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Minority Monopoly in Transition: Recent Policy Shifts of the South African State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Heribert Adam
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Does Zimbabwe provide the model for the likely transformation of white minority rule in the industrial heart of Southern Africa? With their morale boosted, the expectations of many black South Africans have been raised. Likewise many outside commentators predict the inevitable downfall of the white bastion along similar lines of escalating military confrontation after the last buffer state but Namibia has gone. Even Nationalist newspapers draw the lessons by admonishing the Government to pay attention to the ‘real leaders’ of the subordinates instead of unrepresentative collaborators. The Afrikaner political leadership uses the Rhodesian example to drum home its message of ‘adapt or die’ to a bewildered electorate.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , December 1980 , pp. 611 - 626
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

page 612 note 1 For typical recent U.S. views, see Bissell, Richard E. and Crocker, Chester A. (eds.), South Africa into the 1980s (Boulder, 1979)Google Scholar, and Rotberg, Robert I., Suffer the Future: policy choices in Southern Africa (Cambridge, Mass., 1980).Google Scholar

page 612 note 2 Beeld (Johannesburg), 20 02 1980.Google Scholar

page 612 note 3 Financial Mail (Johannesburg), 11 01 1980.Google Scholar

page 612 note 4 Die Vaderland (Johannesburg), 21 02 1980.Google Scholar

page 613 note 1 Adam, Heribert, Modernizing Racial Domination: South Africa's political dynamics (Berkeley, 1971),Google Scholar passim.

page 614 note 1 See Adam, Heribert and Giliomee, Hermann, Ethnic Power Mobilized: can South Africa change? (New Haven, 1979).Google Scholar

page 614 note 1 See O'Meara, Dan, ‘White Trade Unionism, Political Power and Afrikaner Nationalism’, in South African Labour Bulletin (Durban), 1, 10, 1975, pp. 31–51Google Scholar, and ‘The Afrikaner Broederbond, 1927–1948: class vanguard of Afrikaner nationalism’, in Journal of Southern African Studies (London), 3, 2, 1977, pp. 156–86Google Scholar, and also Greenberg, Stanley, Race and State in Capitalist Development (New Haven, 1980).Google Scholar

page 615 note 1 Bonacich, Edna, ‘The Political Implications of a Split Labour Market Analysis of South African Race Relations’, in van den Berghe, Pierre L. (ed.), The Liberal Dilemma in South Africa (London, 1979), pp. 106–16.Google Scholar

page 616 note 1 Moodie, T. Dunbar, The Rise of Afrikanerdom (Berkeley, 1975).Google Scholar

page 616 note 2 Moore, Barrington, Injustice: the social bases of obedience and revolt (White Plains, N.Y., 1978), p. 488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 616 note 3 Hermann Giliomee, in Adam and Giliomee, op. cit. ch. 6.

page 617 note 1 Financial Mail, 29 February 1980.

page 617 note 2 Toit, André du, ‘Emerging Strategies for Political Control’, in Price, Robert M. and Rosberg, Carl G. (eds.), The Apartheid Regime: political power and racial domination (Berkeley, 1980), p. 2.Google Scholar

page 617 note 3 The new alliance was symbolically scaled in a day-long conference of South Africa's leading 250 capitalist representatives, including Harry Oppenheimer, in November 1979. The Financial Mail, 30 November 1979, reports about the ‘historic’ meeting at the Carleton Hotel that English ‘SA’s business leaders, excluded for at least three decades from any real participation in power politics, were basking in the aftermath of Botha's skillful strokes’.

Oppenheimer who controls a $15,000 million multinational empire has become an explicit supporter of Botha's, P. W. ‘constellation’ of Southern African states. For an informative description of Oppenheimer's empire, see Business Week (New York), 17 03 1980.Google Scholar

page 618 note 1 Rapport (Johannesburg), 30 12 1979.Google Scholar

page 618 note 2 The South African Labour Bulletin, 5, 2, August 1979, ‘Focus on Wiehan’, and 5, 4, November 1979, ‘Focus on Riekert’, contains informative assessments of the implications of the two Commissions by a variety of authors.

page 619 note 1 According to the Minister of Mines, F. W, de Klerk, the white Mine Workers Union can contribute to terrorism by refusing to abandon job reservation for its members, and the Afrikaner press often draws a distinct line between state and union interests. For example, Beeld, 31 January 1980: ‘A trade union is entitled to negotiate the best conditions for its members. It is even entitled to differ from the Government on how the white worker's position can best be secured. But when a trade union tries to prevent black people from being trained in their own country, as is the case with the Mine Workers Union attitude towards Bophuthatswana, then it is abandoning the labour field and entering the grey area of political threats. In such an event it should not complain if it encounters strong political reactions.’

page 619 note 2 Rapport, 3 February 1980.

page 620 note 1 The relaxation of job reservations has sparked new moves for non-racial unions, thereby intensifying the conflict within the white union movement. Thus, the Underground Officials' Association (a ‘closed shop’ of white surveyors, samplers, and ventilation administrators in the mines) decided to agree to the abolition of the racial-exclusion clause, provided – in the words of its General Secretary – the Association was given the right to organise blacks in order to ensure ‘that they are not exploited and that our members are not undercut’; Financial Mail, 9 November 1979, p. 589. Such far-sightedness, however, is also opposed by rival white unions – e.g. the Mine Workers Union led by Arie Paulus – who hope to swell their ranks by disgruntled members from newly integrated unions. They in turn prevent this exodus by insisting on strict ‘closed shop’ clauses.

page 620 note 2 On this concept, see the excellent discussion of the relevant social science literature by Skocpol, Thea, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Introduction.

page 620 note 3 The Standard Bank Review (Johannesburg, 1980),Google Scholar reports a 6 per cent drop in black unemployment during 1979 compared with 1978. The Economist (London), 8 03 1980,Google Scholar indicates that ‘fixed investment in the Republic may rise by 5% in real terms this year, after dropping steadily since 1975.’ Most of the new projects fall into mining, energy, and importreplacement machinery, due to local content rules. All this makes South Africa nearly self-sufficient, save for a few strategic products.

page 621 note 1 du Toit, loc. cit., p. 7.

page 621 note 2 See Lawrence Schlemmer, ‘The Stirring Giant: observations on the Inkatha and other black political movements in South Africa’, in Price and Rosberg (eds.), op. cit. pp. 99–126.

page 621 note 3 Pretoria did so with the Coloured Representative Council which constantly embarrassed the Government by drawing attention to its sham.

page 621 note 4 Wilson, F., ‘The Political Implications for Blacks of Economic Changes Now Taking Place in South Africa’, in Thompson, Leonard and Butler, Jeffrey (eds.), Change in Contemporary South Africa (Berkeley, 1975), pp. 168–200.Google Scholar

page 622 note 1 Buthelezi, Gatsha, ‘The Loneliness…’ in South African Outlook (Cape Town),09 1979, pp. 134–8.Google Scholar

page 622 note 2 When the police arrested Thozamile Botha, the strike organiser at the Ford plant in Port Elizabeth, at least one Nationalist newspaper cautioned that this action could be counter-productive: ‘We do not like detentions unless they are essential for the investigation of an actual offence. The authorities have too wide a discretionary power. By and large, we must learn to live together, even if the one sometimes does not find the other's politics to his liking. To detain people merely in order to enable a situation, or a person to “cool down”, seldom works in any event.’ Beeld, 14 January 1980.

page 623 note 1 Die Transvaler (Johannesburg), 6 June 1980.

page 623 note 2 Financial Mail, 18 January 1980.

page 623 note 3 South African Institute of Race Relations, Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, 1979 (Johannesburg, 1980), pp. 272–3.Google Scholar

page 624 note 1 It should he noted that all data on compliance with the various employment codes are based on more-or-less reluctant company reports, usually not made public in the case of European subsidiaries. Apart from the reliability of a picture compiled by managers who are often remote from the shopfloor, the credibility of these reports remains suspect as long as no independent body monitors the progress. It confirms the critics who suggest that the codes were instituted mainly to ward off demands for disinvestment, rather than to achieve genuine employment integration.

page 624 note 2 Sunday Times (Johannesburg), 23 03 1980.Google Scholar

page 624 note 3 Cf. Hanf, Theodor et al. Südafrika: Friedlicher Wandel? (Munich, 1978).Google Scholar

page 624 note 4 Simpson, J. D., ‘Preliminary Report on Research into Attitudes of Literate Urbanised Blacks towards Socio-Economic-Political Systems’, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, 1979.Google Scholar

page 625 note 1 Die Transvaler, 6 November 1979.

page 625 note 2 Wilson, William J., The Declining Significance of Race (Chicago, 1978).Google Scholar