The collapse of the Lebanese state and its relevance to political developments in South Africa

Abstract

This paper attempts to identify the roots of the Lebanese civil war and to relate these to the changing South African political scene. The causes of the war were both external and internal. The settlement of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon upset the delicate confessional balance between Christians and Moslems while economic imbalances further divided the “haves'’ from the “have nots” and hastened the polarization of forces. The author sees the creation of an artificial Lebanese policy lacking in cohesion and the transposition of Western concepts of government into a traditional society as an underlying cause of the war. Parallels with South Africa, also a compartmentalized society, indicate that the pitfalls that led to the collapse of the Lebanese State are being avoided by the evolution of a loose association or community of states in Southern Africa.