i.e. liberate society to allow it to flourish freely) as it was purely intended as an exercise in knowledge development. If anything, ‘embedded neoliberalism’ here is an homage to the great thinker rather than a direct theoretical link. Here ‘embedding’ refers more to the processes of embedding that characterise, in a social theory sense, the formation and production of any social order as an ongoing process. However abstracted and separate the spheres of the social whole have become in both idea and the practice of daily life, they nevertheless inform each other in mutually reciprocal and reinforcing—and at times contesting—ways. Ideology and ideas shape policy and the terms of debate, which in turn shape practices, legal structures, and the production and maintenance of material and materiel organisation. The material organisation and social organisation in turn present problems that both policy and ideas must address. They reflect, in a sense, their mutual entanglement in much the same way religion as both a social practice and a form of organisation supported previous forms of political power. While many ideologies and ideas exist and in many parts of society, there is an element of hegemony or dominance around liberal/neoliberal ideology today that informs political and economic practices on a global scale. This is as true of human rights as it is trade and democracy; though deviations exist, there exists a clear juxtaposition between perceived proper and improper state and interstate behaviour that gravitates around the broad contours of liberalism. It is also true of the principles that inform the very architecture of modern global trade and finance, which touches upon not merely banking but also such deeply sovereign prerogatives as customs and border control (see Chalfin 2004, 2008). That the modern/post-modern era is characterised by the use of the abstract to organise social relations and social space should not, however, distract us from attempting to produce a basic model and theory of social production that recognises them as part of a larger social whole. Abstractness must be considered as a feature, a product of history to be explained. That is, embedding and the processes of embedding are key components of the proposed model, which refers to our ongoing

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­ roduction of the world as a form of practice, inherently material and p immaterial. The state, we can argue then, must be recognised for its embeddedness in the social forces that constitute it and the domestic more broadly as well as the international including such abstracting and seemingly separating concepts like sovereignty and global markets. Further, neither the domestic nor the international should be seen as mutually exclusive but neither should we assume that the boundaries, socially produced, are static or homogeneous across societies. Societies and states have differing capabilities, as much as individuals do and such capabilities are relative. This is nowhere truer than in our core concept of sovereignty. Sovereignty is but a form of practice—and a malleable one, as the human rights literature can attest—reflecting domestic and global power that inform capabilities to act or engage in any range of social processes (not just military self-­defence). So too is the relative autonomy of the state to act upon a separate social and economic realm a reflection of this unevenness of capabilities and practices. But the ‘neoliberalism’ of our model’s namesake merely captures the current flavour, if you will, of ideology presently exerting influence on the processes of social production we see today. But the embedded neoliberal state form suggested here emerges from the interdisciplinary study of the African state. As such it is not a-­theoretical as much as a theoretical work in progress that criss-crosses the near hermetic disciplinary confines. It is in their reconciliation that we find space to elaborate upon the place of neoliberalism in the practice of state-­ making. The embedded state is in many ways a throwback to the earlier political economy of Weber, Polanyi, even Marx, where the state is embedded in a much broader range of socio-cultural and socio-economic processes and relations. Today, however, when one speaks of the embedded state, particularly in Africa, it is used to describe how the state is too embedded in society and thus a sign of its dysfunction (see Jackson and Rosberg 1984; Chabal and Daloz 1999; Herbst 2000; van de Walle 2003). It is thus descriptive of a problem, in contrast to an explanation of how the state functions in this embedded sense. How does this, albeit inverted, idea of the problematic embedded state pop up once again in Africa and as a defining feature of what is wrong with the state in Africa? That is a peculiar intellectual history through positivism, behaviouralism, and the politics of negation. That is, as our work became theoretically refined and methodologically positivist, scholars of the developing world, not the least in Africa, came to view the state deficient in particular ways; it delineated state, society,

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e­ conomy into discrete components that could be measured and deemed effective or in need of reform and intervention.6 But as Mbembe (2001) concluded, from this perspective the African state is understood only through its negation to a western form; it is understood by what it isn’t, what it doesn’t do, and what it does not have. To what extent did we actually understand how the state functioned even if that meant explaining what appeared to be rationally ordered chaos (Chabal and Daloz 1999)? Given the political backlash of our applied knowledge in the developing world, how accurate is a body of knowledge that necessitates—or allows—multiple interventions to reform the very thing being studied? Empirically, theoretically, and politically this is problematic. It is thus important to distinguish this embedded idea from the one used here. Across a variety of fields and subfields of the social sciences a body of knowledge emerged that allowed for a profound and particularly technocratic engagement with and intervention in the developing world, particularly its economies and politics, beginning with colonialism itself (see Bissell 2011). The history of failed democratisation and stalled economic development has had the effect, however, of broadening our horizons to the sources of failure and thus solutions. The African state in particular became the site of an intriguing problematique: the informal or embedded state. That is, the exercise of power in many sub-Saharan African states failed to remain at meritocratic arm’s length from the circles of society at large. Power was personal and personally enriching (Jackson and Rosberg 1982b, 1984) and separating state from society has long been a goal of a range of developmental projects. The state was weak because in too many ways it was entrenched in society. But the study of the informal state revealed myriad ways to develop a deeper theory as it uncovered the politics of personal rule in the study of social cliques, weak bureaucracies, corruption, cultural practices, and sinewy clientelist webs radiating from the state-house down to the village. It is one thing to recognise the overlap between the political and the social in its clearly informal envelopment; it is quite another to make a theoretical leap to noting this as a problem. What is the impetus for such processes? Why does it exist first as a problem before it simply exists? Despite claims of weakness, Africa’s states have persisted. The very real, attenuated state in Africa had numerous coping 6  The literature on African civil society is riddled with debate over whether there is or isn’t an African civil society or whether the term itself needs revision (see Hearn 2001; Orvis 2001; Lewis 2002).

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mechanisms to hold itself together as it ambled along despite its perceived weaknesses. And scholars began to see an international role as well. Cold War aid propped up clientelistic dictators and weak militaries forced politicians to settle with their colonial borders with a warm embrace of the principle of sovereignty (Jackson and Rosberg 1982a). The informal state revealed itself as one deeply embedded in society, keen to exploit the politics of the Cold War, and highly adept at adapting the core principle of the modern interstate system to hold itself up. Such illumination of the processes of the state in Africa did not lead to a rethinking of the state in positivist literature rather it noted points of intervention to reform the state. North American scholarship continues to plod down this problematic path of negation and intervention. Other researchers, however, loosely organised in a French school of African studies (Chabal 2000), began to turn the questions on their head. They asked not what was missing from the state but rather simply how did it function, how does it exist and maintain such existence; from the seeds of its dysfunction emerged a functional state just not the one we expected. The positivist informal state thesis already allowed for a type of research in the developing world long since eschewed in studies of the modern developed state and so these scholars had little problem in casting wide nets; into literature and fashion and into anthropology and sociology, these scholars began to develop a different understanding of the state and its formation in Africa. Arguably, they also began to reacquaint us with the possibility that the state is always embedded in something, that it emerges from the deeper workings of the social world everywhere, not simply Africa. Despite a certain degree of theoretical heterogeneity, this French school agreed that the state is a product of its context—domestic and international—and hardly the passive recipient of an oppressive colonial legacy. The weak state thesis was turned on its head. One could not doubt the empirical reality that the apparatuses of governance were thin on the ground making it difficult to exercise a monopoly of force over the complete geography of the state (see Herbst 2000). But in a remarkable act of what Bayart (2000) would call extraversion, the states of Africa removed such geopolitical concerns on the one hand by embracing the—admittedly ill-fitting—principle of sovereignty, as noted above, thus settling any potential interstate border disputes from poorly matched colonial borders.7 On the other hand, lacking a sense of internal legitimacy and any 7

 Africa has, in fact, seen very few wars fought over colonially produced borders.

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means to settle all rival claims to power through force, the politicians brought together the groups, however formed, that exercised a measure of control over certain spaces and peoples into a clientelist network of patronage. The government, then, became the source of spoils to be distributed throughout society via networks of influence. That there was a set of cultural practices that in many cases facilitated this (see De Sardan 1999) only served to confirm the wider notion of the embedded state advocated here: one that reflected more the practices and organisation of society than the relative autonomy of the modern European state form. The work of Bayart stands out among the literature here less for his sweeping analysis of African politics than for his concept of the strategy of extraversion to understand said politics. In the simplest of terms, this concept recognises that we all practice agency, even if it is a weapon of the weak, but do so under structural relations of uneven constraint and performativity. Despite their unequal position and access to resources, Bayart says, actions and practices of African states challenge the “conceptual apparatuses constructed of western historical experiences” to explain the actual formation of the state (2009, 21). States and societies are not simply passive recipients bearing the burdens of external impositions. They are active in the construction of their conditions and they do so with what they have ready to hand. In short, we get by making do. But in laying out his idea Bayart made it clear that it was also shrewd foreign policy. This should be of interest to IR scholars as it challenges the ability of a clean, hermetically sealed systemic theory to explain interstate behaviour, let alone ones developed from the view of the powerful. It also challenges what we think about power, agency, and the foreign policies of states we too often simply see as weak and dismiss as such. Much of the recent literature on the African state in international relations of interest here, however, has been produced outside of the confines of IR by anthropologists. Interested in understanding the societal effects of the austerity measures of the 1980s and the ongoing failure of development, these scholars began wending their way upward from villages into bureaucracies foreign and domestic, and up through to the international agencies themselves until resting at knowledge and the politics of anti-­ politics; looking back at the trail these scholars descried an international, systemic dimension to something as local as housing policy. From this vantage came the neoliberal state: broadly understood as a socio-political, socio-economic project (Harvey 2005), governmentality (Foucault 2008; Ferguson 1990), or a new constitutive practice of state sovereignty

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(Chalfin 2010). This is a state easily understood by IR; not directly, of course, but rather implicitly as the self to a theoretically produced other in our desire to order and organise a world to fix and reform. If we can accept the basic premise of a state as always embedded in its social context, one embedded in the ideas, social, and material organisation of society; then we should also note the point made by the neoliberal state scholars that such processes—and thus the state too—are being fundamentally altered. What then is the embedded neoliberal state beyond its reconciliation in two literatures? The embedded neoliberal state is fundamentally a temporally specific form reflecting in someway the contingent processes and outcomes of the syncretic processes of the embedded state. The typological mashup nonetheless captures the processes through which the state is produced domestically and internationally. That is, it recognises the state as a set of contingent practices reflective of domestic social organisation (materially, culturally, socially, economically, and ideologically) and international practices, processes, and organisation. The state, as such, is always embedded within any given range of social productions of which it too is a producer and a product; neoliberal may be said to simply qualify its character descriptively and mark out its particular ideological influence. To do more would betray its contingent nature and that of the ongoing processes of production that constitute any social formation. If global economic processes, globalizing or otherwise, are changing the state one must include domestic processes to understand how those changes are occurring and why and, most importantly, why others are not happening (see Held et al. 1999). Yet while the combination appears to produce a more holistic picture, one cannot help but see vignettes of change and contestation—from the village to the bureaucracy and the global economy—absent theoretical cohesion to explain it. For scholars of neoliberalism the material processes are also ideational ones, or at a minimum processes informed by ideas that are altering the practices of daily life. Not all of such change is by acquiescent actors taking in new ideas and changing behaviour accordingly. For the weakest actors it can feel as if things are beyond one’s control. The global antiglobalization protests, periodic riots against austerity, and the unending stories of villages and lives uprooted to make way for foreign investment that typically exist outside of traditional IR suddenly come into view as relevant to our understanding of the interaction between the domestic and the international. They are part of the political and social processes bearing down on the state as much as society in general. Yet

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what to make of it? How is it all connected? What theoretical thread can explain varying actions and reactions? Is Bayart’s extraversion, which remains a strategy, one that does not differ much from comparable rationalist assumptions, sufficient to tie the literatures together? That is, can extraversion serve as our model of the human necessary in a social theory? The concept embraces a wider notion of agency by showing the adaptive practices of the weak, though in doing so it also cordons off that agent, whether it’s a state or an individual; it is an active actor in the world but not necessarily one made by it. Extraversion simply sees an agent acting within the structural position it has but it can say less about the interests that such a position throws up as well. Any embedding process will need to address the reciprocal nature through which we produce and are produced by the world. Extraversion, as such, cannot explain the contested politics that interest us here, however useful it may be. For in their everyday being, agents produce meaningful behaviour by embracing and enacting ideas and symbols; they engage the material and ideational world ready to hand. I believe some of the material and ideational tensions at the heart of the combined neoliberal and embedded state literatures can, however, be resolved by resorting to a more neutral social mechanism: a spatial theory of practice or performativity. Additionally, this mechanism is inherently scalar and can, thus, reconcile the systemic, local, social theoretical gaps. A core, and thus assumed, premise then is the spatial ontology noted above. Daily practice is a lived process, it is habitus, but it is also concretized in structures, legal systems, bureaucracies, flows of capital and so on that can disrupt a purely theoretical production of the world. New ideas disrupt old ones; new processes make older processes more difficult to sustain. But a recourse to spatial practice incorporates continuity of systems and the discontinuity that occurs as systems interact (cf Kavalski 2007; Bousquet and Curtis 2011). In short, it can begin to explain that which is often dismissed, namely the politics of everyday life in an unevenly connected world of numerous systems. As such, we can make the following claim: the spatial performativity at the heart of the embedded neoliberal state connects the ideational nature of neoliberalism (e.g. governmentality, policy knowledge, etc.) to the practice of state politics through changes in laws, the regulation and production of markets, development projects, business, trade (licit and illicit), and technology. The particular emphasis on the practice or performative production of the state is the essential link between the immaterial and material relations here and one that allows us

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to transcend any temporal limitations; as we shall see, the state in production always reflects its time and place, from empire to the Cold War. But for the post-Cold War contemporary state, neoliberalism shapes its practices in ways that change its nature by changing how such practices are understood and even legitimated in daily social life. But it remains a local process of embedding such ideas and policies into existing socio-economic arrangements that in turn modifies their production in ways that change the state. Behind such processes lies power, as it inevitably does. A discussion of power, however, could lead us in a great many directions. Who has it, who doesn’t, and why? But as I wish to apply a social understanding of the international system (being the most amenable to the above discussion), and so as to narrow our wide discussion, I want to first focus on power and meaning as part of an understanding of practice. That is, under any context or interaction the role of intersubjectivity to produce meaningful behaviour necessarily limits the ways in which interests/goals/policies may be articulated and still be meaningful—to a domestic audience and an international one. To clarify, within any community or society (global or domestic) Gramsci posited that the stability of the social formation rests on both coercion and consent. The material and social relations that comprise society are then explicated and understood culturally, ideationally, even ideologically such that the status quo is both justified and explicated; it is also productive. The particular ideational, social, and material relations he termed the historic bloc and within any social formation many such blocs could exist but one is hegemonic. But as Scott (1985) has shown, this hegemonic historic bloc is contested even if on terms set by it. Attention to context and cultural repertoires of meaning are particularly important for research that seeks to examine the interconnections between domestic and international systems (cf Rosenberg 2006). While social theory would suggest a stability of the system, of the habitus, it must also explain the real disruptions that occur and have occurred in all societies throughout history. The current task is both complicated and in some ways simplified by the deep interconnectivity between societies that exist today. As such we can begin to expand our ‘context’ to a global system of states and societies interacting in various ways across a variety of media. But the neoliberal argument is that, as far as the socio-economic and socio-political processes are concerned, the global context is dominated by a roughly coherent set of ideas that are greatly influencing all social processes. It is not total but it is dominant. States justify their economic

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­ olicies apropos of it even when contesting it. The importance of neolibp eralism here lies in the ways in which the material world is understood through ideas and beliefs. The disruption of such ideas thus challenges existing practices but it does so first as an idea, as a challenge to existing norms, and then materially. The spatial performativity model proposed here rests on the underlying assumptions of a spatial ontology of social reality that necessitates explaining the interplay of the material and immaterial. The problem of the ‘neoliberal’ here is much the same as that posed by the spread of norms: explicating changed institutions, practices, and even socio-material organisation when the key explanatory element is simply the spread of a norm or idea. But in explaining how norms of behaviour and policy ideas are spread, adopted, and eventually internalised into the legal architecture of states, Acharya argued that norm adoption occurs when congruence exists (or can be created) between transnational norms and “local beliefs and practices” (2004, 241). Through what he terms localization, norms are made to ‘fit’ a given state by powerful actors (norm entrepreneurs, if you will) and by the ability to familiarise the unfamiliar with existing beliefs and ideas. “Localization”, according to Acharya, “describes a process of idea transmission in which Southeast Asians borrowed foreign ideas… and fitted them into indigenous traditions and practices” (2004, 244). Where norms lacked a fit they were less likely to be adopted. There is thus still considerable room to contest global ideas and practices based on local needs and ideas. That this argument rests on intentional actions should not distract us from the broader implications we can draw from this on the interaction of societies and ideas. In a similar, if quite distinct, argument on colonialism and the spread of Christianity, Comaroff and Comaroff (1986) discuss the effects of the spread of Christian ideas among the Tswana (in pre-colonial Botswana) as a confrontation of and dialogue between different social systems both material and immaterial. Unlike Acharya, however, the argument here is not necessarily intentional but rather one of two social systems interacting with all their complexity. It also more clearly links ideas with material organisation. Though viewed as a more one-way process of interaction by the Comaroffs, the early Christian missions were simultaneously used by chiefs to support and expand their power and as a subversion of such power by initial converts who typically came from the margins of society. In this way Christianity settled into and exacerbated the existing political and social cleavages of Tswana society and cannot be understood absent

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this more holistic understanding of the socio-material worlds interacting. The long term effects of Christianity, however, are most evident in the subtle cultural changes that can aptly be described as a hybridization of the two systems. “Christianity,” according to the Comaroffs, “was received through the grid of local cultural forms and became the subject of an extended process of accommodation and struggle” (1986, 15). Ideas matter here but so does the place of social cleavages, actors and their social positions, and the relationship between material goods and social norms— in essence the context or ‘texture’ of spatial practices. While dialogue serves as a metaphor of interaction for the Comaroffs (1986), it also serves as the principle means of transmitting ideas and beliefs. It is, however, easy to visualize an actual conversation occurring between missionaries and the Tswana even over material objects such as the plow, which the Comaroff’s argue is both an ideological and technical interaction. The plow, “more than any formal act of ‘conversion’, marked their [Tswana] entry into a world of commodity relations” (ibid., 13). Its effects, however, were greater than simply transforming agricultural practices. Existing gender norms concerning agricultural duties were exacerbated by the plow, which required cattle that were solely attended to by men. The veracity of the authors’ claims of conversion and change rests on the adoption of norms on the one hand, and changes in cultural practice over the longue durée on the other. Nothing in either work, however, suggests that change is unidirectional or resulting in whole-sale adoption rather than adaptation and hybridization. Indeed, one could argue that the end result of missionary contact with the Tswana resulted in more of a hybrid culture, partially Western and partially Tswana, than a pure incorporation of the Tswana into Western culture. Religion and new material resources altered the practices that constituted Tswana society of the time in much the way that neoliberalism, along with the material processes of the global economy, are doing to states today. It is both local and international. On the one hand, the literature on neoliberalism is at its heart about the spread of ideas. As such it is important to note how the spread of ideas, like norms, is in part an intentional act but also one that rests on adapting ‘external’ norms and ideas to local practices. On the other hand, it is important to link ideas to a general model of social production that recognises the way actors, class, ideas, beliefs, norms, etc. must be part of our analysis of such norm and idea transmission. To reiterate, this is a call for a holistic approach to social analysis. It is a call to understanding the state

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as embedded in a range of social processes and systems. We must recognise that interstate relations are as such fundamentally questions about the interaction and intertwining of social systems. Neoliberalism as a body of ideas, however, must be understood and explicated within the dialectic of practice at the core of the model here. This will have an effect on how we understand the changes facing processes of state-making as, at their core, changes in spatial practice. To say that we assume a core place for practice is to assume that behaviour—and the resulting social system—is both intentional and unintentional. It is social too in that practice recognises that behaviour is explicable and meaningful in a given social context. But in the context of both Acharya’s and the Comaroffs’ work it is worth pondering for a moment the place of interpretation in practice when we consider the introduction of new norms and ideas into societies. Even in a counterfactual isolated state or culture, because the repertoire of meaning of any socio-cultural system is broad and diverse, it is worth noting that the contingency of meaning and interpretation in practice makes the system subject to change on its own (see Doty 1997; Wedeen 1999, 2002). No system is stable because of this; ideas, concepts, ideologies, even material structures themselves are unstable in their meaning, like an ideational structure itself, they contain their own means of change. Even if we assume a core around which ideas and concepts are organised (Derrida 1978), there still exists grey areas where difference can be played out and meaning debated and where social change occurs. Agents with different interpretations may, through interaction, come to a conceptual agreement in the grey area that eventually settles and becomes the core norm or meaning central to a social act. In this way ideational structures hold their own means of change and evolution. But the range of ideas, concepts, ideologies, and interpretations,—a culture’s intelligibilia (Archer 1988)—while constituting the ideational structure of a system, is not static and can grow when agents from outside a system introduce new ideas as in the case of the Comaroffs’ Tswana society (see also Philpott 2001). The introduction of ideas then must be seen theoretically as part of the way in which the practice of daily life is subject to change because practice is always interpretive, thus removing ideas as externally causal to social change. Challenges to existing practice, then, can come from changes in the socio-material world that makes existing interpretations hard to sustain or it can come from the introduction of new ideas about how to understand the world. This is particularly important here as the neoliberal state literature argues in part that it is changes in the

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­ overnmentality of the state—the ideas and beliefs about the purpose and g means to govern—that are fundamentally changing the practice of the state. And if critical scholars of neoliberalism are to be believed, it is also having a significant effect on the nature of politics itself. In South Africa, the localisation of neoliberal governmentality in such policies as privatisation, decentralisation—or broadly ‘good governance’— reveals the considerable efforts to articulate specific policies and broader socio-economic paradigms within different narratives of history and meaning resonant in South Africa. Such competing narratives are the essence of politics (Der Derian and Shapiro 1989). Such narratives boil down to the purpose of the state in society and what is and is not the proper scope and action of the government. The re-articulation of what a free South Africa will mean is deeply embedded in the competing narratives for and against the state’s—contested—neoliberal path. Our analysis, however, should not end here. There are clearly corporate and class interests at work along with the material organisation of the economy (particularly property ownership) that must also be integrated into our discussion. As we shall see in the chapters that follow, there were and are groups in South Africa that would clearly benefit—and those that would not—from the broad scope of changes neoliberal policies would entail. But if this local context is important so too is the international context of the post-Cold War era and the growing place of free trade on global affairs. The disciplinary effects of the market should not be ignored but markets are as much interpretive as material. Neoliberalism does not simply place markets at the centre of policy-making, it also provides a way of interpreting them and understanding the role of the state in society and the economy. It provides new meaning to what is already there. But if there is a sense of resignation at what can be done in the face of the market, such policies deemed ‘bad’ for the market also produce corollary ‘good’ policies making the disciplinary effects of the market quite positive and constitutive of state practices. Thus the global context, which includes the basics of interstate politics and the forces of global markets, shapes the processes of the state at the domestic level by shaping the broad terms of debate. It helps us understand how some policies appear more realistic, more reasonable than others, how some interests are more easily articulated and justified than others. But while the introduction of new ideas and norms into a given system may provide new modes of understanding the world, it does so from within existing practices that are distorted, magnified, sustained, or changed. It does so from within existing social structures. The terms of debate, then,

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must include an analysis of how existing practices and structures (including markets) give greater poignancy and even agency to some actors and their interpretations over others. To further the complexity and exegesis of the embedding processes we must not ignore the role of past practices, past structures, past ideas or simply the texture of space in spatially performative practices. The socially produced world leaves us with a product that shapes the future (see Mitchell 2002), though it may not determine it. This is certainly true in the development of the modern state, a creature with a long and convoluted history. For South Africa this means coming to terms with the legacy of apartheid and the imperial roots of race and social organisation. This legacy is in part structural: decades of socio-economic policy created an educated class of whites and inward oriented economy that by the 1990s was reaching the limits of further economic growth given the dearth of local capital for investment. But the legacy is also normative: the long struggle against apartheid engendered considerable ideas on what a free South Africa must look like and what role the state must play in bringing this about. So if we were to simplify our model of state-making in a global context here, we would find ourselves, on the one hand, with a global environment of triumphant liberalism and spreading markets; on the other hand, we have a South African state with an economy and class structure that left powerful actors with an interest in a small government and free markets alongside a newly enfranchised population that saw the necessity of a powerful, interventionist state to right the wrongs of apartheid. Such is the contingency of the state. The contingent nature of the state is not, however, merely a recognition of the too often unrecognised historicity of a given state; it is also a recognition of the unequal distribution of capabilities of actors to influence processes and practices of the state in addition to its historically contingent nature. Contingency then is important not simply in explicating the existing structures and processes but how these things affect the ability of actors to impact the direction of social change. This is an important point in our study of South Africa. Powerful economic actors and the resources they controlled gave their views a structural resonance that made them more than plausible; it made them rational and more realistic than others. Another way of thinking about this is that any actor’s capability to act isn’t simply relative but contingent, reflecting relative power as much as position in a given social system. Contingency matters in the way that the existing socio-economic organisation (and beliefs/norms) and

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­ ractices produce uneven capabilities to act (Emirbayer and Mische 1998). p This is not particular to the neoliberal state, or any state formation, but, rather, reflects upon the divergent, uneven, relative and relational nature of agency that characterises all human relations. Agency—divergent, contingent, and uneven—reflects the necessity to marshal material and immaterial capabilities in order to act; these are themselves unequally spread and, particularly when speaking internationally, reflective of ongoing processes of accumulation that concentrate such resources in particular states or classes. But while the domestic and the international are often analytically distinct, in practice social and material relations transcend such levels of analysis and theoretical, methodological clarity. At any given time for any given social interaction, an agent’s capability to act will reflect the relative and relational position of the agent vis a vis other agents as well. Thus an agent’s ‘agency’ is itself contingent and reflective of the structural positions of the agent, be it an individual or the state itself, that shapes a given social interaction. One need not see power in operation to know, a priori, that it is present in the unequal access to the means to act. This point on contingency and agency is not as far removed from my purposes here as it may seem. Social theory has long been bedevilled by the problems of agents and structures but it is not a debate I wish to entertain here for it is beyond my purpose. But research embracing theories of practice (see for example Wedeen 2002) as applied to the question of agency highlight the need to embrace a holistic and contingent approach to understanding human behaviour that also recognises the relational and relative ability to act that most interests me in discussing contingency. Since we are consciously seeking to understand the state by looking at the history of the South African state and not merely the most powerful states in the system, this is an important point in its own right. That is, one of the points I wish to stress is that once we turn to the developing world and the post-colonial in particular we see that the international system exerts an influence on state-making not unlike that noted by theoretical discussions of agency. The historical contingency within which we situate the state and its production also includes historical relations of power and the dominance of ideas that justify such power. It will, in short, exert an influence on the very processes at the heart of this model. As such the knotty issues faced by theorists of agency provide an interesting point of view in understanding the processes of state-making for weaker states in a way that

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does not ignore how the same processes, obscured by power, operate elsewhere in all processes of social production. What then are we to make of the neoliberal state, which as a concept emerges from both a descriptive and critical analysis of its form and its relationship to contemporary power relations. The neoliberal state is, without a doubt, a temporally specific reflection of the dominance of a singular set of ideas we may broadly call ‘neoliberalism’. The importance of neoliberalism, which must be theoretically explicated, is that, as a roughly coherent set of ideas and body of knowledge concerning the economy, the role of the state in economic policy-making, and a particularly liberal view of state-society relations, it remains, however inchoate or fully developed, the focal point around which policy is debated. We may place it amongst the other ‘ideal types’ in the pantheon of IR, such as the Westphalian and modern, bureaucratic state; it is a model—the model—of the post-Cold War era. But it is a model that states enact and thus adapt with all the syncretic outcomes this suggests for state forms. The critical moniker of the ‘Washington consensus’ more than suggests its geopolitical relationship to interstate politics and power in defining this idealised state form; it is an idea that reflects on the dominance of a singular set of ideas on state making and policy making. As we shall see below, this singular set of ideas, neoliberalism, is having profound effects on the domestic and international organisation in ways that are changing the processes of social production in direction if not its underlying mechanics as understood in social theory.

The States of the System: The Embedded Bias of Neoliberalism While many constructivists might quibble over how to read this, the international system like its domestic analogue is, to risk repetition, both a product and producer—not unlike the state or society. It is a social environment built and maintained by agents of the state, but it is also a great socialiser of those very agents. Like all systems there is order in the international system. This order is created by powerful actors, shared goals and ideas, and, in the last two hundred years at least, institutions to help the system of states promote and maintain key principles of interstate behaviour. As Bull (2002) argues, the global order rests, indeed is created by, shared underlying goals that even absent coordination produce stable

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­ atterns of relations. These goals, however, were quite simple and entirely p derived from the assumptions of anarchy and the resulting security dilemma. Absent from Bull’s global society is any discussion of how more complex goals that benefit groups of states at the expense of others might emerge and influence other states. There is no discussion of the emergence of far more complex goals, such as free trade, and their relationship to powerful actors. Even sovereignty itself is a malleable principle inversely correlated with the power a state has. But as global institutions flourish and global trade becomes more institutionalised and unevenly enmeshed in the organisation of states, there is a greater need to reconcile our understanding of the system with the disparate abilities of states to shape it and be shaped by it. Since we are in part interested here in neoliberalism we need to recognise not simply that power matters but that the ideas the powerful bring to and institutionalise within the system’s processes must be seen as part of its production. I do not believe, however, that this should prove too difficult once we ponder the literature for a moment. The patterns and patterning of interstate relations and its causes or origins is the stuff of our deep theorising—and much debate—within IR.  The turn to recognising the social nature of the system, however, allows novel ways of thinking about the system and thus its effects on the constituent parts—states. According to Rosenau (1992) the order that Bull recognised was not the result of just simple common goals but rather of much larger sets of ideas that might make sense of the patterns we see. We need only look to human rights for an example of the ways in which new ideas are introduced and begin shaping state behaviour. Accordingly and more relevant to our discussion here, there are important economic patterns of interaction at the international level, which also rest upon sets of (economic) ideas and norms about how the system ought to function (see also Porpora 1993). These ideas are also considerably more institutionalised in both formal institutions and the rugged and sustained exchange of goods, services, and capital that unevenly shape the capability of states to act. Ruggie has incorporated much of this into his concept of ‘multilateralism’, which “here refers to the constitutive rules that order relations in given domains of international life their architectural dimension, so to speak” (1993, 12). Ruggie’s earlier concept of embedded liberalism, however, adds an additional dimension to the above point. His argument, at its simplest, is that the global institutions that blossomed in number after WWII were specifically liberal and embedded liberalism’s basic tenets into the post-war fabric of the international order as they are

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themselves premised upon it (1982). The patterns we then see, the institutions then built to promote certain patterns, cannot exclusively be seen in a strictly material sense. We thus need to tweak the use of term here to note that, “when we speak of multilateralism in international trade we know immediately that it refers to trade organized on the basis of certain principles of state conduct” (Ruggie 1993, 7). It is a system, a system of trade in this case, and one that is consciously built from ideas about what we wish to see occur in the world. When we speak of the social nature of the system then we must acknowledge this material-immaterial connection. It is in this way that we can begin to cross the system-state divide. For critical scholars, however, there is a greater call not just to the content of the present order, its dominant ideas, but also to the relationship between the powerful and the order and ordering of the international system. That is, if Ruggie is right—and I think he is—that the institutions of the world system reflect a given body of ideas, we may rightly follow Cox (1987) and ask who benefits from such principles and how. Or to be less conspiratorial sounding, we may rightly seek to understand power in the system with the dominant if not hegemonic ideas that justify such power. Observing the patterns of the system is not sufficient nor is expanding our understanding of its causes. We must pay attention to how the system, like any social system, comprises structures and ideas and that these reflect the unequal power of actors to influence the order of the system. This is not to suggest that the system’s processes are not changing. Critical neoliberal scholars are quick to note that, though liberalism and the global spread of markets has deep roots in the system, systemic processes are changing and this is felt at the state level as well. We must, however, understand these changes as the interplay of ideas and real material processes. Both Mittelman (2002) and Brenner (2004) have argued that real changes in the modes of production, their spread across countries necessitated policy changes on the flow of money and, increasingly, skilled labour. The effect is a propensity for ‘deterritorialisation’ of economic processes that are affecting political choices and socio-material organisation. The relationship between these material and processual changes should not be removed from their ideational grounding (see Porpora 1993; see also Adler 1987; Ringmar 1996; Lieberman 2002; Blyth 2003). As Gill (1995) argues, capital and the neoliberal conception of free and open markets are here intertwined in a recursive behavioural-discursive relationship in the architecture of the system that, in a sense, ‘disciplines’ states. State behaviour is constrained by the real effects of the mobility of

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and need for mobility of international capital but states are seemingly a priori disciplined by the pervasive presence of “market values, representations, and symbols” in both international institutional discourse (e.g. IMF, World Bank, WTO) and states themselves (Gill 1995, 409; Hibou 2000). In this way the international system as a social system exhibits a mobilization of bias that we then see in the patterns we study. If the system has long held a liberal bias we must begrudgingly acknowledge that the bias is tilting toward the central place of markets associated with neoliberalism. As neoliberalism makes both a normative claim on the goodness of markets and a nomothetic one on their law like behaviour, states that pull back from market interference can also absolve themselves of their impact. This marks a telling difference in how neoliberalism is affecting social processes (domestic and international). States are not, however, removed from this process. Policies must still be enacted that ‘favour’ markets and allow them to work unconstrained (more in theory than practice) and to allow greater movement of goods and services. And yet there is something telling in former Prime Minister Thatcher’s remark that, as far as markets go, there is no alternative (TINA). For weaker states in the system this is indeed how it feels (see for example Callaghy and Ravenhill 1993). To do so, global markets, like the global system in general, must be understood in their material and immaterial nature. They are material in that real policies make the flow of capital into and out of a country easier or more difficult thus linking the two in a seemingly causal sense. It is immaterial, however, in that policy options may be restrained from the point of view of policy makers even when no material constraints currently exist (see Gill’s ‘disciplinary neoliberalism’ [1995]). Policies affect whether investments are likely to have a high or low rate of return and investors will take that into account. Policies and the state of the economy generally also impact a state’s credit rating, a decline in which can be devastating for an economy thereby impacting development, unrelated policies, and the budget. But decisions can be constrained or shaped by what policy makers perceive will be the impact on a country given generally held beliefs about capital and its behaviour. What constitutes a ‘good’ investment climate is not objective and has changed over the years. Thus the content, the neoliberal content, of dominant ideas matters. The embedded nature of neoliberalism, to adapt Ruggie’s title, adds an ideological component to a generally material explanation of the world order and the processes of increasing interdependence, privatisation, and general government roll back that characterise the post-Cold War era.

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Embedded neoliberalism is not, however, merely systemic in its effects for it posits a specific relationship between the state and society and other states. It is in this way that the ideology itself can shape behaviour on multiple levels. Increasingly this ideological component has woven itself into the discourse of states and in the language and policy of international economic institutions such as the IMF and World Bank (see King and McGrath 2004; Hibou 2000). It is an ideology that places primacy on the individual and reconceptualises both the notion of citizenship (Gill 1995) and governance (Ferguson and Gupta 2002; Ferguson 2006) in ways beneficial to ‘market civilisation’ (Gill 1995), capital, and transnational business. It is both democratic and free market. The traditional notion of citizenship—bound up with our notions of legitimate, democratic governance—can be seen as a series of rights and protections bound up in the institutional design of the state itself. The new notion of citizenship still sees legitimacy resting on the primacy of the individual but no longer sees the institutions of the state as the means to guarantee this; rather it is viewed as an impediment. The broad, global trend toward neoliberalism, of which South Africa is a part, while resting on local policy decisions, is often studied from a strictly systemic level. As this project argues, however, this is but one level and an insufficient analytical point of departure to understand the global neoliberal trend; but it should not be dismissed outright. If all states interact within the international system, indeed produce it by their very actions, we must ask how this system acts on states and the processes of state making. We cannot be blinded by any theoretical dogma that would forbid us from analysing the system despite the fact that the system only exists by state behaviour. Like culture, the system is a product and producer of behaviour. From this perspective what we are interested in here in this section is how the context, the systemic environment affects policy options, debates, and decisions in South Africa—and one should hope, more generally. For Marxist inclined scholars it is almost a given that the international system, defined by the nature of global capital, affects state level decisions. World systems theorists in particular have been adept at linking the international with the local (see Wallerstein 1979). Later, however, such scholars sought to analyse the end of the Cold War and its effects on the global economy (see Arrighi and Silver 1999). Unlike other authors who argue that we treat this as a watershed event that ushered in a new global economy (or at least began the process), Marxist scholars have dismissed such

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talk; historically such changes happen all the time. This dismissal, however, rests on a materialist view that many scholars have questioned (not the least of which are the bulk of constructivists). But there is some merit in their claims. What we might take Marxists to be implying is that the behaviour of the international system is propelling states in a given direction and is organised and ordered despite the lack of any conscious effort by any one state. Indeed it would seem that the world is moving in concert without anyone at the helm. For Ruggie, “the area of unpredictability of state behaviour clearly is limited, complex relations are pursued within sets of stable expectations… In other words, despite the nature of the international political system, international behaviour is institutionalized. Institutionalization, as sociologists define the term, is said to coordinate and pattern behaviour, to channel it in one direction rather than all others that are theoretically and empirically possible” (1998, 54). Even if we dismiss the blatant structuralism of the Marxist, we can admit that the relations among states have not radically changed while the normative and ideational order itself has. The impact of the system is not merely material and, where material relations are concerned, the nature of those relations and their content, their substance, if you will, is different and rests on the interpretation of those material factors by actors. Thus the substance of that institutionalization is an important component of any analytical model given its place in international socialisation. For Johnston (2001), institutions can be thought of as social environments and, as Bull might agree, the global order is really one big social environment. In this great, global social gathering the underlying principles and principals that organise it are in part economic and follow the logic of capital. I am not suggesting merely a material link here, though the real impact of capital on South Africa is not to be dismissed. Rather what is important to note is how the material reality of capital and its very real role in investment and development act to impress upon states a given interpretation of the economy: the inevitability or the objective reality of the laws of the market, what Gramscian theorists call economism. “Acceptance of these assumptions and claims by politicians and the public means that governments have to be concerned with the cultivation of an appropriate ‘business climate,’ or else investment might be postponed” (Gill and Law 1989, 481). This is not a trivial matter if we take the crucial claim of critical neoliberal scholars that the primary effect of neoliberalism on the state is its changing governmentality. This change, wooly as it is, has profound effects on how states organise themselves and what policies they pursue. Under a

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neoliberal governmentality the purpose of the government is to devolve as much responsibility and freedom into individual hands and allow individuals and markets to operate freely (Ferguson 2006). Within the myriad institutions of the global economy this is often and simply referred to as good governance. ‘Good governance’, then, is defined as the state that governs least. Or, more practically, one that is efficient where efficient is defined as minimal in both resource use and intervention in the economy where one devolves as much power to society (and by association the economy) as possible. This new notion of governance, however, has its ancillary in a newly conceived space and autonomy for civil society as part of its conception of democratic governance. This new space is said to empower civil society actors and to ensure that their concerns are heard. Yet, as Jaeger argues, this new place for civil society cannot and should not be analysed distinct from a new form of governance. Rather civil society, by being portrayed as a democratising force to politicise the needs of civil society, actually depoliticises and removes from political debate issues of civil society (e.g. human security and development) (Jaeger 2007). Civil society’s place in governance and government, then, renders moot claims that it is not being heard while simultaneously removing from political debate social issues by making them the purview of the now incorporated civil society actors. As we will see, for South Africa good governance has not only shaped the political discourse but also the emerging post-apartheid institutions and state-society relations. Moreover, South Africa along with the World Bank and others has made the promulgation of good governance a key piece of foreign policy. The irony of this new democratic governance, as Ferguson noted, is that though democracy remains the base of legitimacy for governance, when put into practice via privatisation plans—plans that seek to open individuals to the freedom of the market—such policies meet fierce popular resistance such that they must be implemented outside of democratic means (2006, esp. Ch 1).8 Good governance is thus an emerging key principle of the present global order and one that also highlights the dual role of neoliberalism as both normative and nomothetic. Normative in proposing an ideal state-society relationship but law-like in that governance reforms should free up an economy to perform and grow as it should. 8  We might here think of South Africa’s GEAR programme, which was both highly free market and presented to Parliament by then Finance Minister Trevor Manuel as non-negotiable.

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Failure to adhere to governance reforms then is a failure to understand markets. In Gill’s thinking this global trend in liberalism/neoliberalism has become the ideological base that supports transnational business and capital—as well as calling for the spread of democracy. Thus the two act in concert (unconsciously, presumably) with recursive positive and negative effects. Positive in that it speaks of individual freedom, democracy, democratic legitimacy, and free markets. Negative in that states that pursue alternative policies (e.g. nationalisation or redistributive programmes) are ‘checked’ by either the outflow of capital resources, lack of investment, or a lower credit rating (Gill 1995, 406). There is growing evidence that states have begun (if we may speak of states as such) to internalise such market values and have created new and concomitant discourses. We might cite as example the 1991 Zambian constitution, which opens with a commitment to privatisation and management of the public sector with an eye to a minimal, market friendly government. Several points worth highlighting emerge from this wide-ranging discussion of the system and the state. What emerges most noticeably, if perhaps implicitly, is that our traditional thinking of the ‘international’ as an autonomous sphere is as problematic as thinking of the state as an autonomous thing unto itself. This is not, however, to imply that we abandon such habits just yet. But the above discussion on the one hand challenges us to, if not fully re-conceptualise the international, it does at minimum recognise that it is a socially productive as much as socially produced space that transcends easy categorisation as a level of analysis. On the other hand, when viewed as a socialising space we must be attuned to dominant norms, practices, and discourses implicated in behaviour at the international and domestic level. Ruggie’s embedded liberalism and multilateralism, however, remind us that norms/ideas and practices at the international level have roots in domestic practices and the needs of powerful states and even powerful actors within them. This suggests a blurring of the typical boundaries between the state and the international. To return to the question and idea of the embedded neoliberal state it is becoming clear that ‘embedded’ is a quite wide ranging process. States are embedded in societies but so too are they embedded in a global society of markets and power and ideas. It is at this point that I feel nearly in despair that I have created the impression that all of this is something new to the world. Yes, the neoliberal order is new and quite different than the order it has emerged from.

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But the very social processes that produce the state and the system are much the same, if the parts and their relations somewhat different. If we may but simplify all of this we could declare that the state and its production has never been an exclusively local phenomenon. As much as the ancient states of South East Asia were influenced by the power and ideas of the Chinese empire that emerged after the Warring States period, states have long been influenced by other states. There has then, in a sense, always been an interstate dimension to the production of the state. To pull ourselves from this obtuse discussion we must now turn to the case of South Africa to begin applying the wide ranging thoughts from above to something much more wedded to the ground of history.

A Note on the Method of Madness: Narrative and Theory As this project is both macro/systemic in scope (i.e. the long development and transformation of the state) and historical in approach, it is tempting to simply rely on the basic tools of historical analysis: That is, to simply dive into the records, the work of other historians, and to simply lay out the chronology of events and any relevant disputes. After combing through the relevant speeches, documents, the ‘narrative’ of events—if you will— an historian simply puts together another narrative retelling such events; such is the historical method. Narrative then becomes both the outcome and the raw material of a given project. But the argument put forward here is actually premised upon a model of social processes that transcends the traditional levels of analysis while similarly positing a more complex relationship between social and material conditions and processes. It is laying claim to an explanation of how humans produce their world and it becomes important then to explore whether history agrees with the model. As such, I suggest using narrative in a quite different way. For Abbott (1992) the narrative method captures the social reality of a constant unfolding, a veritable story of life. Analytically it captures sequences of actions by agents in a given context of enabling and constraining structures, processes, and positions (ibid., 428). Like process tracing, its backward looking cousin, it allows for the contingency of events to be incorporated into the analytical framework of the narrative. Questions of scale and issues of incorporating multiple and overlapping ‘plot lines’ of reality necessitate capturing what amount to multiple stories

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within a given method. But only narratives are capable of providing unified analysis where many overlapping processes (and ultimately narratives) may also operate over vastly different time scales. The same can be said of how the past ‘textures’ the present in the greater holistic view of a spatial ontology. “A fundamental argument of narrative methodology is that narrative meaning is a function of present and past context” (ibid., 439). The use of narrative not as raw material but, rather, as a tool to elaborate upon specific, underlying models of human behaviour is not new. Bates et al. (1998) suggest the use of ‘analytic narratives’ as a way of explicating rational choice (even game theoretic) models for a given phenomenon. Their work, however, lacks a specific historical dimension; rational choice merely says this is how things occur and the narrative, as such, merely lays out the evidence of the model at work, which in one sense is similar to this project. The problem for a model that, as Büthe (2002, 484) notes, makes temporality and process key to its explanatory apparatus must be able to show such processes at work as they unfold. Büthe has suggested that narrative, rather than being merely raw material, can explore such processes. Here a given model’s theoretical argument structures a narrative of events; it allows for moments of reflection to assess, say, the contingency of events or to elevate material over ideational processes. But so too can such a model show how over time it is a concatenation of contingent events, structures, processes and the habitude of daily life that engender specific outcomes or additional structures (in the case of the formation of the state) in time. Time itself plays a role in the argument of this text and, thus, must be given space and pride of place in the use of narrative. An analytical narrative in and of itself is, however, empty and neutral. The theoretical mechanisms must be explicated and here some attention to greater ontological questions is necessary. Despite amenable and at times overlapping research projects, the spatial approach applied here rests on a fundamentally distinct ontology than that of most constructivist work in IR and other social sciences, particularly sociology. A spatial ontology is certainly not materialist or structuralist as commonly understood but neither is it purely ideational. The theoretical position taken here is that the material/ideational divide is a false dichotomy (see also Lefebvre 1991). Actors confront the world in practice as if it exerted a reality, a resistance, an existence seemingly both independent and part and parcel of one’s lived reality. Lefebvre referred to this as a recognition that in our being we dwell in a specific here and now. The same is true of our social relations and those purer, increasingly abstract

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and more nebulous social constructs that inform our existence. That both of these operate at vastly different scales and sense of immediacy, micro and macro, may be solved, however, through Abbott’s (1992) argument that they are, at times, better thought of as questions of time not scale. The recognition of their nature and theorisation of operation/effect as a factor of time and scale (even scale of time) does not preclude recognising a fundamental truth that lived existence is one wherein this world cannot be explained away as pure discourse nor overwhelming structural determinancy (cultural or material). Contingency of choice and action, of interpretation and organisation preclude it. In this way a spatial ontology and theory of spatial performativity offers a more dialectical material-ideational existence as a true midway point. But like social theory this approach puts forth a series of mechanisms and processes to explain the social world that calls forth similar methodological choices (see also Hedström et al. 1998). This use of narrative also is different than a simple case study in that the narrative framework itself produces individual ‘narratives’ or stories (see Abbott 1992) in the elaboration of the plausibility of a given argument; it is a testing of the argument. The theoretical eclecticism at the heart of theoretical exploration and development (see Swedberg 2014), then, is given multiple avenues to work here. As different elements of a model, or different variations on a model are elaborated, the historical record is put to use in narrative to validate or invalidate the model, its mechanisms, and its explanatory claims. Over the course of a large project such as this, one ends up with multiple narratives each testing components of a model yet adding up to a comprehensive theoretical narration of the development of the South African state as both a domestic and imperial then global process. The narratives are of two types. There is first the historical record, which is itself a narrative in the sense that it is a telling of events by those who lived them. It comprises speeches, discussion documents, memoirs, news articles, and other sources specific to a given time. It is the detritus of reality that is recorded but nevertheless limited by first hand interpretation or a conscious interpretation of events by those present (e.g. memoirs and memos). This is not the historian’s narrative, which emerges from these documents, but the parts of the historical narrative as it occurred that ultimately gets interpreted by others.9 The detritus of history leaves 9  Schroeder (1997) has an interesting discussion on analytic narratives in history in his discussion on the differing goals of history and social science research—not unlike similar debates in IR (see Smith et al. 1996).

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conflicting accounts of what happened depending on the source. But it is the raw material from which a picture of events emerges. The second narrative type is derived from this and is shaped and defined by a model or interpretive method. This narrative is the product of sifting through the historical record and historical work of other scholars to confirm or disconfirm a given model or interpretation. Like the historian, however, the use of multiple narratives allows for conflicting pieces of the historical record to be analysed and juxtaposed with other relics from the period in a form of triangulation of views. This is important as this project draws heavily from the work of historians of nineteenth century southern Africa if only because of the limited sources available, in particular regarding non-white peoples. Indeed, reliance on the record alone would lead to an over accumulation of the stories of whites. Comparing histories here then is important for both assessing the model of process and to assess events from the perspectives of peoples whose own stories have been hard to uncover. Whenever possible and useful the work of archaeologists and anthropologists are used to further enhance the historical detail of this period. The epistemological status of narrative here—as pertains to core spatial ontological assumptions—is its ability to capture the dual descriptive and explanatory tasks of empirical and theoretical research. According to Abbott (1992, 173), good research must be relevantly descriptive of a state of affairs and how it came about. But so too must it be a descriptive account of the factors “governing their constitutive actions,” according to Schatzki (1991, 661). Narrative is far better suited to capturing a social world “made up of situated actions of social relations not [just] individual stories. Social life is a process that continuously embodies itself in constraining structures” (Abbott 1992, 175). Ontologically and theoretically, spatial performativity here operates as a dialectical mechanism that narrative seeks to capture. It’s more a question of what one seeks to know more than a question of scale whether any particular nexus of relations and conditions show more structural/materialist or radical agency in explaining a given state of affairs. An obvious critique of such an approach is the problem faced by any historian: how are we to know that this narrative is true? But perhaps this is better reframed as is this all the truths. The problems with collecting and using historical data are not unknown, nor are the problems of using the secondary analysis of historians themselves (see Lustick 1996). Persons past and present have every reason to distort how events occurred and

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which ones to note for posterity. Such problems, however, can be avoided by the use of multiple sources and addresses divergent views in the record. Again I return to Büthe (2002, 488) who suggests that the validity of narrative should not be measured as true or untrue but rather as ‘plausible’ or not. The strength of the narrative rests on the evidence marshalled to back it up and its strength increases when alternative interpretations are admitted and addressed. As Büthe notes, this is hardly a cop out for this is precisely what historians themselves do.

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The Meaning of Belonging: Race and the Making of South Africa

I will admit at the outset that it is rather strange to begin a discussion of the post-apartheid South African state by beginning in the nineteenth century. But there are several reasons for indulging this historical interlude of mine. Though we are concerned here with the rise of neoliberalism and its effects on state-making, we should not forget the world of ideas and global structures of power that played similar roles in a different era. Both colonialism, imperial power relations, and nationalism shaped states before neoliberalism ever did. Colonialism and nationalism played significant roles in the formations of not just European states but so too the states that we would later term post-colonial. But in the crucible of the British Empire and the tumultuous nineteenth century politics of the Cape Colony we also find the origins of the South African state to come. It is in this period that the fragile autonomy of the African societies was gradually eroded then destroyed amidst imperial politics, emerging Afrikaner nationalism, war, and eventually the needs of an industrialising imperial state. Afrikaner nationalism itself cannot be understood outside of the events of the nineteenth century, both locally and globally. Imperial politics, language, and even religion conspired to produce the Treks of Afrikaner nationalist myth and the first Afrikaner states and their eventual destruction by imperial Britain that would foment the Afrikaner nationalism of the twentieth century. By the end of the nineteenth century two groups would look back on this violent history as they began to work toward creating a different © The Author(s) 2020 D. A. Becker, Neoliberalism and the State of Belonging in South Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39931-3_3

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future, a different state, and one with a very different purpose. It is from this history that competing visions of what the state was, should be, and for whom would form. And as the next chapter will show, these visions of the state and what it means to belong as a person and as a citizen would profoundly affect the politics of the post-apartheid transition period and the first free South Africa. So we begin here first as a test of the proposed model applied to the origins of the state amidst empire, markets, industrialisation, race, and nationalism. The state that emerges from these contingent processes does not merely help us to understand the history of the apartheid state but so too the challenges to it. For the apartheid state was a nationalist state designed and built for a white minority; it was built upon the sense of Afrikaner aggrievement of economic and political disenfranchisement; it was built upon and engendered a view of the state’s purpose that in confounding ways informed the struggle against it. It shaped how the African National Congress and the black majority came to understand the purpose of the state, what it meant to belong; it shaped the very politics and struggles of the immediate post-apartheid era. It was a vision of the state built for the people that the ANC and the black majority would find no longer held resonance in the post-Cold War neoliberal era. In some broader sense too it is this idea of the purpose of the state and what it means to belong as a citizen that frames much of the resistance to the neoliberal state in South Africa and elsewhere. In the pages that follow I hope not only to show how the very meaning of the state and its purpose was forged and how and why this would matter over a century later; I also hope to show how the politics of the period, the wars, and the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and African resistance were deeply intertwined with global imperial processes. In this way then the chapter has two broad purposes: on the one hand to help us understand the meaning of the state, a meaning whose importance will not be clear until much later. And on the other I hope to elucidate the mechanics of the spatial performativity model as it is applied to the foundations of the South African state.

The Unintended States of Imperialism The imperial encounter has a long history in the study of post-colonial states. It is often invoked, for states in Africa in particular, to explain a host of issues from ethnic conflict resulting from arbitrary borders and imperial policies of divide and rule, to weak government itself. Indeed, the politics

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of many African states following independence can be understood as a total repudiation of the coloniser and, thus, that encounter itself must be understood to grasp the significance of the present.1 But the historiography of colonialism, empire, and the post-colonial state has moved to a far more nuanced and complicated view of origins, processes, and legacies of the colonial period. The details of the long colonial encounter can be maddening. The historian Basil Davidson has made a career of exploring these details showing how diverse the politics of the continent were and how groups engaged with Europeans in a vastly more complex manner than simply material domination and European aggression. Social, cultural, market, and even at times something akin to state-to-state political processes characterise these interactions. And in the organisation and interaction of different polities, colonisers, and settlers change can become explicable. Take the Xhosa for example. In the eighteenth century prior to the Cape Colony changing from a Dutch to a British colony, we find a complex set of interactions between Dutch famers—boers—and the Xhosa tribes. The way in which the Xhosa were organised, however, can tell us a lot about interactions with the boers. In Xhosa society, one that revolved around cattle and their owners, “every bull had a right to his own enclosure, every chief had the right to his own territory. It was the fate of other people—San, Khoikhoi, Thembu—to give way before the Xhosa and to accept their place in the Xhosa scheme of things” (Peires 1982, 53). Contact with whites did little to abate this process of expansion built into the very way in which Xhosa society was organised. Indeed, as Peires (1982) shows, factions of Xhosa chiefs would often form ad hoc alliances with small groups of boers in their disputes with each other, a process that saw varying factions at war with not just each other but with the boer farmers too. Under the British, however, things changed. Fuelled by ascendent liberalism and reformists in Britain (under the Whig Prime Ministership of Charles Grey and his son, Henry George Grey, as secretary for the colonies), the new governors were inclined to treat the Xhosa like any other state: through treaties. But changes in the local economy led to land pressures that engendered a series of wars with the Xhosa and their eventual subjugation. Interaction, of course, did not stop there. Peires 1  There is of course some truth in these broad explanatory brushes. Herbst (2000) links the weak state in Africa to the colonial geographical legacy while Prunier (1995, 2008) incorporates it in his study of the Rwandan genocide.

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traces the origins of the massive cattle killings that occurred after the last of the Xhosa wars to the fall of the chiefs due to war and the rise of prophets. A schism formed between more traditional—almost nationalist—and Christian Xhosa. It is among this social collapse and the rise of prophets— themselves already part of the socio-cultural world of the Xhosa—that Peires seeks to understand the baffling cattle killing where the Xhosa slaughtered all their cattle—and thus wealth—in a millenarian prophecy (Peires 1979). I will touch on these events more below. My purpose is to briefly highlight the complexity of changes, their causes, and processes that shaped the state in its slow formation. The present chapter aims to understand a range of changes that occurred in what would become the state of South Africa in the twentieth century. And in this broad swath of history we are particularly interested in how polities changed, developed, and identities and interests emerged that would profoundly affect the emergence of the twentieth century state. It is in this period that the long settled Dutch began to see themselves as something distinct as Afrikaners, which itself made it possible for later nationalist groups to mobilise politically. It is also the period where major changes in the political economy of the colony began the process of creating a peasant agricultural class to feed the growing needs of the colony and eventually the mining towns. This emerging African peasant class itself was, however, hardly unified. Some were made quite wealthy by supplying the colony and in time moved farther from traditional cultural practices as they purchased land and commercialised their agriculture. This also bred resentment by white farmers who felt they could not compete (see Bundy 1979; Keegan 1983). Such resentment, the rising need for cheap labour in the mines, Indian immigration, and the eventual devolution to ‘responsible government’ that empowered settlers politically meant the end of an independent peasant class and the beginning of a wage labour class and massive dislocation of peoples by the end of the nineteenth century. A quick rundown of concepts, processes, and issues leaves us seeking to grasp identity and class formation, political participation, liberalism and reformist movements in Britain and the Cape Colony, and all the messy details that tie it together. But while many historians—many used here, in fact—wade gleefully into these details, once we broaden our perspective to include the larger, global imperial encounter there is a tendency to read history unidirectionally. For a project that seeks to place the state in context—global and local—this can be troubling. We need to establish where

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and how ideas and networks are formed and change and this means having the tools to link disparate processes and networks across an empire or simply the global economy. For example, even while acknowledging the role of liberalism and the reformist policies it engendered in the colonial enterprise (see, for example, Strang 1996; Bissell 2011), ‘liberalism’ left alone as an explanatory variable captures neither how this ideology was implemented, how it was undermined or expanded locally, nor how components of liberalism like free trade impacted specific places due to their organisation or different actors due to their uneven capacities to take advantage of changing conditions. We are interested here, then, in discussing what Lester refers to as the ‘place’ where global/imperial networks and processes unfold (2006). Lester’s work is of particular interest here, not the least of which is due to his focus on the very colonial South African encounter we are interested in. Echoing the work of Ballantyne (2006), who sought to understand the empire as a fragile yet dynamic ‘web’ of networks and processes, Lester reminds us that “the point about networks, of course, is that they connect different places. And what emerges implicitly from the networked conception of imperial space that ‘new’ imperial historians employ, is a conception of place that shares many features with recent theoretical approaches” in geography. Such a notion of place is not bounded “but rather specific juxtapositions of multiple trajectories.” These can be material as much as ideational or ideological and cultural. The ephemeral or sedentary solidity of a place made of such trajectories gives each its unique character (Lester 2006, 135, emphasis original). Much of Lester’s initial concern is a question of framing: traditional imperial history’s acceptance of a directional metropole-periphery relationship relegated local conditions to irrelevance even as it embraced the ‘man on the spot’ of imperial unevenness. Though this framing recognises the absence of a cogent or central policy of imperialism in favour of local political and economic circumstances, it still locks imperialism into a centre-­periphery spatial organisation; British interests interact with secondary local, or ‘peripheral’ concerns at the edge of a burgeoning empire. The question he asks is not unlike the one here: how do we explicate the effects of empire (or even its own nature) without an empire-centric assumption? How too do we avoid the tendency of the imperial to determine the significance of history? The task is to avoid a historicity of the local that remains externally oriented however much it grasps local conditions; this is the problem, according to Lester, of existing attempts to

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study empire. “The places mentioned in this tradition of imperial history, then, are significant as locales only in the Cartesian sense of points on a grid or map, set out in relation to an imperial core which may be Britain as a whole or London in particular. The purpose of this map is to allow the driving forces of Britain’s expansion to be plotted… in such an imperial history, neither colonial nor British places are of interest as configurations of peoples, experiences, things and practices in their own right” (ibid., 131). For the social scientist we may simplify this broadly as denying agency. But it is also empirically and theoretically myopic. The ‘new’ imperial history of network oriented scholars, in contrast, is attuned to multiple meanings and projects that may or may not be implicated in the strictly colonial/imperial relationship and may even contradict other projects and discourses. This does not, however, obviate the mutual constitution inherent in such networks and practices. Here Lester invokes the overlapping networks and at times contradictory practices in the Cape Colony of the early nineteenth century. Missionaries were apt to use their British connections, particularly their connections with reformist members of Parliament, in their project to convert the Khoikhoi and Xhosa. At the same time, local colonial officials desiring effective yet cheap governance hoped to “create docile, well-ordered subjects, both white and black, by sharing in a general discourse of governmentality” (ibid., 132) itself derived from the liberal reformist movement. Similarly, local settlers used networks that extended to other settler colonies to call for greater metropolitan support against such humanitarian critiques as levelled by reformists and the local colonial government that sought to ‘reform’ their relations with the indigenous peoples. This might seem like an obscure point but it actually helps explain some of the early politics of the British Cape Colony. The reformist discourse Lester is referring to was not simply significant in Britain it was also significant in the colonies. Liberal, somewhat rational and ‘scientific’ approaches to governance played a big part in the justification of British colonialism (see Bissell 2011) yet issues of class and race led the earliest British governors—and later settlers—to essentially look down on the boers as backward and uncivilised, particularly in their harsh treatment of Africans (whom these reformists sought to uplift, of course). Politically this manifested in a generally negative view of boer ‘native policy’, which missionaries and local notables used to argue for greater British involvement and a settling of frontier issues. It further provided a link between missionary/ reformist moralism and British support of the colony. But the reforms in

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Britain, nonetheless, had important and diverse effects on British colonies from shifts in more obtuse notions of governmentality to the easier to grasp effects of liberalised trade on agricultural products and immigration to the colonies (see Taylor 2000). The latter had intriguing effects on the political coalitions of the Cape Colony in particular as English and boer settlers jointly protested newer British immigrants (a point apparently lost on the recently emigrating English themselves). The Cape Colony had long been a Dutch colony; it was initially used as a stopping point to collect provisions for ships plying trade within their far flung empire of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Originally these were merely stops but Dutch settlers began settling in the Cape area (that is the western side of modern South Africa) around the mid seventeenth century. The Dutch, like many European powers, initially did a brisk, if not always sufficient, trade with local populations, such as the Khoikhoi. Dutch settlers began a modest supply in agricultural products and increasingly engaged in trade deeper into the continent often using Khoikhoi as intermediaries. This trade was initially, nominally among free peoples. Indeed, though primarily cattle herders, some Khoikhoi nonetheless worked as labourers in the colony and the Dutch tended to treat them as people of a separate and independent state (see Elphick and Malherbe 1989). But in less than a decade after founding the more permanent settlement in the Cape, relations with the Khoikhoi deteriorated. Ships demanded more and more beef cattle that the Khoikhoi were loath to part with lest it decimate their breeding stock. The Dutch in turn expanded their settlements and their agricultural footprint putting greater strain on an already strained local population. The effects of this initial contact are interesting, not the least for their longterm effects on views of racial superiority and the domestic labour market. They highlight the changes wrought in Khoikhoi society by increasing economic interdependence with the Dutch and how internal and external processes eventually brought about their collapse and complete legal subjugation. The Khoikhoi were initially enthusiastic traders. The Dutch in particular provided easier access to sources of iron and other material goods that the Khoikhoi would have had to source from long distance trade within the continent—if at all. But the trade also threatened the source of their livelihood and culture: cattle. In time this trade became increasingly violent and coercive—so much so that as the Khoikhoi lost access to land for their cattle they began attacking the Dutch within a decade of their arrival. While some of the Khoikhoi became labourers in

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the colony, others fled inland followed by a steady expansion of landless boers over the next century. Internal strife, however, brought more and more labourers to the Dutch colony such that by the 1670s the Dutch decided to incorporate the Khoikhoi completely within their legal system—a notable change from their initial policy of treating them as independent peoples—and yet still distinct from slaves imported to the colony. The Khoikhoi remained nominally free and able to use the court system to settle disputes with their employers. But as Elphick and Malherbe (1989) argue, trade and legal changes alone do not explain the collapse of their society. Instead they see a combination of factors. Namely, they argue that Khoikhoi society had long been accustomed to boom and bust cycles of cattle wealth but that the presence of the Dutch prevented the normal process of recovery whereby a new chief arose and stole the necessary cattle to begin the process anew (ibid., 19–20; see also Smith 1990). The Cape Colony itself was undergoing changes that would fuel expansion deeper into the continent and the concomitant feuds with fleeing Khoikhoi. While the initial colony was never meant to turn a profit, it was not long before some settlers were able to make small fortunes from farming and trade and a social hierarchy began to form. Like the British later, the Dutch arrived with all their class distinctions intact. The hierarchy that emerged held VOC employees at the top, free burghers (those workers no longer held by contract to the VOC) below them, poor and often landless whites further down, and slaves at the bottom. Friction quickly emerged between (often) corrupt VOC employees and the free burghers who felt wrongly treated by what was essentially the governing class. But it was landless whites that fuelled expansion inland, breeding a century of conflict. It would also presage the labour, class, and eventually racial tensions and relationships that would coalesce into the cauldron from which new identities would emerge in the politics and socioeconomic changes under the British in the nineteenth century. Cheap and skilled Khoikhoi labourers and a class of imported slaves had long provided the actual labour of the colony. Whites rarely did much real work. But this also left little room for a white labouring class in the Colony, despite the growth in the local white population that placed strains on this stratified society. The collapse of many neighbouring Khoikhoi chieftains and the devastation of smallpox on their population, however, left a void that these landless whites began filling. The interior of the colony, then, acted as a release valve for socio-economic tensions in the colony: landless whites simply moved. This exodus of sorts was to some extent encouraged

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by the VOC government through a system of ‘loan lease’ land titles whereby whites could make easy claims to land in the interior (see Elphick and Malherbe 1989). These initial ‘trekboers’ began moving farther from the small town of Cape Town deep into the interior, an expansion only checked by the arid Karoo in the north and Xhosa to the east (Thompson 2001, Ch 1). With little cash it was easy for these trekboers to hunt and establish small, widely dispersed cattle and sheep farms where they could do a modest trade with the colony. While this inland trek alleviated some of the class and racial tensions that shaped the labouring classes of the coastal colony, however minimal their labour needs were, these trekboers still faced labour issues of their own as they roamed the interior. It is a curious fact of history, though, that while raiding cattle from the Khoikhoi was common—as was outright murder—so too were clientele relationships (Viljoen 2001, 33).2 Clientship, according to Viljoen (2001), was a mutually, if unequally, beneficial relationship and one with deep roots in Khoikhoi society (see also Elphick 1980). The practice of poorer households forging working relationships was a mechanism of ensuring a measure of equality among the pastoralists. More prosperous cattle owners could hire on a poorer family who would then share some of the milk from the cattle and, perhaps, some of the offspring (Viljoen 2001, 31). A similar pattern emerged with the trekboers as they encroached upon the ever shifting Khoikhoi. Those with some cattle left might move them to the land of a trekboer while agreeing to herd the master’s cattle in exchange for access to resources like water and land. Even families without cattle could offer work on the farm for a place to stay and settle and, thus, were slowly incorporated into the extended familial operation of trekboer farms. This is perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the expansion of the colonial frontier: the social processes were overwhelmingly intimate and shaped by the production of the family within a roughly subsistence level political economy centred on extended family farm operations. Farms would trade what they could afford with the Colony for the few consumer 2  The trekboers also encountered the San, a loose grouping of hunter-gatherers. It was not uncommon for the trekboers to slaughter any adult male San they encountered and take the surviving women and children as slaves. In this sense the San too augmented the cheap labour available to the trekboers, though not to the extent of the Khoikhoi. The slaughter of the San became so regular, however, that it was organised into sometimes monthly ‘commandos’ toward which all trekboers were expected to contribute. This process was so thorough that Adhikari (2010) argues it constitutes a genocide.

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goods they could not obtain or produce on their own. Few education opportunities existed and what little education people had was limited to what could be provided by the family bible and whatever would further life on these distant, insular farms. Though the trekboer farms were broadly family operations, exogamous sexual relations, abuse, coercion, and rape were common. Such liaisons also produced children of ‘mixed’ races that added new layers and challenges to the perceived racial hierarchy and eventually necessitated the passage of laws that would recognise the higher status of these new ‘coloureds.’3 This was as much an issue for the Colony as the frontier. Such a racial order built off family violence was not uncommon and played key roles in the political economies of both spaces. This pattern of expansion, propelled by the political economic relations of the Cape Colony, and sustained by extended family farms and frontier violence, continued until well after the arrival of the British at the turn of the nineteenth century. And it is out of this heady mix of familial farm production, violent frontier life, and evolving racial views that identities would emerge and solidify. When the British arrived they would be received into this worldview and from within the emerging dual economies of the Colony and the interior. And while the British would disrupt the status-quo of the coastal cities of the Cape, the settled agricultural economy would adapt and in some ways benefit from the market access. The emergence of a boer identity would instead occur deep in the interior built off the life of the frontier with its isolation, family centred production, and racial hierarchy fed by regular violence with neighbouring Africans. By the time of the arrival of the British the Khoikhoi had been thoroughly subjugated and frontier violence now occurred with the far more organised and powerful cattle herding Xhosa with whom the boers would find at least three wars prior to the arrival of the British—who would themselves, and with far greater violence, fight a series of wars with the Xhosa and Zulu. Contrary to liberal historiography of the period, which sees racial divisions in South Africa as a result of deep seated racial animosity, Keegan (1996) sees racial identities forming out of the cauldron of the nineteenth century with lasting effects into the 20th. But the complexity of this process owes much to the historical processes that preceded it and the changes 3  Many of these coloureds came to be known as Griquas who would go on to form their own, albeit temporary, states on the edges of the expanding British colony in the nineteenth century (see Ross 1976).

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wrought by the British. It was over these relations and processes that the British would govern bringing revived immigration, a new liberal governmentality, and incorporation into the empire. And it would be in response to these changes that would produce the Great Trek of boer mythology: the great migration of trekboers into the interior and, ultimately, to the founding of two Afrikaner states. Despite a century of migration into the interior, it is this latter and greater migration into the same violent frontier that would be remembered and turned into a key narrative of boer identity. “Boer group identity and solidarity were forged out of the hostile and dangerous conditions on the frontier, faced as they were with the constant threat of attack, impoverishment and displacement at the hands of indigenous peoples, and with the daily struggle to tear from the barren environment the means of survival. Racial distinctions, set in concrete by the assumptions of their primitive Calvinism, became fundamental to their drive to overcome the forces which threatened their very existence” (Keegan 1996, 1).

A British Colony Like much of the colonial impulse, the arrival of the British in southern Africa was entirely due to European politics. Their initial stint was short. In 1795 they arrived simply to prevent a French takeover as the latter had invaded the Dutch Republic. They did not arrive permanently until 1806 following the bankruptcy of the VOC and major immigration would not occur for nearly two more decades—once again fuelled by events in Europe. This was an important time period in British history as well as British Imperial history. This is the period of the liberal reform movements, the emergence of European nationalism, and, for the British in particular, the beginnings of a more bureaucratic, rational, and ultimately ‘scientific’ approach to governance and social management that they would sedulously, if incredulously, apply to their colonies. But if the British brought with them their ideology they also brought their own class distinctions and divisive baggage that shaped the processes of identity formation in their new colony as immigration began apace in the 1820s. Though hardly the dumping ground of convicts (from time to time, rumours of cheap convict labour would cause serious disturbances in the Cape), the expanding empire provided a release valve for the pressures of rising unemployment in Britain.

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The arrival of large scale immigration, more so than the mere arrival of British governance, created the first distinctions between whites themselves and not simply whites, Africans, and coloureds. The initial wave of immigration stemmed from a series of crises or problems in Britain; class relations and general unrest combined with the then fashionable ideas of Malthus and Adam Smith to overcome opposition to British emigration to the eastern portion of the Cape Colony. These emigrants were a diverse lot of property owners and paupers, indentured servants, and free men, but mainly families and organised groups. They were hardly unified and certainly as divergent in interest as the Dutch that preceded them. But it is in the colonial experience that, according to Lester (1998), an initially divided body of British settlers came to forge a common subjectivity or solidarity under the conditions or ‘place’ of the Cape Colony. Such solidarity needed to transcend or reformulate inherited social boundaries, which Lester argues involved several integrated strategies. “First, there was the invention of a shared past, relying on imageries of a landscape being civilized through mutual endeavour.” Robert Godlonton’s Graham’s town Journal, founded itself by an 1820 settler in the new settlement of Grahamstown,4 proved key in shaping a political discourse of common enemies, political and indigenous. “A second strategy stemmed from notions of a unifying character, which could serve to obscure real differences of personality and politics” or our classic entrepreneurial capitalist ‘Brit’. Third “was a shift of emphasis in daily gendered routines, with women, who were initially constructed as ‘boundary markers’ for class identity, being positioned rather as harmonizers of an inclusive sense of ‘Britishness’” (Lester 1998, 516). It would not be a stretch to call the newly arrived British arrogant. Indeed, their treatment of the existing white settlers engendered a perceived distinction between whites and helped push the creation of a distinct Afrikaner identity, which did not yet exist. For Atmore and Marks (1974), this was a form of racism not unlike that applied to the Scottish and Irish by the English. Much of the twentieth century analyses of the origins of Afrikaner identity tend to focus on its religious and frontier life origins. The origins of Afrikaner nationalism cannot, however, be laid completely on religious interpretation, however relevant it remains. Some of the Afrikaner consciousness raising was due to genuine efforts to malign Afrikaners in the Cape Colony. 4

 Now Makhanda, Eastern Cape.

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In the judgement of the English-speaking Victorians, the rural Afrikaners, apart from being white, were almost everything they themselves were not: ignorant, superstitious, and conservative—and not interested in progress… The Afrikaans author ME Rothman, who grew up in Swellendam in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, noted with resentment that the English in the town used social etiquette and other ways to demonstrate their superiority as a nation and as a class… In many ways Afrikaners, ironically, were being subjected to the same rituals of subjection and degradation as those they employed to keep coloreds and blacks in their inferior place. (Giliomee 2009, 202)

English missionaries and local notables used this brutish view of the Afrikaners to argue for greater British colonial involvement and a settling of frontier issues from a liberal reformist perspective. The arrival of the British, then, must be understood as a set of complex ideological, racial, class, and material processes that had an effect on the formation of identities, politics, and existing social processes that could not be immediately grasped. When we seek to understand social changes of groups interacting the question must acknowledge that we are in part talking about the interaction of different social systems with their own ideologies, materials, relationships, and inner logics. We can then better understand the manifestation of power in shaping the direction of these interactions and how societies evolve, change, and emerge into a new set of social processes that define the production of society. But while European, primarily English, immigrants to the new British colony brought with them their European social system, this social world was just as challenged by the colonial experience as the Afrikaners before them. Here again the social understanding and actual life on the frontier would come to play a profound role in solidifying identities while furthering the political, economic, and social chasm developing between the coastal enclaves and the boers of the interior. It would also show how deeply a conflicted liberal ideology would insert itself in colonial, local, and frontier politics in distinct ways for the boers and the world of Cape Town. That is, liberalism would shape how the colony was seen and understood from afar in London; it would be translated and coopted for local political exigencies in Cape Town and it would profoundly affect the initial interactions with the peoples on the frontier of the colony, no matter how porous that border was. For Lester (1998) the frontier allowed for the formation of a common, if not commonly understood enemy for both the

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English and the boers: the Xhosa. The understandings of the Xhosa were not, however, uniform; they reflected the divergent positions of the colonial, local, and frontier people such that each experienced their interactions with the Xhosa through not simply ideology and the existing social order but from concrete, sometimes violent experiences. The Xhosa existed as much in experience as they did the mind; they, the abstract idea of a people, acted as an ‘other’ to the formation of a range of selves. The initial understandings of the Xhosa as a people were as much influenced by class, location and emerging liberal reformist ideas of a noble savage as they were changed by developments in the local economy unleashed by the arrival of the British (noteworthy here is the expansion of wool farming, which greatly expanded the perceived need for pasture). Upper class property owners tended to view the Xhosa through the lens of the noble savage and reformist ideals then popular in Britain. Such sentiments even led to a sense that the Xhosa too deserved access to the land and that the two peoples, European and African, could coexist as equals. But these farmers were often physically far removed from the realities of struggling farmers in the interior. Farmers and ranchers closer to Xhosa land tended to have a more aggressive view of the Xhosa owing to greater interaction and the effects of the small scale cattle raids that they were at times subject to—not to mention the three previous ‘wars’ the trekboers fought prior to the arrival of the British. Labour shortages in the burgeoning Cape economy similarly had an effect, though an oddly perverse one. The upper classes, themselves often recent immigrants, feared greater ‘pauper’ immigration to fix the growing labour shortage that had long plagued the Cape Colony. Their fear was driven by the existing upward mobility of the lower classes, which was seen as disruptive to the social order the English desperately wished to maintain. Successful yet poor English immigrants were trespassing on delicate class sensibilities in a land that already made it easy to leave behind existing class—even gender— relations. Regardless of one’s position in England, life in the colony tended to level social relations; all struggled to survive and success was not exclusively determined by class. Being part of a global empire, however, meant a much larger economy to compete in and cheap, pliable labour was essential. Recall, however, that the local population of Khoikhoi once again formed the first attempts to bring about a ‘native’ labour solution in the Colony that would not necessitate the socially destabilising effects of more pauper immigration (this policy was as much riven with reformists ideals

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on the benefits of labour to the soul as they were by the need for labour itself, though). That is, where cheap European labour could not be had— either due to the ‘escape option’ of the interior, views of racial superiority and types of labour, or simply due to a tight labour market caused by the broad success of the newly arrived immigrants—cheap labour had to be found amongst a population deemed racially suitable to menial work. The Khoikhoi, long seen as hard working and docile, neatly fit the bill. But the liberal reformists themselves, led by the reformist John Philip, director of the London Missionary Society in the colony, shed light on the deplorable conditions this form of labour ultimately produced: something akin to slavery. This ultimately ended in semi-legal status and the extension of some socio-political rights for the Khoikhoi that brought them more in line with notions of indentured servitude and a limited set of rights to appeal and challenge working conditions, though still noticeably deficient to the rights of whites and even Griquas or coloureds. This legal change of status, however, angered many colonists with their sense of racial superiority to the black peoples adding fuel to the social and political tensions in the colony. These processes were brought to a head by economic changes produced by the growth of the colony’s exports and the opening of the free port in Port Elizabeth in the early 1830s. This created an opportunity for wool exports and greater potential to exploit grazing land, an idea taken up by the eponymous Graham’s Town journal in the new immigrant town of Grahamstown near Port Elizabeth. This induced a change in the local economy, with some winners and some losers, and a call for greater access to land for the sheep herding that was now vastly more profitable. The call for greater land access would in time bring greater conflict with the Xhosa along the frontier, split the colonists, and further fuel a growing distance between the boers and the arriving English settlers. The sixth frontier war with the Xhosa in 1834 saw a hardening of views of the Xhosa as violent savages in need of subjugation. This was, oddly, aided by the then popular notion of phrenology brought to the colony during the war. Such ideas fuelled a ‘scientific’ rationale for the violence of the Xhosa. Such representations, however, ran up against the very same reformists in Parliament who were more successful at promoting a ‘benign’ relationship with the Xhosa that prevented the expansion demanded by the eastern settlers. The Xhosa and the colonial government, then, emerged as common enemies of the settlers and helped forge a common sense of solidarity and identity in frontier areas. For the newly arrived English this would further the

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­ erceived distance from the imperial centre and lead to calls for political p devolution; for the boers it would lead to a belief that they were alone and unique in their struggle, which would further their distance from the growing English world of the Cape Colony. And what of the Xhosa, the Zulus and other assorted peoples? Until now we have spoken from the perspective of the white immigrant and the socio-economic and cultural changes up to and immediately following British colonisation from their perspective. We know that many African societies, such as the San and Khoikhoi, were destroyed during the colonial period and others radically altered in the period still to come. But for historical and theoretical reasons we should look a bit more at groups like the Zulu and Xhosa and their polities to further assess the applicability of the argument made here. That is, though we often do not think of groups like the Xhosa as having a distinct polity or political apparatus as their cultural processes are deeply interwoven into their political ones, there is an order that defined these societies and one that can be properly deemed political. And this social and political world was hardly static. Attention to changes in these societies can help shore up the basic argument here while also exposing IR scholars to an area of study they rarely consider. But it’s also important to note that as African societies were subjugated resistance also emerged. The shape of this resistance reflects how groups adapted and changed in the broader colonial context, in particular with the rise of mission education and the liberalisation of colonial government. Just as it was for the Afrikaners, Black resistance in the twentieth century has roots in the 19th; the first black South African political writers emerge in this era as do some of the initial organisations and strategies of accommodation under the—false—promise of liberal governance. Even a cursory glance at the history of the events of the nineteenth century, though, will elucidate this process and contribute to our broader understanding of the forces that would create the modern South African state at the dawn of the twentieth century. Though debated, there is some consensus by historians that the nineteenth century saw some form of ‘state’ building among African societies (see, for example, Kuper 1993; Deflem 1999; see also Flannery 1995, 1999; Vansina 1970, 2004; Reid 2012) even if these processes were halting and ultimately squashed by the imperial might of the British army. Nevertheless, there is enough evidence to suggest that significant cultural, social, and political changes were occurring (particularly among the Zulu) that were leading to a centralising of authority and power not unlike a

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state; the processes of these changes too may fit our understanding of how states develop from pre-state political organisational forms. At issue is whether to call these political entities, such as the centralising Zulus under Shaka, proto-states and to what extent the changes that occurred were revolutionary forms of social organisation that would constitute some noticeable change from previous forms of social organisation (see Laband 1985; cf Reid 2012). At issue too are the causes of these tendencies— encroaching British colonialism, increased slave raids from Portuguese Mozambique, trade and wealth accumulation, or pressures seemingly external that are in some way caused by internal processes, such as the expansionary social processes of the Xhosa and the Zulus who both share a similar Nguni cattle oriented way of life (see Comaroff and Comaroff 1990; Bjerk 2006). For our purposes a detour into some ethnographic work is called for. We need to understand the basic organisation of the Zulu and Xhosa societies before we can assess the changes wrought over the nineteenth century. Both were chiefships well integrated into a cattle rearing society, though highly fragmented. Paramount chiefs were far from absolute in their power, which was largely centred on ceremonial practices and the allocation of land access—an important role in maintaining political power, rewarding patronage, and preventing roiling dissent. Both the Zulus and Xhosa had numerous chiefs and varying clans that at times fought each other in succession disputes. For the Xhosa and Zulus, real authority for most, however, remained tied to the extended families that formed the basis of the homesteads that constituted the broader Xhosa and Zulu societies and the Nguni societies more broadly. Not too unlike the boers, both built homesteads around extended familial relations that provided the labour necessary to cultivate the land and care for the cattle that defined a family’s wealth and status. The leader of the homestead was simply the one with the most cattle. Some leaders of homesteads, however, would accumulate large cattle herds—thus status—creating client-like relations with smaller, lesser families that coalesced into large homesteads. Such individuals would become very powerful in both societies and chiefs needed to take their views into account when making decisions (see Switzer 1993, 38). Social organisation, then, can be visualised as the expanding circle of the home and larger homestead and its roaming cattle; radiating out from here are patron-client networks that extend out into larger homesteads and beyond to the chiefs. This way of organising production and political power links land, cattle, and labour in complex ways that necessitate

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expansion to head off tensions of a variety of sorts. Land disputes, labour disputes, issues of marriage and status, etc., were all solved by expanding Xhosa and Zulu lands and thereby providing a social pressure relief valve. It is a particularly fragile way of organising the polity, however, that lends itself toward perpetual expansion to accommodate the accumulation of power and mitigate competition within the loose hierarchy of individuals of the chiefship. Cattle was status. With cattle and land one could, thus, develop and command status in society and those with both fragmented the polity into a variety of factions that broke off to create new lineages. Though based on oral tradition, according to Switzer (1993), the Xhosa had already endured two major splits in the early and late eighteenth century. Contact with the whites did little to abate this aggressive expansion or the fissiparous tendency built into Xhosa society. Indeed, we know from the numerous frontier wars that the Xhosa were apt to fight anyone that threatened them and their access to grazing land while also forming ad hoc alliances with boers in their disputes, whom they initially assumed would be subsumed into Xhosa society much as other groups had been as they gave way to the expanding Xhosa (ibid., 48). As the frontier with the Cape Colony crept closer and as more and more boers migrated outward on their treks, the Xhosa’s relationships would become more complex, involving not just groups of boer families but British government agents and increasingly missionaries. By the 1860s many Xhosa would be deeply enmeshed in trade, labour, and political relations with the Colony in a process that both seeped into and expanded upon the fissures of Xhosa society upending it in the process. The ability to expand and bring more land under control was central to the stability of the Xhosa order; more land for cattle meant less tensions in society. Chiefs could gain support by granting access to land but there first had to be land. This pressure pushed the Xhosa to continually expand in a fragile process of socio-political-pastoral expansion. For the most part, it worked. That is until the land you desire is claimed by another. And this is the situation by the end of the eighteenth century. The boers and the Xhosa had long fought and collaborated along their mutual frontiers. But the arrival of the British and a massive split among the Xhosa that saw them once again divided into two major factions would have profound consequences for Xhosa society. Unrelated to the British or the boers, the Xhosa had endured a serious split over rival claimants to the chiefship at the turn of the century. Two brothers, Gcaleka and Rharhabe each claimed

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the throne on the death of their father, despite the former’s more rightful claim. Their dispute amounts to a civil war and played a role in igniting the first Xhosa wars in the resulting expansion that put the Xhosa into greater conflict with the boers. As before, the Xhosa had few qualms about making alliances with others in their disputes and the arrival of the British provided a powerful new ally, if a dangerous one, in this dispute down the generations. The politics of the internecine conflicts that embroiled the Xhosa in the early 1800s are maddeningly complex, medievally so. Delving into this complexity is, at best, a distraction (for an overview see Switzer 1993). Suffice it to say that we can distill the competing factions into two groups of Xhosa formed in the split of the House of Phalo: the Gcaleka and Rharabe dwelling on opposite sides of the Kei river. Among the Rharabe there would be a later succession battle between Ndlambe and Ngqika. This dichotomy, however, fails to capture all the familial complexity allowed by a polygamous society. Competing factions within factions each sought out members of rival groups in their claims to power. Indeed, the civil war was started when Ngqika took the wife of his uncle Ndlambe. Such an act could not go unpunished and Ndlambe rallied the sub-chiefs to defeat Ngqika. But these very chiefs would, at the conclusion of this first skirmish, eventually switch sides to support Ngqika. Meanwhile, cattle raids caused much unrest among the boers and the newly arrived British waited for the dust to settle before invading Xhosaland. By the time the British arrived, though tensions remained, two powerful groups of Xhosa sat uneasily across the Kei river. Indeed, the Ngqika, the name this band took after Ndlambe had been pushed aside, had done much to expand the Xhosa lands for his faction; particularly up to and around the Fish River along the frontier with the boers. But, in a nod to those wildly complex events, to defeat their rivals the Ngqika allied with the British. The neighbouring Gcaleka, looking down upon this action, decided to recognise—the still living—Ndlambe as paramount chief. The British, who initially wished to treat the Xhosa as independent entities bound by mutually agreed upon treaties, in turn came to see the Ngqika chief as answerable for all the incursions the Xhosa—regardless of faction—continued to mount in the Cape Colony. The alliance not only brought the far better organised and armed British military to the frontier, it also gave credence to their rivals’ decades long claims to be the rightful heir to the House of Phalo, as it was known. The alliance with the British required ceding some territory around the Fish River, which rival groups

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began invading in a series of commando style raids in a bid to reclaim land they felt was rightfully Xhosa. This led to increasingly violent British reprisals and a fitful attempt at expanding British colonialism among the Xhosa. The socio-political organisation of the Xhosa, as noted above, was prone to fission and needed expansion to contain major disputes. But the Rharhabe split and rise of tensions with the Gcaleka Xhosa proved costly, fatal; it created two powerful groups of Xhosa with competing claims to authority and a powerful incentive to ally with the British. Initially the British were content with addressing their frontier and the Xhosa along it by using treaties and alliances. Their paramount concern in the early 1800s was security. But the British had failed to appreciate the divisions within the Xhosa and their policy of holding the Ngqika, with whom they had partnered, solely responsible for all the Xhosa would in time lead to greater and greater engagement and interference. The aborted Queen Adelaide Province (1834–37) was an attempt to address this security issue (see Lester 1998) through a mix of treaties and direct colonisation; but it also showed the growing power of economic interests that would later push for more permanent colonisation. As Switzer makes clear, “the treaty system was doomed almost from the beginning: it was simply not in the settlers interests to observe these treaties” as they needed more land and continued to face the perennial problem of labour (1993, 61). The collapse of an independent Xhosa would have to wait until the War of Mlanjeni in 1850–53, which was itself preceded by war in 1846–47, with its denouement in the Cattle Killing. The war in 1846 saw the complete annexation of the Xhosa lands east of the Kei river and the land between the Kei and Keiskamma rivers were to be a new colony called Kaffraria where the remainder of the Xhosa were corralled. But this period also coincides with major liberal reforms in the UK and the rise of a ‘civilising mission’ to justify colonialism. The term should not fool us for, however laudable many of the proposed liberal reforms were, their purpose was the total destruction of the Xhosa way of life. In 1850 the new governor of the Colony, Lord Grey, made his views quite clear for he saw the complete subjugation of the Xhosa as the only path to peace and only possible if the power of the chiefs was undermined through social reforms (Switzer 1993). To this end he aggressively pursued assimilationist policies, such as mission education and public works, which were thought to encourage a ‘civilised’ outlook through hard work. But it is the Cattle Killing, where thousands killed off their remaining cattle in the hope of

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resurrecting their prosperous society, that represents the true collapse of the Xhosa as a politically independent people. The Cattle Killing follows the War of Mlanjeni and the great lung sickness plague introduced to the Colony by imported cattle in its aftermath. Lung sickness destroyed almost as many cattle as the Cattle Killing that followed it. In the wake of this natural catastrophe a young prophet arose who claimed to have seen a vision whereby the Xhosa would be free again if they destroyed all of their wealth (i.e. cattle) clearing the ground for a resurrection. It was, in short, a millenarian movement within a defeated people that blended elements of Christian resurrection and cleansing with existing Xhosa beliefs (see Peires 1979, 1987). But two other elements stand out: the prophecy was not embraced by all Xhosa and neither Christian converts nor Xhosa traditionalists neatly explain who did kill their cattle (though enough did such that the outcome was devastating). For Peires, opponents of the cattle killing were not necessarily Christian or formerly allied with the Cape in the War of Mlanjeni (Peires 1986). Instead he argues that political and economic changes were occurring that were severing the social linkages between chiefs and ‘commoners’. In particular he highlights fundamental changes in social traditions that indicated a significant change in social processes—and thus chiefly power—that had occurred over the decades of engagement with the Colony. Traditionally when one slaughtered a cow, for instance, or opened grain reserves there was an expectation of sharing with one’s neighbours. But with the British and the boers came access to markets; increasing access to markets allowed cattle owners to sell rather than share their bounty. Markets also reinforced relative and absolute deprivation within Xhosa society. That is, as chiefs gained more status from the goods one could buy in a cash economy the distinctions between chief and commoner became greater; social distress was compounded by the suffering of the post war period making traditional appeals to sharing more powerful; their denied access was, thus, felt more acutely. For Peires, it is not a surprise, then, that struggle between traditionalists and modernisers (Soft and Hard) would play out in cattle and corn (Peires 1986, 455–456). For Gump, the killings reinforced a growing split in Xhosa society between those benefiting from greater integration into the colony and those who did not; between those who held fast to notions of tradition and those who saw benefit to working with the colonists (1997). According to Gump, Lord Grey saw the cattle killing as a conspiracy, one last attempt to maintain an independent Xhosa. He would use the killings as a pretext

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to inaugurate greater policies of assimilation but also as a means to finally break the chiefs and gain control over the people as a labour force (see also Switzer 1993, esp. Ch 3). Hard work, it must be remembered, was part and parcel of early missionary work, which saw it as essential to one’s duty to a Christian god. The broader civilising mission of the British, however, would have an unintended consequence. While a small elite would arise within the Xhosa, many would become landless labourers. But a small sliver of the children of this Xhosa elite, mostly Christian converts, were educated in mission schools and very much aware of the—admittedly cynical and hypocritical—colour blind constitutional traditions of the British and, thus, would begin giving voice to their grievances in the new African newspapers and opinion journals. They sought not autonomy or independence but inclusion. Though not discussed by Gump, this approach would form the basis of the policies of the early ANC until WWII.  Indeed, accommodation shaped many early nationalist movements from South Africa to India. “For the Xhosa masses, assimilation resulted in their absorption into a racial capitalist system, with the transformation of peasants into proletarians and economic underdevelopment being the outcome. Such exploitation also gave rise to a shared consciousness. Consequently, by the 1920s tens of thousands of rural blacks from eastern Cape joined the Industrial Commercial Worker’s Union” (Gump 1997, 51). The comparison here with the fate of the larger Zulus, could not be more striking, though their encounters with the boers and the British did not come until after the Xhosa had been subjugated. The Zulus, like the Xhosa and all Nguni peoples, were a cattle centred society where power rests in the household and homestead, literally and metaphorically. They too were loosely organised around a paramount chief. But their reaction to external pressures from the Portuguese in Mozambique, for example, had a very different effect on the internal organisation of Zulu society. The anthropologist Mathieu Deflem has done considerable work on the Zulus and state formation, challenging many resource war arguments that argue pressure engenders centralisation. His analysis of the powerful and famous Zulu leader, Shaka, and the empire he created, he argues, cannot necessarily be explained by what he terms Eurocentric theorising on centralising states (Deflem 1999). He is not alone in his analysis. The Zimbabwean scholar Chanaiwa makes a similar point and notes how contemporary accounts of Africans in southern Africa, reflecting the racism and bias one would expect, were dumbfounded by the order and strength of the Zulu

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kingdom they encountered in the 1860s—notwithstanding its fragmentation. They ascribed a deficient mentality to all Africans such that a state like the Zulus could only exist with European tutelage. But according to Chanaiwa, contemporary writers went to great lengths to find some mythical past where the ways of the white man, the ways of good governance, were imparted to some previous Zulu king (1980, 3).5 Chanaiwa, more strongly than Deflem, adamantly opposes any purely external causal account of the political revolution he sees occurring in nineteenth century Zulu politics (see also Vansina 1970, 2004; cf Flannery 1999). Instead he argues that whatever external causes may exist, they must be paired with or understood within the social processes of Zulu society itself. In particular, he argues that the cattle society of the Zulus was a form of capitalism with cattle being an investment whereby large cattle herders would dispense with their own labour by incorporating others and paying wages or forming clientele relationships. “This quasi-­ capitalist, pastoralist mode of consumption most likely would have led to much more considerable socioeconomic distinctions between rulers and the commoners, and between wealthy and the poor, as well as to more conspicuous class formations, than we have been able to discover and appreciate. It is most probable that one of the major motivations for mass participation in the [Shaka] revolution and the accompanying political violence was the socio-psychological feeling of relative deprivation” (Chanaiwa 1980, 8). He argues that leaders like Shaka were able to draw in followers in part by drawing off this discontent. A revolution of the social system to redistribute cattle was unthinkable. But revolutionary expansion to bring in new land and cattle raids was. The ‘exit option’ always meant that the discontented could merely leave one chiefdom for another. Here Chanaiwa argues that rebellious leaders like Dingiswayo and Shaka (neither of which, though heirs, were meant to ascend to the throne) could disrupt the status quo and gather followers in their quest for the thrown in the fractious disputes that characterised all transitions of power in Zulu (and Xhosa) society. Like the Xhosa before them, “to resolve the universal problems of societal identity and self-determination, the Zulu converted their predatory 5  This is not so odd as it seems nor so much a thing of the past. Carl Sagan thought the extraordinary accuracy of celestial predictions by the Dogon tribe in northern Cameroon surely indicated that some missionary or white traveler had imparted this knowledge some time in the past (recounted in Mudimbe 1988).

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pastoralist economy based on the dispossession of other peoples and the redistribution of the spoils among themselves, and their political violence, into a potent nationalism. Military conquest and despoliation of non-Zulu people became the basis of their nationalism” (Chanaiwa 1980, 15). Unlike the strict internalist, Chanaiwa, and more in keeping with my own position, Deflem (1999) argues that change among the Zulus cannot be solely attributed to a neutral process of external pressure leading to internal cohesion or collapse; they must instead be analysed as two systems, internal and external, engaging and interacting. Change emerges from the propensities of these systems and the specific disruptions that occur as groups interact. Laband (1985) and Kuper (1993), in contrast, argue that the Zulus were far more fragmented than recognised and, thus, though certainly changed, were more continuous with the past than Deflem argues (i.e. the Zulus were not moving toward the state form). Kuper’s approach offers a rather insightful and intriguing argument based on a mix of archaeology and anthropology to argue for continuity. But he also places a strict line to adjudicate change: the direct challenge of the British military as its colonies expanded into the Natal in the later nineteenth century. To study change, however, Kuper argues for an analysis of the ‘house’ as a means to uncover broader socio-political changes indicating notable transitions from existing social organisation. “This domestic settlement [the house] forms the crucial unit in economy, kinship system and regional political organization; and that its layout is a symbolic representation of principles of the socio-cosmic system” (1993, 473). Rather than attempt to analyse changes in lineage structures away from familial forms of power organisation to more stratified ones (i.e. early state formation), Kuper argues that studying changes in the ‘house’ and its organisation is more in keeping with the limited archaeological record in the absence of any real data on early African lineage systems. The house and broader homestead is a significant part of Zulu (and Xhosa society) so any changes there would, in turn, reflect larger changes in society. According to Kuper, the archaeological record does not indicate significant transformations such as increased use of metals that might indicate a greater centralising tendency, greater specialisation, and suggest some emerging socioeconomic stratification for these societies. But for Deflem this misses some important changes that did occur in the nineteenth century where there is more ample evidence than the scant archaeological record on metallurgy. That is, he argues that, though the record in the ground shows little important change to the organisation of

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the homestead and thus broader society, nascent change is evident. Under Shaka, according to Deflem (1999), real political and military changes occurred, even if it did so, as Kuper (1993) notes, by building off the existing social organisation. Shaka, as such, proved a far more powerful and centralising figure than could be found in the fractious Xhosa at the time. This is not to suggest that they did not contain the same fissiparous internal propensity. On the contrary, things could have gone a different direction, which serves to highlight the role of contingency in social processes and outcomes. The Zulus much like the Xhosa faced external and internal pressures focused on access to land. But something like an empire began to form amongst the various Zulu factions under these internal and external pressures in the nineteenth century; leaders began to centralise around the powerful Shaka, though, like the Xhosa, they remained significantly autonomous (Laband 1992). But Deflem argues that both institutional leadership and resource pressures cannot alone account for the rise of the Zulu state, though each played a unique role. “The Zulu’s aggregative warfare, as a process of unification by external coercion, was accompanied by an integrative mechanism of internal coercion. Moreover, warfare should not be regarded only as a cause but also as a result of state formation” (1999, 381). Though arguing for change short of revolution, Ballard’s study of the material basis of Zulu power and the political machinations of one John Dunn reveals a complex pattern of interaction and change between the Zulus, boers, and British (1980). Ballard argues that the only period of centralisation occurred under Shaka in the early 1800s and that his assassination ushered in a lengthy period of decentralisation and civil conflict in response. The newly formed Natal colony on the east coast in the mid 1840s was sufficiently concerned about the fallout from the Zulu civil war in 1856 that advisors to the crown, particularly Theophilus Shepstone, sought to foster the power of Cetshwayo (son of the nominal chief, Mpande, under whom he ruled in all but name) at the risk of two or three rival yet equally powerful chiefs (Ballard 1980, 85). But it is Bullard’s study of the man to whom Shepstone turned, John Dunn, that truly reveals the complexity of these relations. John Dunn was a British settler and a creature of the frontier zone where an intrepid person could make much for himself outside the stricter social and economic confines of the colony. Dunn would make a fortune trading with the Zulus and would become Cetshwayo’s closest adviser (and beneficiary) until he turned traitor and sided with the British in the

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Zulu wars. But before the war Dunn used his assiduously collected connections to Cetshwayo to first access land, which required the chief’s assent; he then slowly built up his relationships (and clients) along the coast by acquiring numerous wives along the coast of Zululand—all the while maintaining a healthy trade in immigrants and weapons between the colony and Zululand. Cetshwayo himself was instrumental to Dunn’s ascent by granting him various rights to engage in trade, particularly in weapons once the former’s paramountcy was assured. With the building of the Natal railway in 1877–78, both individuals would serve as vital conduits for immigrant, particularly Tsonga, labour and both would grow rich in this trade even as a cattle virus culled the wealth of many wealthy Zulus. “By 1878 Cetshwayo and Dunn had succeeded brilliantly in augmenting the political and economic strength of the pre-capitalist Zulu kingdom by adapting the traditional tributary obligations of the Tsonga to meet the cash needs of the kind and the labour needs of a capitalist white settler community in Natal” (Ballard 1980, 90). The collapse of the independent Zulus was not too different than that of the Xhosa—despite the centralising tendency, the same internal logic of Zulu society made the task of a leader like Shaka necessary and difficult. It reflects the role played by changes the British wished to introduce in the political and governing structures of the colony. That is, it is in part ideological but it was also economic and social. Indeed, it is in analysing the social changes of the Zulu and Xhosa that we get a clearer picture of the changes wrought in African societies at the time, changes that cannot be explicated in neatly causal relationships only mechanisms. Though much farther from the Cape Colony, by the late 1840s the Zulus were in increasing and increasingly violent contact with the trekboers (more below) followed swiftly by the British as mineral wealth was discovered in the 1860s and 1880s. By this time several quasi-independent boer polities were emerging as well and the British, following the discovery of gold and diamonds, wanted to solidify their hold and secure cheap labour for the capital intensive extraction of the mineral wealth. They hoped to introduce a federal system much as they had recently done in Canada that would bring a measure of local governance and lower costs. The system was meant to reduce a top heavy governing system that would federalise some duties, placate dissenting voices (mainly boers), and more cheaply and effectively settle the colony for good by opening the political process. But for federalism to work it required the recalcitrant boers and the Zulus to accept the sovereignty of the British. Neither group would but it was the Zulus who

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initially bore the brunt of the British ire as they unleashed a violent and devastating war against the Zulus in 1879. The war put an end to the independent Zulus. Not long after their defeat, however, the British would turn to the now independent boer republics culminating with the brutal and devastating Boer War at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Liberal Governance and Boer Defiance It may be that the death of the independent Xhosa and Zulu societies was overdetermined; all societies interact and change over the course of interactions but such stark material and organisational differences are bound to make some interactions ones of notable dominance. And while it is unlikely that we have settled any debate over their burgeoning proto-statehood— not that an attempt was truly made—the changes these societies did undergo highlight the need to look at internal and external processes even while recognising historical contingency and the overwhelming power and logistical organisation of the British military. But it is the nature of these interactions, the direction—fits and starts—of societal organisation as it changed over time, and the way ideological, immaterial, and material processes shaped but did not outright determine the social production of society that is of interest here. The economic organisation of the colony and larger empire is important, no doubt, but it alone cannot explain change nor can a strictly material economic interpretation help us understand both the expansion of the colony, its nature, or the processes of change within Xhosa and Zulu societies. We are, however, at a disadvantage in discussing these societies for the written record is scant and is often reflective of the views and interpretations of those functionaries, immigrants, and missionaries who produced many of the records available to historians. As colonisation spread, however, and more Africans came under the jurisdiction of the British Colonial administration this began to change. Here we begin to see how the black majority came to contest colonial power and, moreover, how powerful an entity the colonial apparatus had become as this contestation, at least initially, does not seek to fully subvert the system directly but on its own terms. We see a similar historical unfolding when we turn to the boers and their ill fated republics. The contestation of power between the boers and the English follows a similar narrative arc, if you will, to the Xhosa and the Zulu. But from the ashes of the funeral pyres of the boer republics emerged a potent political challenge to the state in formation; the boer identity emerged as a

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­ ationalist one that would take control of the state, the economy, and n society in the twentieth century. In the literature on African societies it has long been noted that all socio-political organisation has in part been framed by the ‘exit option’. If one did not like life under one chief or ruler one needed only to move (Herbst 2000). The political geography of rule had to contend with a capacious physical geography of a continent with more land than people. What drives a person or persons to leave one space for another varies by time and place and is largely idiopathic. But as the British began taking over the Cape Colony many boers began using their ‘exit option’ by simply walking deeper into the interior—and for reasons that are considerably more well known and documented. There were two streams of emigrants from the Cape Colony into the interior of what would become South Africa. Only the second is called the Great Trek with the first emigrants in the mid 1820s simply called ‘trekboers’. The distinction is important, however, as the trekboers left primarily seeking greater pasture for cattle and often left in small, family groups. The Voortrekkers of the Great Trek, in contrast, left in large, organised groups. They too left to seek out more land but political problems, particularly concerning loans for farm land—abolished by the British—and issues concerning title claims left many feeling marginalised under the newly arrived British. This marginalisation should not be trivialised for it is from within the experiences of the Trek, both on those who left and those who remained, that an ethnic nationalism would emerge. Though the independent boers who founded the first republics in the interior would be destroyed by the British at the dawn of the twentieth century, the acute sense of political and economic disenfranchisement engendered a political consciousness built on capturing the state for the Afrikaner Volk that defined politics in the period between the World Wars and, ultimately, led to the apartheid state. It’s easy, as an outsider, to dismiss the relevance of a group of people who seemingly migrated to gain access to land. But this glosses over the very real and perceived threat the boers felt as the British instilled a new governmentality on the Cape Colony. Access to cheap labour, the perennial problem of early South African political economy, was, as far as the boers were concerned, made worse by the bans on slavery, the nascent rights for workers (some of which predate the British, of course), and the changes wrought by the mere presence of English immigrants with greater access to Imperial capital. The English could quite simply afford to pay

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more for labour; they could invest more in agricultural technology; and, as such, they benefitted mightily from a slowly liberalising British Empire. And we know, as noted above, that the English held themselves socially above the boers. Indeed, this animosity bordering on ethno-classism even led the Cape Colony government to decree that all government work was to be conducted in English and English alone. The Voortrekkers saw the English, then, as a threat to their independent way of life that not only criticised their language but the very social and economic foundations of their independence. Not all Afrikaners left, however, and those that remained, Giliomee (2009) is at pains to note, tended to prosper and to identify increasingly with the political order erected by the British. They prospered too from the liberalising trade policies of the empire and during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1901 their loyalty remained to the British. This split amongst the boers would later lead to differing political divisions and parties that jockeyed for the Afrikaner vote in an independent South Africa. But, for our purposes now, it highlights the central role of an ideology, of liberalism, and all its messy reality as central to the processes that unfolded over the nineteenth century. Material change and organisation matter but so too does the ideology that seeks to alter them. Liberalism is a strange bedfellow to the rise of nationalist politics yet its role is clear in the history. While Keegan (1996) takes issue with the general liberal historiography6 of this period where Afrikaners are essentially anti-enlightenment boors fleeing the material and ideological progress of the British into a rugged and isolated interior where their racial views could harden; British imperial policy still contrasted with the needs and desires of the Afrikaners on a very fundamental level. For Keegan, key here is liberalism itself as a driving ideology of nineteenth century British Colonialism, which must be incorporated into our understanding of the domestic politics of the colonies themselves. Liberalism entailed opening trade and reducing preferential treatment to certain goods, which for the near subsistence farming boers meant less money for their agricultural output and, thus, little money for imported goods. In time liberalism also meant significant reforms in  local governance, particularly the long, long period where devolution was mooted and ultimately instituted toward the end of the century. The devolution of representation alone led to tremendous 6  Keegan is referring to liberal scholars of the twentieth century where liberalism provides a theoretical lens with which to analyse the past, its failings, and its historical unfolding.

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­ olitical disputes within the white community and even between Cape and p the boer republics, the Orange Free State (OFS) and the Zuid Afrikaasche Republic (ZAR/Transvaal). According to Keegan, Early-nineteenth-century liberalism was profoundly ambiguous. Its rhetorical commitment to the legal formalities of equality and freedom was in sharp contrast to its fundamental compatibility with cultural imperialism, class domination, and, ultimately, racial subjugation. And it could be argued that these were not just failings, but were a function, direct or indirect, of the role of liberal ideology in the sustaining the hegemony of class and culture in the rapidly developing economic order of free trade capitalism… Here race is treated not simply as a derivative of relations of production or of economic class, but as an autonomous variable with a life of its own (though in practice race as a historical reality takes on meaning in the context of specific social and economic systems). (1996, 13)

This ambiguity is as profound as the consequences of increasingly liberal policies in the Cape and broader empire. Ideology must, in the end, be worked into the world by humans enmeshed in material networks and other social processes that shape their identities, needs, and interests that constitute in part the lifeworld of individuals and communities. Liberal humanists of the period were, for example, at considerable ideological pains to deny the vote to coloureds and blacks despite racial animosity in the province. Surprisingly, Giliomee (2009) argues—much like Keegan (1996)—that socio-economic differences amongst the whites—British and Afrikaners—fostered an indifference to coloured votes on the one hand and a stronger Afrikaner identity formation on the other. Multiple attempts were made to institute small financial hurdles to the franchise in an effort to prevent blacks the vote. Hypocrisy, after all, is the essence of an empire built on a belief that it promotes freedom. However hypocritical that seems now, that was for many the raison d’etre of the British Empire. But black politics began to emerge nonetheless as some English political parties began courting their vote, however short lived black suffrage turned out to be. The reform bills in the 1880s that sought to extend the franchise also had the effect of politicising an early black consciousness, if one that initially fell along ethnic lines, such as seen in the Xhosa journal, Imvo Zabantsundu (see also Switzer 1985). But when devolution led to real voting and the formation of political parties, white votes could easily be delineated between those who benefitted from liberalising trade

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(English) and those who did not (Afrikaner farmers). Liberalism in the economic sphere was a threat not just to a racial order but to a way of life built implicitly and explicitly upon it. Liberalism got its push into the colonial project with the fall of Peel’s Conservative government in the UK in 1846 and the election of the Whigs; Earl Grey, after his perceived success in governing New Zealand, became the colonial secretary of the Cape Colony. He held decidedly favourable views of the reform movement in general and what could be done with the colonial administration as a result if such reforms were brought into colonial administration. For Keegan, this demonstrates the deep connections between imperial policy and the domestic processes of the Cape Colony and neighbouring colonies (1996). Not only were the Corn Laws repealed, which had an immediate impact on grain farmers, the Whigs also began the process of political devolution in some of the colonies. Matched with more immediate and significant bureaucratic reforms, they aimed to create the necessary preconditions of colonial self sufficiency via rational administration. This is most clearly embodied in the reform works projects of John Montagu the government secretary to the Cape Colony. According to Keegan, Montagu “laid the foundation of a modern civil service by introducing an examination system for civil servants, antedating such a system in Britain” (1996, 211). Mantagu also sought to revamp the colony’s communication infrastructure with large building projects to open markets and more easily communicate across the colony (e.g. rail roads). But Montagu was a stridently authoritarian figure, much loathed, and he proved to be a lightning rod for settler [read: English] discontent. The resulting reforms, however, proved fertile ground for the Whigs’ devolutionary desires by creating nascent political stirrings among the colony’s well heeled and increasingly wealthy merchant class. “The increasingly self-confident and assertive bourgeoisie looked forward to the formal extension of the public sphere in which they operated and exercised their influence. The mercantile-humanitarian alliance of the 1820s that had set out to free the colonial economy and society from archaic restrictions had been overwhelmingly metropolitan in its perceptions and orientation. By the 1840s, however, public discourse in Cape Town was dominated by local colonial forces, Afrikaans and English-speaking, with precious little time for humanitarian concerns” (ibid., 215). Such ideological flexibility proved useful in meeting the political needs of both colony and metropole while reflecting their distinctive politics and political issues; the colonial economy and need for land meant real ­material

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repercussions and interactions as well. Cheap labour and available land had long fuelled the Afrikaner exodus of the trekboers, but such tensions arose in immediate colonial-indigenous borders as well. These too reflected the growing political tensions in the Cape Colony concerning taxation and representation; a growing urban-rural divide was forming and mapped onto a growing sense of Afrikaner identity in contrast to the English/ British and, in particular, their policies in the colony and towards the as-­ yet unincorporated African tribes. The treaty system that had determined British-African relations was increasingly under strain as farmers and settlers sought ever more land for development and who saw their conflict with the Africans as part a larger conflict over legitimate governance in the colonies. It is in this context that the final battles with the Xhosa in Eastern Cape must be understood. Though imperial policy was to avoid war, local land issues led to agitation for war and claims of imperial abandonment. But if London was opposed to fighting costly wars, the emerging merchant class in Cape Town was much more decidedly in favour of settler capitalism and, thus, supported the calls to war and settle the Xhosa question once and for all (see Keegan 1996, 216). Settlers in the Eastern Cape could agitate for land while Cape Town merchants could engage in war profiteering if the British could be convinced to commit. It is here that Earl Grey’s devolution policy becomes of interest. Grey felt that in order to eventually grant representative government the Xhosa needed to be completely pacified and subjugated as subaltern subjects not an independent polity at the Colony’s frontiers. But here too we see the liberal influence not just on colonial policy but in the methods; through the civilizing mission, Grey sought by military means to create a pacified system of Xhosa chiefs that could support British colonial policy and expose them to the ‘civilised life’. Here the desires of locals to take over African lands meshed well with London’s interests—at least initially. If war could be had cheaply, and waged with South African ‘sepoy’ armies, then it could meet a number of interests. But this would not be so. War is always costly in life and specie. The growing costs of the Xhosa War of the Axe in 1847 led Grey to replace as governor and high commissioner, the civilian Sir Henry Pottinger, with the hero of the Sikh War (India), Sir Henry Smith. Smith’s immediate actions were swift, total, and devastating: he promptly began a policy of total, abject humiliation and subjugation of the Xhosa. Smith’s high handed efforts and close ties to the Cape Town elite, however, alienated not only the Afrikaner settlers—particularly those in and around Graham’s Town near much of the fighting—

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his efforts to bring the Xhosa to the light of civilisation entailed utter humiliation that in the aftermath of the latest wars left Xhosa society destroyed but did little to militarily settle the issues on the frontier. Immediately following the end of the latest hostilities, Smith faced an even greater threat in the last great Xhosa war, the War of Mlanjeni. Settler desires for land had long fuelled the Xhosa wars but the Mlanjeni war was unique in that it brought into rebellion a large number of coloured settlers in the Kat River Settlement who had only just recently fought alongside the British in the latest war against the Xhosa. But here the broader workings of the imperial economy must be called upon. Pressure on the Kat River settlement began as the wool economy began heating up in the 1840s. Kat River was increasingly crowded and viewed as ideal pastoral real estate. Settlers began to view the Kat River as not only ideal land but came to see its occupants as particularly indolent and corrupt (see Keegan 1996, 237; see also Taylor 2000). Smith had sought to do away with the coloureds by introducing vagrancy laws, declaring that the land was not being properly used and, thus, the coloureds must go. Grey’s government, however, citing imperial policies, forbade the new laws. This did not stop settlers drumming up support for formal annexation of the Settlement and the removal of its inhabitants—the settlement’s purpose as a buffer to the defeated Xhosa was, in any event, no longer necessary. Smith ultimately got around the vagrancy laws by simply handing out land to white settlers. These efforts were so egregious that they led several coloureds to appeal to the Aborigines Protection Society in London—itself an odd Liberal institution that sought to guarantee the upliftment and protection of aboriginal peoples. This inland march of British settlers and the British Empire is a curious and noxious admixture of race, economics, settler politics, frontier disputes, security concerns, and the liberal policies of the Empire itself. None are sufficient and little appears necessary in the messy contingency of unfolding events. Colonialism’s ‘man on the ground’ appears just as relevant as the economic forces in the UK and the colony that propelled him forward; liberal reformists appear alongside the growing spread of missionaries, aided and abetted by the liberal ‘civilizing’ mission of colonialism. Yet the brutal reality of a racist hierarchy that underpinned society and the colonial mission made a mockery of reform in the wake of creeping colonialism. However relevant the empire was to these events as they unfolded, the colonies remained at the penumbra of imperial concerns and processes;

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the colonies remained more an irritant than a centrepiece of policy as the empire reacted as much as it acted to events on the continent. But with the discovery of gold then diamonds all of this would change. Mineral wealth would attract both unsavoury settlers with delusions of grandeur (think Cecil Rhodes) and imperial capital that would remake southern African politics; it would foster the creation of an African peasant class then concomitant settler fears that would in time unleash a cascade of racial laws aimed at controlling Africans and ensuring a steady supply of cheap African migrant labour; it would embolden the boers with a sense of stability from wealth in their new republics; and it would profoundly alter the socio-­ economic, ideological, and cultural processes that would shape the South African Republic yet to come.

Gold and the Political Economy of Ethnic Nationalism: The Rise and Fall of the Afrikaners and the Nascent South African State By the latter decades of the nineteenth century, if we pull back from the immediate politics of the frontier, we begin to see how clearly the region is being made and remade by the confluence of local and imperial processes. The number and kind of actors has by this time grown. Though hardly truly autonomous for all involved, the actors constituted genuine political entities within a vaguely liberal sovereign and economic order—if hesitantly and hypocritically at times, tempered by political expediency and the exigencies of more immediately pressing interests both imperial, regional, and local. Though for these past few pages we have quietly left behind the trekboers, these discontented farmers were nonetheless busy pushing farther into the interior while the British sought a more secure frontier so as to focus on their new mineral wealth and all the problems of their emerging settler colony. By the 1850s the boers had erected two republics, the OFS and ZAR, that, in keeping with the security needs of the colony and the messy details of subjugating an entire panoply of peoples, were recognised as sovereign entities by the British if only for pragmatic purposes. But for similarly complex reasons the British were extending protectorates [read: colonies] of notable autonomy to a number of other political entities in the region: the modern states of Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana—often as a direct result of political and economic problems thrown up by the mining economy and the nascent boer

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republics and British fears of a land link between the boers and the encroaching Germans in what is now Namibia. When diamonds were discovered in 1866 at Kimberly near the messy borders of the boer republics and the Griqualand province of the Cape Colony, liberal trade policies and capitalist economic expansion began to take on an outsized, but not overdetermined, place in the political and economic discontents that fuelled ethnic nationalism—culminating in the apartheid state nearly a century later. The boer republics at their founding in the early 1850s were economically marginal to the British Empire. They were republics built upon a rough agricultural life but one where identities of racial hierarchy could exist without the social condescension of the English to intrude upon their tidy racially ordered world. Though the diamond fields would benefit the British, by the 1860s a veritable gold rush was unleashed in the ZAR as gold miners flooded the young republic in search of wealth.7 Gold, however, would be both a blessing and a curse. Mining gold is capital intensive and the republics were decidedly capital poor. The flood of gold-seeking migrants would also undermine the very purpose of the republics as states for boers. Foreigners threatened to dilute these nascent nation-states while also giving cause to British interference on their behalf, which ultimately proved to be the Empire’s justification for war. Gold simultaneously emboldened both the boer republics’ acquisitiveness and assertiveness: the original British decision to annex Bechuanaland/Botswana came after a failed boer attempt to annex Swaziland engendered fears of a similar attempt there. Mineral wealth not only upended the economic situation of the colonies but the political situation as well. Greater wealth created new economic and, thus, political interests, spurring greater attention to the Cape by bureaucrats in London. It fuelled too the growth of nationalist politics within the free states and the Cape. From the perspective of London, the political expediency of appeasement led the empire to, at least initially, favour treating the republics as genuinely sovereign entities with shared economic interests and border concerns. Their relations and interests, so the thinking went, could be ameliorated through proper statesmanship. Still troubled by their frontiers and increasingly concerned with the free flow of goods, labour, and c­ apital, 7  The presence of gold in the area of what is now Johannesburg had long been known but the Jo’burg find was much easier to access as it lay literally, if only initially, right at the surface.

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the British sought by common agreement to institute a custom’s union with the free republics to try and harmonise relations. Their efforts were duly spurned by the boers. By the 1890s the Cape Colony, OFS, and ZAR were increasingly pushing the limits of peaceful coexistence and a growing sense of ethnic nationalism amongst the s would ultimately lead the OFS to form a treaty of mutual assistance with the ZAR in case of British attack. Relations between the trekboer states of the OFS and ZAR were clearly both economic (and imperialist as a result) and one of nationalism and autonomy. Having lost the diamond fields, the new gold mines in the ZAR on the Witwatersrand provided significant cash to the government under Paul Kruger and a basis for industrialisation. The purpose, overall, was to develop an economic counterweight to British power. The annexation of Lesotho and the attempts by the ZAR to annex Swaziland (and the perceived intent to annex Bechuanaland/Botswana) show continuing relevance of a virulent mix of nationalism, racism, imperialism, economics, and the process of state formation and production in the region. As the Cape Colony’s wealth increased so too did the interests of the British in London and the Cape. Mineral wealth and growing intra-­ imperial trade mixed with the zeitgeist of political devolution to produce political fault lines that ran along economic and ethnic lines; where before the merchants (i.e. English) and farmers (i.e. Afrikaner) had once agreed on local production, greater ties to the empire led merchants to import goods at the expense of local farmers. By and large, English access to imperial capital, skills, and cheaper African labour put the Afrikaners at a disadvantage in a liberalising economy. And it is this particular organisation of the economy that is worth exploring for a moment as it goes some way to understanding how economic grievances became political ones that in turn became ethnic then nationalist. Though race long remained part of the Afrikaner imaginary, the politics of this period served as the socio-­ ideological crucible for later nationalist politics whereby the Afrikaners would so clearly link their interests as a people to control over the state and economy that so defined apartheid. In the Cape Colony at this time, viticulture comprised roughly two thirds of farmland, wheat the remainder. Merchants were dominated by the English and wine producers and merchants shared a common interest in expanding local sales and exports by advocating a lowering of tariffs for wine exports to London. Wheat farmers, however, were at odds with wheat merchants where the latter favoured cheaper imports and thus aligned with the overall climate of ‘free trade’ then prevalent in the empire.

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The latter’s conflict led to early mobilisation of Afrikaner farmers for higher import tariffs. While the movement was short lived—it ended by 1870—it produced a political mobilisation and burgeoning Afrikaner leadership that would, according to Giliomee (1987), foreshadow events to come where local political contestation would foster an Afrikaner identity at odds with British imperialism. All the more so with the advent of Responsible Government in 1872 and increased government revenue from the diamond trade with its uneven effects on the population. “All these three forces—growing state revenue, the relative lack of economic progress of the wine and wheat farmers, and the advent of Responsible Government—dissolved the Afrikaner political apathy” (ibid., 42). It was not yet an ethnic politicisation, however, with economic and labour interests of farmers dominating without a broader nationalist air to them. This is evident in the class make up of the contending political movements of the era: Onze Jan Hofmeyr’s Zuidafrikaanse Boeren Beschermings Vereniging (BBV) for wine farmers with a focus on capital, markets and labour, and the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners under Du Toit. The latter did in fact focus on Afrikaner concerns, though primarily the recognition of the language, it was decidedly more anti-capitalist with their base of rural small farmers. These and other organisations formed the basis of the later, more potent and nationalist Afrikaner Bond8 as a populist movement seeking to harmonise these distinct class and economic differences under a more holistic political/economic movement for Afrikaners. This was most evident in the Afrikaner calls for greater infrastructure and government support to facilitate farming exports and greater access to financial institutions then dominated by the English. The Bond in turn would promote local district banks as a way of funnelling what Afrikaner capital there was into a financial system for Afrikaners, in contrast to the ‘imperial’ Standard Bank founded in the 1860s with British capital. These district banks had a loyal following but were often poorly managed making many bad loans based more on loyalty than prudence. But they had the effect of keeping the community looking inward for its solutions to political and economic isolation. What is striking, however, is that, despite their different positions in essentially different states with different political conditions, Afrikaner discontent transcended borders even while few could state that unity existed 8  The full name is the Afrikaner Broederbond, sometimes simply referred to as the ‘Broederbond’ or ‘the Bond’.

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amongst the community as a whole. The Afrikaners in the Cape, much like their kin in the free states, increasingly favoured anti-trade policies against the free trade views of merchants and British more generally. For Giliomee such broad economic grievances gradually gave way to a more nationalist, ethnic politics in the Cape and free states that had not existed before. “The trigger for the new political consciousness was both political and economic. The British annexation of Basutoland [Lesotho], the diamond fields, and later the Transvaal, had caused outpourings of Afrikaner resentment across South Africa” (Giliomee 2009, 225). Most Afrikaners in the Cape, however, continued to work within the British system rather than against it. Many of the Cape Afrikaners simply saw British colonialism as a “colonial yoke that sat lightly on them” (ibid.). In time the Cape Afrikaners would form the Afrikaner Bond, whose leaders would later find themselves split between the ambitions of Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company—a product of the immense mineral wealth that created powerful political and economic actors—and the broader jingoist British imperialism of the late 1880s. This brought conflict from the states in the interior, the OFS and Transvaal, which had notable trade disputes with the Cape Colony and would, as noted, refuse to join the various proposals for a joint customs union or to in any way harmonise their relations. The espousal of free trade and progress, according to Giliomee, “disguised the interests of Britain and the English-speaking people extremely well” (ibid., 226). Giliomee argues that these early political stirrings were ethnic but not quite nationalist, if only given the make up of the Afrikaner farmers (wine and wheat) and with the financial institutions and government dominated by the English. Yet “Afrikaner”, he notes, could mean simply “a person of Dutch extraction, who believed in the advancement of the brandy market, protection to the corn farmer, and repression of the native” (1987, 58). Their interests were economic first, ethnic second. But the seeds for the rise of a cultural movement that would feed nationalist politics were sown deeply in the economic discontent of the Cape and the fears of imperial encroachment in the free republics. If the Cape Afrikaners were quickly coming to see themselves as a distinct community within the colony and looking inward to their brethren as a result, the boer republics, though decidedly protectionist, would turn to their distant relations in Europe, in particular the Germans and the Dutch, in their desire to rapidly develop a strong, autonomous state. Indeed, there is a notable difference, for example, in how the British colonies and the boer republics dealt with the growing social disruption

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brought by mining that shows the influence of Bismarck’s welfare state on the latter. Van der Merwe (1997) argues this reflects the British preference for a laissez faire approach to poverty viewed as a moral failing. In contrast, Bismarck’s intention to bind the working man to the state through the provision of welfare is closer to the Afrikaner approach. The presence of Dutch civil servants in the free republics certainly helped to bring such continental notions of a more comprehensive social security as they had knowledge of the progress of such programs in Germany. Such European influence, cultural as much as ideological and political, is considerably deeper than welfare policies; they found a friend in Germany with their mutual concerns with the British Empire. Mineral wealth, however, brought more than a sense of stability and taxes to fund a welfare state in the Transvaal: it brought a massive influx of foreigners attracted to the delusions of wealth that gold brings. The trekboers, perhaps even more than their brethren who stayed behind in the Cape, were already an insular lot with a deep resentment of the British politically and culturally. Foreigners, most of whom where British, merely served as another reminder of the fragile position of the boers in southern Africa. They appeared to men like Transvaal President Kruger as a fifth column, a source of intrigue and British imperialism, and a threat to the Afrikaner identity. The boers had already lost the Kimberley diamond fields to the British as their discovery was in that liminal and ambiguous frontier zone where even half baked machinations can bear fruit. The threat to the boers was very real in their minds. Moreover, mineral wealth had not only brought greater British interest in southern Africa; it had created men like Cecil Rhodes, whose ambitions (and ego) could barely be contained within the bounds of one state, who was not above political chicanery to reach his goals. Rhodes, having made his wealth in diamond mining and risen to become Prime Minister in the Cape, finagled the British into granting him control over large swaths of land under his South Africa Company. He barely contained his ambitions to annex the boer republics themselves. To an extent, the fears of men like President Kruger were ultimately quite on the mark. As Kruger sought to protect his young state’s Afrikaner identity, he raised taxes on gold and enacted strict residency requirements to vote, ultimately ostracising foreign labour, who by the late 1890s were double the population of Afrikaners. Both Rhodes and the British government used the treatment of these foreigners as a pretext to invade and ultimately annex the boer republics. In the slow run up to war, attempts

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were made to encourage foreigners in the republics to rebel and, thus, bring in the empire. The Jameson Raid in late 1895 was one such quixotic attempt; it comprised men and material from Rhodes’ workers in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) just to the north and very likely had the support, tacit or otherwise, of Rhodes himself (see Butler 1968). No rebellion came and the raid was a disaster that ultimately forced Rhodes from power (see Galbraith 1970). The issue of foreign voting rights remained, however, and was taken up by Colonial Secretary Chamberlain who played a dangerous politics of brinksmanship by stationing troops near the borders of Transvaal and the OFS to make his demands. The republics, understandably, felt concession would be the end of their states as boer states and, failing to persuade the British to move their troops, declared war on Britain in 1899. Three years later, after a devastating war that presaged the industrial wars to come, the Transvaal and the OFS were annexed by the British. Ten years later, the Union of South Africa was granted dominion status and the boers began organising to take control of the new state and right the perceived wrongs done to the boer community. In the decades that followed, as we will see, the Afrikaners organised intellectually, economically, and politically, though not necessarily in a unified way; they sought to create a more coherent nationalist identity and political party that, at the conclusion of the Second World War, would culminate in the creation of apartheid.

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Vansina, J. (2004). How Societies Are Born: Governance in West Central Africa Before 1600. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Viljoen, R. (2001). Aboriginal Khoikhoi Servants and Their Masters in Colonial Swellendam, South Africa, 1745–1795. Agricultural History, 75(1), 28–51.

The Politics of Discontent and the Early State: On the Origins and Death of Apartheid

The turn of the century and the conclusion of the Anglo-Boer War brought the fitful and lengthy journey to consolidate British Imperial control to a resounding conclusion. The British colonial state had been consolidated, its power unchallenged. But to what end? What was the state’s purpose? Within a decade the almost-equally-long path toward devolution resulted in dominion status for South Africa thus removing the colonial yoke. But the commercial interests that had long dominated Cape politics remained. Indeed, the political economy of South Africa had not fundamentally changed nor did the politics it reciprocally supported. Mining relied—and would for some time—on a racial division of labour supported by growing government intervention to control black labour, particularly the policies to secure a ‘labour reserve’ by forcing black South Africans onto marginal land with strict labour migration controls to restrict black urbanisation. The economic and political marginalisation of the boers continued. With the exit option no longer possible, their poverty became known as the ‘poor whites’ problem that fuelled the political organisation of the Afrikaner community. Afrikaner politics were never homogenous; well-to-do farmers in the Cape had already been politically active and loosely in line with imperial economic interests in antebellum South Africa while their brethren in the interior remained—even more so after the war—decidedly anti-British and all things imperial. In the aftermath of war, however, Afrikaner politics became increasingly Afrikaner.

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As noted in the previous chapter, the political marginalisation of Afrikaners was accompanied by a cultural and social marginalisation dating back to the first British settlers in the early nineteenth century. The condescension with which the British settlers viewed the Afrikaners engendered resentment but produced little organised pushback. A cohesive identity built upon a belief in a distinct community remained inchoate. Efforts to instil a common identity with a common language and sense of shared history began apace in the late nineteenth century. Dominion status, however, created an opening for a more specifically Afrikaner and nationalist politics around which to politically organise the community. This is not to suggest that existing political divisions vanished under a single nationalist party. Though cultural identification grew, the poor whites problem concerned all political parties for varying reasons while also playing a role in creating institutions, such as community banks, to improve the economic lot of the Afrikaners. But a virulent mix of nationalism and resentment would coalesce in a new National Party (NP) and the emergence of their vision of a racial state. If it seems we may be paying too much attention to the decidedly still minority community of Afrikaners, it is important to note why. In this early period where the role and purpose of the state remained nebulous and contested, Afrikaner nationalism provided clarity. From the perspective of the poor whites, the state’s purpose was to retain power for the wealthy and the English in particular at the expense of a long maligned community. It was the Afrikaners that began to see the state in nationalist terms even where such overt nationalism was absent—or simply didn’t exist coherently as an ideology underpinning state or party. The cultural organisations, economic organisations, and ultimately political organisation of the NP would, in an almost Gramscian fashion, educate Afrikaners about the source of their immiseration and path to political salvation. The NP offered their own ideology of the nationstate and concomitant political platform to take power and, in their view, rightfully remove the obfuscatory liberal cloak of a state for all, for the people. Well, for white people anyhow. It is precisely because this vision of white nationalism came to define the purpose of the South African state for half a century that we begin here. Until the first free and open elections that led to majority rule in 1994, the defining characteristic of twentieth century South Africa was apartheid, a political and economic system born of a socio-cultural system of racial separation. To say that it was a racial or racist system alone, however,

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is to miss that it was also an ethno-nationalist, interventionist state. That may seem like an overly and perhaps unnecessarily nuanced point to make but the National Party that created apartheid emerged from the collapse of the Boer republics in the Anglo-Boer War with a specific mission to improve the political and economic power of the Afrikaner community. It had a view of the relationship between political and economic power that lent itself to a politics linking the state with the Afrikaner community (or whites in general). While a particular identity emerged from the experiences and, to some extent, reimagined history of the nineteenth century that surely cannot be ignored, the nationalist politics reflected long standing economic and political grievances. In particular, nationalist Afrikaners latched on to the poor whites problem and a sense that the state, colonial or otherwise, was controlled by the very same interests that controlled the economy: namely, the English. And like the century before, events and processes that unfolded in the lead up to apartheid very much reflect their engagement with other global processes. Soon after its founding, however, long simmering racial tensions would engender not one but two movements that would shape much of modern South African history. The African National Congress, then known as the South African National Native Congress, was founded in 1912 to promote the well being of the black majority.1 Two years later in 1914 the NP was formed to promote Afrikaner nationalism against both the black majority and the wealthier English. While the NP’s emergence owes much to longstanding Afrikaner grievances against the British, ideologically it is rooted in the theological development and ideas of the Dutch Reformed Church. Indeed, the links between the church and the NP were so close that the former was colloquially referred to as the ‘National Party at prayer’. The economic grievances of a largely poor community juxtaposed with a wealthy English minority alone might explain the rise of an Afrikaner movement focused solely on economic grievances. But the NP was overtly nationalist and sought at every turn to promote Afrikaner culture as a distinct and separate people. This nationalist element, according to Sparks (1990), is a result of culture, history, and the particularly theological developments of the Reformed Church itself. It is noteworthy, though, that, however racial in origin, the basic interventionist state at the heart of apartheid was not, in practice, fundamentally at odds with the Keynesianism of the post World 1

 The SANNC changed its name to the ANC in 1923.

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War II order or even later development theorising that saw a prominent role for the state in development. In time, of course, South Africa under apartheid came to be ostracised from the global community of states as a pariah. As ostracisation grew, the state and economy turned inward until ultimately apartheid collapsed much like the Soviet Union; as a mix of local and global forces made the apartheid state increasingly untenable its leaders looked toward both global and local reconciliation. With the end of the Cold War apartheid was done but it had achieved what it set out to do and its legacy would continue well into the democratic era (see next chapter). And the vision of the state whose purpose is the upliftment of a people, this time the black majority, remains central to South African politics today. If apartheid was a defining characteristic of twentieth century South Africa so too was resistance to it. As we’ve seen, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were one long unmitigated disaster for the peoples of southern Africa. Once military subjugation was complete, many Africans found themselves being pulled into the expanding mining economy as cheap labour or as peasant farmers (see Bundy 1972, 1979; Wolpe 1972). The Xhosa and Zulu were, thus, subject to the socio-economic processes and concomitant social transformations that come with being brought into the mining economy and, ultimately, the global economy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While some were able to prosper in providing food for the mines, most Africans, deprived of the means of production to maintain an autonomous existence, were forced to migrate for work. Migrant labour had a profound effect on African social processes as rural families contributed to the labour pool of mines and the emerging towns while being prohibited from migration themselves. As such, families were split apart ripping asunder familial traditions while inculcating migratory men in the very different world of mining camps. These processes of social transformation cannot, however, be likened wholly to the kinds of social transformation experienced in Europe at this time or since (see Polanyi 2010). Race permeated every aspect of South Africa’s political economy even before apartheid. Indeed, mining relied on a race based system for labour aided and abetted by government policies to control access to cheap labour for the mines that continued well into apartheid (see Mabin 1992). Though racially controlled, migration and labour drove urbanisation and the slow emergence of an educated black petit bourgeois. Urbanisation fostered the development of a politics of black identity that transcended

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previous tribal identities—though without subsuming them.2 As an African intellectual class slowly emerged from this economic dislocation many would begin to agitate for reform by invoking the very same allegedly universal claims of liberalism itself. Both the ideology of liberalism and the experiences of early capitalist industrialisation shaped the early resistance to the state and channeled it into a reformist rather than fully revolutionary politics, in keeping with a belief in the promises of political liberalism. But if the experiences of the nineteenth century fed both white and black nationalism, the failure of reformism and the rise of the Cold War also shaped the resistance that followed, which took on a decidedly socialist interpretation of the predicament of black South Africans. The politics of Afrikaner nationalism similarly emerged from a particular reading of their predicament as poor whites put upon by English political and economic dominance—though one that was decidedly less socialist in origin. What followed was a particular view of the state whose purpose was to uplift the white nation. So too did the politics of pan-African resistance rest upon at first a liberal and then a socialist understanding of the nature of black disempowerment. Each looked to understand their lot by looking at what the state did and for whom. But each was also influenced by larger, global currents of political thinking. The nationalist Afrikaners reached political power in the era of nationalism that would ultimately bring down the British Empire itself. The ANC, in contrast, had tried the politics of liberal reform and, in the post WWII world, turned to the promise and explanatory power of Communism. As we shall see, until the collapse of the Cold War black resistance envisioned a liberated state that would do for black people what apartheid had done for whites. That this vision met the steady head winds of the triumphant (neo)liberalism of the era in no way undermines the appeal of this view of the state. However at odds it is with the neoliberal world order of global economic integration that remains with us today, this view of the state remains. Thus to grasp the rise and production of the South African state is to not merely study competing nationalisms—white and black—but to situate the production of the state in a properly local and global context of political, economic, cultural, and ideological transformation (see also Marks and Trapido 2014). Any history of the South African state and its formation must 2  While much of the liberation ideology of resistance groups, like the ANC, were decidedly pan-Africanist, this did not preclude political organising for specific groups, such as the Zulu’s Inkatha Party (see Cope 1990).

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­ rapple with the difficult, intertwining nature of race, politics, and ecog nomics. But so too must we be attuned to the events of the nineteenth century and how they came to form the basis of a virulent politics of Afrikaner identity; thus we must contend too with ideology, religion, culture, and history itself as an interpretive act in the production of the state.

The Union of South Africa: The Politics of the Poor Whites and Afrikaner Nationalism By the end of British colonial rule in 1910, what was then known as the Union of South Africa was characterised by a mix of de facto and patchwork de jure segregation that made its presence felt politically and economically. The wealthiest sections of society were dominated by the English while Afrikaners were largely relegated to rural poverty. This intra-­ white inequity presented a notable political problem for the young state, much as it had the colonial state: it propelled Afrikaner nationalism and a number of economic and political organisations that would rise to prominence during the interwar period. Blacks and coloureds in the now Union of South Africa, on the other hand, were largely and legally disenfranchised throughout the Union. They enjoyed some representation and freedoms in the Cape Provence that were not fully struck down until the 1950s. Rather than address the racial issues prior to decolonisation, Britain chose to let things be. Social segregation, which had its effects in politics and certain laws banning property ownership for blacks, was for the most part not codified.3 But it was essential to the economy of South Africa before and after obtaining dominion status. Much of the nineteenth century disputes, however, turned on the question of racial dominance and the formation of a white country with such stark socio-economic differences amongst whites themselves. The problem of ‘poor whites’ did not emerge after the Anglo-Boer War; it had long been an issue but with the existence of the boer Republics it was easy to ignore; the poor could migrate as they always had. But with the defeat of the boer republics the problem leaped to the fore and presented a serious challenge to the colonial state. Indeed, the British High Commissioner for the South African colonies following the Anglo-Boer war made fighting 3  Racism and segregation were largely a part of social practice at the time. What legal separations did exist were not terribly different than in other multi-racial states of the time (Seidman 1999).

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white poverty central to making South Africa into a white country. The problem would also prove to be a key element in organising the Afrikaner community politically. Though the stirrings of communal organisation began as early as the 1870s, the move to political organisation only gained pace in the twentieth century. Three trends can, however, be discerned over this period that are relevant to both the creation of an Afrikaner identity and the ways this was translated into a nationalist political ideology with major ramifications for the young state. The first are the long cultural processes fostering a distinct identity separate from the English. These processes are as much linguistic (the formation of a more coherent Afrikaans language and grammar aided and abetted by the rise of Afrikaans newspapers) as they are religious and intellectual. But these religious and intellectual developments that fostered a singular, separate identity fed off the economic inequality between whites that left people feeling culturally and economically separate. Efforts to address this economic, and ultimately political, isolation constitute the second, perhaps most important, trend too. The final trend is one of international engagement in techno-­ ideological networks. Afrikaner scholars of all kinds began studying in Europe, particularly Germany and the Netherlands, bringing them into contact with major developments in fin de siecle Europe. The presence of Dutch civil servants in the boer Republics is noteworthy for bringing in such continental notions of more comprehensive social security as the Dutch had knowledge of the progress of such programs in Bismarck’s Germany. For Van der Merwe (1997) this is an important point: Bismarck’s welfare reforms were as much a product of fostering a coherent German identity as a plan to bind the wellbeing to the bosom of the state. This logic was not lost on the later National Party as they began erecting apartheid. The formation and coalescence of the later Afrikaner nationalist movement and identity from which it was born, then, must be recognised as the result of economic grievances and the political and economic moves to redress them. But so too must we recognise the intertwined ways in which international networks of people and ideas take hold in the particular political, economic, and cultural processes of what would become South African. The ultimate intellectual development of this movement comes from a sense of aggrievement fostering a singular identity, a belief in a common history, and culture. And it produced an ideological view of a state whose purpose was the upliftment of a people.

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By and large, the British access to imperial capital, skills, and cheaper African labour put the Afrikaners at a disadvantage in the liberalising economy of the late colonial and early Dominion period. The problem of white poverty became acute in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it played a key role in the myths of Afrikaner nationalism and fed off racial/ civilisational discourses of hierarchy and power. “In a racially homogeneous society the Afrikaner poor would have become the urban proletariat and worked their way up from that position. But there already was a proletariat of between 200,000 and 300,000 male Africans who had moved from the reserves to the towns and cities as migrant workers… Africans did the unskilled work at a rate far below that for which whites were prepared to work. The term ‘poor white’ developed in this context. The white elite did not define poverty in terms of physical or economic data, but relationally— how a white person by virtue of being white ought to live in comparison to non-whites” (Giliomee 2009, 318). For Giliomee, racial and civilisational discourse cannot be separated: Afrikaners saw their status as poors as little different than the ‘kaffirs’4 despite their perceived higher civilized status. Yet in the 1890s and immediate post-war era, poor Afrikaners were ill disposed to take advantage of any economic opportunities created by the mines and related industries that were fuelling the South African economy. As a capital intensive industry, mining left few options for capital poor Afrikaners except as labourers and providers of agricultural goods, both of which meant competing with the black majority. Lesotho and what black farmers did exist in the colony provided immense amounts of cheaply farmed grains for the mine workers producing a notable source of tension that shaped policies in both the colony and the boer republics at the time. “Africans in [Lesotho] and the OFS keenly responded to the large market for wheat, maize and vegetables that had sprung up in the Diamond Fields. During the 1890s a group of farmers from the eastern Free State demanded that the Volksraad [govt of OFS] prohibit large-scale growing of grains by blacks, because white farmers could not compete… Lacking capital and experience, the Afrikaners struggled to switch to arable farming. The wheat market was a particularly difficult one since it was often flooded with cheap Australian and American imports” (Giliomee 2009, 297). According to Giliomee (1987), the genesis of Afrikaner nationalism is found in these economic issues—dating from the 1870s. Such ­conditions put paid the notion of white dominance and fuelled resentment and agitation politically 4

 This is a derogatory term for black Africans.

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and economically among Afrikaners. This early resentment led to experimentation with community banks to increase Afrikaner lending that were largely failures. But the banks and other commercial entities served an ideological purpose as much a commercial one; the ideological drift of Afrikaner nationalism propagated by groups such as the Bond had, by the end of WWI, engendered a growing belief in the salvation of the Afrikaner people through the creation of a volkskapitalisme—a people’s economy. Translating a cultural movement into an economic and political one was not easy. Though SANTAM and SANLAM, a trust and life insurance company respectively, were formed only at the end of WWI, they showed the power of a nationalist call for economic cooperation. Unlike previous banking efforts in capital poor Afrikaner communities of the old Republics, these companies were formed in the relatively centralised agricultural capital in the Cape. That is, earlier efforts to create Afrikaner economic institutions—to provide small loans, insurance, etc.—faltered on the lack of such centralised access to capital as found among the wealthier export oriented farmers of the Cape. The idea of a volkskapitalisme emerged from these failed efforts to push cooperation between SANLAM and the Bond. Together they convened an Ekonomiese Volkskongres in late 1939 where they began the process of creating a much larger bank with capital closer to a million pounds. Divisions remained, however, between those who wished to aim such credit at poor whites and those who wished to engender a new entrepreneurial class of businessmen. But the centrality of the volk remained, though clearly contested. O’Meara, however, argues that the more pro-capitalist entrepreneurial side would win. That is, Afrikaner nationalism would come to promote the notion the Afrikaners’s legitimate place was in business, not the farm (1983, 116). The Bond, along with organised capital in the Cape, would slowly come to organise the disparate capital of the ‘volk’ to pool it and channel it into a viable source of credit for Afrikaner business; in the process a new economic consciousness would form around a volkskapitalisme that itself would support an ideological consensus at the heart of the NP’s creation of apartheid where the state’s role was clearly one of support for the community. South Africa at the turn of the century, like the century before, remained a heavily agricultural economy despite its diverse economic interests between farmers, merchants, and miners. A closer look at the agricultural situation, then, can help us understand some of the earliest policy debates and political alliances of, in particular, the nascent NP, which made agricultural reform a key pillar of its platform. Indeed, the early 1920s saw a

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pact between the Labour party and NP over the question of agricultural reform. But the pact faced the difficult problem of working to promote capitalist agriculture (with, say, large credit) and to stop the destabilising effects of this transition on smaller white farmers. The result was a cacophony of policies ranging from punitive laws to induce wage labour from Africans to policies that would set up long term conflicts over the taxes on mining used to pay for white farmers. In the twentieth as in the nineteenth century, the bulk of Afrikaner farmers were tenant or landless farmers, called bywoners, who competed with black farmers and a small minority of large landowners in a labour-­ tenancy system that had long since been done away with in other parts of South Africa—particular the Cape where wage labour had supplanted tenant farming. The geographical split among Cape Afrikaners and poorer tenant farmers of the interior presented significant problems for political parties competing for their support, while also pitting the nascent upper class landowners and merchants against their poorer brethren. As such at the time the NP formed it faced decades long concerns and deep structural issues dividing their community. The district level NP parties struggled over calls for land reform (racist vagrancy laws among them) that were in direct contrast to the needs of the NP in other states and different, yet important, classes of farmers. Such distinct class and geographically divergent political economies engendered divergent, sometimes conflicting, needs that had already led some (particularly Cape) Afrikaners into political alliance with parties advocating a more liberal political economy. The Cape Afrikaner Bond, for example, had by the 1880s, formed a tenuous relationship with the Cape’s merchant and mining capital demonstrating the delicate divisions within the far flung community over serious political questions. The interests of poorer farmers in the interior, by contrast, were dominated by concerns over labour in a share-cropping economy (an irrelevant issue in the Cape) exacerbated by differences in the size of farmer holdings in Transvaal. Rents provided the bulk of the income here and not the larger commodity agriculture elsewhere in South Africa making land reform seem like taking from one group of whites to give to another.5 According to O’Meara, “The myriad forms of state assistance to agriculture (and industry) were possible only through various direct and 5  See Keegan (1983) for more on the origins of this economy. African farmers, as share croppers and yeoman farmers, responded positively to imperial policies and economics (see also Bundy 1972, 1979).

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indirect taxes, levies, etc. on the gold mining industry. In effect, this involved the state transferring the surplus value generated in the mining industry to agricultural (and industrial) capital.” This was possible because of the complex and contradictory class alignments in the Afrikaner community and NP in particular. “Such was the balance of class power in the social formation that, on its own, agricultural capital lacked the political and ideological weight effectively to implement such policies. It was forced to sustain political alliance with other class forces in order to do so. It was precisely these alliances which first began to crumble during the Depression, threatening the isolation of agriculture and so a collapse of state support for its interests” (O’Meara 1983, 28). These class conflicts continued to bedevil efforts to create a coherent Afrikaner political party with shared interests even as such efforts helped propel and solidify the formation of a communal identity and the gradual acceptance of nationalist politics. Even with the creation of the NP, perhaps the first overtly nationalist Afrikaner party, agreement on a policy platform was challenging. Competing factions within the nascent party, reflecting the varying socio-economic make-up of the respective provinces, differed on their position within the empire, on trade, and on what was becoming the proper scope of state-society relations. Serious agricultural reform called for the kinds of intervention that challenged a party attempting a cohesive, nationalist platform among the competing interests of such a big tent party united only by a common identity. These issues became more acute following WWI. The upheaval of the Great Depression challenged policymakers and the liberal view of the state, which created an opening for the NP and its view of the role of government in society. As the Depression raged the liberal view of the state and laissez faire trade policies were challenged and variously, if incoherently, disbanded in Europe, England, and the US. Protectionism creeped into virtually every state even where fascism was held at bay. South Africa was not immune to the general shift in views concerning the interventionist state in the 1930s or of the bold success of states that eschewed liberalism. Though different, states as diverse as fascist Italy and New Deal America broke decisively with the more laissez faire views that had dominated earlier politics. While some states elevated parties—particularly fascist ones—that brought a new ideology of the state into practice, other parties, like the Democrats in the US, struggled with competing factions from within. This had a parallel in South African politics with the NP struggling to hold itself together despite the 1924 electoral success under

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Prime Minister Hertzog that brought the NP to power for the first time in a coalition government with the Labour Party. As noted above, the NP was at a provincial level quite diverse with merchant interests predominating in Cape Town and wealthy farmers against poor whites in the Transvaal. But the NP under Hertzog was decidedly against free trade as much as it was pro-Afrikaner. The Depression, however, put significant pressure on the party that came to a head June of 1934 when a major split emerged. In order to maintain a coalition, Hertzog was forced to combine with the South Africa Party of Jan Smuts creating the United Party (UP). But major elements of the NP refused to follow Smuts. The UP under Smuts leaned toward but did not outright embrace a liberal ideology of the state. This was too much for many within the NP who broke from the party to create a more stridently nationalist and interventionist National Party more familiar to us today.

The Ideological Origins What is intriguing about the National Party that emerged from the Depression is the unique way in which it crafted an ideology of separation (apartheid) built upon ideas and beliefs that were themselves essential to the formation of the Afrikaner identity. We have yet to touch upon the intellectual and religious side of these cultural and political processes and their roles in the formation of the apartheid state. Historians of South Africa have spent a great deal of time on the intellectual and religious developments and their place in Afrikaner nationalism. Robust debates between varying readings of this history from different academic traditions—liberal, Marxist, and so on—dot the historiography of these events. But few doubt the importance of religious developments in Europe and South Africa in the Afrikaner community, though debate continues over its relevance to apartheid itself (see Dubow 1992). What is clear, however, is that philosophical and religious developments in Germany and the Netherlands around the turn of the century began developing links between religious communities and national identity. Much of this work stems from the Dutch theologian, Abraham Kuyper, whose reading of the bible led him to see a divine place for separate nationalities as independent peoples.6 A num Much of this comes in part from his reading of the story of Babel. His work is also noteworthy for its support for a secular state and Dutch ‘pillarisation’ where society is divided into constituent parts or spheres each independent from each other yet each supporting a whole. 6

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ber of prominent Afrikaner theorists studied in both countries, notably Nico Diederichs and Piet Meyer, and who would go on to lay the philosophical foundation of separate development at the heart of apartheid (indeed it is the very definition of the system). In a sense they acted as a form of ‘norm entrepreneurs’ (see Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; see also Acharya 2004) in localising and adapting European religious philosophical thought to the South African context. And each would challenge the liberal view then ascendent in South African politics. The religious basis of this challenge to a liberal order is rather unique and in part reflects events in South Africa itself. The boers had a long history challenging the liberal economic order of the British Empire as detrimental to their interests. So too had they long held a certain cultural superiority over non-whites, if not a fully racist view of the inferiority of black peoples. But it was not in some way tied to their identity or their politics. The anti-Enlightenment nationalism developing in northern Europe that was transported to southern Africa collided head long into events unique to the country to produce the particular nationalist politics of apartheid. Liberalism assumed a political equality between peoples and laid claim to a sense of universalism at odds with the theological and nationalist developments that saw each community as unique and entitled to its own spheres of influence. In this sense it began to cohere what were then still disparate and nascent ideas over what being an Afrikaner meant. But so too did this ‘separateness’ challenge the benign paternalism so clearly evident in liberal politics in practice: apartheid thinkers would claim that their approach would better serve the distinct cultural and developmental needs of the black majority. Such needs were best met with separate spheres for blacks and whites. Several processes can be discerned here and from previous discussions that bear on what follows. Sociocultural processes that helped develop a sense of Afrikaner identity did not easily translate into Afrikaner politics. Multiple parties competed for their vote but the formation of the United Party in 1934 spurred efforts to form a nationalist politics to attract votes to the new NP. The inherent anti-Liberalism/Enlightenment of Kuyperian philosophy provided a solid framework with which to contrast the views of the NP from the more liberal politics of the United Party. The problem of the ‘poor whites’ combined with the urbanisation of the industrialising state to place Afrikaners and blacks next to each other thus facilitating a sense of ‘us and them’ whereupon apartheid’s call for full separation

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became appealing. Identity, politics, economics, and social change created a rich soil in which the ideas of an ethno-nationalist politics could thrive. All of these processes must be seen as part of the social production of the state. Whether we seek to lay the apartheid state at the feet of religious doctrine or not (and there are few direct scriptural references in any of the work that gave rise to it), religion provided a framework where racial differences could be understood. Liberal segregationists, such as Jan Smuts, could find space in liberalism for racial politics. But liberalism also gave the oppressed a means to contest their immiseration (one need only think of the history of virtually every civil rights movement in the US). Religion, long central to boer life, not only helped unify a community, specific developments in Dutch religious thought at the end of the nineteenth century provided a religious backbone to white views on race and civilization making apartheid imminently understandable within an existing worldview. Equally important, though, were the intellectual developments that circulated in Europe at the time and in the former Republics where a number of Dutch bureaucrats employed managerial ideas in the boer bureaucracy. And as always the international environment and the shock of global and local events, particularly the Depression, set the context where ideas battled politically. It was during the interwar period and the Depression where existing practices of communal economic development were married to a growing nationalist view of the state in direct contrast with liberalism. That the liberal order was seen as responsible for both the Depression and the history of economic isolation of the community only aided the entrenchment of a statist and interventionist state ideology. So too did the powerful examples of Germany and Italy (and to a lesser extent, the New Deal) help the fortunes of the nationalist NP. Despite an avowed appreciation of fascism, the NP, however, was never an explicitly fascist party (cf Bunting 1969; Mzimela 1983). Yet there were similarities between them in their views of the hierarchy of white civilization—not to mention the strident nationalism. The late nineteenth century saw the rise of a great many Afrikaner intellectuals of both religious and more broadly philosophical inclinations that were deeply influenced by intellectual and theological debates in Europe where many had studied (see Schutte 1987; Giliomee and Schlemmer 1993). Their work would be very influential in the development of a specifically and politically nationalist identity politics over a strictly communal

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identity (Bloomberg 1989). O’Meara (1983) traces this ideological transition to the formation of an Afrikaans speaking intelligentsia in the Broederbond, which despite operating mainly outside of the political institutions became a cultural force in the formation of the Afrikaner myth and the emergence of an ideology of a new state form (see also Moodie 1975; Bloomberg 1989). But the formation of this new ideology cannot be removed from the material experiences of those who made up the Bond as individuals either. Though intellectuals and clergy, these were Afrikaners who spoke, and as a result were discriminated against for speaking, Afrikaans and who as a result also could find less work in their fields in a world dominated by English. They thus suffered in the economy with their distinct but cultural cousins amongst the poor and working class. “Precisely in the daily productive lives of the Afrikaner intellectuals, as the thinking and organising element of an increasingly polarised class, were synthesised and concentrated the manifold and contradictory effects of capitalist development on capitalist farmer, small trader, and ‘poor white’ alike—that is on all Afrikaners. The Afrikaner intellectual taught the curriculum of ‘imperialism’ to the children of the rural bourgeoisie and the dispossessed… as an academic he was particularly concerned with the causes of these transformations and as a cleric he had to explain them to a confused flock in cosmic, symbolic, and purposeful terms” (O’Meara 1983, 55). The fusion of religion and political nationalism should come as no surprise. Though these intellectuals themselves were often members of the clergy, religion had a deep history within the community. At the time of the Great Trek, most if not all families carried with them one and only one book: the bible. If a boer could read, it is likely that the only book he read was the bible. Though diffuse homesteads meant few churches, as people settled the church, as is common in many societies, became a communal focal point. Indeed, the church and religious developments at the end of the century in particular grew into the ideological bedrock of a racist doctrine of Afrikaner supremacy (see Ritner 1967). Initially, the Reformed Church in South Africa welcomed congregants of all colours but white backlash eventually led to white only churches in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This initially lacked any theological justification. During the nineteenth century, church theologians engaged in near schismatic theological debates and revisions that ultimately led some ­ Afrikaners to interpret a scriptural justification for white, and particularly

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Afrikaner, dominance (Sparks 1990; Prozesky 1990).7 This was grounded in the work of the Dutch theologian, Kuyper, who saw a biblical need for separate nations of peoples. He developed a theory of the volk quite distinct from more liberal nationalist movements. His ideas disseminated through clergy educated in Europe but they were developed into a more coherent form of nationalist politics by members of the Bond in the 1930s, particularly Nico Diederichs’ widely read 1936 pamphlet on nationalism, Nasionalisme as lewensbeskouing en sy verhouding tot internasionalisme (see also De Klerk 1975). But while the church provided some theological grounding for the NP, the practical grievances of economic poverty and intra-what inequity drove the nationalist movement, if not the broader processes of cultural identification. Historians remain divided over how much credit must be laid on the church in both the formation of apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism (see du Toit 1983, 1985; cf Prozesky 1990). O’Meara (1983), for example, does not dismiss the role of Calvinism and the DRC in providing a moral and symbolic framework to redefine Afrikaner nationalism, though he downplays it in favour of class based analysis. Giliomee (2009), in contrast, argues that the Dutch Reformed Church—and only later Afrikaner nationalists—would be the first to take up the anthem of white poverty as central to political reforms and Afrikaner pride making its role a bit more important. The Church initially took a key role in educating the poor Afrikaners while several efforts in the Cape parliament were tabled to provide industrial education to Afrikaners struggled to gain traction during the late colonial period. But the DRC itself sought to radically reorient the values of the Afrikaner to move beyond limited, rural education to become genuine masters of their world—a white world. The challenges of accommodating white labour led to several strikes and rebellions in the early part of the century demonstrating both the powerful dissent of its politics and its appeal to nationalists. The 1914 rebellion, for instance, may have been led by a landed elite but the soldiers were primarily drawn from the Afrikaner poor that provided the backbone of aggravated labour militancy in this period. The far more violent rebellion of 1922 (see Krikler 2005) ended only when the military was called in. The church may have cared for the poor but capturing their vote became a matter of political survival.

7  It wasn’t until the early 1980s that the Dutch Reform Church officially renounced this scriptural interpretation.

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But the ideologues of the inter-war years were not immune to their time and place in explaining the origins of the volk even as they argued what this meant for the community and politics. This latter point is important in distinguishing between the two major Afrikaner political parties: Hertzog’s South Africa Party with its notion of Afrikaner identity embracing all who called South Africa home, and the NP, which most assuredly did not. At issue is how inclusive the community should be and what this meant politically. The issue played a role in the union of the two parties in 1934 that led to a more stridently nationalist NP to breakaway. Religion and identity were quickly becoming serious political problems. But the separation of the parties left the new NP without much of a platform or ideology to distinguish itself attracting Afrikaner votes. Efforts began almost immediately to craft a political platform built on a clearer politics of identity grounded in theology and the simmering problem of the poor whites. The more nationalist Bond in particular began valorising and indeed creating a unique and exclusive tradition of Afrikaner identity. For example, the Bond’s cultural group, the Tweede Trek (third trek), symbolically recreated the Voortrekkers on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Blood River (see O’Meara 1983, 68). The question of identity and the attempts to foster nationalist myths played a role in the breakaway NP in 1934 as it sought to distinguish itself. To the Bond, Hertzog’s more expansive Afrikaner identity lacked a genuine ethnic consciousness and accepted too much foreign influence, such as imperialism and class, division to justify a union. Hertzog and Smuts, and the United Party in general, were content with a liberal politics that left identity to the socio-cultural realm. But to the Bond, the UP’s subjective view of identity needed to be replaced with an objective one, they claimed. Their “ethnically exclusive delimitation of ‘Afrikanerdom’ then involved the definition of what was peculiarly ‘Afrikaans’ about ‘Afrikaners’—an intensive analysis of the inter-­ relationships between the individual, volk, culture and state” (ibid., 69). The Bond’s intellectuals, such as Dierderichs, Meyer, and later Malan, would take their biblical understanding of the nation and translate it into a political platform. Kuyperian separation of spheres would, in their thinking, entail the creation of a white, Afrikaner political and social order with a separate—notably diminished—state within a state for the black ­majority. And therein lies the beginnings of a new state-society relationship that would gel under apartheid.

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As such, events in the 1930s indicate that the community itself was divided over both how nationalist and secular its politics needed to be. This did not, however, stop groups like the Bond and the clergy from seeking to link the crises in agriculture, the poor whites, and lack of genuine sovereignty to a broader sense of Afrikaner discrimination. The admixture of religion in the justification of nationalist politics and economics proved powerful. D.F. Malan, who would go on to lead the new NP and who is generally seen as the political father of apartheid upon his elevation to the Prime Ministership in 1948, became a leading intellectual and politician in this fecundate climate of rising Afrikaner nationalism. Malan’s intellectual roots were much more deeply religious as well. He had studied religion at Utrecht in the Netherlands and returned with the then fashionable ecclesiastical idea of the ‘pillarisation’ of society, which he spread as a new political message where ethnic, cultural, religious and political separatism could be the only basis for cooperation between the Afrikaners, English, Indians, coloureds, and the black majority. Thus he played a central role in coalescing a nationalist identity from the economic and political concerns long dormant in the state by fashioning a political ideology from his theological worldview. It is difficult, however, to definitively link religion and the ideology of apartheid since each intellectual, from Malan to Meyer to Dierderichs, went to great pains to remove any explicitly religious (and overtly racist) references in their writings (see Dubow 1992). But it seems clear that for many the policies of apartheid could be justified by—or at least understood through—widely held beliefs about racial hierarchy in South African society. That such a view would be in keeping with theological interpretations in the DRC does, however, ignore how views of race also found space in secular liberalism. Such political racial divisions were not, then, limited to the NP or Afrikaners in particular. Jan Smuts, who would return to the Prime Ministership under the new UP in 1934, is widely known for his views on segregation. But his reasoning was pulled as much from liberalism as, well, racism. Smuts saw no hypocrisy between advocating for a unified world order akin to Wilsonian liberalism8 and advocating for separate development between races. Like many liberals he saw it as the state’s duty to help ‘immature peoples’ in ways that echoed the colonial logic of a century earlier. Indeed, liberalism itself, despite being grounded in claims of equality, seemed to allow as much space for racial organising and racial 8

 Woodrow Wilson’s own views on race are well known and need not consume space here.

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divisions as the stridently nationalist NP (Dubow 1989). Few black and coloured intellectuals viewed liberalism through rose tinted lenses but for some time its promise of eventual political reform propelled these groups. It was the failure of liberalism to incorporate the black majority more than the rise of apartheid that led to the downfall of reformism in the black community. We can, however, say that the liberal order that had sought to dig itself into the political economy of South Africa had clearly been eclipsed by the time apartheid became the policy of the state in 1948. The Great Depression had already led many states to question the value of a liberal order and to seek out alternatives. Even unabashedly liberal states such as the UK and the US saw fit to tweak their policies while much of Europe embraced fascism and communism. The states of South America similarly questioned the dominant order, variously embracing populism and policies of import substitution and protectionism. In a way this was similar to the path the NP took as they erected apartheid upon assuming power in 1948 under Malan’s premiership. While many NP supporters openly favoured fascist Germany during the war, the NP was not a fascist party and many South Africans served in the war from the beginning.9 As such apartheid was not greeted too harshly by the global community and South Africa remained one of the founding members of the United Nations, an entity that would later prove to be a thorn in its side. For many apartheid was little different than segregation in the southern states of the US of the same era.10 But apartheid elevated an ideology of the state that even shorn of its racial views was profoundly at odds with liberal states. It sought to create a state whose purpose was white political and economic empowerment. The apartheid state was a massive white welfare state combined with protectionist economic policies to placate industrial interests. In fact, one of the unusual aspects of the apartheid era, and one that played a role in its downfall, is the degree to which apartheid became integral to the state’s economic development (see Wolpe 1972). Given the NP’s clear ideology of economic nationalism, there is room to question whether racist nationalism or nationalist economics propelled its rise. In discussing the roots of apartheid, Legassick (1974a, b, 1975), for 9  Though originally opposed to the war, Jan Smuts ultimately served in the combined general staff of the Allied Forces. 10  One notable difference between Jim Crow and apartheid is the latter’s use of the legal order to the former’s use of terror to maintain separation.

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instance, strikes a middle approach recognising the organising effects of ideology while noting the benefits to capitalist economic development, contradictions notwithstanding. In fact, as we’ll see below, historians still debate whether apartheid was good for the economy. The gap between the racial ideology of apartheid and the reality of the state does not negate the former’s mobilising powers or its real effects even when it is not a wholly accurate representation of said reality. “At one level apartheid, or separate development, or multi-national development, is an ideology essentially cloaking the realities of domination and inequality. Ideology, explaining the interests of special or partial groups as the general interest, has an essentially imaginary aspect. Yet apartheid must be seen also at the level of reality, which means examining the ways in which the policies it institutes flow from and react back on the structures of production and power, i.e., on an examination of the specific forms taken by capitalist production and the capitalist productive cycle in South Africa” (Legassick 1974a, 6–7). When viewed as an ongoing social production it is hard to lay claim to or discount any one event, intellectual tradition, or process to grasp the production of the state as a whole. The diverse origins of the apartheid state should not cloud our view that it represented the elevation of a view of the state whose purpose was indistinct from the community of people it served. The liberal order in South Africa was dead. The opposition to apartheid, which would only grow louder and more violent as it wore on, also shows how well the black majority understood the purpose of the state. It was a white man’s state; it served a white economy for a white people. And, as we shall see below, however socialist or Marxist the reading of the state became, it was clear that the black majority sought to take over the state to do for them what it was doing for the whites.

Apartheid and Its Dissolution It is possible that one might read that the implication of this chapter—and certainly this subchapter—is that the South African state did not fully come into being until 1948. But that would be at odds with the theoretical premise of this work that the state is an ongoing production. But it also would not be an entirely inaccurate reading of both events and their ­interpretation here. The nineteenth century saw the unfolding of a colonial project that was barely complete when Dominion status was conferred. The late colonial period was, at least in principle, liberal as much as

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imperial. The socio-economic base of the colonial and immediate postcolonial one was dominated by the English and liberal policies, particularly on trade.11 Afrikaner politics at the time was split between working from within (e.g. the South African Party) or gradually defining an ideology at odds with liberalism (the National Party). The post-colonial liberal order was in many senses unstable and contested. The Great Depression similarly tested and ushered in many challengers to the liberal state. But apartheid sets a convenient date for officially banishing liberalism to South Africa’s past, which, like the 1994 majority elections, allows for some comparisons across periods of time in the state’s production. The apartheid system represents the rise of an ethno-nationalism that strongly linked the power of the state with a particular community that, whatever its origins in Afrikaner nationalist ideology and party politics, was defined by race. In this sense the state had a clear purpose and one that was quite at odds with the purpose of a liberal state with its (admittedly questionable) separation of the political, economic, and social spheres under a neutral government. This was a state for whites whose purpose was the creation and maintenance of white dominance. The apartheid system is difficult to conceptualise as a coherent entity with a clear structure that defined it throughout its existence. But its purpose remained the same. Over its history, however, it may be easier to think of it in stages with the overall goal of improving the economic and political position of Afrikaners specifically and whites generally. Whether we agree with Dubow’s argument on the role of ‘scientific racism’ (1992) or the broader cultural acceptance of or belief in a racial hierarchy (perhaps justified by specious science), the first policies of the NP were aimed at maintaining complete separation between whites and, well, everyone else in South Africa. To this end social policies forbade racial inter-marriage and transformed the Land Areas Act of the colonial period, which created separate areas designated for ‘natives’ only, into nascent homelands for the black majority. This was part of the Kuyperian logic at the heart of ­apartheid: separate nations with separate politics.12 The separate ‘homelands’ for the black majority were the logical conclusion of this ideology, though in spirit they are not too different from liberal paternalism either. 11  My use of post-colonial here should be narrowly construed as referring to the end of the British imperial period. 12  These homelands were later granted certain political autonomy that had the effect of rendering their ‘citizens’ beyond the concern of the apartheid regime.

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There remains a rigorous debate among scholars, primarily between Marxists and liberals, over the role of apartheid in supporting or (somehow) undermining the economic development of the state (see Nattrass 1991; Moll 1991; see also Legassick and Wolpe 1976; Davies 1979). But in some ways this seems to miss the point. Marxist, class based analyses of apartheid helpfully explicate the ways in which cheap black labour was created and maintained but this misses the cultural elements inherent in separation and speaks little to the broader project of white empowerment that drove the apartheid as a welfare state. Liberal scholars, by contrast, usefully highlight how apartheid distorted the economy (thus assuming some purer economic sphere devoid of intervention) and helped slow its growth while similarly missing how such protectionist policies furthered apartheid’s broader project. If, however, we see the state as an unfolding process, as a thing that exists even in contradiction, we can see how both positions can be right at particular times. One explains the rise and development of the apartheid state; the other, particularly when combined with global systemic changes, explicates how the system destabilised itself and collapsed. But it collapsed when both the internal project of white empowerment was complete and when for internal and external reasons the system could no longer be maintained. Thus far the reading of history presented here has sought to compare the model to the record but without venturing an argument on historical events themselves. Here, however, a clear argument is developed over the arc of history: once the purpose of the state is understood it is clear that apartheid policies economically and politically empowered the white minority; as this project reached its fruition in the 1980s it slowed economic growth and challenged the stability of the system by necessitating more educated black workers. Such workers in turn put pressure on the state and business, the latter of which began agitating for serious reform and who began to recognise that further growth necessitated reengaging the global community (and in particular its flows of capital). As these internal dynamics met with significant changes in the international system, as the apartheid project reached its conclusion, the system was wound down then collapsed. The problem of the poor whites as an economic and cultural problem had been solved (cf Nattrass and Seekings 2005) and the economic and political cost of maintaining apartheid became unbearable and unnecessary.13 To demon13  At the end of apartheid all whites could be found in the top 3/10ths of the economic ladder (Nattrass and Seekings 2005).

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strate this, three interrelated processes are discussed: the building of apartheid, the nature of the resistance, and the collapse of apartheid. In the first we see how the ideology is implemented and how this process materially shapes and is in turned shaped by the economy. In the second we see how the black majority came to understand the nature of the state. Even in recognising the dominance of a Marxist reading of apartheid, it is clear that the resistance saw the state as a white project while similarly hoping to replicate it for the black majority. And in the latter we see how internal and external dynamics must be combined to understand both how the system collapsed and why a similar project for the black majority became all but impossible. Even in recognising the apartheid state as a broad welfare state for whites, we must also see it as a massive project to build the white economy relying heavily on the cheap labour of blacks and coloureds. Economically, apartheid economic policies can be likened to the import substitution industrialisation (ISI) approach of Latin America in the 1930s. But such policies also existed alongside numerous other policies and regulations that gave whites preferential access to jobs—particularly in management— preferential access to the education required to maintain economic power, and a host of policies that held down black wages and prevented or slowed black urbanisation. This was followed by massive capital expenditure on State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in telecommunication, energy, and oil production in keeping with other ISI strategies. Education policies were designed to create a skills gap favouring whites that, when combined with job restrictions based on race, engendered a long process of upward mobility for whites and Afrikaners in particular. But without intensive capital expenditure by the state to fund industry there would have been fewer businesses to offer jobs to whites no matter how educated. Here too, however, we find a key role in these economic processes and the control over black wages and the necessity of black migrant labour. Marxist scholars typically trace the close mingling of racial politics and capitalism in South Africa to the mining boom in the nineteenth century (Bundy 1979). The native reserves of the colonial era served as a source of migrant labour and where agricultural surplus could both maintain the reserves and provide cheap provisions to the mining economy. But to do so the costs of reproduction in the reserves—and later bantustans—had to be maintained below the cost of labour itself. That this did not occur led to several commissions and reports on the issue from the Native Economic Commission Report (Wyndham 1932) to the Tomlinson Commission of 1956 (see Houghton 1957) among others. Each sought to understand

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why the separate space for the black majority was failing to sustain itself and cheap migrant labour. What marxists argue is that the state, colonial and apartheid, actively sought to manage black labour to the benefit of capitalism as a whole (see Wolpe 1972; Legassick 1974a, b; passim). Without such actively managed cheap labour, it is argued, capital accumulation and redistribution would have stalled and potentially prevented industrialisation. This is difficult to argue with given the range of other policies thrown up by the state to manage all the effects industrialisation had on black labour. While the Pass Laws and Native Urban Areas Act of 1925 predates apartheid, it was updated and amended when the NP took power. The NP similarly created labour bureaus to organise labour around business needs (see Wolpe 1972, 447). There is in fact a constant back and forth in policy reevaluation over the course of apartheid as the needs of the economy change and the problems of managing labour grow with urbanisation, education, and simple demographic growth. The NP goal of economic empowerment of the Afrikaner population was, however, extraordinarily successful. And this is an important point to reiterate given that this was a major goal of the National Party. Prior to the formation of the NP there existed few if any Afrikaner corporations and many Afrikaners were mired in poverty. By the end of apartheid, though, many of South Africa’s largest corporations and mines were led by Afrikaners and white poverty virtually eliminated. To see this solely, or in large part, as a product of capitalism and industrialisation minimises the broader nationalist project. It’s not just that the state colluded with the capitalist class, as in traditional Marxist political economy; it’s that the state was captured to promote one group over another, though still decidedly within capitalist production. The state pursued a range of policies to promote business and employment growth but their costly trade protectionism and geographical dispersion of investments are evidence of this broader political project. Industrialisation and favourable tariff policies to protect nascent industry led to phenomenal growth and white economic empowerment. That is until growth began to slow in the 1970s. This is a point that liberal scholars miss in arguing that apartheid distorted the economic development of South Africa: this was, broadly speaking, the point. The various interventions in the economy, from tariffs and a bloated bureaucracy of whites to gross production inefficiencies, may very well have undermined the longterm survival of apartheid (see Lowenberg 1997) but they were initially successful at what they were intended to do. ISI strategies and a

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big welfare state were always going to require large budgets. Mining, however, remained a profitable source of foreign currency that helped keep government programs solvent. Several problems, however, began to emerge by the 1970s that ultimately led to a weakening of many of the social constraints of apartheid that had helped maintain white superiority. If the liberals are right that the economy was undermined, Marxists are right to note the long history of the state’s interventions to maintain the labour market. And that is precisely what the apartheid government did by primarily easing labour restrictions. That what they unleashed ultimately led to the downfall of apartheid suggests that a broader analysis is warranted. By the 1970s GDP growth had slowed and the need for skilled labour beyond the white labour pool increased as ISI strategies did indeed help nascent industry thrive. Most skilled labour and all management positions were limited by law to whites only. But as business grew so too did a shortage of skilled workers as whites neared full employment. The government’s overriding concern became this skilled labour shortage, which it tackled by loosening restrictions. As such, this latter phase of apartheid saw the removal of some barriers to education and work for black South Africans in order to meet business needs. Blacks were allowed to take jobs heretofore forbidden to them and, most importantly, black unions were recognised as a way to ensure a favourable labour supply. These policies alone, however, were not sufficient to stem the decline of the economy in the 1980s as capital needs grew. The 1980s saw both the rise of stricter sanctions on economic trade with South Africa and a precipitous decline in the value of gold, which had previously provided easy access to foreign currency, fuelled the bloated apartheid bureaucracy and provided badly needed capital. At this point business leaders began calling for even greater economic liberalisation of the economy and the pressure to reform apartheid beyond recognition grew. Gavin Relly, soon to be chairman of the powerful Anglo American Mining company, saw the writing on the wall in a speech he made in London in 1981 calling for serious reforms (see Relly 1981). Relly would later lead an important business delegation to Lusaka, Zambia to meet with exiled leaders of the ANC, in particular future President Thabo Mbeki. By the 1980s apartheid policies had educated the white establishment, secured their wealth with favourable job regulations and an expansive bureaucracy, and slowly built up a sizeable local industry producing everything from shoes to complex defence systems. But policies that work

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under one set of conditions may not work when conditions change. And by this time period the policies that produced growth simply were no longer sufficient as both the domestic economy had developed and foreign relations deteriorated. Under Prime Minister P.W. Botha, the state began looking into liberal economic reforms and, in particular, the reduction of the number of SOEs to rein in the budget. Other than recognising unions and loosening job restrictions, though, little else was done to dismantle the basic outline of apartheid. But external developments put additional budget pressures on the state that greatly affected its budget and, thus, its priorities. The liberation of Zimbabwe from white rule, a growing rebellion in what is now Namibia (which was then an unrecognised colony of South Africa), and a disastrous invasion of Angola, led the government on a military spending spree that it could ill afford. Economic reforms took a back seat yet remained part of the political debate. By the time F.W. de Klerk took over from Botha as prime minister, the state was actively looking for ways to reform apartheid. The fall of the Berlin Wall and decline of communism provided an opportunity for de Klerk to truly reform the system. Above all it allowed him to negotiate with the ANC, whom the NP had long labeled a violent communist front.

Resistance and the State Throughout much of this period there was constant and widespread opposition to white rule. While there were numerous groups in the resistance, such as the Pan-African Congress and the South African Communist Party (SACP), the ANC is the most famous and largest of the opposition groups. Its formation around the same time as the NP is an interesting historical irony. The ANC’s opposition tactics, like most movements, evolved over time. From its inception through the end of the Second World War, the movement focused on political dialogue and active engagement with the political system. Its membership comprised the educated, the clergy, the middle class, and tribal chiefs (see Ellis 1991). The movement from its founding sought to work within the alleged liberal system; its strongest debates were over whether it should include liberal whites or whether it would be an exclusively ‘African’ movement despite an avowed policy of pursuing a ‘non-racial’ state (see Ndebele 2002). The ANC was, thus, largely a forum for discussion and it was, at the time, hardly an influential force in South African politics or even opposition politics. The 1948 landslide election of the NP, however, marked the beginning of important

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shifts in ANC tactics as it began shifting to a genuine resistance movement. But where there is power there is resistance and we learn much about power by looking at how those who resist it understand it and fight it. During the inter-war period the ANC had assiduously remained hostile to allying itself with the more organised SACP despite some informal connections as early as the 1920s (see Ellis 1991).14 Nelson Mandela, then a young lawyer who, along with Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo, helped create the ANC Youth league that would later lead a young Turk revolt of sorts, was adamantly opposed to the Communist world-view that then prevailed globally and among many independence movements. This was the era of Stalin’s purges but it was also still the era where liberal reform still seemed possible. By the 1948 election, however, the ANC had moved much closer to working with the SACP and began the slow process embracing a colour blind view to membership. The largely middle class and tribal elites that comprised the leadership of the ANC heretofore were in time influenced by the efforts of the SACP to organise workers, many of them black, Indian, and coloured. It was becoming clear that reform was neither possible nor desirable and apartheid proved a key moment in the evolution of the worldview of the resistance. The group also sought much more active forms of protest by joining the Defiance Campaign, which advocated Gandhi style non-violent but active protest against the state. As apartheid ramped up, the 1950s saw an increasing number of mass protests against the nascent apartheid state and against the pass-laws in particular.15 And though at times violently repressed, these protests were themselves non-violent in order to maintain international support. It was around this time that the ANC along with other anti-apartheid movements got together in 1955 to write the Freedom Charter, which called for a race blind government of the majority. The Charter, which even today retains its symbolic and ideological power, laid out a vision of political power and a vision of the state that both challenged apartheid and affirmed the basic view that the state belonged to the people whose purpose it must serve. At its heart it included the widely debated clause that the land and all that is above and below it shall belong to the people, which many felt—and continue to feel—should be read as nationalisation of, at a minimum, the mines. White reaction to this growing political  The SACP was originally the Communist Party of South Africa.  These laws required all non-whites to carry ID cards at all times to justify the bearer’s presence in white only areas. 14 15

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activity was swift, however, and resulted in the banning of the SACP and all forms of political rallies. But in keeping with the vestiges of anti-­ communist hysteria then still smouldering, only the SACP was at first banned as an international communist front organisation (which it was). By the end of the 1950s, however, a de facto and hidden working relationship began to form between the ANC and banned SACP over how to confront the increasingly violent state. There was a slow but growing recognition by many of the ANC’s leaders that non-violence would not end white dominance. This view was hardened by the Sharpeville Massacre on March 21, 1960 when police fired on thousands of demonstrators killing approximately 70 and injuring nearly 200. A year later in 1961 the leadership of the ANC and certain members of the SACP, led by its clandestine leader Bram Fischer, formed Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) to begin an armed rebellion against the apartheid state. The formation of MK could not have been more disastrous. Before it even began operations, Mandela was arrested in 1962 for sabotage. Later other key members were arrested at their rural farm hideout known as Rivonia, which would lend its name to one of the most famous events in the history of the resistance. All of the plotters were put on trial in 1964 in what became known as the Rivonia Trial. The trial proved to be a turning point as a movement in exile formed that actively courted assistance and training from the Soviet Union and other resistance movements around the globe. The trial also showed that the men fighting apartheid were as diverse as South Africa itself with a number of the accused being white and Indian as well as black. The trial also demonstrated that the ANC had begun working much more closely with the SACP in a campaign of sabotage against the state. The prosecution’s case was easily made as the plotters had been found together with various materials to sabotage and attack the infrastructure and instruments of the state. At the trial, however, both Mandela and the defence council, Bram Fischer,16 made stirring speeches on the essential freedom of humanity and the rot of apartheid gaining much attention to the cause of the resistance. At the trial’s close most of the leadership was either sentenced to life in prison on Robben Island or fled the country in exile. The ANC’s activities in South Africa from this point were severely curtailed. While the MK did engage in many acts of sabotage, most 16  It is a great irony of history that the head of the SACP was the same Bram Fischer. He was away at the time of the raid but would later be tried for his connections to the SACP.

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famously the attack on the Koeberg nuclear power plant, it is questionable how efficacious its activities were in hastening the demise of apartheid. In many ways, however, its foreign activities forced the South African military into a number of foreign engagements that, combined with its domestic acts of sabotage, engendered by the 1980s a fear much larger than its abilities. This fear was compounded by the collapse of white rule in Zimbabwe and the insertion of communist Cuban forces in Angola. But the period in exile also played a distinct role in completing the ANC’s progression from a still ‘African’ centric multi-nationalism to a true race blind view of the state and resistance. The period of exile brought them into a much closer working relationship with the SACP. The SACP itself underwent significant ideological developments to make this happen. The party had long faced a dilemma over viewing apartheid in class or race terms; the problem had played a role in the dissolution of the Communist Party of South Africa and its reformation as the SACP. According to Everatt (1992), the move away from a class interpretation to one where South Africa was viewed as a form of ‘imperialism of a special kind’ helped cool the discontent between the ANC and SACP. The move specifically recognised the racial character of the South African state and the need for a liberation movement that took this into account. But while exile led to ideological development and a closer working relationship between the groups, it also split those abroad from those that remained. The SACP with its longer history of exile, closer ties to other revolutionary movements, training in guerilla tactics and extensive experience with political/grassroots organising brought useful skills to the ANC in exile (see Ellis and Sechaba 1992). As such the work to bring these groups into more coordinated organisation was expected. But exile also led to a vacuum within South Africa that was quickly filled by young men such as Chris Hani who chafed at their exiled leadership as out of touch and doing little to further real change (see Macmillan 2009a, b). Tensions arose between those in South Africa and those in exile over issues as diverse as organisational structure, strategy, and the race question of membership. It should be noted, however, that the ANC and SACP were not the only anti-apartheid groups in exile. The broad coalition of groups that engendered the Charter included diverse groups, such as the Congress of Democrats (primarily comprising sympathetic whites), in a Congress Alliance (or the Congress movement) that were resisting apartheid precisely because of the racial state it engendered and who, thus, were at odds with the ANC’s limited membership. But as

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these groups too were banned and exiled their leadership was at pains to work with the ANC in exile in a concerted way. Reconciling these issues became the focus of the Morogoro Conference in 1969. From this conference emerged a more unified alliance with a more clearly articulated non-racial membership (see Lissoni 2009). Apartheid’s undoing, however, had little to do with the efforts of the MK or ANC/SACP in exile’s efforts in general. Its collapse rests on the combination of labour reforms that empowered black unions, the efficacy of the ANC’s domestic organisation that helped organise growing protests in the 1980s, and economic instability brought on by domestic and international economic conditions. The collapse of the Berlin Wall (and ultimately the Soviet Union too) must not be discounted either. The NP (along with US President Reagan and British Prime Minister Thatcher, it must be said) had long argued that the ANC was a communist terrorist organisation making any negotiations difficult to commence.17 The end of the Cold War, however, made it much harder to argue this view—or at least Soviet support—while also making it possible to open negotiations with the ANC that was no longer a global threat. It is this combination of contingent domestic and international processes that ended apartheid by negotiated death. Domestically, the recognition of black unions in the 1970s meant to ease labour shortages led to a massive organised labour force by the 1980s that could challenge the state economically and demand greater political reforms (see Marx 1992) as well as painfully shut down business by striking. F.W. de Klerk’s willingness to discuss reform and the sudden unbanning of protest movements in 1989, followed quickly by the release of all political prisoners from Robben Island (including Mandela in February 1990), ultimately brought the end of apartheid. The sudden unbanning of the ANC and the prospect of a negotiated transition to majority rule forced the ANC to wrestle with the internal transition from an opposition movement into a democratic one. The rise and fall of apartheid must be seen as both a domestic political project filled with unstable contradictions and one felled by those contradictions in an increasingly difficult international environment. ­ Contrary to the arguments of some, apartheid did not meet its negotiated end as global norms corralled and undermined it (see Klotz 1995a, b). Rather it must be seen as a completed project resting on inefficiencies in 17  It is noteworthy that when Mandela died former US Vice President Cheney still considered him a terrorist.

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domestic socio-­political processes increasingly put under strain internally and externally. While the system may very well have collapsed on its own, it did not. It was a negotiated death and transition and one that would have profound impact on the state that would emerge.

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A State in Transition: The Negotiated Birth of the Post-Apartheid State

It seems to me that if we are to understand the state we must be willing to grasp it in its myriad forms, which are only in part captured by stating that it is a social product. It is not a construct. Though it is that too. It is an intentional act and ongoing production, however contested and without telos. The state always serves a function, a purpose, at once stated and debated and set into constitutions. This we might say is bound up with notions of citizenship and identity. But for Lefebvre the modern state serves another function in practice: to facilitate what he called the ‘state mode of production’ (SMP) (2001). His is a point well beyond the traditional Marxist links between the economic and regulative governing apparatus. In Lefebvre’s understanding the state in modern times takes on a far more important role in facilitating and creating the possibility of economic processes than merely regulating them. Though never explicitly addressed by Lefebvre, apartheid is arguably a form of SMP. But it is also one that cannot be fully grasped without attention to the questions of race and citizenship that defined its purpose, who belonged, and ultimately the organisation of the state itself. Apartheid was, at its base, a multi-lateral project of racial empowerment and exclusion that was essential to the development of the state itself. Its racial roots are, of course, much deeper and have been dealt with in earlier chapters. What concerns us here is how we might understand the legacy of apartheid so that we may understand the post-apartheid. In this regard, then, no accounting of the state, now or then, is complete through a simple analysis of the institutions themselves, © The Author(s) 2020 D. A. Becker, Neoliberalism and the State of Belonging in South Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39931-3_5

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nor the legacy of wealth accumulation that leaves its trace in the racial socio-economics of class; so too must we also examine this other purpose of the state, the one bound up in a notion of citizenship—at once both abstract and cultural and concrete in law and policy. As Rancière has argued, before there is politics there is the question of who counts, who belongs, and how (2004). To understand this, however, we must situate what is essentially an idea—or sets of ideas, ideology—in its context. Any idea of the world, even of our place in it or the purpose(s) of the institutions we seek to create, must speak to or in relation to an extant world. In Lefebvre’s ontology of space this dialectical relation between the mental and material stems from a simple recognition that as humans we not only produce our world (space in his terminology) we dwell in one that already exists. This world and its attendant mental, social, and material processes appears before us no differently than a wall (Lefebvre 1991, 57). Our ideas about the world then reflect this existence as dwelling. For our purposes here, then, it becomes necessary to situate the question of who belongs within the broader context of the socio-material status-quo: the legacy of apartheid. A change in the governing body does not equate with a radical disjuncture with the past in this broader sense. In spatial terms, then, we are interested in the legacy of apartheid as the texturing of space from which the post-­ apartheid state emerged and toward which, explicitly and implicitly, all ideas, policies, and ideologies are situated. This is not to suggest determinism or that a radical disjuncture is impossible—even one that transforms the state itself. As Philpott (2001) argues, even radically transformative ideas spread slowly in society as individuals come to accept them; as such, ideas reflect upon, inform, and propose condemnation of and solutions to a given state of affairs. Certainly the ascension of the ANC and a black majority more generally might constitute—or allow for—such a radical state of affairs. But as is clear now this has not been the case. As we shall see, the ideological radicalism of the struggle was amenable to adaptation and the transformation of the state far from radical as a result. The ideology of the ANC during the struggle certainly presented an understanding of the apartheid state concomitant with a vision for its replacement. But the politics of the post-apartheid state do not reflect a radical departure. No single work could fully explore the ways in which the texture of apartheid is reflected in the contemporary state. But in the individual, central to the question of who belongs and to

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any proper ontology of the social world, we find an analytically revealing focus on the nature of the production of the state and its politics. The present chapter sets out to disentangle a complex phenomena that lends itself only to an equally complex argument linking institutions, the individual, and the state in South Africa. The conclusion put forth is not itself novel. Post apartheid South Africa has, like many states over the last several decades, elevated the abstraction of the market into a central role in policymaking—in practice delineating the politics of the possible and impossible. In doing so it has also greatly attenuated the ability of politicians to address the legacy of apartheid. What is unique, however, is the attempt to link this to a question of belonging and the spatial organisation and processes of the state with the legacy of apartheid understood as the texture of space. In this way it contributes—if only obliquely—to a growing literature on what we might call ‘neoliberal citizenship’ (see for example Foucault 2008; Brown 2006; Ong 2006). The focus here, however, is on the conceptualisation of the subject at the heart of policymaking and to what extent the legacy of apartheid can be read on this subject. Neoliberalism is far too often seen simply as a form of ‘governmentality’ without an explicit link to actual behaviour, any theorisation of such agential behaviour, or as a gross elevation of the conceptual over the material world. It exists solely in a problematic separation of mind and matter, ideas and the material world. In contrast, spatial theory seeks a dialectical relationship between the conceived, the perceived, and the lived. Or, rather, the ideas of the world, how we actually feel and understand the world, and how we in turn live in the world. If the world, and the state, is a social product in a constant unfolding of social production then we must properly grasp its totality. And this totality must include an analysis of the extant texture of space; the legacy of apartheid textures even while it does not define and determine the post-apartheid spatial processes. As is explored below, much of the legacy of apartheid and its explicit white welfare legacy is left untouched for the most part by this elevation of the market as the central locus around which policy debates occur. This alone would not tell us much without linking it to the spatial organisation and processes of the state itself. This is the textural legacy of apartheid. Lurking behind all of this, however, is a question that animates but is not directly addressed here: namely how did a movement aimed at eradicating apartheid come to pursue policies that fail to address its legacies? But as I seek to argue, this is not an entirely accurate reading of the politics of immediate post-apartheid era. The ANC and its alliance did in fact believe

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it was eradicating this legacy. The goals of the ANC never changed, only the means. A diverse strand of thoughts must be woven together, I readily admit. To keep it from becoming unwieldy, then, this chapter will orient itself around the individual as the subject of policy, particularly the policies of reform embedded in the wide ranging concept of ‘good governance’. In doing so I hope we may shed light on contemporary politics in South Africa as a question of belonging, as a reality of exclusion, and a fight to be recognised and included. This elevation of the abstract, this question of belonging as a problem of marketised citizenship, is quite distinct from the origins of citizenship tied to the nation and national identity. This is not to say, of course, that this abstraction is absent from the traditional heartlands of the nation-­ state. Far from it (see Brown 2006). This abstraction, however, can never be fully removed from the socio-economic processes to which it implicitly must refer. In this sense, then, this transformation of the subject from an explicitly white nationalist one to an economic abstraction cannot be fully understood without also reflecting upon the texture of apartheid. Whatever reforms the post-apartheid government sought to pursue, however such reforms were conceived and however weak they may be, they still reflect back upon the socio-material world that exists; it is the texture of space within which we dwell even as we seek a transformation. While it may seem obtuse to momentarily venture into urban planning, bear with me as Lefebvre’s critical thoughts on his field are far more enlightening of the nature of what I am getting at than any discussion of neoliberalism heretofore. His thoughts on the state of urban planning— originally from a talk given to graduate students in the 1970s—are easily transposed to economics, political science and, yes, International Relations. Lefebvre (2009) spoke derisively of the then emerging trend of a ‘scientific’ study of urban planning (not at all unlike the contemporaneous behavioural turn in the social sciences). Planning is concerned above all with space. But the attempts to create an objective study of space and thus an objective way to properly assess and design urban planning meant that space itself became removed from lived practice into an abstract thing. This placed the planner as an intermediary between the politicians and their visions on one side and the people on the other. The planner looked upward to ideas, into the abstract, and only then down to the social, whose primary problem was being made to ‘fit’ into the abstract remaking of the world; people were meant to fit and the struggles to make them fit were secondary to the purity of the abstract. By contrast, Lefebvre wondered

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what such planning might look like if the content (i.e. the people) were prioritised over the form (i.e. space). The reverse had long been true. The reality of this is manifest to any pedestrian walking the famed modernist— and eminently planned—cities of Brasilia and Chandigarh. These are not cities of life. They are the abstract made manifest. The problem for Lefebvre is that when the content, the people are not prioritised something is necessarily lost when they are forced into such abstractions (ibid., 169). Is this not in essence the problem good governance and a notion of citizenship that abstracts the human into pure economic form as a particular subject? Homo economicus is a pure abstract. It exists solely within the abstraction of the market. And no one thinks it is real. And yet it informs policy. It lies at the centre of the far more wide ranging policies promulgated internationally within the concept of good governance. Such abstractions inform policy, and thus the making and remaking of the state in much the same way as Lefebvre lamented. Good governance touches upon a range of institutions and processes from local governance and service delivery to judicial autonomy. The allocation of resources, the formulation of tax policy, the policies of housing and water and so forth are derived from an abstract modelling of an agent of needs and interests resting at the nexus of various markets. But as they are framed in such terms, whether by design or by default, they define a citizen—and thus citizenship—as a cluster of needs to be met via the market or by increasing one’s ability to function within it not as a people in a community. It is not the bottom up of the content seeking a relevant policy. It is a top down of the abstract forcing the content into its mould. Before moving on let us return to some basics, some outline of the premises at work here in what I mean by the state and how it thusly informs the present analysis. The state, it has been argued, is an ongoing socio-material spatial practice. But it is also a conscious social project for some end; this idea and ideal of the state hovers above any government. We see this as a problematic conflation of the state and government only by ignoring that in every utterance the government is spoken of as the government of some people, some place, some state. It has a purpose. At times this purpose has been linked to a definite notion of the people, a nation. It is a state of belonging with a clear notion of who belongs. In all of its history South Africa has been an explicitly racial state or one, at a minimum, whose social production rested upon race, from colonialism through apartheid. From the ‘poor whites’ problem of the postbellum turn of the century politics to apartheid’s explicit creation of a white

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welfare state, the question of who belongs—and thus for what purpose the state exists—has been inseparable from race. The post-apartheid ‘rainbow nation’ and the equally problematic (and as we shall see, mostly impotent) idea of a citizenship grounded in ubuntu has merely removed the question of race from the purpose of the state. But it has not removed it from its legacy in the spatial organisation of the state.

Socialising the State The state remains a key concept to both the field of International Relations and interstate relations themselves. Yet beyond critiquing our assumed holism apropos of the state (see Wendt 1999), it’s unclear what theorising we have done that would provide us a glimpse into the dynamics of the state in an international system of states. In an increasingly, if unevenly, interconnected (perhaps globalizing?) world that question takes on both empirical and normative theoretical importance. Constructivist scholars have quite ably demonstrated that the international system can be easily understood socially, that states can be ‘socialised’ into norms and practices that transform them. In this sense the spread of market norms and norms of good governance can be explained as the results of interstate socialisation. But what is this socialised creature but the very actors that comprise it, for it is ultimately policymakers and bureaucrats that are socialised as agents of the state. Why do some ideas hold greater resonance than others? Why do some ideas fail in practice? The reality of the state, its infrastructure, its investment, its political geography cannot be re-socialised into something they are not. Whatever socialisation occurs must occur within a given context that informs their resonance and likely success. But for us this is but to ask in what ways the past sets the stage for the future and how we may think about it. If, as Acharya (2004) argues, ideas must be made to ‘fit’ a local context then we must rightfully examine—and properly theorise—this context. By the same token, theorists of the state as diverse as Poulantzas (2000), Jessop (1990), and Bayart (2009) have highlighted the ways in which the state as a whole is an amalgamation of society and institution, private and public, where the boundaries between them are blurry at best and perhaps best theorised as such (see also Mitchell 1991). This is all the more so when discussing the state in Africa. There is a certain logic to any argument, however, that would note that as the ANC took the reins of power it did so with the existing bureaucracy of government (and most of its bureaucrats) intact, which leaves behind a

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considerable legacy effect of the status quo ante. Given that within two years of taking office, the Mandela administration abandoned its election platform, the Reconstruction and Redevelopment Programme (RDP), in favour of a radically different set of policies outlined in the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) plan, the question of legacy effects appears valid. It is certainly valid to ask in what manner that which preceded informs that which succeeded. Many commentators inside and outside government have suggested that the full picture of the economic and budgetary troubles facing South Africa did not become readily apparent to the ANC until it assumed office and there was but little choice but to follow one path over another. It was at this point that we might begin asking how the ship of state influenced policy-making. But we must not forget the wider, more amorphous ‘state’ itself in this discussion. Policy-­ making under the first Government of National Unity (GNU) and succeeding administrations also had to deal with important societal actors such as labour (represented in the coalition by COSATU), the business community, and an emerging black middle class. Yet for ideological reasons, the poor also crop up as an unrepresented group nevertheless influencing ANC policy-making as a principle legacy of apartheid. The post-apartheid state’s post-Cold War formation, however, should be seen for what it is: an ongoing social process of production. But such a process took place in a global system where liberalism—even neoliberalism—became the dominant paradigm by which behaviour and policy is judged. Meaningful social interaction occurs because of a common ground and the ability to appeal to shared norms and beliefs to make sense of the world and behaviour within it. To be heard and understood both the speaker and listener must share some basic assumptions and meaning. At a higher level of abstraction, however, we can see that this position, in recognising the analytical utility of analysing the social realm, notes that structures would both constrain and produce meaningful behaviour. This is important for the work that follows because, as we shall see, South Africa’s neoliberal transition emerges through a process of interaction between typical social constructs such as norms and ideas as well as more concrete structures such as institutions and markets that together constitute the texture of extant spatial organisation. The end of apartheid quite obviously ushered in a new state defined by the expanded franchise and end of racist rule. This in and of itself constitutes a significant reordering of state-society relations, which in keeping with the argument of the book amounts to a major change in the purpose

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of the state. But the new state was hardly revolutionary nor was it quite what many who supported the ANC and their tripartite alliance partners, the SACP and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), envisioned. In what follows below, my intent is to discuss this negotiated transition and the rise of a neoliberal vision of the state. In doing so it should become clear that the ANC did not abandon its view of empowerment but that it had to negotiate this view with a world increasingly at odds with it. The view of the state as one whose purpose is the needs of the community gave way to a view of the state whose purpose is the neoliberal free individual. This had profound effects on both the institutions of the state and its policies. But this chapter also offers to explain the rise of such a neoliberal state where few predicted it. It deepens our understanding not simply on what the neoliberal state is but how it emerges and is sustained. As such it seeks to understand modern state-making in a globalizing world. We began this project with duelling issues at the heart of much social analysis: the problem of ascribing outcomes to ideas or materiality, to domestic or international processes. The idea put forward suggests that such distinctions more often reflect the questions asked and their scope or scale in time and space. But a competing problem may be likened to over emphasising the ideological and ideational at the expense of ‘brute’ facts at the heart of many invocations of neoliberalism. This is particularly relevant here for the present argument rests on a subtle claim about the place of the immaterial, the ideological in producing post-apartheid South Africa, the relationship between the government and society and in social processes generally. That this also transcends any level of analysis as South Africa more deeply reengaged the global system of states does not itself stand out as particularly unique, however theoretically problematic at times. In what follows I wish to discuss the complex ways in which the international and the domestic interacted and are manifest in the ANC’s attempts to re-shape the state and formulate economic policy in ways that sought to transform it. In doing so they began an ongoing, incomplete, and still very much contested reformation of the way government and society interact and did so by fundamentally altering how it understood the individual as a citizen. The goal is to exemplify not just the ideological shift within the ANC but how this shift translated into practice. It must be said at the outset that apartheid did not collapse; it was negotiated away. The apartheid project had fundamentally altered socio-­ economic relationships for some, primarily whites, while leaving unchanged many others, primarily the black majority. One is tempted to see in the rise

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of the post-apartheid state some revolutionary new being, some fundamentally new state. And yet in its negotiated death it was anything but revolutionary in the sense of a fundamental reordering of class and power relations (see Skocpol 1979). The state did indeed change; it embraced, in spirit if not always the letter, the triumphant liberalism of the post-Cold War era that may be more properly termed neoliberal with its emphasis on markets and global market integration. This in and of itself is both shocking and something less so. The rise to power of the black majority under the ANC could lead one to believe that as a party aligned with the South African Communist Party, black labour unions, and one committed to the vague economic principles inherent in the Freedom Charter and affirmed in the later Harare declaration that fundamental change was coming. That the ANC quietly abandoned any notion of nationalisation or state led development for the black majority is itself a shock. But only if looked at purely as a domestic political question. Even then, the economic power gained by the white majority was not about to be negotiated away along with the apartheid that birthed it. But the post-apartheid state’s embrace of neoliberalism is due less to the power of de Klerk and the NP to maintain their new economic power under market conditions than it is due to a reckoning of domestic needs within the possibilities of the emerging global economic order. To say the ANC sold out its socialist past is to miss an important point: it did not shift its goals of black empowerment as much as the means. The transition period was in many ways a battle over the state and how it would be defined. In this way many actors and institutions from diverse contexts intervened consciously and unconsciously in the domestic debate. While this project is focused on the state itself, the economic debates of this period—and through to today—cannot and should not be removed from a larger discussion on what South Africa was to be, how it was to be defined, and what it meant to belong and be South African. Questions of social justice and democracy are intimately interwoven into the economic debates as part of a larger narrative of the new South Africa. Politics, as always, is a competition between competing narratives and world-views. Few places offer such divergent and at times acrimonious views competing within a state as South Africa.1 Once the holism of the state is challenged, however, it becomes possible to look at the confluence of factors and 1  Since the end of apartheid, South Africans have been, in a very real sense, grappling with what it means to be South African (see Ives 2007; Vice 2010, 2011; passim).

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actors that allow one vision of the state to emerge over others, one set of policies over another. In hindsight we know which view won out and we know which party came to power. As such, we must unravel the ANC’s transition if we are to understand South Africa’s transition.

The Ship of State Does Not Turn Easily: Syncretism and the Drift Right The transition period leading to the 1994 elections that brought the ANC to power were years of tremendous policy work by all sides in the political and economic debate inside and outside South Africa. The ANC itself greatly expanded its department of economic planning and fostered links with academic economists to help shape what became its electoral platform in the 1994 election, the RDP. As a blueprint for change it rang out with calls for social justice, economic reform, and economic restraint. Strangely, it had wide appeal. It was hardly a socialist document but neither was it free market. It was a comprehensive programme aimed at ending the structural and cultural legacy of apartheid but also one that did not seek to seriously challenge the international status quo; it was a signal to the country as much as the international community that change in South Africa was well within the emerging international order. It was a wide ranging programme, as one would expect; it encompassed the economic, political and civic spheres of South African society in ways that challenged little that had been gained by a wealthy white minority while promising new gains to the enfranchised majority. It is replete with references to ‘people power’ and broad economic development that focused on the basic needs of the people, which, post-apartheid, were—and remain— legion. It is also a document that deftly links nation building (the ‘Rainbow Nation’), reconstruction, redistribution, and development. This is in direct contrast to a range of critics who argued that development and redistribution were not contiguous processes but mutually exclusive; shifting funds to others would preclude their use in economic development. Early in the transition period the ANC created the National Economic Forum (NEF) as a way to bring together business and labour to discuss economic policy in a post-apartheid South Africa. (This was later incorporated into a formal government apparatus called the National Economic Development and Labour Council [NEDLAC]). It is a curious corporatist arrangement at a time when such arrangements were largely fading away

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from the European political scene that created them. While the business of the NEF and NEDLAC are important in their own right, it is the context, relationships, and curious discourse from which they originate that are typically overlooked. But, as Manji aptly notes, the ANC was well aware of the difficulties of pushing through even a mild market-oriented set of policies. “It [the ANC] therefore sought, through corporatism, to co-opt the labour movement as the vanguard of popular support thus neutralising potential opposition having given the labour movement a ‘privileged’ position in the area of economic policy making” (2002, 22). Whether such overt cynicism is warranted is debatable. NEDLAC and the NEF represent clear institutional arrangements meant to both pursue market-­ based economic reform and give a hearing to those groups in society affected by such reforms. It was not, however, merely an attempt to co-­ opt the potential opposition. Indeed, the corporatist arrangement was part of the deepening democracy discourse that the ANC began cultivating during the transition. It’s a discourse that quite neatly appeals to disparate groups and discourses. This emerging hybrid democratic-neoliberal discourse is embedded not just in the institutional arrangements of NEDLAC, it is, arguably, the root of NEDLAC. It is a clear example of syncretism at work, creating a discourse that appealed to many. As an early report noted, NEDLAC is primarily a social forum whose purpose is an end in-and-of-itself (NEDLAC 1998, 46). NEDLAC has deep roots in the discourse of the struggle, which focused, even in the Freedom Charter, on a popular democracy and true representation of the people. But this is not my point. Rather my point is that the ANC intended to deepen democracy further into society and this belief is manifest in this democratic discourse. In the post-­ apartheid South Africa they wanted a new relationship between the people and the government. Within this wide discourse on deepening democracy, however, we find a noteworthy congruence with the agencies of the Washington Consensus—particularly the World Bank—around the now familiar idea of ‘good governance.’ Deepening democracy and spreading ‘good governance’ became increasingly inseparable ideas/concepts.2 It is also at the heart of Mbeki’s African Renaissance, NEPAD, and a variety of projects and discourses 2  I should point out that this is not mere rhetoric. Aside from NEDLAC, there are a number of agencies from the federal to the municipal level whose mandate is to deepen democracy and provide a forum for state-society interaction. Such agencies include not only the

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originating in both the developed world and Africa. Beyond this, however, it is interesting to note how the concepts of democracy, good governance, and development became linked theoretically and practically in South Africa. For example, the smooth and efficient running of government agencies are linked not only by a desire to make the state accountable to the people (more in theory than my experience has indicated) but efficient in their use of resources so as to lower the budget and, thus, the need for taxes (see White et al. 2000).3 Good governance is not only a government of accountability but one that sees accountability in economic and democratic terms. But democracy here implicitly understands freedom in a very marketised sense. Good governance stands out as both an ambitious and ambiguous concept in the democratic discourse. Deepening democracy by providing vertical linkages from state to society has clear appeal to a population accustomed to apartheid. It also connotes real popular control and involvement in government. NEDLAC, with its inclusion of civic groups, is clearly one major institution to keep the people involved. Beyond this, however, the concept is vague and quite difficult to disentangle from the Washington Consensus agenda of market-centric reforms. White et  al. (2000), like the World Bank and others, treat it as a cluster concept consisting of several—at times similarly vague—elements: Human rights, justice, safety and security, law-making processes, public sector reform, decentralisation (practically, this involves the devolution and delegation of some powers to the provincial level), and media and information access (ibid., 3). The concept and its implementation has also fostered linkages and inter-governmental dialogue (see ibid., 61). While overseas assistance remains a small part of the South African budget (approximately 2–3% at the time [ibid., 1]), it has been a fruitful area of collaboration, further blurring the levels of analysis. Over time South Africa became a local champion of good governance on the continent. Indeed, it has hewn closer to the ideal in both market-oriented and good governance policy than expected. I would argue that this is a manifestation of a fear over the loss of sovereignty at the heart of the ANC’s neoliberal-lite shift and good Dept. of Public Service and Administration but a variety of provincial fora and industry specific economic development bodies (e.g. Motor Industry Development Council). 3  Reducing the budget was a key component for financing the RDP as laid out in the RDP White Paper.

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governance discourse with roots in the ANC’s existing world-view—and thus is a fruitful area for syncretism. There are, however, other factors that must be brought to bear on this process. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the ANC went into government in 1994 without a complete idea of just how stricken the ship of state was. Budget deficits had grown considerably since the 1980s—partly due to a bloated budget spent fighting off the enemies of apartheid—leaving the government with a heavy budget, debt,4 and rising interest rates on said debt. Beyond this, however, the country’s GDP only recently went into the black and inflation was rising, which led to fears that the influx of capital hoped for would not occur (on the state of the economy see Fallon and Perreira da Silva 1994). The RDP and RDP white paper indicated that the ANC had intended to fund most of its social programmes by cutting back on budget spending that was no longer necessary. The military budget in particular could quite easily be trimmed now that it was no longer needed to fight an insurgent-like struggle. The sweeping budget cuts envisioned by the ANC, however, would not be sufficient to meet the deficit targets hoped for. The macro-economic state of South Africa, however, did not necessarily prevent the government from taking out small loans to rein in its budget deficit. Fallon and Perreira da Silva’s analysis had suggested that growth could be promoted via the budget and that wise use of loans would not necessarily scare off investors (1994). Indeed, the World Bank seemed to be suggesting a sort of mild Keynesian pump priming by arguing that economic growth could be spurred by government spending, particularly on infrastructure (see Fallon 1993). Given South Africa’s low foreign debt to GDP ratio, this advice seems sound. Yet the ANC chose to avoid loans (and raising taxes, for that matter). ANC mistrust of the World Bank was notable (see ANC, US Mission 1991) amidst a general fear of being sucked into structural adjustment policies should the economy falter. But Hirsch suggests the ANC also avoided loans out of fear of its own abilities, and those of the bureaucracy, to manage the money and instead

4  According to Fallon and Perreira de Silva (1994), the budget deficit grew dramatically in the period from 1991–1994 reaching around 8.5%. Hirsch notes that some in ANC speculated that this was a deliberate act by the NP to constrain the actions of the next government (2005, 70).

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opted for a series of budget cuts and a long term plan of reining in inflation and financial liberalisation to encourage capital inflow (2005).5 Patrick Bond (2000), however, makes the argument that South Africa’s increasingly neoliberal oriented policies were the result of elite collusion and outright selling out on the part of the ANC. His argument, however, rests on some traditional Marxist thinking regarding state-society relations (cf Poulantzas 2000; Jessop 1990). His argument is far more structuralist than he might admit. He argues that over-investment in technological improvements in production resulted in a decline in profitability and an inability to bring goods to market. This resulted in capital bottlenecks that could not be put back into productive assets. This, he argues, strengthened the hand of financial capital and financial services leading to calls for a more laissez-faire approach to financial capital (i.e. less restrictions on capital flows). “The argument, simply, is that as over-accumulation begins to set in, as structural bottlenecks emerge, and as profit rates fall in the productive sectors of an economy, capitalists begin to shift their investable funds out of reinvestment in plant, equipment and labour power and instead seek refuge in financial assets” [emphasis original] (Bond 2000, 11). Financial capital is thus competing with capital generally for profits. To maintain its profits, Bond argues, it sought a true laissez faire. Bond strays from this argument briefly by noting that the many ‘scenario’ exercises and planning that took place during the early nineties allowed for a meeting of the minds, as it were. Each of the participants, labour, business, etc., learned “each other’s basic objectives, philosophy and discourses, and they had to begin to make concessions—mainly rhetorical, but to some degree concrete—to build trust between negotiating parties with once vigorously opposed interests” (Bond 2000, 56). This resulted in what Bond calls ‘coerced harmony’. The scenario planning exercises were useful for this reason alone (or primarily): they allowed an opening and harmony of minds. His argument here is not entirely at odds with my own. But it is at odds with his point noted above and doesn’t quite hold up upon closer scrutiny. The oft repeated point that, in many ways to avoid being trapped by the requirements of international capital and finance, the ANC/GNU had to adopt the same policies required by such financiers bears repeating (Hirsch 5  The government also moved to shore up its revenue collection and reorient the patchwork of provincial and former homeland finances to better allocate and control the dispersal of funding.

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2005, 69). But the impact of extant socio-material relations domestically and internationally is much more nuanced, reflexive. The policy commitments being made were informed by both the constraints and possibilities of institutions and the broader interpretation of the macro-economic context within which the emerging ideological/ideational position of the ANC itself was being articulated. But I argue that such ideas are always fluid and contestable and, that upon taking control of the state, the signals interpreted by policymakers merely reinforced existing ideational predisposition—perhaps even strengthening and clarifying them. Carmody (2002) goes a step further in arguing that the ANC’s neoliberal turn (which he terms an ‘embrace of globalization’) was really more foreign than domestic; by being more free market oriented in trade policies it gave them room to pursue a hybrid, syncretic policy domestically by, for example, intervening in labour markets. This approach, he further argues, also rested on a meeting of interests with a handful of large conglomerates that benefited greatly from trade and financial liberalisation. While financial liberalisation (e.g. elimination of the financial Rand and allowing domestic companies to list on foreign stock exchanges, passim) did proceed rather speedily under the GNU, there is no reason to believe that productive capacity and capital bottlenecks created this alone as Bond argues. From 1993–2006, South Africa showed a steady run up in overall manufacturing output that follows a matching but higher level of consumption resulting in a matching level of import growth to meet demand. While this is a blunt measure, it does not suggest restricted capacity. But the bigger issue is linking structural conditions with ideas themselves. Financial liberalisation in theory would not only benefit financial capital it would benefit net flows of capital over all. The steady increase in both direct and portfolio investment over this period suggests that liberalisation may have benefited financial capital but that it also did what the ANC hoped it would do, which was to increase access to capital in general (see SARB 2006). The latter argument made by Bond seems closer to the point. There was an ideational fixation on liberalisation in general, which might better explain policy preferences than structural conditions alone. The ANC’s commitment to manufacturing as a key component of its development strategy also questions overt structural links to policy preferences or indeed options. But the argument bears further scrutiny beyond manufacturing. The trend being set by the South African government as early as the mid 1980s is one of shedding SOEs and decreasing government intervention in the economy. In many ways, GEAR represented a continuation of

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the Nationalist Party’s Normative Economic Model (NEM), which they counter proposed to the ANC’s RDP. It advocated a focus on “economic growth, minimal state intervention, privatization, deregulation, wage restraint” and close attention to inflation (Habib and Padayachee 2000, 250). The NEM, however, while certainly a new set of ideas, has a long history. Privatization and deregulation were hallmarks of P.W.  Botha’s economic policies, which were taken up with greater force under the last NP government of FW De Klerk. The government had begun researching the issues surrounding privatization as far back as 1986 (Rep of SA 1986) and again during the transition (Economic Advisory Council of the State President 1992). While little privatization of SOEs was completed by the mid 1990s, it can certainly be argued that the bureaucracy was moving in this devolutionary direction. Privatization discussions gained momentum prior to the 1994 elections but went nowhere as it was almost a foregone conclusion that a new, ANC-led government was likely to take power and privatization and nationalization were quickly becoming major components of the political debate. But the RDP White Paper clearly references the need to reorganise SOEs, restructure their relations with the state, and possibly privatise certain assets. The White Paper was echoed in the first major policy document on the subject by Ministry of Public Enterprises (1995) under the GNU. The latter document refers to the need to reorganise to gain efficiencies and extend services to those historically denied it. We are left with two perplexing issues that bear on the question of South Africa’s transition. On the one hand privatization talks were not merely political as the bureaucracy was clearly studying the issue and working towards that end. On the other hand, though, the major state owned companies remain to this day under some form of government control. The GNU inherited around 300 state-owned businesses four of which took in 94% of income, 77% of employment (presumably of such SOEs), and 91% of total SOE assets. The businesses were/are Telkom (telecommunications), Eskom (energy), Transet (transportation), and Denel (unspecified defence work) (see Ayogu 2001). There are two reasons, I believe, that explain this outcome, one structural and the other ideological; both, in part, reflecting the split between an outward neoliberal set of policies with a more syncretic domestic set (see also Carmody 2002). The structures involved, however, are not the governing institutions but rather the deficiencies of the existing organisation of the economy. The ideological and structural in this case go together quite handedly. Despite fierce

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debate within the alliance over future privatization (COSATU led a general strike over this in 2001), the government has not said it will privatise said industries anytime soon. Moreover, the position of the ANC to extend electrical and telephone services makes government control over such industries a more efficient means of implementing such policies (to this end the government has been quite successful in stark contrast to its efforts to promote affordable housing). What may be missing from these bold facts, however, is the key role and use of the word ‘efficiency’. To this end one could argue that the market-oriented approach to development that was working its way into the governing institutions and the ANC was very much at work in the privatization debate. State control of certain industries is currently the most efficient way to implement policy absent an efficient regulatory body that would ensure that privately-run network utilities serviced the entire nation. The RDP made quite explicit goals of extending power and telephone service to the vast majority of homes in South Africa that lacked it (it also set, in retrospect, some overly ambitious housing goals). Despite the growing place of anti-privatization as a rallying call on the left, very little has occurred. This would seem to quiet any strict materialist ‘textural’ argument in shaping the path of government policy. The government managed to work against tendencies set in motion by the previous governments under apartheid demonstrating a degree of agency. But I would argue that this is not because the government is opposed to privatization, quite the contrary. Rather it is part of a hybrid worldview wherein social justice coexists with market efficiency and the complex of policies within good governance. The discursive hybrid that emerges in this period deftly moves the social justice of the democratic discourse away from a collective vision to a private one and thus fundamentally shifts the ideological positions of citizens and the government. Electricity and other infrastructure improvements, however, get interwoven into a discourse on social justice—right the wrongs of apartheid—that characterises the emerging discourse of the post-apartheid period. The government’s commitment to privatization and its slow pace of actual privatization are the result of this and structural factors that make the current policies both practically and ideologically syncretic. Privatization, however limited in practice, remained a part of the political debate primarily because it was part of the larger development strategy that emerged in the wake of the RDP in the form of GEAR in 1996. GEAR was an ambitious set of goals and policies that would shape

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­ evelopment policy into the next century (the current one, actually). It d was overtly market-oriented, had set plans for trade and financial liberalisation steps (e.g. lowered tariffs and less onerous restrictions on the flow of foreign capital), strong budget deficit targets, and in general set about reorienting the position of the state in development (see ANC 1997). Unlike the RDP, which, while run from a single office, was largely left to individual departments to implement, GEAR would coordinate all relevant departments around policy implementation and involve the relevant societal actors (i.e. via NEDLAC) (see Dept. of Finance 1996). GEAR, thus, represented some continuity with the practices of previous governments but also the influence of the ideological and non-governmental structures at work. GEAR’s monetary, fiscal, tax policies, and clear inflation fears were all aimed at encouraging capital inflows, reflecting the perceived needs of international capital. But the policy also reflected the aforementioned concern over retaining South Africa’s autonomy in the face of international financiers. Labour’s impact is demonstrated in NEDLAC (which actually predates GEAR) and via the focus given to industrialisation as part of the larger development strategy. It is an interesting fact that while the service sector and agriculture mark a considerable part of South Africa’s GDP, the policies of the government are aimed primarily at industrialisation and manufacturing; mining too remains a significant part of the country’s exports, all areas most susceptible to the open trade and global markets. There are two explanations, not mutually exclusive, to explain this. In part, South Africa under apartheid had a long tradition of fostering industrialisation via import substitution to counter the effects of sanctions. Thus industrialisation did not generate much backlash from the bureaucracy or NP. But Hirsch suggests, and I agree with him, that both the presence of labour in the alliance and the remnants of Marxism within the ANC gave industry a particularly mythic and nostalgic importance (Hirsch 2005, 116). There was also little likelihood in engendering a backlash from the World Bank either as there remains a mythic status around the industrialisation of the Asian NICs (Newly Industrialised Countries). Indeed, even Japan stepped in to fund a World Bank grant for South Africa to study industrialisation policies and opportunities. The RDP, however, proved to be a successful electoral platform, though it was unlikely the ANC, the face of the resistance, would fail to win the first ever free elections in South Africa. But, at least initially, it was more than a boilerplate manifesto aimed at securing electoral wins alone. While

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it was clearly a political statement, an agenda, that we should not read too deeply, it does give us some insight into how the ANC’s views had changed and how much of their worldview remained, struggling to be relevant. Some of the plans laid out in it remain relevant today, particularly redistribution of land, increasing affordable housing, and the expansion of electric and water infrastructure. There is also the clear recognition, a retention of a world-view where the wealth, educational opportunities, and economic power of the few had come at the expense of the many. The state under apartheid had been organised to tip the scales in one direction and the RDP was meant to gently, though not excessively, tilt it in the other. The realities of a negotiated transition, the decision to pursue a government of national unity,6 and the fear of becoming an international economic pariah after decades of being a political one meant the RDP would be the guide for, at best, a mild reorganisation of the state. This is perhaps best encapsulated in the decision to leave in place the existing bureaucracy. No one was to be fired and replaced, no offices were to be greatly expanded—thus requiring a larger budget (and higher taxes)—and change would come gradually as people retired. In essence, if the RDP was meant to show that the ANC would indeed tear down apartheid it would do so gradually and without ruffling too many feathers in the process. In the first years of ANC rule, though, the RDP had its own office to oversee the wide ranging policies that would be implemented through a variety of ministries. As an independent office it had status and signalled the importance of the ideas of transformation by the ANC to the people. The office was meant to coordinate efforts across agencies. It lasted all of two years. By 1996 it was eliminated and a new programme, GEAR, was launched. GEAR represented a major change in policy direction and ended all doubt about whether the ANC had abandoned any socialist world-view for this programme was resolutely market oriented. It laid out clear development goals within strict budget deficit targets that would ultimately mean curtailing government spending. For many in South Africa GEAR was a free market, pro-business sell out (see Bond 2000, 2004; Marais 1998). There is no doubt that the ANC underwent a major ideational change in the early 1990s. But it is difficult to say whether this change represents ‘selling out’ or whether it even represents a major change in thinking 6  President Mandela’s first government had two deputy presidents as a sign of his belief in the ‘rainbow nation’: Thabo Mbeki and former prime minister F.W. De Klerk.

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rather than simply a different view on how to achieve social change. What is clear is that by 1996 and the adoption of GEAR as the framework for South Africa’s economic and social development the terms of debate had changed. The problems facing South Africa had not gone away nor the desire to completely undo the legacy of apartheid. But how the government would go about this changed. The government adopted the approach that to develop the state would need to become more business friendly, rein in government expenses, gradually open itself up to freer trade, and lessen intervention in the economy. In this sense then the ANC did indeed seek to make a major change from apartheid but one that would please the neoliberal economic order: they were going to disband the SOEs where and when they could. The key figures within the administration that ultimately created GEAR, most notably Thabo Mbeki and future Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, would go on to entrench this approach more deeply during Mbeki’s presidency. The 1999 election that brought Mbeki to power served to entrench the market oriented approach in policy debates. It would be misleading, however, to say that GEAR did not engender opposition. Quite the opposite: it would grow. The ANC party president elections in 2007 that elevated Jacob Zuma demonstrated the discontent in the nation. This tumult, however, demonstrates how fragile and weak the reformation of the state had been and how essential a leader of Mandela’s stature was in keeping discontent at bay. Zuma’s election, protests at the slow pace of housing reform (protests that would continue and ultimately cost Zuma office as well), and the discontent among the trade unions all indicate disenchantment with the market oriented path to reform and redistribution. Yet little real change has occurred except in how the state is conceived and the relationships between society, the economy, and the state as a whole. Even under Mbeki, the electoral alliance of the SACP, trade unions (COSATU), and the ANC increasingly became fragile as opposition mounted to Mbeki’s policies absent the stature of Mandela. Striking nurses and teachers during the Winter of 2007 were but prescient examples of social unrest that would ultimately lead to Mbeki’s downfall and the elevation of President Zuma who nonetheless lost the confidence of the people. The strict fiscal discipline instilled by Mbeki’s finance minister, Trevor Manuel, led to stagnant wages for state workers (which includes teachers and nurses) and a renewed emphasis and reliance on market mechanisms for land and housing reform. Missing from this picture, however, is the simple fact that there exist few in power or vying for power who would completely undo the policies

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of the Mbeki and Zuma administrations. Few argue that the state must abandon freer trade or launch a disastrous and ill advised land reform programme of the likes seen in Zimbabwe.7 When the Mbeki administration announced the first budget surplus it had the noticeable effect of legitimating existing policies and the views of those that claim the government can afford to do more. A growing, but still small, black middle class is also unlikely to desire a complete abandonment of current policies from which they have benefited. Rather, what is emerging is an opposition whose voice is not anti-market but one seeking a greater redistribution of the real wealth generated in the country. Looking back now a decade after the end of the Mbeki administration (where this project analytically ends) it is much easier to see the transition period for what it is: a political transition. Full stop. The fundamental changes in the organisation of the economy, society, and the government (i.e. the state) began in the 1980s as the apartheid project both completed its goals and the strains of maintaining what was by then an unnecessarily intrusive state began to show. The democratic transition leaves one with the impression that this was the moment of change, of deep systemic change, rather than the changing of the guard that it was. The ANC sought and achieved office hoping to create a new state but ultimately they inherited a state already changing. As a revolutionary movement bent on major reforms the democratic transition period is baffling. The evolution of thought regarding the state and the policies to bring this about rapidly evolved. What domestic pressures pushed policymakers in one direction over another? What international processes reinforced this or, at a minimum, stymied an RDP program that might have created an interventionist state but not necessarily one so different from other developing states? The frailty of the latter years of the apartheid economy are known. The need for capital, a slimmer bureaucracy with less taxes, and the need for more educated workers all put strains on the apartheid state; strains that led some in the business community to reach out to the ANC in exile. As the Cold War ended, it became easier for the masters of apartheid to reach out and negotiate. The two are not separate. But internationally, the material elements of the global economy have not changed much in their relations after the Cold War, though they have deepened and spread globally 7  This is, however, extremely fluid at the moment as there are indeed growing calls for land redistribution in the current administration of Cyril Ramaphosa.

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while new actors such as China have emerged and grown in clout. What has changed is the manner in which states approach the global economy as well as their own development. There is a surprising trend toward global agreement here and one that may explain some of the stalled transition in South Africa. It is important to note that while the ANC and SACP had a close working relationship throughout most of the apartheid years, the parties were separate. Socialism, however, had a certain resonance with many in the ANC (even when Communism itself did not) and there were many people with overlapping memberships between the organisations (e.g. Nelson Mandela). From the 1960s through the 1980s, the basic anti-imperialist rhetoric of socialism and Communism more specifically proved a fertile discursive ground to attack the apartheid state. Of course this process itself was the result of ideological developments within the SACP and in the experience of the struggle against apartheid (see Everatt 1992). Similarly, as the South African state was being mobilised to the benefit of the white minority, it is not surprising that many in the ANC felt that under majority rule that it ought to be mobilised for the masses. The close working relationship that developed between the ANC and SACP and the importance of black unions in undermining apartheid could leave a neutral observer of these events certain of the direction of the post-apartheid state. Indeed, the ANC/SACP had also inculcated a deeply socialist and somewhat communist understanding of the nature of apartheid as a racial state exploiting black labour. Academics themselves were in a heated debate in the 1970s over just how apartheid functioned to both oppress the majority and uplift a minority (see previous chapter). Debates raged over whether apartheid and capitalism went hand-in-hand or whether the two were ultimately at odds with each other. But few in the opposition denied that the state’s resources and policies were aimed at empowering a white minority. Nationalisation and massive state intervention, while quickly falling out of favour in the post-Cold War environment that the ANC found itself in, held a prominent role in ANC thinking in the early 1990s for precisely this reason. State industries must be used to uplift the majority as it had the minority under apartheid. News stories from the early 1990s are rife with speculation over whether Mandela was embracing nationalisation one day or rejecting it another. What is clear, however, is that by the end of the transition period the ANC had embraced a market based approach to its economic and social policies.

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The ANC and the Rise of a New Era Hein Marais, a journalist by training, has been a vocal opponent of the ANC’s market oriented shift at least since the GNU. In his estimation the leadership of the ANC shifted its policies for political expediency and abandoned its revolutionary aims in a lust for power (1998, 2002).8 Bond, a more prolific and acerbic writer, has simply said the ANC is led by ‘true believers’ and maintains a semblance of socialist rhetoric out of an almost Orwellian desire to distract the masses (2000, 2004). I do not wish to easily dismiss such works or their interpretation in general. Their overtly political nature is relevant here. They are contemporary critiques that speak from a socialist world-view and even today they resonate with South Africans angry at the direction their country has taken. They represent currents of thought in South Africa that the government must address but so too do they represent an ideological legacy over what the state’s purpose could have been—and many desire it to be. As scholars, however, their work does not shed much light on the transition per se and much of my treatment of their work here is as contemporaneous—and invaluable—chroniclers of events offering useful insight along the way. Their view comes from a particular lens, but even more overtly analytical works can begin their analysis with the assumption that what is to be explained is the turn away from the left itself and not simply ‘what happened.’ Padayachee, for example, begins his analysis specifically by asking how progressive economists failed to shape the development agenda (1998; cf Nattrass 1994). If we’re asking why one thing did not happen there is some understanding then that there are reasons to believe it should have. It is a valuable question and certainly part of understanding South Africa’s transition but it sounds as if it is asking ‘what went wrong?’ rather than explaining the events at hand. What these works—and many others—reveal, though, is that in many ways the ‘what happened?’ really must address what didn’t happen because contemporary politics still very much revolve around this question of what kind of state did we get and what kind we want. The question of high level corruption, state capture, or classic clientelism addressed in the State Capture report (Public Protector 2016) with its narrow focus on a slice of corrupt elite should not, however, distract us from larger questions regarding the state more 8  In light of the recent reports on state capture perhaps he was rather prescient (see Public Protector 2016).

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than the regime. When so many imagined the state going one way yet ending up, as Bond puts it, ‘talking left while walking right’, we must pay attention to why this one thing happened but not another. That this transition would engender such a vituperative and acrimonious debate, though, rests on a few commonly held assumptions, half-­ truths, and understandable myths surrounding the ANC, its ideology, and the negotiated transition itself. Understanding how and why most scholars and pundits view the incorporation of neoliberal ideas into economic policy is an important first step to understanding the actual process itself. But it is just one part of the bigger process. The important changes in the development of the ideology of the ANC (and even the SACP) show that the movement, though coherent, was never static over its history; like all movements it evolved with events and changes in material and social conditions within the movement and in society more broadly. But it is also a fact that what makes the democratic transition in South Africa unique is that unlike Eastern Europe, the party of liberation, the ANC, was supported throughout its struggle by the Soviet Union; it did, in various forms, define its understanding of the resistance and apartheid in terms understandable and familiar to a socialist worldview. It was also a theme taken up by its enemies. Indeed, the apartheid governments of South Africa had long labelled the ANC not only a terrorist organisation but a communist one.9 Many scholars have, as such, tended to treat the ANC as a socialist, if not Marxist, entity making its transition to free market economics quite noteworthy (see Padayachee 1998; Habib and Padayachee 2000; Bond 2000, 2004, passim). Similarly, the Freedom Charter—a mildly socialist document outlining the aims and goals of many of the anti-­ apartheid organisations—remained central to ANC policy-making through the 1994 elections. Despite the document’s wide ranging subject matter, many scholars and journalists have focused on a single phrase from the charter—that the wealth of South Africa shall belong to the people—as a call for nationalisation. Lastly, there is the myth that the ANC either caved to international pressure or was coopted and sold out. But this misunderstands the ANC as an historically static entity removed from the context of society and history. While the ANC could have pursued a range of policies it’s important to understand the material and ideological context. The 9  South Africa spent much of the Cold War portraying its struggle against the ANC and other liberation organisations as a struggle against communism. As such, the US had long considered South Africa a key ally in the fight against communism in Africa.

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ANC’s critics accuse it of selling out and the ANC responds that it simply made the right choice. It’s important to understand what makes something more or less possible. “In order to account for the choices that were made out of all those that could have been made, one must describe the specific authorities that guided one’s choice” (Foucault 1972, 66). The truth of these events is, as always, much murkier. There are good reasons for questioning an unproblematic socialist labelling of the ANC and the view it sold out. But it’s important to point out that despite the socialist-like rhetoric, despite the formal alliance between the ANC and labour unions, and despite a clear affinity for socialism among the rank and file, the ANC never developed a coherent economic policy let alone a socialist and communist one. Its ideological efforts were primarily aimed at understanding the nature of the state and developing a nationalist, in time non-racially nationalist, movement to end apartheid. For all intents and purposes one can safely call the ANC an historically socialist-leaning organisation intent on organising a robust big tent movement against apartheid—but not a specifically communist one. Throughout much of the struggle the ANC did receive significant support from the Soviet Union—this cannot be denied. Many of its leaders, including former President Mandela, and President Mbeki, received training in the USSR, and there continues to be a close relationship between it and the South African Communist Party.10 Thus, it seems not only understandable but appropriate to call the ANC socialist, if not communist. In doing so, however, we fail to examine the inner workings of the group and what Gumede (2005) calls the battle for its soul. In truth, the ANC has never been wholly committed to a socialist agenda and many of its leaders, most notably Thabo Mbeki (despite past SACP membership), have been openly hostile to communism. Indeed, until the 1950s Mandela and other leaders of the Youth League openly called for greater distance from the SACP and communists in general (Gumede 2005, 16–20). In time we know that the ideology of the ANC leadership became more socialist and even somewhat Marxist in its orientation (particularly as its working relationship with the SACP got stronger in exile) but a clear division existed within the movement between ardent communists and

10  Not only is the SACP a close ally of the ANC, the late Joe Slovo, the head of the SACP, played a key role in running Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).

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s­ ocialists and those who were ideologically less committed.11 Many members remained hesitant to cast the struggle in Marxist terms because of its total focus on class over race. By the 1980s, however, the ANC had come to incorporate some elements of a class dimension of race into a broader anti-­imperialist view, thus in part linking some of the communist rhetoric with the core of the struggle: race. This view re-framed apartheid into a form of race-capitalism to be destroyed and replaced with a more egalitarian economic system (see Meli 1988; see also Mandela and Castro 1991). Marxism, then, should be seen for what it was to many liberation movements in the 1960s: the discourse of rebellion that put discontent into a coherent framework. It also reflects real academic debates that occurred in the 1970s over the nature of apartheid itself (see Bundy 1979; Wolpe 1972). The apartheid regime itself contributed to this by framing those who struggled against it as communists. In a discussion paper for the ANC in the communist German Democratic Republic written in the mid 80s Arnold Selby discusses the use of anti-communism as a tool to fight anti-­ imperialist movements, particularly the ANC (Selby 1985). Selby invokes clear Marxist/Socialist interpretations in his analysis of the threat to the movement yet it is a stretch to say that the document indicates a completely communist world-view. Rather, it appears to function as one lens through which the apartheid regime is viewed. That the day-to-day language of the movement should meld socialist and anti-imperialist rhetoric is no surprise—it was common to hear communist states themselves use such rhetoric. The document, bordering on the hyperbolic at times, speaks volumes of the more socialist views of the rank and file members and it may be that such views obscure important divisions amongst the leadership—at least as a rhetorical tool. To this day it is interesting to note the continued presence of basic communist rhetoric; in documents and at conferences, ANC members are still referred to as comrade. Ultimately, as Mandela would later remark, though the SACP and ANC worked closely together and shared the same goals, they were “driven by a different logic” (1995).12

11  Gumede (2005, 38) remarks that as early as the 1970s important ANC leaders—including Oliver Tambo and the young Thabo Mbeki—were becoming much closer to the social democracy ideas of Germany than the doctrinaire views of communism. 12  Mbeki would reiterate this point in his speech at the ANC policy conference in June, 2007.

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While not entirely inaccurate, the common and unquestioned view of the Freedom Charter as a socialist document is problematic. Since it serves—even today—as a rallying cry for opponents of the post-apartheid ANC it is worth examining what the document is as much as how it came to be used by all parties. The document served as a vague declaration of goals and views common among several anti-apartheid groups—notably the ANC. It served to unify opposition to apartheid and to strike at the apartheid state’s singular focus on a state for whites; hence the land belongs to all of the people. Similarly, it served as the only real document where one might get an inkling of ANC policy, which otherwise entered the transition period noticeably lacking in economic ideas beyond the need to nationalise a few sectors of the economy—notably mining. While the document has been widely read as a socialist, its ambiguity lends itself to many interpretations. For instance, Mandela himself wrote at the time the Charter was written that his interpretation of it was that it would guarantee the rights of the majority to own property and to share in South Africa’s prosperity. The economy, he argues, ought to serve the people and at the time it served only a white minority. Only later would this be interpreted by Mandela to mean nationalisation (Mandela 1992; see also Lodge 2003, 9).13 While the Freedom Charter remains a manifesto of sorts and a call to redistribute the wealth of the nation for many ANC members—the elite and the grassroots alike—Mandela’s rereading of the document became much more important during the transition. His interpretation does not abandon the general view that the economy ought to work for all of the people and not a select few. This, however, can mean nationalisation or equitable growth. It is worth noting that despite the criticisms that the ANC has abandoned the Freedom Charter for neoliberalism, it remained a constant referent in the public discourse of the party through the Mbeki administration. Despite these qualified remarks, it is fair to ask ‘how did one set of economic policy ideas emerge and not another?’ Despite a dearth of economic policy ideas at the beginning of the transition, many leaders had some idea about what they wanted South Africa to look like. But in many 13  Mandela’s comments on the subject in the journal Liberation did not actually repudiate nationalisation but rather sought to re-frame the idea outside of socialism. He states that the Charter is no socialist blue-print and sees nationalisation as a means to destroy monopoly capital, which he and others saw as intimately linked with apartheid. As such, his later comments on the subject are not completely revisionist (see Mandela 1956).

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ways, explaining how and why South Africa embarked on the free market, neoliberal path defies easy explanation. While few in the movement truly envisaged a centralised soviet style economy, nationalisation and some form of mixed economy were widely discussed and pursued as policy options. The transition period that saw nationalisation move from a declared right to a policy option also saw a major engagement between the ANC and multiple domestic and international actors, the rise of TINA (there is no alternative), the emergence of a new African identity led by Thabo Mbeki, and the emergence of a new black elite. We also find a convergence of discourses around concepts and ideas malleable and amenable to differing contexts and views. There is a sort of hermeneutic drift apparent in the transition period that sheds light on how the neoliberal path came to seem reasonable even inevitable. The policies that emerge are the result of these varied discussions and interactions as well as internal (ideological) power struggles. The RDP most clearly embodies these diverse influences (see Nattrass 1994). As previous chapters have argued, internal politics is not purely the result of internal forces. Rather, the internal dynamics and politics of the ANC are intersected with external links both domestic and international. If, as Gumede (2005) and others have argued, the pro-market forces of the ANC won out we must ask how that was possible and how a debate on market reform came to be in the first place. It should be clear that the internal debates of the ANC, indeed South Africa, were on a stage much larger than South Africa itself. The changing nature of the global political economy, the rise to dominance of a single economic ideology, and the individual ambassadors of this body of thought sought and forged links with the relevant actors within South Africa. The transition period, to put it simply, proved to be a pivotal period of remarkable change whose effects are very much evident in South Africa today.

Selling the Story of South Africa’s Future It has almost become trite to say that the ANC lacked any real economic policies let alone an economic policy department and bureaucracy to formulate such policies when it was unbanned (for an overview of the problem see Van Ameringen 1995). As a revolutionary movement, the ANC saw itself in a long term struggle and its legalisation came as a surprise. Following their unbanning, the ANC and its allies emerged into a world where their ideological grounding was crumbling, where the free market

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was on the rise, and into a state already moving toward market reforms and a business community that had come to believe in the necessity of deep reforms. The democratic transition and subsequent reintegration of South Africa into the global economy along free market or neoliberal lines, however, does not garner much attention in the West. South Africa was one among many states in the ‘third wave’ of democratisation, which primarily involved the former Communist states of Eastern Europe. In the post-Cold War world a democratic state committed to open market economic policies is not, in short, terribly noteworthy. For Africanists and— perhaps more importantly—South Africans, however, this was a remarkable turn of events representing a significant change in ANC policy. Existing analyses generally focus on either purely systemic factors that limited policy options or on the internal debates and balance of power within the ANC itself. The ANC is hardly a monolithic, coherent entity. It is, rather, a bundle of contradictory tendencies and ideas held together around core agreements and beliefs about the world and the group’s place within it. These competing tendencies manifest themselves in groups, subgroups, cliques, and even organised sections or departments within organisations. That we may speak of ‘ANC policy’ in any meaningful sense is the result of internal wrangling that leaves some groups dominant at certain times. This is no less true of the state itself. While we will focus here on the transition period from 1990 to roughly 1996, many of the actors and ideas that would come to the fore in this period originate in the days of the struggle itself. By 1989 the ANC knew it was time to start thinking about economic policy but its first ‘economic’ document, the Harare Declaration, largely relied on its vague predecessor the Freedom Charter as template. With the unbanning, however, the party began working in earnest, forming working groups on economic policy and reaching out to academic economists in South Africa’s universities. The Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC) also stepped in to offer advice and technical support as well as the World Bank. Several groups were also established by the ANC’s ally, COSATU to discuss and formulate policy. The Macro Economic Research Group (MERG), Industrial Strategy Project (ISP), Economic Trends group (ET), and the Department of Economic Planning (DEP), were not formally competing groups and in many ways they offered the strengths of splitting the workload. But they also came to embody the ideological battles leading to the 1994 elections.

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As the ANC and its allies began to form the groups that would shape early economic policy, their relationships with global and local actors changed and new relations forged. Soviet support was no longer necessary nor possible as it too began to change. But the ANC found many actors in the business community—some old ‘friends’ some new—willing to engage with them on professional and personal levels. The South African state was also changing as the apartheid political economy creaked and groaned under the increasing structural problems and inefficiencies at the heart of its socio-political project. This was a rapidly changing environment for everyone involved. Post-apartheid analyses of the economic transition in South Africa have highlighted the changed power relationships between actors, specifically invoking the role of capital. The evidence suggests, however, that these relationships began changing in the early 1980s, setting up conditions that empowered some actors to the detriment of apartheid while simultaneously setting up the context of the transition—perhaps even causing it. During the 1980s, the domestic and international economic conditions empowered labour (Marx 1992) while also giving credence to the economic arguments of business that change was necessary. The terms of the debate were quickly becoming economic. Moreover, these changing conditions enabled and encouraged the participation and logic of business leaders in debates about apartheid, its usefulness, and its dangers. In real terms business leaders began to question apartheid and, thus, began the process that changed the perceived role of business under it. How one sees apartheid and its collapse is very important to how one will argue the legacy of apartheid is to be undone. The transition debates were as much about what apartheid meant as they were about future policy and the state itself. While many authors have commented on and discussed the policy ideas of the ANC, few have been as thorough and as analytically rigorous as the work of Adam Habib and Vishnu Padayachee. Their argument in a nutshell is that “the shift in economic policy… was the result of the ANC’s particular perception and interpretation of the balance of economic power” domestically and internationally (Habib and Padayachee 2000, 246). On the surface it is quite difficult to disagree with this statement. In a post-Cold War world the ideological support that the ANC might have drawn upon was gone; the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and China was embarking on its own hybrid free market path leaving few credible socialist states to look towards for support if only by example. But this assumes

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a coherent economic world-view that was in reality much more nuanced and varied, one where socialism provided a coherent discourse of rebellion if not rule. It may be more accurate to say that changing context empowered factions within the ANC through the erosion of legitimacy of one world-view in favour of another. The perceived victory of market liberalism would have opened up new possibilities of critique even within a socialist discourse. It would have similarly placed individuals within the ANC alliance who favoured such market approaches in greater positions of discursive power by granting such market oriented discourse greater relevancy and legitimacy. More importantly, as discussed below, the magnitude of the changed global conditions, and the emboldening of the agents of the Washington Consensus could lend an aura of objective reality to the claim that ‘there is no alternative’; this is an idea that could quickly silence critics or force them into technocratic, economic debates that would favour the neoliberal world-view. While the Soviet model was never likely to make its way into ANC policy, the social democratic models (e.g. Germany) that the ANC would eventually advocate were quickly turning to greater market based policies themselves.14 The ideological universe, as Herbst (1994) termed it, had indeed collapsed. More importantly, the global legitimacy of any variation of socialist market policies was also undermined. This was a fundamental shift in the relationship states had with the international economic structure. That it should similarly affect non-state actors should come as no surprise. Even key members of the SACP were questioning the socialist/ communist project, if not outright repudiating it (Slovo 1990). Both the SACP and COSATU sought to reorient their arguments for a socialist market economy. COSATU, which took a very active role during the transition (they were active in creating the ISP that would be incorporated into the RDP almost unquestionably), while reiterating its commitment to socialist principles, quite notably altered what these meant. These principles were quite distinct from those of the former communist states. COSATU merely sought to place workers and their interests at the forefront of economic thinking and policy (Kentridge 1993). To this end, COSATU played a not too insignificant role in creating long lasting institutions to guarantee a labour presence in decision-making (i.e. NEDLAC). While the erosion of international metaphysical support on the one hand and soul searching on the other are important, Habib and Padayachee  This is not to say that there were no advocates for a social model (see Simkins 1992).

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(2000) are quick to note that the rise of neoliberal ideas to global hegemony also contributed to a domestic power shift. Combined with the close alliance between the National Party and the business community and an economic debate that, as Marais (1998) notes, shifted from ideological to technological grounds, the ANC felt pressure to change. “The ANC and its left allies,” Marais argues, “were poorly equipped to wage battle on technical grounds… Thus, business could successfully conduct a vigorous political and ideological struggle at a nominally technical level” that undermined the more ideological and normative arguments of the ANC (1998, 158). While it is tempting to criticise these views as overly deterministic in that the ANC could act in no other way (or so they thought), in his earlier work, Habib (1998) is considerably more nuanced. His work discusses the ways in which the ANC carefully navigated changing structural (economic but also ideological) circumstances that made some policies less tenable than others. The ANC sought engagement with the major international economic actors (e.g. the World Bank and that catchall group, ‘investors’) but did so cautiously and with full acknowledgement of ‘ideological differences’ (see ANC US Mission 1991; ANC 1991). The result, then, is a compromise and a ‘best possible’ outcome given the situation. There is no doubt that many ANC members felt as if there was no alternative to a free market solution (for example, see Mandela 1997; Sampson 1999) and certainly many world leaders impressed that upon them. The point, however, overlooks the fact that key members of the ANC appeared to prefer market based development and, in some cases, went further than required by the institutions of the ‘Washington Consensus’ (see Business Day June 13, 1995). This element of overstepping expectations or hewing closely to an ideal/norm is a theme that comes up again and again. The reasons for this are multifarious. In this vein, Nadine Manji has argued that core elements of the ANC (presumably including Manuel and Mbeki, though she does not make this clear) made a conscious effort to embrace neoliberalism and all that followed in the transition period is an attempt to address well known opposition (2002). Manji’s work, however, is not on how this situation came to pass rather than on how it was made palatable. That the two may be linked is probable. The seemingly objective affects of market forces, the solidity with which the market norm was promulgated, and the lack of other options could, arguably, lead one to assume an inevitable, fatalist view. This is also a useful way to explain one’s decisions to opponents, internal and external.

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Even when disagreeing with the basic premises of Manji’s argument, some critics have noted that the idea of objective policy constraints can be a useful way to disarm critics. “The presumed limits to state power have been a consistent theme in ANC discourse since 1994… However, in the case of economic policy the limits of state power are seen to circulate formidably in a twilight zone of ‘investor sentiments’ and ‘market dynamics’” (Marais 2002, 91). There is also ample evidence of numerous and ongoing contacts between the South African business15 community and the ANC spearheaded by former President Mbeki. But the greatest problem with relying solely on a shift in the ‘balance of power’, widely conceived, is that the explanatory power rests on its objective existence and autonomous causal effects. If the economic policies that emerged from the transition were affected by the global shift to neoliberalism there still exists room for manoeuvre and it does not explain why the ANC hewed so closely to the global consensus. The result is neither overly neoliberal orthodoxy nor a complete rejection of the interventionist approaches favoured by labour and found in the RDP. The position staked out by those in the ANC favouring a market based approach to post-apartheid economic policy generally have sought to locate space for such ideas within the dominant socialist tinged views of the black majority. At the same time, however, the ANC embarked on an interesting path to institutionalise the various parties (e.g. labour and business) in a government forum on economic policy (i.e. NEDLAC). We can, arguably, begin to understand such changes as emerging from attempts to create intersecting discourses from generally divergent ones mapping onto equally divergent coalitions of interests. Combined with the ideological power struggles occurring in the ANC, we can see a variety of potentially intersecting discourses competing for legitimacy in diverse contexts; these contexts range from the global to the national to the internal world of the alliance. Even a casual look at the historical process, then, demonstrates a gradual transition in thinking that can, I argue, be better explained as an ongoing social process within the extant texture of the spatial organisation of the state.

15  There are references in newspapers to these contacts, particularly Anglo-American and its CEO Gavin Relly (Reuters News 23 Feb, 1990; 26 April, 1990; Financial Times 5 March, 1994). The Archives at Fort Hare are similarly full of letters of introduction sent to ANC leaders.

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The neoliberal proponents within the ANC faced two audiences in the creation and validation of their policy ideas (we might also say that opponents had two audiences as well or that neither protagonists and antagonists existed absent interaction in both of these contexts). On the one hand was the national and international business community that sought assurances that any investments made—encouraged by the ANC—would be supported by favourable macro-economic and fiscal policies in the next government. This audience, for lack of a better term, however, comprised both actors and that generally vague entity ‘market forces,’ which we could think of as aggregate individuals of the business community along with the economic assets under their control in specific if contingent socio-material relationships. On the other hand is the aggrieved—and equally oppositional socio-material relationships of the—majority of South Africans who rightly wished to destroy the legacy of apartheid and enjoy the benefits of a state whose purpose was their upliftment. The former, as individuals, pressed the ANC to give assurances and to craft investor friendly policies. The markets, however, reflected aggregate fears of investors (manifest in their control of economic resources and investments), moving up or down based on what ANC leaders said from one week to the next. The latter’s views were and are heavily influenced by the rhetoric of Marxism (see Reuters News 2 Feb 1990). The majority of the population at the time of the transition still saw the Freedom Charter as the basis of reform. Similarly, there existed widespread acceptance and internalisation of earlier debates on race-capitalism in South Africa, which discursively favoured a market antagonism. Two themes emerge from these various interactions and audiences: one is the production and utilisation of TINA. This is bound up with a general narrative of the future of South Africa that, while not limited to economic policy, ultimately rests on economics as a technical field distinct from normative issues at the centre of politics. The other is a concomitant, discursive convergence around the idea of good governance, an idea whose vagueness lent itself easily to a variety of world-views. We must now examine how and why these themes emerge and how and why they matter.

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Business and the Unmaking of Apartheid: Mont Fleur and the Flight of the Flamingos As early as the 1980s business leaders, led by Gavin Relly, were beginning to make sound arguments for the economic necessity of both reforming apartheid and the economy. Relly himself gave a speech to London’s South Africa Club in 1981 praising then Prime Minister PW Botha’s commitment to market reform while also making an economic argument for the end of apartheid. “The country as a whole will have to accept that if we are to achieve the economic growth rate which will be required to sustain a relatively stable society, the advance of the black people in business and industry will have to be totally at the expense of the tattered remnants of apartheid” (Relly 1981, 3). Relly was more than a man of words, however. In 1985 he led a delegation of business leaders to meet with the ANC in exile in Zambia in the belief that change was afoot and that business needed to actively engage the opposition. The meeting, described as ‘cordial’, focused heavily on business and the economy (as one might expect from a business delegation). The group raised concerns about the Freedom Charter and that the need for strong economic growth in post-apartheid South Africa would require a commitment to free enterprise. This was countered by the ANC’s argument that economic growth has historically only benefited whites and that the state would need to take an active role in any economic transformation after apartheid (ANC 1985). The take away from this is not that the ANC and business elites had a meeting of the minds; it’s that the business community believed that apartheid would end and a black majority government was likely. What business feared was a continuation of dirigiste policies that were slowly withering away under apartheid. The meeting was also in direct defiance of the apartheid government and, however subtly, made a political point. This was hardly lost on the ANC and it provided fertile ground for business leaders to entrench their contacts with the ANC during the transition negotiations that no one knew were soon to come. During the transition period the IMF, World Bank, and numerous business leaders would actively engage the ANC apropos of economic policy and, in particular, the relationship between the government and the economy as separate spheres. Businesses churned out numerous reports and funded a significant amount of policy related work that at times actively involved ANC members. In remarks made at a meeting of business leaders shortly after the 1994 elections, Mandela demonstrated just how far the world-view of

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the ANC leadership had changed. More importantly, however, is the extent to which this new thinking was informed by a significantly different view of the role of the state in development, the place of business, and the needs of both domestic and international capital (ANC 1994a). While the political negotiations over elections and structure of government dominated the transition period, the economic future of South Africa was quietly being crafted and debated in a number of think tanks and institutions. The lack of any real policy by the ANC in the early 1990s is well known as is the support they received from many institutions. The ANC, however, hit the ground running and worked hard to revamp their Department of Economic Planning (DEP), sending out members for increased training, and cooperating with a number of institutions (notably Canada’s IDRC). But perhaps the most intriguing thing to emerge from this period is the role of highly technical scenario planning as a way to ‘envision’ the future of South Africa. Scenarios are part economic forecast and part narrative where alternative ‘futures’ are envisioned and policy effects—political and economic—are examined. They were first used by Royal Dutch Shell beginning in the 1970s. Shell realised that the past alone could not be used to predict the future economic environment as there are a myriad of political and social forces and trends that all contribute to economic conditions. Scenarios, then, were collaborative projects of economists and other social scientists that created a best guess of what the next five to ten years might look like under varying policy choices. The idea was to give managers a vision of the future so that policies could be crafted accordingly. Scenario projects are often large in scope with multiple stories or future scenarios hammered out by experts in a variety of areas. Shell continues to produce such scenarios and had a hand in South Africa’s most famous and influential scenario exercise: the Mont Fleur Scenarios. Mont Fleur was a large project drawing in Shell’s chief of scenario planning, Adam Kahane, and a number of South African social scientists as well as the future minister of finance, then head of the DEP, Trevor Manuel. Manuel would also go on to play a key role in creating GEAR, which replaced the RDP in 1996. The project sought to envision South Africa’s economic future. But its effects were far more wide ranging. “The result of Mont Fleur was the creation of informal networks and understandings among the participants—an influential group from across the political spectrum—through the time they spent together” and provided the basis for “subsequent critical, formal agreements” (Global Business

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Network N.D., 5). What emerges from the scenario process, less than the scenarios themselves, is a fundamental “change in the language and thought of the team members” (ibid.). The end products were four scenarios: the ostrich, the lame duck, the Icarus scenario, and the flight of the flamingos. All of them were eventually published in the newspapers The Weekly Mail and The Weekly Guardian. The scenarios, thus, had wide circulation and are to this day widely known. The scenarios tell simple stories drawing on well known metaphors and myths to convey an image of what the future might look like. The scenarios are not, however, merely images of the future. They are also images of a future, a future wherein its shape is a result of actions taken by the state and society in an idealised way. But they remain accessible and devoid of the complex work that produced them. They are, in short, stories in a very real sense. It is their story-like nature, however, that hides implicit assumptions built into the scenario process. A story can promulgate a given view without being overt. Like children’s stories, a scenario has a moral lesson. This is particularly true of Mont Fleur, which rests on a myth or narrative about reality. The myth at the heart of Mont Fleur is an economic one. It is a myth about progress, development, opportunity and to some extent democracy. Each of the four scenarios in some way emphasise the opportunities of this myth or the pitfalls of deviating from it. In a way, the scenarios resemble the story of The Three Little Pigs, where each pig’s downfall teaches us a lesson about planning and working hard (it is, after all, the house of bricks that stops the wolf). Icarus is a scenario wherein populist policies are enacted to lift all of society at once engendering a massive spending spree that ends in societal collapse. Flamingos is the most picturesque and draws on a simple, particularly African image of society collectively taking off, slowly at first but then steadily gaining height through prudent management and market oriented policies (cf Rostow 1960). The last two, the lame duck and the ostrich, imply a society that does nothing or changes too slowly and gets left behind. But changes to what and in response to what? Each scenario appears as a separate entity yet each rests on a simple set of assumptions about the nature of the global economy and what states must do. At the heart of Mont Fleur is TINA: there is no alternative. It is a form of ontological economism, or the unproblematic elevation of the autonomy of the economic sphere of social life with concomitant natural laws unconnected to the rest of the social world. Shell itself produced its own scenario at the time specifically invoking TINA as an indifferent and

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immoveable set of fundamentals at the base of reality, arguing that states and businesses had no alternative but to abide by market forces or collapse (Shell 1996). According to the scenario, “no alternative economic or ideological model competes with the emerging global consensus about the value of open markets and the necessity of macroeconomic prudence” (ibid., 5). It ends by arguing TINA. It is a phenomenal report/scenario that creates several images or types of corporate and state behaviour and their likelihood of success in a globalized world. But the report is not doom and gloom, rather it is an optimistic rendering of what riches can be made by giving into the market—but, then again, there is no alternative. The report has many similarities with Mont Fleur. It highlights the danger of business as usual (the lame duck), the dangers of ignoring the changing environment (the ostrich), and the dangers of confronting a globalized world with outdated ideas for short term gain (Icarus). According to Betty Sue Flowers, a professor of English specialising in myths and mythology who helped Shell write its scenarios in the early 1990s, the economic myth is the first universal myth. It’s a complex myth that defines the good life in a specific ‘growth for all’ sense and says little about values or quality. It is a holistic vision as well. It argues for a global perspective wherein companies (and states) do not and cannot act alone but act within a global context (see interview Davis-Floyd 1998). According to Flowers, the economic myth is ‘the myth we’re in now.’ In the West I think we’ve been shaped in the past by a heroic myth, a religious myth, and a democratic myth; and I think now we’re in the economic myth. That myth doesn’t have the kind of old fashioned “once upon a time” story we’re used to; it doesn’t have in Campbellian terms a hero’s journey— there’s no journey part to it. It has a dynamic and it has implicit values on measurements—number, quantity, growth. It’s got an inherent bias toward a series of evolutions that are additive—like we get better and better, we grow more and more. It doesn’t tell a very coherent story. But it has a thrust and a power to it. (quoted in Davis-Floyd 1998, 146)

The Flight of the Flamingos scenario, more than others, arguably influenced the way the leadership in the ANC began thinking about the future of South Africa. It’s a template for reform that was easily wedded to the other values at the core of the struggle and, as such, it could fit an existing way of seeing, an existing world-view. The project, particularly the Flamingo scenario, appealed to both business and labour (labour was

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­ resent via the participation of a Mahlomola Skosana, former president of p NACTU). It’s a scenario that does not lay out a blueprint but, rather, a set of ideas, a rough draft of what needs to be done. It is political and economic in scope but open enough to be read in many ways, thus, appealing to multiple audiences. The scenario lays out a vision where the wealthy drive the engine of growth but also where employment growth creates an even faster rate of growth for the poor. It is not Friedman’s free market paradise but it does advocate ‘market oriented’ policies coupled with fiscal restraint and export led growth (see Global Business Network, N.D., 19–21; Davis-Floyd 1998, 155). But it is clear that political reform is necessary and it is here where much of its appeal is generated. It specifically addresses the need for judicial fairness, a decrease in violent crime, and a system that allows open participation in the political process. It participates in a simple dichotomisation of reality; apartheid/political struggle— post-apartheid/freedom. Thus, while invoking TINA, it also proposes a highly amenable idea of what good governance is about. While it is possible to find comparisons with this and the RDP, it more closely resembles the corporatist structures that emerged from this period and, in an economic sense, GEAR. I do not, however, wish to imply a causal relationship—far from it. What I wish to highlight is the subtle, unconscious way that this represents a blending of the local and the international. Mont Fleur and Flamingos in particular lay out an image of South Africa that is vividly drawn from the vision of a triumphant liberalism and the then emerging consensus on what constitutes good governance (more on this below). But it also says that no path will work unless the vast majority of the poor—a large constituency in post-apartheid South Africa—find a way out of their poverty and feel that they are actively participating in the political system. Indeed, the ostrich scenario is the counterpoint to flamingos envisioning a political system that ignores the vast social and socio-economic problems in the legacy of apartheid. But the shift in language and perception of the problems facing the country and their solutions take their cue from this notion of ‘good governance.’ Good governance, however vague the term may be, is explicitly democratic, pro-­ market, and focused on individual freedom but a reoriented view of freedom as a government free space within which the individual is free to act—not one where a citizen is free of concerns over education, security, and the general welfare of the people. It is a particular notion of individual freedom where government is a hindrance and the market is the truly free space. As Hart has noted, the electoral discourse of the ANC of this period

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sets up a clear dichotomisation between the apartheid and post-apartheid state, wherein the post-apartheid world freedom is individual and subtly contrary to the vision of the collective struggle (2002, 25). Her argument draws off Bertelsen’s work on the appropriation of the imagery and language of the struggle in a wave of consumer advertising wherein the struggle was coopted within a consumer and market discourse (Bertelsen 1998). Thus it is quite easy to see how the language of good governance can easily be adapted to the language of freedom in the struggle against apartheid. Such language strongly resonates with the population even when there is clear disenchantment with the perceived abandonment of ‘socialist’ policies. Perhaps more than any other idea or policy option, the question of nationalisation—and its slow abandonment during the transition period— exemplifies the dramatic change in thinking and the ANC’s discursive hybridisation during the transition period. The nationalisation question arose immediately and came to dominate the transition period as it increasingly became an albatross around the ANC’s neck. Nationalisation also highlights the ways in which the international and domestic markets impacted decision-making less than the overt manoeuvres of any one business (or even the business community). Even prior to leaving Robben Island, Mandela’s views on nationalisation were heavily discussed (see Sunday Times 4 Feb, 1990). At one point the press reported that he had a ‘conversion’ and would advocate for a market-based economy (Financial Times 16 Jan, 1990). This was later repudiated by a jailed Mandela who reaffirmed his commitment to nationalisation of key industries (Reuters News 28 Jan, 1990). The business community too was keenly interested in the commitment to nationalism within the ANC.  Shortly after leaving Robben Island, Mandela met with Anglo-American CEO, Gavin Relly, to discuss the post-apartheid economy. Relly’s ongoing discussions with the ANC, notably orchestrated by Mbeki, had left him with the impression that the leadership was open to discussion and ultimately saw the value of working with private business (Reuters News 23 Feb 1990). It wouldn’t take long for the ANC to learn that the business community and the ‘markets’ more generally would need to be taken into account. Markets swayed anytime the word ‘nationalisation’ was uttered. The ANC and SACP had for years argued that the wealth of the nation was plundered and redirected to a minority and that ultimately this would have to be reversed. If the state pulled the Afrikaner from poverty then it would similarly help millions of black South Africans, they reasoned. As Mandela

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noted in a speech to the Consultative Business Movement (CBM), a group of reform minded businessmen, “if we are genuinely interested in ending the old social order and bringing in a new one, characterised by the notions of justice and equity, it is quite obvious that the economic power relations represented by the excessive concentration of power in a few white hands have to change” (Reuters News 23 May 1990). But the growth years of the early apartheid state that fuelled Afrikaner development had given way to a gradual decline in GDP by the 1970s. By the mid eighties the economy was in trouble and by 1990 it bordered on crisis. Restrictive labour laws, limited access to capital (mostly resulting from sanctions but also the collapse of gold), and a ballooning budget deficit led many business leaders to push for liberalisation and some to call for negotiations with the ANC, as discussed above. The economic reality would not slowly force its way onto the ANC.  It hit quickly and engendered a pragmatic response by many leaders in the alliance. This ‘economic reality’ of the markets demonstrates the real power of socio-economic control. The signals are not simply consultations and meetings, but the negative slide of currency, credit scarcity (or lowered ratings), and so forth (see Handley 2002). Nationalisation as a genuine policy choice, as such, clearly did not last long, despite howls of protests from within COSATU and the ANC (see Kentridge 1993; see also Ayogu 2001). Curiously, however, nationalisation remained on the lips of the ANC leadership right through the 1994 elections. But by then it had gone through many revisions and re-­ conceptualisations veering into a fuzzy electoral slogan for the base. As early as 1990, Joe Slovo, leader of the SACP, would declare that nationalisation was but an option and that the ANC was in no way committed to a socialist economy (Financial Times 27 Feb 1990; Reuters News 1 March 1990). Nationalisation of key industries and the mines, however, remained central to labour and COSATU in particular as a means to engender employment and capital. But as the first major policy papers began coming out of the ANC, the policy of nationalisation was noticeably toned down. Instead, leaders of the ANC began referring to a mixed economy with a role for the state in reviving the economy and generating equitable growth. The new mantra became ‘growth through redistribution,’ a slogan that would carry the ANC into the 1994 elections. This emerging policy perspective, equitable growth, in its ambiguity played to the views of a variety of groups (e.g. labour and business). But it also highlighted the shifting views of the leadership, if not the rank and file.

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The high profile given to nationalisation obscures the fact that policies are buttressed by overall goals and beliefs about how to achieve them. Policies are merely a means to an end. But nationalisation implies socialism and, worse, communism; as such it engendered negative market reactions. Regardless of their ideological commitment, the ANC leadership was committed to ending the legacy of apartheid and uplifting the majority. They merely differed on how to do this. Development would be key to ending poverty but by itself it would do little to help the poor majority. Development, however, became an idea around which certain members of the ANC and business leaders (as well as the omnipresent ‘market’) could coalesce. All parties agreed that investment in a new South Africa would be necessary. Any idea that goodwill alone would lead to investment would not suffice. It quickly became apparent that guilt for participating in the continuation of apartheid, which had benefited many businesses, would not result in investment. Business leaders impressed upon the leadership that if it was investment the ANC wanted then what was needed was a favourable investment climate. The jittery response of the markets reinforced this idea. Moreover, the global discourse impressed upon the leadership that the market reigns supreme. Despite the slow shift towards some acceptance of market based economic policies, nationalisation, did not disappear entirely until after the elections. There are two reasons for this. The privatisation of existing SOEs that began in the 1980s had increased by the 1990s. Many in the ANC viewed this as an attempt to rid the state of some measure of economic control before it was taken over by the black majority. It was, in short, perceived by the ANC as a power play by the NP. This tactic resulted in a swift rebuke by the ANC and a call to end privatisation for its own sake. The nationalised industries were becoming a negotiating tool (see Hirsch 2005, 41–42) even while nationalisation as an idea was fading from discussion. The second point is that by keeping the idea alive but framing it as an option the leadership could appease labour. As the ANC approached the 1994 election it faced an expectation crisis whereby long repressed sections of the population that supported them now wished to see the fruits of this support borne out in policy. But it also faced high expectations from business and the international community. Thus, beyond toning down the rhetoric on nationalisation, the ANC made several other key policy adjustments to gain investor confidence. As Tito Mboweni, chief economist of the ANC at the time, noted, “we want their [investor] ­overall

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stamp of approval… the kind of working relationship that will send a signal to private investors that we are pursuing policies that are not unsustainable” (Financial Times 11 June 1993). With the growing confidence by the recently formed economic apparatuses of the ANC and its allies, the party launched Ready to Govern (ANC 1992), which sought to assuage all sides but also highlighted several new avenues of thought. The document, the precursor to the RDP, laid out the party’s belief in the need for state centred development but also its commitment to financial prudence (see also Hirsch 2005). The party also endorsed South Africa’s membership in GATT16, which remarkably COSATU also endorsed, while committing itself to loosening tariffs to promote export growth, tight fiscal constraint, and a pledge to keep inflation—and thus the safety of financial investments—safely in check. Yet, with Ready to Govern and later the RDP, the ANC committed itself to contradictory goals. On the one hand both documents laid out a strong role for the state in building housing and infrastructure as well as fostering investment in strategic areas of the economy. On the other it simultaneously advocated for strict fiscal restraints that would undermine such investments. The rise of fiscal restraint juxtaposed with an interventionist state suggests not simply competing policies but competing visions of the state. It also placed the party in a difficult position. In reviewing the economic debate prior to the elections, Herbst commented that “the Congress has raised its constituency on redistributive economics and has not even begun to develop a vocabulary to explain to its erstwhile supporters why they may have to wait before they see the fruits of the liberation struggle… Further, any rhetoric from the ANC on fiscal discipline will feed into the critique of radicals that the Congress is ‘selling out’” (1994, 36–37). Indeed, this critique was only just emerging and it was coming from very prominent members of the ANC—most notably Winnie Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s ex-wife. It was, however, clear at this early stage that the neoliberal vision was not only beginning to make headway within the ANC, it was being adopted and adapted to the competing ideas of the alliance and the strong, widespread commitment to social justice that fuelled the struggle against apartheid.

16  South Africa was a founding member of GATT but its continued participation under the new WTO was uncertain.

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Were the critics in part correct, though? Winnie Mandela is not the first or last to see the slow creep of neoliberalism as ‘selling out.’ And while many authors have suggested structural or cynical reasons for this, it is clear that for some members of the ANC fitting the social priorities of ending apartheid with market oriented policies was not selling out. Indeed, it seemed a prudent and wise approach. But why? Beneath the veneer of a ‘crisis of expectations’ lurks a real fear that helps us understand that this shift in thinking was not only genuine but a shrewd tactic against a far greater fear of global power and control. As the elections grew closer and it was apparent that the ANC would win in a landslide, the leadership began to worry that their new found sovereignty might be usurped by an IMF bailout for poor economic performance. This could occur with poor policies but it might also occur if business simply feared poor governance causing capital flight. The ANC, as noted above, had to be more hawkish (fiscally speaking) than the IMF itself. Some have argued (for example, Bond 2000) that the IMF was overly influential in shaping, indeed demanding ANC policy. It is, however, a point that varies depending on one’s perspective. Gumede found in his interviews that as many people denied influence as confirmed it (2005, 87–88). It seems that the ANC decided that, to appease the business community, one must not only behave as if you have their interests at heart but that you think like they do too (Hirsch 2005). To avoid the IMF meant maintaining macro-economic stability according to policies and ideals widely held to be legitimate and proper—a task that is only partially related to sound policies. If the ANC was to avoid capital flight and keep its currency relatively stable it had to convince investors to keep their money in South Africa. What better way to do this than to sound more hawkish than the IMF itself? This fear of losing sovereignty underpinned many decisions prior to the first election and many afterward. At its core, the party remained committed to societal transformation and losing sovereignty to the IMF, however temporarily, would clearly prevent this and would, in the minds of many, lower the image and status of South Africa. The ANC, thus, inhabited two contradictory worlds. In time, however, the battle over which world-view would win out would give way to those who combined both.

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Abandoning RDP for GEAR: A Neoliberal South Africa Is Born On the eve of the first truly democratic elections in South Africa, the ANC and its allies released their Reconstruction and Development Programme (ANC 1994b). Given its breadth it would become the de facto electoral platform of the alliance. It is, as its introduction makes clear, “an integrated, coherent socio-economic policy framework. It seeks to mobilise all our people and our country’s resources toward the final eradication of apartheid and the building of a democratic, non-racial and non-sexist future” (ibid., 1). The RDP was the result of probably one of the most collaborative consultative processes South Africa had ever seen. The RDP laid out a bold set of policy goals in several key areas: meeting basic needs, developing human resources, building the economy, and democratising the state and society (ibid., 7). It envisioned a key role for the government in developing South Africa’s economy and eliminating the structural legacies of apartheid. It was also, at its launch, widely criticised as unworkable. Much of the criticism focused on the costs involved and the fact that, like many electoral manifestos, the expenditure ideas contained within it were insufficient (Southern Africa Business Intelligence, 23 May 1994; 31 January 1994). But it should be pointed out that the people who needed to see something in the RDP saw what they wanted. While business remained sceptical, even critical, the document indicated a strong policy focus on working with private enterprise. Similarly, labour was quite pleased (BBC Monitoring Service: Africa 24 September 1994). It maintained an interventionist approach with a mixed economy and, moreover, suggested a move to setting a minimum wage. It even called for the state to begin a massive home building programme that would not only bring decent housing to the poor but stimulate economic growth and provide jobs. It was, in short, everything to everyone. It would not take long, however, to see which interpretations were going to win out. Shortly after the election Mandela stated in an interview that the RDP, despite its critics in business, bowed unquestionably to their interests. It was, he declared, a market friendly set of proposals with no reference to nationalisation and he dared anyone to find anything remotely ‘Marxist’ within it (The Asian Wall Street Journal, 3 May 1994).17 It was, however, the RDP White Paper that would lay out how the new government of  The RDP does, indeed, discuss nationalisation (see ANC 1994b, 80).

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national unity (GNU) would implement the RDP.  Two things emerge from the WP that indicate a major shift in policy and shift in who the GNU felt it was talking to. The first is the abandonment of nationalisation. It’s death had long been predicted but the WP finally did away with it. The second point addresses how the RDP was to be funded—a point never fully explained anyhow. The RDP envisioned a strong role for the state that would be costly. The WP, however, solidified the rhetoric of fiscal restraint that had been creeping into discussions since 1992. As Adelzadeh and Padayachee note, the state goes from having a central role in transforming the economy to a managing role (1994, 5). The burden was shifted to private business and the state would, in turn, fund its now limited role with fiscal restraint (e.g. decreasing the size of the bureaucracy and combining some offices, though not by firing bureaucrats). The WP also reaffirmed the policy of gradually lowering trade barriers, conferred national status on foreign investors, and strongly indicated that it would maintain the independence of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). In retrospect the document lays the groundwork for the undoing of the RDP and the rise of GEAR, less than two years hence. GEAR would solidify the market oriented view of the state within the ANC leadership but its commitment to trade liberalisation and sound fiscal policies does not eliminate the strong social justice views still central to the ANC. To say that the GNU and the ANC in particular abandoned the RDP is to miss the point and is, in fairness, overly cynical. As Habib (1998) noted, the ANC felt hemmed in with few options thus making the turn to market orthodoxy— which I argue is too strong a term—seem almost inevitable. This, however, misses the points discussed above, which indicate that if certain elements of the ANC felt hemmed in and reluctantly adopted neoliberalism they eventually came to see its merits. Many in the ANC, particularly Mbeki, Max Sisulu, (eventually) Alec Erwin and Trevor Manuel, even Mandela himself, made this language their own. The ANC of the early 1990s was a party of internal factions struggling to define the party and economics played no small part in this struggle. The RDP can be seen as a product of this struggle and a balanced document meant to appeal to all parties while simultaneously saying little. But greater shifts within the party leadership were being played out and their outcomes shaped the economic policies of the GNU under Mandela and the rise of Mbeki. I would not be the first person to suggest that those favouring a more market oriented approach won this struggle (see, inter alia, Gumede 2005; Habib and Padayachee 2000). But I am arguing that

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international processes and domestic ones played a role in the outcome as well as classic political manoeuvring where supporters were placed in key positions to affect one view over another. It is arguable, though, that the terms of debate themselves began shifting as evidenced by the positions taken by the, for lack of a better term, left. Even as critics found themselves arguing against the market state, they seemed to sense that there was little support in the world for anything else. Joe Slovo, in a seemingly clear recognition of the changing world, acknowledged early on that the SACP should not commit itself to the old style Communism of the Soviet Union (1990). Alec Erwin, who would later go on to take a position in government, as a trade union leader widely denounced Mandela’s call for the abandonment of nationalisation in the early 1990s. Yet by the mid 1990s he wrote to his old colleagues saying that times had changed and that the path to take was the market one (1996). It’s not as if the left gave up—far from it—it’s that when the terms of debate changed a migration of thinking began (see also The Weekend Argus, 10 Oct., 1992; The Cape Times, 12 Nov., 1992). Classic politics itself cannot be ruled out but it is insufficient. As Mandela increasingly and publicly began altering his stance on the nationalisation question, it became easier to discuss alternatives. Similarly, it opened up a debate between the left and right of the party over key positions. The death of Chris Hani, then Secretary General of the SACP, left the leftwing in the hands of Cyril Ramaphosa, former head of the National Union of Mineworkers, who fought a bruising battle against Thabo Mbeki for the ANC presidency in 1997. Mbeki, then one of Mandela’s Vice Presidents,18 was far more committed to market reform and his win presaged a continuation of the policies of GEAR into his administration. Mandela made several other noteworthy decisions in forming his cabinet that indicate a concern for the international impact and perception of the new government. Key among these was the appointment of Derek Keys, former head of GENCOR and NP member, to be his first Minister of Finance. Keys’ tenure, however brief, and his ties to business were meant to assuage business concerns that the new government would pursue a costly populist budget and restrict market reform. Keys’ history under the caretaker government, where he shored up government finances, carried over into his early moves to maintain a balanced budget. Keys was replaced  FW de Klerk was Mandela’s other Vice President.

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rather rapidly, however. Chris Liebenberg, former head of one of South Africa’s largest banks and member of the CBM, was appointed to replace Keys, according to Hirsch, to assuage the jittery markets (2005, 67). Liebenberg, however, was not an elected official and his tenure, while longer than Keys’, was to be brief. By 1996 Mandela sought a replacement this time from inside the cabinet and with a background in the ‘good governance’ school of thought that produced Mont Fleur. Trevor Manuel, though schooled as an engineer, took over from Liebenberg as Minister of Finance after a long period of work on economic policy during the transition period. The choice was not coincidental and sent another signal that Mandela would run a tight ship and staff his cabinet with the international and business community in mind. Fellow scenario planner, Tito Mboweni, was also granted an important cabinet position.19 While it might be conspiratorial to suggest a neoliberal coup d’etat, the men appointed to control the economic reins of South Africa were chosen quite clearly with the intent to assuage a nervous international and domestic business community. Further, during the first two years of the Mandela administration, the RDP went from a cabinet level position to simply an oversight office indicating that whatever reforms it promised were to be handled by a powerless official. At the same time Manuel and Mbeki began formulating the new and vastly more market oriented GEAR that would frame economic policy in South Africa for the next decade. The most significant change in thinking, however, and one that demonstrates a greater congruence with the global idea of good governance is overtly about the state itself. Around 1996, the ANC began circulating a document specifically addressing the role of the state in the economy (ANC 1997). Like the RDP, it represents a hybrid of thought bringing together the vague ideas of good governance and those of social justice, development and democracy. But it lays out a clear argument that the state must take the needs of capital seriously (ibid., 49–50). The document does, however, reject the premise that the best government is one that governs least. Yet by similarly embracing the need to court capital, recognising the control of capital in private hands, it must abandon the idea that the state can intervene to force capital movement for social ends. Rather 19  Tito Mboweni was Minister of Labour under Mandela before heading the ANC’s policy dept. and finally the SA Reserve Bank. Manuel remained the Minister of Finance through the early years of the Zuma presidency garnering considerable praise from the business community.

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the document lays out an argument where the state facilitates the needs of both society and capital as not necessarily incongruent forces (ibid.). Lastly, in a direct argument to the ‘ultra-left’, the document abandons the socialist/communist idea of ‘stages of development’ instead recognising the changing nature of the world economy and the need to adapt in concert. It is not a direct cry of TINA but it is a clear nod in its direction. The irony of the document is that for all its discussion of democracy it remained out of public view until published well after the fact by The African Communist. While I can offer no clue as to why this occurred, it does lend support to Ferguson’s (2006) argument that, for all its discussion of democracy and individual liberty, the global idea of good governance is not always palatable to the people it is meant to govern.

The Good Citizen: Good Governance and the Neoliberal Subject In many ways what we examine here is largely left unsaid, unspecified, and largely unintended. What we seek to examine is the implicit ways in which a particular notion of the subject has emerged in South Africa; one with a strong affinity with the processes of the global economy and its management. This subject is not just the political subject, the citizen. Nor is it purely the economic subject of economic policy and even social services. The subject that emerges comes from the diverse links between each along with numerous other ideological and cultural attempts to define the individual at the heart of the state. To explore its systemic-domestic nexus what follows focuses on the concept of good governance as a means to elucidate one facet of this subjecthood. Good governance is not the sole path to this subject, however. But as will be argued, related discussions of this subject that encompass questions of national and communal identity, for example, are upon reflection greatly influenced by the political and economic subject explored via good governance. This concept has proven to be central to much of South Africa’s domestic transformation agenda. But so too is it part of South Africa’s post-­ apartheid foreign policy (see Becker 2010). Taylor and Nel (2002) once opined that South Africa’s foreign policy adventures, particularly its role in the New Africa Initiative (NAI) and the reformed African Union (AU), represented the failure of the socialist rhetoric of the past and a warm embrace of the liberal agenda of the post-Cold War era. Good governance,

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holistically, cannot be removed from an implicit view of the economic and political, however lacking in the teleology of modernization theory that it replaced; it is a concept that links the political, the structural, and the economic without being a specific academic theory or body of thought; yet holding an affinity for many. But it is no less a way of understanding the world premised upon right economic and government policies justified by economic modelling in effect producing Gramscian economism. Thought of as discourses, modernization theory and good governance ultimately address and define not only the proper nature of a state and government-­ society relations but also what a developed, modern state is by definition (Escobar 2011; Ferguson and Gupta 2002; see also Pasha and Murphy 2002). But each is in turn defined and refined by the practice of social scientists themselves lending it, as Mohan argues (1994), an air of legitimacy and truth. And this is what is most intriguing about good governance and the neoliberal subject here: it is at once a normative, democratic project to move post-apartheid South Africa into the future and one that is greatly limiting in that it is premised on a technocratic ‘objective’ view of the world that is itself not open to debate (see Hart 2008). The syncretism of the good governance policies of South Africa grants it a certain degree of international legitimacy because it is largely in sync with the world view of the developed world. As liberalism and its economic variant, neoliberalism emerge as a dominant set of ideas and norms, they shape what constitutes legitimate behaviour and what it means to be a legitimate member of the international community (Becker 2010). Embedded within such norms, however, is a subtle conflation of the economic and the political around an unexamined ideological/ideational consensus on proper economic and political behaviour—whose clearest manifestation we find in good governance. This consensus centres on the market as an ideal space toward which policy is directed and from within which the individual is grasped as a subject generally. It is, finally, the ultimate expression of the ways in which the state cannot be theorised in isolation for it is both global economic and political forces in combination with domestic practices that are at work here in transforming what it means to belong as a South African. The World Bank heralded the end of the Cold War era by declaring that good economics is good politics, thus ushering in an era of ‘Good Governance’ (World Bank 1992; see also Weiss 2000). Since the inaugural report exploring the relationship between poor economic performance and poor governance, the Bank has worked assiduously to refine the

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c­ oncept and develop measurable ‘governance’ indicators (see Kaufmann et al. 1999a, b, 2001; World Bank 2006; passim). The question and idea of good governance has not, however, been limited to the World Bank. Considerable research has been devoted to explicating and enumerating the various indicators that have emerged to measure the efficacy of efforts to promote good governance. Indeed, the project of good governance has been widely embraced by a range of international organisations from the UN to The AU’s New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and its much lauded—if also critiqued—peer review process. What defines the good in good governance has a specific history bound up with the dominant norms and the exercise of power in the international system, particularly the global economy. In the post-Cold War era the dominant economic paradigm (and ultimately it is a political one too) is undoubtedly neoliberalism. Any analysis of the ‘good’ of good governance cannot and should not be contemplated without this in mind. Within this conflation of the political and the economic, the political good is premised upon what is deemed economically good within the dominant norms and ideas of the international political economy. Yet in his analysis of the concept Santiso argues that, while the current conceptualisation of the concept is largely part of a post-Washington Consensus that questions the pure market oriented approach, the governance agenda modifies but does not ‘repudiate’ the neoliberal paradigm (2001, 16; see also Doornbos 2003, 5). As such, when we speak of good governance we cannot remove it from the neoliberal paradigm and market centric logic from within which it emerges. While the rise of good governance in Africa stems from the World Bank and IMF’s intervention in the debt crises of the 1980s, it also occurred during a profound crisis over the legitimacy of the African state itself. While this crisis of legitimacy had many—often intertwined—sources (see Chabal and Daloz 1999; Chabal 2000), the neoliberal good governance solution saw them as technical problems of only a quasi-political nature. By this I mean that the plundering of state assets under neopatrimonial regimes led economists to argue that the removal of the state’s functions in society was paramount, contrary to earlier development thinking (see Bhagwati 1966). This was primarily seen as an economic issue. Yet it remained quasi-political in that as the concept of good governance emerged it increasingly argued that both democracy and free markets (as an ideal, of course) ensured both political freedom and economic growth; all solutions involved relying more on markets to do what states t­ raditionally

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did. But “the shift to a market economy required the suspension of individual’s roles in politics and as citizens—that is the emasculation of the interplay of rights and claims enabling people to have not only duties and obligations toward the state but rights against it” (Mbembe 2001, 74). This argument is worth unpacking at some length because it sheds light on how the individual is grasped, what alternatives may exist, and to what extent the field of economics itself plays in depoliticising the question of the subject in practice. The problem of governance, as the research discusses it, emerges from within the problem of functioning markets and getting them to run efficiently and ‘properly’. Governance, which as an idea and concept cannot help but be much more or less than a theory of how to govern, is here tied specifically to the centrality of functioning markets as the state’s raison d’etre. As it has been elaborated, however, good governance clearly makes claims about individual empowerment and the necessity of securing individual freedoms and protections (e.g. property rights) as part and parcel of allowing markets to function properly. Indeed, the underlying argument of good governance’s focus on letting markets function is an implicitly, traditionally liberal one that sees collective benefits from the aggregate behaviour of individuals acting in the market. Opening more space for markets to function, then, helps not only individuals but society. But while getting markets to function properly is the explicit aim; the market itself becomes the space within which freedom and participation is defined and, thus, implicitly what a free individual is. The argument is/was that opaque governing structures and a dearth of accountability stymie development. But the argument’s solution conflates transparency and accountability as a vaguely more market driven democratic process. Proponents see accountability primarily in market terms where competition emerges as a cheap, efficient mechanism where empowered individuals demand better services and hold the government to task. The ability of consumers to choose freely should, the Bank contends, force governments to act more efficiently to provide the best services at the cheapest prices. “Competition”, it is argued, “or scope for the public to exit when dissatisfied with a service—can have a salutary effect on the agency concerned” (World Bank 1992, 22). The market itself is, thus, not the active component here but rather individuals acting within it as consumers choosing the best options. Again, the individual is never specified or defined; it emerges as a necessary corollary from the elaboration and the use of market competition as a mechanism of accountability. As such,

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individuals are empowered as consumers who can, ideally, choose from a range of services typically provided solely by the government once markets for services are working and multiple service providers emerge. Exit mechanisms, to use the Bank’s terminology, draw heavily off of the idea of market competition as not only efficient but implicitly more democratic (see also Root 2007) as they rest on the implicit argument that individuals have greater freedom within the market. To reiterate the general criticism of this position, within this framework individuals can only be conceived of as consumers actively participating—via the market—in the efficient allocation of resources that simultaneously benefit individuals and (market) development. This has effects on not only individuals in the real sense but also relies on a conception of the individual in the first place. This has profound policy effects but arguably it constitutes a radical normative position hidden by the focus on sound market principles. Markets in their idealised, theoretical form are neutral spaces for individuals to better themselves and collectively better society. The implicit liberal rationale at the base of the argument is upended by the centrality of the market in shaping how we conceive of individual-society relations; we have instead a neoliberal, market oriented conception of the individual that defines empowerment in entirely marketised terms (Kamat 2004, 170; Porter and Craig 2004). The prominence of the market as a space subtly redefines these relationships while simultaneously redefining the purpose of the state. The conflation of the economic and the political within neoliberal good governance clearly rests on a series of analytical assumptions and policy prescriptions and proscriptions that shed light on how the individual is conceptualised. Economically and politically it is an emancipatory project seeking to free the individual in a specific marketised way (Hibou 2000). In the World Bank’s view devolution and accountability, for instance, clearly involve greater reliance on market mechanisms to promote development and deliver services. The free individual, then, is one who uses the space of the market as the primary means of social interaction and to check power that is otherwise usurped by an unaccountable state. But it also walls off from discussion the accumulation of power— from a generous white welfare state apparatus—embedded in the textural legacy of apartheid. An element of the status-quo remains untouchable except as may be amended via market processes. It is not so much that post-apartheid South Africa warmly and overtly embraced in whole such a marketised notion of freedom as a consumer. It is that the view that the state as a constraint and limitation on freedom

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becomes apparent in the ANC’s ascendent world-view and discourse. But this had always sat in an uneasy relationship juxtaposed with the overtly global market approach of the government’s foreign policies and the fiscal restraints and (albeit limited) efforts at privatization. The economism at the heart of this market-centric policy approach was, to echo Hart, profoundly disabling (Hart 2002). The idea that there is no alternative was not a fait accompli of some malevolent and powerful force. It is, rather, presented as an economic fact that the goals of the struggle would need to be amended to the global order, that the economy was constricted, and that moreover this need not be a fundamentally evil thing if South Africa were to grow and prosper as a result. But as Von Schnitzler’s (2008) fascinating study of water privatization and resistance shows, the policies that originate within this world-view, however constrained by the real material processes and social forces of the economy, amount, in even the smallest of ways, to a fundamentally different notion of citizenship (see also Lalloo 1999). Access to services as a full member of society becomes uneven and unaccountable in practice. It is a radical reorientation of what it means to belong and to be South African. This should not, however, surprise many. Good governance, as a concept informing the politics of the post-­apartheid state, is equal parts vaguely democratic and liberating with a heavy dose of constraining technopolitics. Indeed, following the serious job losses that began occurring with the implementation of GEAR and the sclerotic and anaemic extant welfare apparatus, the South African government commissioned a study to address the problem. The Taylor Committee, as it came to be known, recommended a rather radical proposal: that the government essentially hand out cash to every South African in the form of a Basic Income Grant (Dept. of Social Development 2002). While the policy has yet to go anywhere, it remain a curious idea that recognises the harm of poverty yet does little to address its causes in the market policies of the state. It is a curiously neoliberal solution (see Barchiesi 2007; Ferguson 2007, 2010) and one that firmly recognises the individual in such market terms by seeking to empower the poor as consumers. While we cannot link this policy idea directly to good governance, it remains a policy with a certain affinity to market logic, a vague democratic discourse of a particular subjectivity. This discourse, in turn, introduces the individual as a subject embedded in a wider array of market relations (Porter and Craig 2004, 293). As Kamat has argued, “this shift in economic policy involves important cultural changes within the body politic.” This shift is not arbitrary either as

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there is “a fundamental cultural transformation involved in the transformation from state-led development to a deregulated market economy [in that] citizens have to forego their sense of entitlement and have to acquire an entrepreneurial citizen identity that derives from liberal values of independence and autonomy” (Kamat 2004, 164). South Africa does, however, demonstrate the limits of this idealised politico-economic subject; politically and culturally there are competing notions of a communal subject alongside loosely traditional forms of political authority. At the highest level, the courts recognise the concept of ubuntu as essential to the state’s purpose and its ethical foundation; at more local levels there are the varying chiefships that sustain political and communal identities (see Williams 2010). Whatever its origins and however much its tenets debated, ubuntu provides an understanding of subjectivity and ethics in direct contrast to any sort of neoliberal subject. And it informs a range of institutions and laws within South Africa. It is, thus, a part of a process to reclaim—perhaps impossibly—some sense of what once was and is now lost after the long colonial encounter. While it exists in the constitution and the courts refer to it from time to time, its ambiguity is all things to all people. In practice, it rests alongside the tension between efforts to retain the traditional and the communal with liberal freedoms (see Comaroff and Comaroff 2003) and the broader spatial practices of the neoliberal subject. At its simplest, “ubuntu”, according to Mokogoro, “as a concept has generally been described as a world-view of African societies and a determining factor in the formation of perceptions which influence social conduct. It has also been described as a philosophy of life, which in its most fundamental sense represents personhood, humanity, humaneness and morality; a metaphor that describes group solidarity where such group solidarity is central to the survival of the communities with a scarcity of resources” (1998, 49). Here the individual is clearly apparent as part of a larger whole; the individual is not gone in the sense of an agential self but is, rather, recognised as member of a group for survival. More than this, however, ubuntu is a world-view in which the individual’s very identity is recognised for what it is, a product of society itself; it is an identity that cannot be removed from membership in a community, however understood (ibid.). Whatever the claims of its roots in some pre-colonial past, it clearly situates individuals within a community without exclusion. This is a set of ideals and ideas that places the human, the individual, even humanity in a mutually reinforcing context of social relations. While all identities

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and concepts of the self are ultimately products of a social milieu, unlike liberal thought, which conceives of a political order premised upon the free individual that stands alone, this world-view not only recognises something above the self toward which one might feel obligated, it also recognises the importance of the social for the production of one’s being. The neo/liberal subject then coexists with ideas and social processes with much more communal identities and ethics that the state has sought to nurture as a link to the past in a rainbow nation future. Philosophically these values are present in the ethics of ubuntu that served as a normative grounding in the resistance to apartheid and the foundation of the post-­ apartheid state; it represents a return to a set of ideals that preceded the colonial moment and, thus, a return to some original point of being (Van Binsbergen 2001). But as the Comaroff’s note, when the liberal subject and its attendant legal protections clash with communal rights and attendant laws the liberal subject takes juridical precedence (2003). This, for Matolino and Kwindingi (2013), may not necessarily be a bad thing. From their perspective ubuntu is primarily a project of the elite and does little to recognise the reality of modern South Africa or a world of truly marketised relations. The ubuntu project problematically, in their view, seeks to return to a traditionalist vision of African society that neither exists nor is it desired. Indeed, it may act as a balm to justify or hide the ways in which the present order is exclusive and marketised; it acts as a template for corporate governance to pay lip service to notions of stakeholder participation and good governance (see Padayachee 2013; McDonald 2010). Regardless of its actual place in the practices of the South African state, however, the ethics of ubuntu shed light onto the reality of inclusion and exclusion in the lived reality of the contemporary order; it serves to outline the struggles to be included, to be counted, to belong in South Africa today. But in the politics of discontent, in the protests over inadequate housing, and poor working conditions, the neoliberal subjectivity’s effects on the spatial practices of the state are far more paramount. A comparison of the two does, however, bring me back to Lefebvre’s (2009) commentary on the distance between an abstraction applied to the world and what a different, ground up approach might entail. That is, the implicit citizen in the contemporary South Africa (as in much of the world, it must be admitted) is one whose needs must be made to fit a particular notion, a particular abstraction of not the citizen but the recipient of service delivery, a particular individual of needs and interests abstracted from the lived existence of daily life.

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Like the broader notions of good governance itself, individual failings must be seen in such neoliberal marketised terms. The good citizen like good governance looks toward the market and not the other way around. It is a profound reorientation of the state-society relationship. But perhaps ubuntu is not in fact the best comparison. Perhaps it is apartheid itself that serves as a better metric of comparison. I do not wish in saying this, however, to valorise the racial state. Far from it. But apartheid was quite clearly a regime with a clear purpose to provide for and nurture a specific—if specifically racially defined—people. It was clear who belonged and how. The legacy of apartheid in the neoliberal subject, then, is the manner in which the power accumulated over the decades of this welfare project are now utterly free of political scrutiny. Economic power is moved into the private sphere and simply isn’t up for debate. But the market, while securing and sustaining such privilege, is portrayed as a truly democratic space where merit is rewarded. Failure, then, is personal not societal. The absence of any means to meaningfully belong within society is not the duty of the state to rectify. It is up to the individual. Thus the struggle today, much as it was throughout apartheid, is the struggle to belong and be counted.

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On the State of Belonging: What a Theory of Space Tells Us About Neoliberalism and Apartheid in Contemporary South Africa

While the boundary between the state and the interstate has always been arbitrary, separated more by parsimonious theoretical necessity than accuracy, this project consistently makes the case that considerable benefit can be derived by theorising and studying across it. The state and interstate in practice are far more greatly interwoven than we typically acknowledge, as even the earliest history of colonial South Africa and its political economy of race demonstrates. The nature and depth of this interconnectedness of course varies among states. But as the case of South Africa demonstrates, the international must be taken into account when discussing what appears to be questions domestic in nature. When we as scholars speak of a new global order after the Cold War, whether we choose to call it a neoliberal order or not, it is clear that there is a hegemonic order and concomitant belief system (however under threat it may be today) about the nature of this order, its ideals, its purpose, and its value. The material and immaterial go hand in hand. Diverse authors and theories have each attempted to explain why this global shift has occurred more broadly—indeed, it seems that the causes are, in a sense, objectively and theoretically over-determined (see Biersteker 1992; Simmons and Elkins 2004; Milner and Kubota 2005). The Cold War ended and with it any ideological counterpoint to the narrative and interests of a world dominated by the US and Europe and the global economic system they created. But while the turn toward a liberal political and economic order in Eastern Europe in some ways intuitively makes sense, the © The Author(s) 2020 D. A. Becker, Neoliberalism and the State of Belonging in South Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39931-3_6

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general shift—and that of South Africa’s in particular—is more troublesome. That neoliberalism was ‘the only game in town’ fails to explain how this affects behaviour systemically and domestically. Of course, bridging this systemic-domestic gap was the principle theoretical task of this project. But this broader global shift is itself troublesome for IR scholars and some of their attempts to explain either the end of the Cold War or the trend towards a neoliberal order have some bearing on the argument presented. As I hope I have demonstrated, the ideas of good governance, the internal politics of the ANC alliance, the relative power between groups, and even the terms of debate themselves were impacted—in often nuanced ways—by international conditions and actors. The ideological drift of ANC economic thinking, policy, and ultimately its view of the state itself, when analysed closely, demonstrates the commingling of the international and the local engendering syncretic outcomes. The changing nature of the international economy empowered some actors over others in the debate over South Africa’s future. Similarly, the very ideas themselves and methods, theories, and tools of analysis in thinking about the economy seemed to have shaped those that interacted with them. We cannot and should not say that individuals were moulded or that they themselves were changed. But the evidence is there that in discourse and policy a shift is evident and this shift is best understood when these ideas and processes are taken into account irrespective of perceived changes in subjectivity. Despite what some critics may claim, there is no wholesale adoption of some ideal neoliberal template. What emerges is a hybrid, which is the essence of neoliberalism in practice. It is a hybrid of democracy, technocracy, and the market. If anything is clear it is that during the four years from 1990 to the 1994 elections, the ANC and its allies engaged in a long dialogue, attempting to communicate their views to sometimes sceptical parties and that vague entity the market. In this dialogue we find the criteria by which the new South Africa was to be judged as minimally neoliberal. This is evident in the gradual removal of nationalisation from the language of the ANC leadership and the acquiescence of labour to nationalisation as merely an option for much of this period. But this was not a one-way discursive and policy move. Agreement was reached around concepts and ideas where the differing discourses could coalesce and ultimately converge, such as with the idea good governance. It is clear that the parties involved have been open to discussion with few holding unassailable beliefs and policies. While some commentators

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have applauded this tendency in the ANC by calling it ‘pragmatic,’ such a term implies that the ANC faced reality or ‘saw the light’ of market policies. From the beginning many options were available but in time the party chose one path over another. The reasons for this are many and hardly static. The ideological support for more socialist or even dirigiste policies was fading and lacked contemporary examples to be used as examples. Neoliberalism was at its height and as far as the ANC was concerned, the world only spoke one language: markets. It was hard to justify and explain one’s policies without trying to fit them into this world-view. But it was also difficult to explain policies from this view to a population raised on revolutionary socialist rhetoric. Yet it was a mixing of the two that shows up in this period. The social justice ideals were squeezed into language palatable to both world-views. Similarly, small but developing ties with business leaders fostered personal conversations that, while unavailable to the researcher, left their mark on many leaders, including Mandela. One need only trace the evolution in thought evident in public speeches and ANC documents from 1990 to 1994/5 to see the subtle influence of the processes of interaction. And above all, the alliance feared failure in the economy for it would confirm the suspicions of many international agents and even necessitate IMF intervention. The leadership displayed a real concern with this and, thus, seemingly and voluntarily began using the language of neoliberalism tinged with ideas like redistribution and economic justice. The broad, global trend toward neoliberalism, of which South Africa is a part, while clearly resting on local policy decisions, cannot be studied from a strictly systemic level of globally spreading norms. As this project argued, this is but one level and an insufficient analytical point of departure to understand any global neoliberal trend; but it should not be dismissed outright. Neither, of course, should we see it as a merely local, subsystem phenomenon; the idea of free trade alone necessitates two states agreeing to, well, engage in free trade. It is an idea that clearly aims at something interstate. If all states interact within the international system, indeed produce it by their very actions, we must ask how this system acts on states itself (cf Wendt 1987, 1992). Like culture, the system is a product of behaviour but it is also a shaper of behaviour and it is in this mutual entanglement that answers are to be sought. Conceptualised as a social process within a ‘systemic’ environment of socialisation, however, the state-system boundaries blur and become meaningless, it becomes a matter of scope and one of commensurate theorising at the domestic and

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systemic levels. How then can we conceive of the larger systemic forces operating at times against and other times in conjunction with domestic processes that are similarly and perhaps more obviously social in nature? As scholars like Brenner have argued, these forces, these conditions are also material conditions that are themselves changing as the free movement of capital is leading to states, or more often urban centres, competing in both policy (e.g. taxes) and physical amenities to attract the uneven flows of capital (2004). The material organisation of the global system is in turn shaping the material organisation of actual lived societies and putting them in competition with each other. In a sense, the behaviour of the international system is propelling states in a given direction and is organised and ordered despite the lack of any conscious effort by any one state. Indeed it would seem that the world is moving in concert without anyone at the helm. As Ruggie notes, “the area of unpredictability of state behaviour clearly is limited, complex relations are pursued within sets of stable expectations… In other words, despite the nature of the international political system, international behaviour is institutionalized. Institutionalization, as sociologists define the term, is said to coordinate and pattern behaviour, to channel it in one direction rather than all others that are theoretically and empirically possible” (1998, 54). To this end, then, the post-Cold War neoliberal trend is clearly overly determined by long embedded structural processes and conditions that set a limited realm of action for states. Even if we ignore the implicit structuralism of this claim, we can admit that the relations among states have not radically changed from the broad view of history. But it has transformed somewhat; the system’s processes are qualitatively different while the normative and ideational order itself has evolved to justify and legitimate this emerging world order (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992; Foucault 2008). This is the essence of both globalization theorising and neoliberalism: the principles have fundamentally changed and the material processes, lagging or leading but certainly in relationship to them, transformed. The impact of the system is not, however, merely or exclusively material and, where material relations are concerned, the nature of those relations and their content, their substance, if you will, is different and rests on the interpretation of those material factors by actors, humans. Thus the substance of that institutionalization, to use Ruggie’s term, is what matters as it is the basis of socialisation; it is this substance, this ideational and at times ideological component that actors draw upon to justify and legitimate their actions and interests.

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Globalization theorists have made similar arguments in their discussion of the ideational component bound up within the increasing global interconnectedness we at times call globalization. Globalization as an idea is still material in that there is a real restructuring of the role of the state in the economy, but it is also an ideology “largely consistent with the world view and political priorities of large-scale, internationally-mobile forms of capital” (Gill 1995, 405). This is not, however, to imply that this has always been so. Rather, the material and the ideological evolve concomitantly where we end up with a situation today that favours the free flow of capital in ways heretofore it had not. That this should be so is not entirely surprising given the global spread of production necessitating the free flow of capital. Held et  al., however, point out that the effects of globalization—or markets—should not be conceived as objective constraints but rather “what Schattschneider referred to as the ‘mobilization of bias’ in so far as the agenda and choice which governments, households and corporations confront are set by global conditions” (1999, 18). Capital, or more precisely its ideological base in the scholarly notion of globalization, is essential to the creation of the idea that there is no alternative; by association, it shapes the realm of the possible; it, thus, becomes part of any discussion of hegemony and vice versa. We ought to think of the effects of capital then as both material and immaterial. Material in that real policies make the flow of capital into and out of a country easier or more difficult thus linking the two in a seemingly causal sense. Recognising its material nature need not occlude the uneven global scope of material flows of goods and capital, of course. Nor should it allow us to blithely declare a withering of the state as more countries imbibe the mantra of free and unfettered trade. Policies aimed at openness are better seen on a continuum of most open to least while many countries still, much like human rights, give but lip service to an ideal that they do not pursue in policy. Policies and the state of the economy generally also impact a state’s credit rating, a decline in which can be devastating and thereby impact development, the budget, and seemingly unrelated policies (see Gill 1995 and his concept of ‘disciplinary neoliberalism’). This was a point driven home to South Africa during the transition whenever nationalisation was uttered. The international system is a social environment built and maintained by states, but it is also a great socialiser. Accordingly, we can argue that the system rests upon dominant ideas and norms underpinning a given order, which is then the basis of state socialisation. The economic patterns of

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interaction we see at the international level rest upon sets of (economic) ideas and norms about how the system ought to function (Porpora 1993). Capital and the neoliberal conception of free and open markets are here intertwined in a recursive behavioural-discursive relationship; state behaviour is constrained by the real effects of the mobility and need for mobility of international capital but seemingly a priori disciplined by the pervasive presence of “market values, representations, and symbols” in both international institutional discourse (e.g. IMF, World Bank, WTO) and states themselves (Gill 1995, 409; Hibou 2000). In this great, global social gathering the underlying principles that organise it are in part economic and follow a logic of capital. I am not suggesting merely a material link here, though the real impact of capital on South Africa is not to be dismissed. Rather what is important to note is how the material reality of capital and its very real role in investment and development act to impress upon states a given interpretation of the economy: the inevitability and objective reality of the laws of the market. In Hart’s analysis of post-apartheid South Africa, she contends that TINA and discourses on globalization, both of which are present in ANC discourse, are similarly invoked to both present policy and dismiss critics (2002). Hart argues that the economic discourse of Thatcherite Britain and post-apartheid South Africa share a common disabling discourse that is also appealing and intuitively correct. The discourse of TINA rests, according to Hart, on this very Gramscian economism at the expense of voluntarism (2002, 15). Economism renders the economy an objective entity that follows known or knowable laws and thus states ignore them at their peril. Thus while a discourse of TINA is enabling and disabling it also makes claims to a truth grounded in claims to objective truth. The divergent views within the ANC and, at times, between the ANC and economic leaders can be re-imagined, then, as a conflict of interpretations oscillating between voluntarism and economism. Actors within the South African state refer to changes in the global economy but the emphasis is on how domestic actors seek to transform local processes and laws with references to systemic constraints. The ideological and normative dimension of systemic processes certainly empowers and disempowers domestic actors, political and economic, that can or cannot successfully articulate their interests within both domestic and international discourses and norms. But we must also acknowledge how domestic material processes and conditions both benefit and constrain, compel and concern domestic actors. A capital starved economy does not act equally

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on all; it does not compel all economic actors to seek free and unfettered trade today anymore than it did farmers and sheep ranchers in the colonial era. Only some would benefit from a more open economy. While mining companies and even the now powerful South African brewing industry benefited mightily from the new access to capital, the removal of the financial rand, and the ability to list themselves on the London stock exchange; textile manufacturers lost out. The question before us is not so much why some actors benefited or did not—that is often rather obvious—but rather to theorise across the divide so that we may begin to grasp how the state is socialised, how the state is changed, and how and why some groups lose while others gain. By the time the Government of National Unity came to an end in the 1999 elections that brought Thabo Mbeki to power, the policies of ANC and South Africa had clearly moved toward a vision of a slim state, market oriented policies, and industrialisation. The causes of this are multifarious and reflect the dialectical relationship between individuals and the texture of space. The push of ideology stands in reference to a world as much given as interpreted by individuals in practice. The state, as government, is thus not quite as autonomous as some might suggest (Evans et al. 1985). But nor is it a wholly constrained or restricted agent. The ability of the GNU to push through unpopular policies demonstrates that there is autonomy and power vested in legitimate governments. In keeping with the general thrust of this book to incorporate the international into the domestic without assigning primacy to either, the reflexive and dialectical relationship of practices and the textural legacy of apartheid assumes no given primacy. Nor should the above discussion be taken as complete—a concern perhaps without foundation—or focused on the most important of issues. Recent work in the party politics of the ANC lays out the case for looking at the legacy effects too of the organisation’s history, the difficulties of transitioning from a movement to a governing party, and the rise of neo-patrimonialism (Lodge 2014). While falling somewhat short of state capture, Lodge’s work shows the analytical utility of the present model; this holds even as Bénit-Gbaffou (2011, 2012) notes that, from a hyper-local perspective, clientelism may be an effective, still democratic, way to obtain scarce resources. Such resources might, she argues, include the attention of politicians themselves. Each is noting a change in practices whose very uneven nature, rural vs urban, included and excluded urban enclaves, calls for an analytical approach like the one advocated here. A spatial ontology can, thus, be seen in a nested

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scalar form from the hyper-local to the systemic while also encompassing a range of phenomena like the party politics at the heart of contemporary South African politics more broadly.

The Politics of Discontent and the State of Belonging In the history of post-apartheid South Africa the Marikana Massacre stands out and very likely will continue to do so well into the future. It stands as a unique moment when the post-apartheid state unleashed a level of violence against its very citizens not seen since apartheid and the Soweto Uprising in 1976. Whether it turns out to be a turning point in South African politics, however, remains to be seen (cf Alexander 2013). But in its very violence, in the ‘triangle of torment’ that led to its unfolding and which continues to engender radically opposed narratives of guilt (Alexander et al. 2013, 146), it brings to the fore a palpable sense of distance between ruling and ruled. The very fact that it was the post-­apartheid state led by the ANC—and its union allies—that unleashed this violence against the same lives it once fought to liberate from oppression lends this tragedy a significance far greater than the 34 lives lost in the Massacre. Long before Marikana, however, there existed bubbling discontent. Striking workers are not uncommon sights in South Africa. Neither are protests of any kind be they students or residents—rightfully—demanding housing, water, police protection, or simply dignity. The source of discontent remained diffuse, nebulous, a general sense that the revolution promised by the fall of apartheid was halting and far too slow. But the violence of Marikana produced a clear and distinct rupture; it created a stark line between oppressed citizens and a state aligned with powerful economic interests. The story of Marikana is instructive but also potentially misleading. It is too easy to see in Marikana something of a synecdoche for the greater problems facing South Africa.1 The lives of the striking workers, though now free of the overt discrimination of apartheid race laws, continue to live an impoverished existence not all that distinct from the apartheid era. Workers were not striking against the oppressiveness of a racial state embodied in race based wages and job categories. They were striking for 1  Of course one could also include here the deep corruption between the ANC and business elites revealed in the State Capture report (Public Protector 2016).

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wages and improved working conditions from a colonial era mining corporation, Lonmin, that today represents another multi-national corporation more interested in profit for international and domestic investors than the lives and the community that depend upon it.2 But their poor health and inadequate housing also reflected the plight of many poor workers in post-apartheid South Africa and the failure of government policies to improve their lot. That the Massacre was surely approved at the highest levels of government (see Alexander et al. 2013) is not, however, the only connection between Lonmin and the ruling elites. Like many large corporations in South Africa, Lonmin had attracted a small coterie of well connected black entrepreneurs as investors and board members. Indeed, at the time now president Cyril Ramaphosa owned a small stake in the company. The picture that emerges is one of a deeply intertwined relationship between a ruling black political and economic class and domestic and international capital at the expense of the citizens of South Africa. South Africa’s transition to democracy, like so many of the transitions to independence in post-colonial Africa’s history, is less a revolution and radical restructuring of the state than a change in the composition of the governing apparatus. Contemporary South African politics are if anything the politics of discontent; the gulf between the lived experiences of the people and the vision of the post-apartheid state is as deep as it is wide. No doubt a sizeable part of the South African public at large places the blame squarely at the feet of the ANC, not only as the party in power for the entirety of South Africa’s post-apartheid history thus far. But because it has promised so much and delivered so little to so many while continuing to give much to so few; it is seen as corrupt at worst and out of touch at best. Despite its revolutionary rhetoric to uplift the oppressed, its policies have done little to change the material conditions of millions. The ideological drift of the ANC’s post-apartheid world-view and concomitant governing policies, from revolutionary to accommodating, is well known. Whatever the revolutionary origins of the rhetoric of the ANC and SACP, once in power the alliance governed in keeping with a broad and conservative consensus on economic and social policy; the state would work for the people but it would not radically challenge the status-­ quo ante. The alliance would remake South Africa and undo the legacy of apartheid gradually through markets, modest social spending, and, ideally, 2  Lonmin was formed in 1909 as LonRho, a name derived from its base in London and operations in then Rhodesia.

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a rising economic tide to lift all. This middle approach, however, has never been embraced by the totality of the ANC (see Gumede 2005), its union allies in COSATU, or the SACP. The ongoing ideological debates within the ruling alliance may have a real impact on policy and the lives of the people. But the perennial strikes and protests over wages, working conditions, inadequate housing, poor transportation, and even practical access to clean water and proper sewage are brute material conditions and spatial practices that confront many South Africans more directly than ideology alone. Ideological and broader discursive representations of this material reality matter, both as a question of aetiology and prescriptive policy toward it; but the lived experience is one of failed promises and mounting anger, a sense of being left behind and alienated from a state that claims to speak for and belong to all South Africans. Despite a noteworthy growth in the black middle class and black capital, economic power remains overwhelmingly in the same hands as it did under apartheid; corporate governance remains a largely white and, in some cases, family affair (see Padayachee 2013). Efforts at diversifying the board room, however incomplete, do not fundamentally alter the broader socio-economy of the state either. The State Capture report (Public Protector 2016) also lends—if somewhat outsized—credit to Southall’s early concerns that efforts to create a black capitalist class would create a form of crony capitalism tying wealth to party position and influence (Southall 2004). Political power has indeed shifted and the state is no longer an explicitly white welfare project. But having obtained economic power, a power which tends to reproduce itself absent government intervention (see Piketty 2013), political power was no longer necessary to maintain the privileges of whiteness. An emerging black capitalist class merely serves to justify such power as open to all who prove their worth in the markets. The ANC’s broad acceptance of market based reforms and a commitment to an image of a business and investor friendly state of limited economic intervention and fiscal restraint leaves this power broadly unchecked. Broadly speaking, as Nattrass and Seekings argue, the benefits of class ensure the maintenance of a privileged economic position for whites absent apartheid’s racial welfare state (2005). A growing middle class and emerging class of black billionaires feeds into a narrative of merit, one where wealth and power—previously race restricted—are open to all, though never threatening to the status-quo. Indeed, it reinforces the ‘democratic’ logic of the market.

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The stark inequality of South Africa is etched into its political geography; its politics are defined by it. Land reform, greater service delivery, and quality affordable housing remain persistent problems decades after the end of apartheid. Despite the fact that today’s protests are against a majoritarian government and not a white minority apartheid one, the same geography of dispossession remains. The forces of segregation may now operate more in the market than in the regulations of government for many in the middle class (see Christopher 2001). But for millions of poorer South Africans their particular relationship to housing, jobs, education and so on still play out on the spatial organisation of the now dead apartheid state. The racist ‘bantustans’ are no longer sites of separate development and pools of migrant labour. But the rural poverty it sustained and the migrants it created remain. Migrant labour is no longer corralled by racial restrictions into worker hostels. The market defines one’s housing, which has given way to informal housing that still follows the spatial organisation of economic production; its spatial practices remain one of rural migrant flows and workers huddled in inadequate housing around job opportunities far from places, however hard scrabble they may be, they have called home. Townships are no longer restricted housing with transit networks radiating into the city of whites. Townships are now vibrant communities but ones reliant on a variety of modes of public transportation into the same cities, to the same jobs. When the ANC and its allies came to power they sought to undo the legacies of apartheid. One of the most glaring failures of the post-­apartheid government’s self proclaimed mandate to undo the legacy of apartheid, then, is the continuing failure to provide adequate housing. But more broadly, according to Lalloo (1999), this failure is not merely or not simply a policy failure. It is fundamentally a failure to fully extend citizenship, thus rendering it far more meaningful in the context of eradicating the legacies of apartheid. Housing, however, stands out in another sense in that it provides a sense of place, a sense of belonging, if not dwelling. But it is specifically as property that housing takes on greater meaning as a particular form of citizenship. Property presupposes specific socio-political processes, along with a certain measure of bureaucratic technical capacity for measuring (metrology) and delineating the privatization of space essential to a given mode of production. Property then becomes a means of power and control under a set of specific socio-political and spatial relations. Even prior to the formalisation of various means of exclusion, power, property, and race carved itself onto the landscape and space of the South

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African state. Exclusion and control defined access to space: spaces of work, spaces of housing, rural and urban space. It fostered the accumulation and concentration in wealth in racially defined hands. But so too has it left the black majority of South Africans with a specific, and only slowly changing, spatial dispersion within the state. Even now class and the reliance on markets to determine access to property and place leave pockets of place defined by race (Cristopher 2001). But for many South Africans, their housing reflects the same spatial organisation of the apartheid era with many living at far remove from places of work and reliant on ageing transportation networks. As Lalloo (1999) notes, however, any policy aimed solely at provisioning housing in and of itself, then, would fail to capture how the legacy of apartheid remains. This failure stems from negotiations with business groups in the run-up to the 1994 elections. It highlights, yet again, the effects of elevating the abstraction of the market within which the people must then fit. Business feared what a truly disruptive housing and property reallocation policy might entail. Housing is but the tip of the iceberg. Vast tracts of commercial agricultural property (and thus economic value) are concentrated overwhelmingly in the hands of a white minority. Righting this legacy would profoundly disrupt the socio-economic order; so too would it lead to the full extension of citizenship. But the negotiations prior to the elections led to far more piecemeal solutions: greater, but still limited, funds to produce a set number of housing units, and subsidies to promote home ownership. That is, the market would play a central role in maintaining a form of white power but its logic would be affirmed in a marketised citizenship. Housing has provided a perennial site of discontent against the post-­ apartheid state. The spaces of housing, largely informal, have also, much as they did under apartheid, proven to be focal points of resistance and struggles to be counted among the citizens of South Africa. The anthropologist Kerry Ryan Chance (2015) has provided an almost literary analysis of what this means in practice, what the violence and rage of protest means. It is embodied in the place of fire and destruction in protest. Under apartheid fire was used to render space, particularly townships, ‘ungovernable.’ This was a political act and challenge to apartheid: we are not to be ignored or governed, if you will, in this manner and as such we shall render this space ungovernable to push for our demands. But as Chance notes, fire plays a similar role in post-apartheid South Africa. The ‘Poors’ is the collective identity that is neither race nor ethnicity nor class but a

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statement of one’s place in the neoliberal post-apartheid state (see also Desai 2002) much as it was at the turn of the twentieth century. The poors, an old idea at the heart of South African politics, is a problem as much as an identity. With fire the people seek to gain the attention of the authorities, the state, by rendering space ungovernable once again. According to Chance, If the mid-1980s marked the popularization of fire in street politics against apartheid, the turn of the millennium marked its unanticipated return in street politics against neoliberal policy reforms and ongoing inequalities in poor African, Indian, and Coloured communities. Activists deployed fire, as they did in the mid-1980s. They capitalized on fire’s highly mobile and affordable qualities to render visible spaces ordinarily hidden from view in the city, while disrupting urban activities by blocking roadways, and therefore the circulation of traffic, goods, and people. Residents of townships and shack settlements torched sites tied materially and symbolically to the state including old targets such as local councillors’ homes, but also new sites of techno-institutional management, such as the offices of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)…The deployment of fire by activists in South Africa in the post-apartheid period has thus become a distinguishing criterion between civil and uncivil society, the former associated with NGOs aligned with state or international institutions, and the latter associated with movements of the poor or populist community—based mobilizations. (2015, 406)

For Chance, fire works as a metaphor in the politics of post-apartheid SA. Fire brings light to the darkness of slums but so too does it bring danger. For the middle and upper class, fire is decoration, mood and ambiance; it is not essential to warmth and light, to existence itself. The ramshackle nature of informal housing makes fire both necessary and dangerous yet only exists as such in these conditions of inequality. The danger of fire also stems from attempts to tap into the electrical grid. Being largely informal and illegal they are also rampant fire hazards. Accidental fires, however, become not a testament to inequality but a time to lecture on fire safety and the need to properly apply for electricity (that is not available in such informal housing). The poors are criminals or hapless victims in need of tutelage: both defined identities within the neo/liberal state. But both also show how far outside of politics the poors remain. In one sense, they show how fundamentally untransformed the state remains. And yet in another there is a transformation at the heart of the state and it concerns the purpose of the state.

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This transformation—one that still roils politics in South Africa to this day—is evident in many states in the global system. However slow this transformation may be, it is no less fundamental and ongoing. It is also paradoxical; it is a radical act of the status-quo; an effort to lock in and at times reclaim an economic power walled off from politics. It is evident not just as an ideology that justifies it, explains it, but also in the real policies and bureaucracies of the state, their purpose, and in their design and execution. That transformation concerns the citizen, the neoliberal subject whose relationship to the state represents a break with South Africa’s past and, as we’ve seen, with the ideals of the ANC itself. It concerns who belongs.

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Index1

A Afrikaner Bond, 117 Afrikaner nationalism, 81, 92 Afrikaner Volk, 108 African National Congress (ANC), 82, 102, 127, 149–153, 160, 161, 164, 165, 167, 168, 170, 171, 173, 176, 177, 179, 180, 184, 185, 187, 188, 190, 192, 193, 196, 198, 201, 204, 212, 224, 225, 228, 229, 231, 232 African Renaissance, 27 Anglo-Boer War, 109, 125, 127, 130 B Bank, 208 Bayart, J. F., 4, 8, 17, 50, 51, 53, 164 Belonging, 4 Black Consciousness Movement, 3 Boer War, 107 Bond/Broederbond, 133, 139, 141

Bureaucracies/bureaucratic, 46, 49, 51, 91, 111, 164, 171, 174, 176, 177 Bureaucratic state, 40, 61 C Cape, 118 Cape Colony, 81, 83, 87, 88, 92, 98, 99, 106, 108, 111, 115, 116 Cattle Killing, 100 Cetshwayo, 105, 106 Civil service, 111 Colony, 94, 101 Consciousness, 44 Constructivism, 36, 39, 44 Constructivist, 61, 70, 164 D De Klerk, F.W., 150, 154, 174 Department of Economic Planning (DEP), 187, 194 Devolution, 84, 96, 109, 111, 116, 125

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 D. A. Becker, Neoliberalism and the State of Belonging in South Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39931-3

257

258 

INDEX

Devolution policy, 112 Diederichs, Nico, 137, 140, 141 Dingiswayo, 103 Dunn, John, 105, 106 E Embedded neoliberal state, 10 Extraversion, 8, 50, 51, 53 F Freedom Charter, 151, 167, 169, 182, 185, 187, 192 G Gcaleka Xhosa, 98, 100 Globalization, 7, 12, 25, 36, 37, 43, 226, 228 Good governance, 29, 58, 67, 162, 163, 169, 170, 175, 197, 198, 206, 207, 209, 211, 212, 215 Great Trek, 91, 108 Grey, Earl, 111–113 Grey, Henry George, 83 Grey, Lord, 100, 101 Griquas, 90n3, 95 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), 165, 173, 175–177, 194, 197, 204, 206, 212 H Harare Declaration, 187 House of Phalo, 99 I IMF, 193, 202, 209, 225 Industrial Strategy Project (ISP), 187, 189 Isomorphism, 11, 12, 26

J Jameson Raid, 120 K Kat River Settlement, 113 Khoikhoi, 83, 86–90, 94, 96 Kruger, Paul, 116, 119 Kuyper, Abraham, 136, 137, 140, 141, 145 L Lefebvre, Henri, 5, 24–26, 39, 42, 44, 45, 70, 159, 162, 214 M Macro Economic Research Group (MERG), 187 Malan, D.F., 141–143 Mandela, Nelson, 151, 152, 154, 165, 180, 183, 185, 193, 198, 203, 204, 206, 225 Manuel, Trevor, 178, 194, 204, 206 Marikana, 20 Marikana Massacre, 230 Mbeki, Thabo, 149, 169, 178, 179, 183, 185, 191, 198, 204, 229 Meyer, Piet, 137, 141 Morogoro Conference, 154 N National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC), 168, 170, 176, 189, 191 National Economic Forum (NEF), 168 Nationalisation, 167, 180, 182, 185n13, 186, 198, 199, 203, 205, 224, 227 Nationalise, 185

 INDEX 

National Party (NP), 126, 127, 131, 134–138, 140, 141, 143, 145, 148, 150, 154, 167, 174, 176, 190, 200, 205 Ndlambe, 99 Negritude, 3 Neoliberal, 5, 6, 12–14, 18, 20–22, 25, 27, 28, 46, 47, 51, 53, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 67, 82, 129, 161, 170, 172–174, 187, 189, 192, 206, 211, 226, 228 Neoliberalism, 8, 29, 43, 46, 48, 52, 56, 64, 81, 162, 165, 167, 185, 191, 202, 204, 208, 209, 224, 225 Neoliberal subject, 208, 213–215, 236 Ngqika, 99, 100 Normative Economic Model (NEM), 174 O Orange Free State (OFS), 110, 114, 116, 118, 120, 132 P Poor whites, 130, 132, 137, 141, 142, 146, 163 Poor whites problem, 125, 127 Privatisation, 29, 58, 64, 68, 174, 175, 212 R Reconstruction and Development Programme, 203 Reconstruction and Redevelopment Programme (RDP), 165, 168, 171, 174–176, 179, 186, 189, 197, 201, 204 Reformist, 83, 86, 94, 95, 113 Reformist movements, 84, 86 Reform movement, 111 Responsible government, 84, 117 Rharhabe, 98, 100

259

Rhodes, Cecil, 114, 118, 119 Rivonia Trial, 152 S Scenario planning, 172, 194 Scenarios, 195 Second image reversed (SIR), 4, 25, 35 Settlement, 113 Shaka, 102, 103, 105 Sharpeville Massacre, 152 Sisulu, Walter, 151 South African Communist Party (SACP), 150, 152, 153, 166, 167, 178, 180, 183, 189, 198, 205 Sovereignty, 10, 12, 27, 29, 38, 39, 45, 48, 50, 51, 62 State Capture, 181, 232 State mode of production (SMP), 159 T Tambo, Oliver, 151, 184n11 There is no alternative (TINA), 1–29, 64, 186, 189, 192, 195, 197, 207, 212, 227, 228 Transvaal, 134, 136 Trekboers, 89, 91, 106, 108, 112, 114, 116, 119 U Ubuntu, 164, 213, 215 V Volkskapitalisme, 133 Voortrekkers, 108 W War of Mlanjeni, 100, 101, 113 World Bank, 171, 176, 190, 193, 208, 209, 211

260 

INDEX

X Xhosa, 83, 86, 89, 90, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100, 101, 103–107, 110, 112, 113, 128 Xhosa War of the Axe, 112

Z Zuid Afrikaasche Republic (ZAR/ Transvaal), 110, 114, 116, 118–120 Zulus, 90, 96–98, 102–104, 106, 107, 128 Zuma, Jacob, 178