Is South Africa's constitutional democracy being consolidated or eroded?

Abstract

This article examines whether, as some claim, post-apartheid South Africa's constitutional democracy is being eroded by, in particular, the alleged ‘reracialisation’ of policy, replacing the previous institutionalised discrimination against blacks with a black economic empowerment policy that favours the African majority over the white, coloured and Indian minorities. It also discusses whether the work of institutionalists such as North, Wallis and Weingast provides a useful theoretical framework for analysing this and other aspects of South Africa's evolution since Union in 1910, when used as a complement to, rather than replacement of, the more usual race/class analyses.

Keywords:

• South Africa
• Black Economic Empowerment
• constitutional democracy
• Social Orders Framework
• social movements
• race and class
• capitalism and apartheid
• liberalism

Note on contributor

Merle Lipton is Visiting Research Fellow at King's College, London and serves on the Advisory Council of the Rising Powers in International Development Project at Institute of Development Studies, Susssex University. Her publications include Capitalism & Apartheid: South Africa 1910–86 (1986); Liberals, Marxists and Nationalists: Competing Interpretations of South African History (2008); and (co-edited with Charles Simkins) State & Market in Post-Apartheid South Africa (1993).

Acknowledgements

My thanks for the useful, constructive comments of the anonymous peer reviewers, for Martha Bridgman's rigorous, supportive editing, and for a stimulating discussion with Jonny Steinberg's seminar at Oxford University's Centre for African Studies.

Notes

1. Terminology: among continuities between apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa is the retention of racial categories (Africans, whites, coloureds, Indians), which have legal implications, for official measures of poverty and the affirmative action policy. The term ‘blacks’ sometimes refers to all ‘non-whites’, sometimes only to Africans. Here it is mostly used in the former sense.

2. North D, JJ Wallis & BR Weingast, Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Race/class analyses of South Africa include: Adam H & H Giliomee, Ethnic Power Mobilized. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979; Lipton M, Capitalism and Apartheid: South Africa, 1910–86. Aldershot: Gower, 1986; Bromberger N & K Hughes, ‘Capitalism and underdevelopment in South Africa’, in Butler J (ed.), Democratic Liberalism in South Africa. Cape Town: David Philip, 1987; O'Meara D, Volkskapitalisme, Johannesburg: Raven, 1983; Marais H, South Africa: Limits to Change, Cape Town: Zed, 1998; Magubane B, Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1979; Gelb S, South Africa's Economic Crisis, Cape Town: David Philip, 1991; Glaser D, Politics and Society in South Africa. London: Sage, 2001; Seekings J & N Nattrass, Class, Race and Inequality in South Africa. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005; Southall R, ‘Political change and the black middle class in South Africa’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 38, 3, 2004.

3. Most states are ‘limited’. In fragile states the dominant coalition does not have a monopoly of violence and there is no rule of law. Basic states possess a monopoly of violence and some stable state organisations. Mature states possess a monopoly of violence, functioning state and non-state organisations, an evolving body of public law and a bureaucracy that can enforce it.

4. North D, JJ Wallis & BR Weingast, Violence and Social Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 143.

5. North D, JJ Wallis & BR Weingast, Violence and Social Order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 47.

6. Among those who confirm deep divisions among blacks, including Africans, is Mandela N, Long Walk to Freedom. London: Abacus, 1994, chaps 6 and 10. See also Thabo Mbeki's warning against ‘a retreat to tribalism’, Business Day, 16 January 2014.

7. Cited in Rajak H, ‘A virile living system of law: An exploration of South Africa's legal system’, Focus, January 2011. See also Chanock M, Making of South African Legal Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

8. This analysis of the apartheid era is based on Lipton M, Capitalism and Apartheid: South Africa, 1910–86. Aldershot: Gower, 1986. On the job bar see pp. 112–15 and 140–43. See also Lipton M, Liberals, Marxists and Nationalists: Competing Interpretations of South African History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 140–43.

9. Shaxson N, ‘Oil, corruption and the resource curse’, International Affairs, 8, 6, 2013.

10. As happened in the 1924 and 1948 elections.

11. Lipton M, Capitalism and Apartheid: South Africa, 1910–86. Aldershot: Gower, 1986, pp. 20–22, 150, 193–4, 272–81.

12. M Lipton, Capitalism and Apartheid: South Africa. 1986, pp. 283–4.

13. Afrikaner dissidents included Bram Fischer, Beyers Naude and van Zyl Slabbert. The English were largely excluded from senior state jobs. White liberals and communists were completely excluded: some were imprisoned or exiled (Harold Wolpe, Hugh Lewin, Randolph Vigne, Peter Brown, the Hain family) some murdered (Ruth First, Neil Aggett, John Harris).

14. Cited by Jeremy Gauntlett in his analysis of a recent similar attempt by the ANC, ‘Minister moves to dissolve South African Bar’, www.freedomunderlaw.org/?d/_id=53, 12 June 2013 (accessed 21 February 2014).

15. Mandela N, Long Walk to Freedom. London: Abacus, 1994, pp. 308–9.

16. Police numbers rose from 11,655 in 1940 to 35,635 in 1975, of whom almost 50% were black. Army numbers rose from 5322 in 1940 to 30,719 in 1975, when it became mainly engaged outside South Africa. Lipton M, Liberals, Marxists and Nationalists: Competing Interpretations of South African History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 197.

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18. Mandela N, Long Walk to Freedom. London: Abacus, 1994, p. 401, in jail on Robben Island, favoured wary use of these institutions.

19. The sequencing of the reforms, with the initial economic reforms preceding the political, is set out in Lipton M, Capitalism and Apartheid: South Africa, 1910–86. Aldershot: Gower, 1986, pp. 56–71 and Lipton M, Liberals, Marxists and Nationalists: Competing Interpretations of South African History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 47–50.

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