Mandela and the last Afrikaner leaders : a shift in power relations (original) (raw)

Trajectories of Power Relations in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Since the official political power shift in 1994, the interaction of power among various groups in South Africa has become an important subject of discussion among academics and researchers. There are four major arguments around power dynamics in South Africa. First, power has officially shifted from whites to blacks, although it is not clear how this in practice has changed power relations. Second, different interest groups in South Africa among the anti-apartheid 'progressives' lacked a clear ideological vision of how to sustain their influence over the policy-making process. Third, due to a lack of synergy of ideological views amongst the progressive constituency, the corporate sector controlling economic power took a controlling influence over the policy-making processes. Finally, the African National Congress (ANC) alliance policy-making process shifted from a consultative to an elitist pattern as a result of the new centralised leadership of Thabo Mbeki. This paper critically assesses these four arguments and attempts to explain the complexity of the power dynamics that arose in post-apartheid South Africa. To do so it traces the evolution of the positions of different organisations within the anti-apartheid coalition from the outset of their rise to power and discusses the different groups' interests and their exertion of power and influence. It looks into the interaction between elites and the implications for socio-economic development in South Africa. This discussion takes place in the context of a four-fold periodisation of post-apartheid South Africa. To realise this, this paper draws from policy documents, relevant literature, and in-depth interviews conducted during six months of research fieldwork carried out in 2007.

South African Apartheid: A Struggle for New Order

This paper deconstructs the various conflicts that arose as a result of the democratic transition and regime change in South Africa. To explain the spawn of conflicts that evolved as a direct result President F.W. De Klerks decision to "unban" the anti-apartheid political organizations like the African National Congress (ANC), free Nelson Mandela, and abolish apartheid; I will use four (4) approaches: Conflict Spiral Model, Contender-Defender Model, Power Imbalance, and Social Identity. Each approach will identify the main components of the conflict and a comparative analysis will provide a comprehensive understanding of South Africa's paradigm shift.

Engel/Pallottii (eds.) 2016. South Africa after Apartheid

South Africa after Apartheid Policies and Challenges of the Democratic Transition, 2016

South Africa is a work in progress, in which at every step the contradictions between promises and expectations must be negotiated in a context of fractures and hierarchies inherited by the legacy of apartheid and influenced heavily by dominant international blueprints. The essays proposed here succeed to make connections between scholarly research and political and social action, between theory and practice. To show how state decision-making is influenced, and in what measure determined, by the nature and internal social changes and by government staying in power in regional and international relations. Connections that raise further relevant questions to stimulate the critique of the democratic process and on how these relations of power may influence, stall or even drive back, the path of autonomous emancipation, as it was and is embedded in the history of suffering and sacrifice of the population.