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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Evolution and Fall of the South African Apartheid State: A Political Economy Perspective |
Author: | Luiz, John M. |
Year: | 1998 |
Periodical: | Ufahamu |
Volume: | 26 |
Issue: | 2-3 |
Pages: | 49-72 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | apartheid political economy Politics and Government Ethnic and Race Relations nationalism Economics and Trade |
Abstract: | This article reviews the history of State intervention in South Africa's political economy and its role in promoting industrialization. It traces the political and economic evolution of the apartheid State from 1910 to 1970. It appraises the erosion of the apartheid State from the 1970s onwards as a result of the growing costs of apartheid and the increasing challenges it faced as South African society became increasingly mobilized, evidenced in the rise of tax revolts, paramilitary forces, people's courts and the crime rate, and the collapse of black local authorities. It evaluates the strength of the apartheid State and argues that it represented a strong State within a weak one. Lacking legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the population, the State in effect had a schizoid existence, possessing pockets of extraordinary strength but with its power being narrowly diffused. The result was the slow but steady collapse of the State that led to the negotiation of a new constitutional settlement from a position of weakness. Bibliogr., notes, sum. |