DOCSLIB.ORG

South Africa: Reconstructing an Imperial State

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
South Africa: Reconstructing an Imperial State Adam Ashforth SOUTH AFRICA: RECONSTRUCTING AN IMPERIAL STATE Facing a Hazardous Future I t now seems highly likely that within the Africanist revolutionaries is more or less near future, some say within the coming year, a inevitable, and may even suit the new regime new constitution will be inaugurated in South as a way of demonstrating evenhandedness and Africa. For any new constitution to gain a statesmanship. More problematic for the new semblance of legitimacy either locally or regime, however, will be repressing Zulu internationally, it will have to look something nationalism and the township youth. And more like a liberal democracy with social welfare generally troubling will be the routine coercion ambitions; majority rule within a unified state. brought to bear upon unauthorized "squatters" There should also be some system built into the and illegal immigrants. constitution for preservation of "minority" Zulu nationalism is, and will continue to be, rights, perhaps through geographical represen- a powerful political force in southern Africa. tation of communities, although there will not Most discussions of the extent of support, or be any language in the document that recalls lack of it, for the Inkatha Freedom party of the "group rights" of apartheid. There will Zulu chief Gatsha Buthelezi miss the point that probably also be some system of strengthened in Zululand (and I use the colonial denotation regional government. Basic property rights of advisedly) there are all the seeds of a powerful market capitalism will, in all likelihood, be and divisive nationalism. It may not be a sanctified as well. monolithic political ideology even within the In this same not-too-distant time, shortly rural areas of Natal where the Zulu kingdom after the ceremonies celebrating the inaugural has its heartland, but the Zulu nation is government of the New South Africa, two composed of many thousands of people who events laden with historical irony will occur. A are prepared to die in its name. That this may black South African president, probably Nelson not seem particularly rational to people who do Mandela, and his Minister for Police will order not share such commitments is beside the a predominantly Afrikaner security force to point. suppress radical Afrikaner nationalists. At It is important to note that however much about the same time, or shortly thereafter, the ideas about Zulu identity may be contested, same leadership will order a crackdown on there is a powerful commitment to nationhood militant Africanist groups. among many Zulu-speaking people, which in a Similar circumstances arose in the early fundamental sense is culturally prior to the years of the Union of South Africa, when the political representations of that nation in the Boer leaders called upon their former enemies Inkatha Freedom party. Zulu nationalism does the Imperial British troops to help suppress not reduce to the Inkatha Freedom party, brother Afrikaner strikers and rebels. In the especially now that that group is so compro- 1990s suppression of the diehard Boers and mised by revelations of secret funding by the 370 • DISSENT South Africa South African Defense Force and the role of Inkatha warlords in factional violence. That is to say, Buthelezi and his cronies are in many ways captives of Zulu nationalism as well as creators of it. Any regime that attempts to suppress such nationalism in the name of the inclusivist vision of a South African nation that has animated much of the anti-apartheid struggle risks civil war. Any political move- ment that can mobilize support of Zulu- speakers throughout the country, the largest single ethnic group, is a force to be reckoned with. Currently Inkatha looks like it has failed in this ambition, but the more that group is seen to have disgraced the proud Zulu heritage, the more fertile the field for a resurgent national- ism. Can a Singular Political Community Emerge? Virtually all of the prescriptions for transform- ing social relations produced by the major parties in the south of Africa are framed in terms of a project of nation building. All of the government can justly claim authority unless it proposals that can be entertained for constitu- is based on the will of the people." Many tion making presume the creation of a national radical Africanists have objected to this propo- civil society, even if some people are becoming sition on the grounds that it gives equal validity more pessimistic that such a society can be to whites' claims to the land. But few have legislated into existence. But is it possible to raised serious questions about what "South create within the boundaries of present-day Africa" or "the people" might mean in this South Africa a singular national political context. South Africa is quite simply the community? Can a nation be built, fashioned territory bounded by the borders of the according to the Western European templates republic; the people are those who live there. that overlaid the great nineteenth-century polit- Yet the Republic of South Africa is not simply ical ideologies of nationalism, liberalism, and a sovereign national state with racially restric- socialism? One way to address these questions tive voting laws and a history of institutional- is to examine the geographies of state power ized racism such as characterized the U.S. and capitalism within the region. Another is to South. examine whether there are symbols around which all people living inside the boundaries can build a positive sense of identity as citizens South Africa is an imperial state. By this I do of something called South Africa. not just mean that it is a product of European Fundamental to social transformation in the imperialism, nor just that the Boers have been south of Africa are questions of boundaries: colonialists in Namibia and destabilizing ag- geopolitical, economic, and cultural. The first gressors in the region. Nor am I just restating proposition of the Freedom Charter, the 1955 the now-discredited theory of "internal colo- declaration of nonracial democracy embraced nialism" with its emphases on modes of by the ANC (African National Congress) and production and economic exploitation (al- others, is that "South Africa belongs to all who though I would suggest that the notion of live in it, black and white, and that no colonialism is worth revisiting, especially in SUMMER • 1992 • 371 South Africa regard to the experiences of people subject to ness of the system of domination that was the South African state). And I certainly do not forged into the Union of South Africa at the mean to give credence to the stupid "separate beginning of the twentieth century, the development" fantasies of Afrikaner national- structures of which remain largely in place ism, the doctrines of apartheid, or the repellent today. There is a widespread tendency, too, to lunacies of the white right wing. view the establishment of capitalism in the The South African state is imperial in at region as inevitable and to presume that the least two important senses. First, the geograph- geographies of capital are coincident with the ical core of state power, the populations and geographies of power within the state. In resources that form its primary fiscal base, is retrospect it may appear that white domination not coincident with the range of coercive in a unified national state was inevitable. Yet reach. The majority of people living inside even with the backing of Imperial Britain the the boundaries of the republic (including the early rulers did not have the resources to so-called "Independent National States") are subject all Africans within the region to their superfluous to the requirements of capital and power. The sociospatial distributions that state power. Put crudely, they will never be became fixed at the end of the nineteenth called upon to work for wages or to face century into a framework of colonies, re- death in the name of the state (or offer their serves, and protectorates represented the sons and brothers to do so). Second, the outcome of a long history of wars, alliances, republic claims dominion over territories treaties, deals, and dirty tricks. There was wherein reside people with potentially strong nothing inevitable about the emergence of a claims to separate nationhood. There are national South Africa. numerous groups of people living under the Some African kingdoms were better able to South African state who could exercise a protect their territories during the nineteenth- claim to nationhood in the face of central century conquest of the interior than others. power. At present the Boers and the Zulus are The Basotho under King Moshoeshoe, for the most insistent of these peoples. But it instance, through skillful warfare and diplo- would be very foolish to presume that there macy were able to gain recognition from the are not others who could resurrect memories British and "Protectorate" status. Thus the of precolonial identities, or that such claims tiny mountain country of Lesotho is an are merely a product or legacy of apartheid independent state, even as it is totally that can be easily dismissed. Moreover, the dependent economically upon exporting labor symbols available celebrating a positive sense to South African industry and totally at the of difference in this context are generally mercy of the South African military. Simi- more powerful than those proclaiming an larly, the Swazi kingdom retained its sover- inclusive identity. eignty under British protection while the more Only the African National Congress and its powerful Zulu kingdom was conquered by the Communist Party (SACP) allies have a tradi- imperial armies. Until the 1950s, there was a tion of inclusive nationalism, dating from the presumption amongst the South African ruling 1940s (the SACP was first with its "Native classes that these territorial enclaves of Republic" manifesto).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • South Africa
    CultureGramsTM Republic of World Edition 2014 South Africa provisions station at Cape Town. It supplied ships with fresh BACKGROUND foods as they sailed around the tip of the continent. French Huguenot refugees joined the Dutch colony in 1688 and Land and Climate Germans came later. The colonists became known as Boers Area (sq. mi.): 470,693 (farmers). They clashed at times with indigenous groups but Area (sq. km.): 1,219,090 stayed mainly in coastal areas. Britain gained formal possession of the Cape Colony in 1814. Dissatisfaction with South Africa is about the size of Peru, or slightly larger than British rule led many Boers to migrate to the interior between the U.S. states of Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma 1835 and 1848. Their migration, which they call the Great combined. The country's large interior plateau averages about Trek, led to war with the indigenous Zulu, Xhosas, and other 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) above sea level. Primarily savanna Africans. The Boers won most of the battles and took control and semidesert, the plateau is rimmed by a narrow coastal of large tracts of land. belt, which is subtropical along the east coast and has a After the discovery of gold and diamonds in these Boer Mediterranean climate along the southwestern cape. South territories in the late 19th century, Britain annexed parts of Africa's most important rivers are the Orange, Vaal, and the area. Tension erupted into the First Boer War (1880–81) Limpopo. and the Second Boer War (1899–1902), which is also called Snow is confined to the Drakensberg and Maluti the South African War.
    [Show full text]
  • Board Christopher
    International Symposium on “Old Worlds-New Worlds”: The History of Colonial Cartography 1750-1950 Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 21 to 23 August 2006 Working Group on the History of Colonial Cartography in the 19th and 20 th centuries International Cartographic Association (ICA-ACI) The British War Office 1:250,000 mapping of Cape Colony 1906-1914 Dr Christopher Board formerly Senior Lecturer, London School of Economics [email protected] Abstract After the second Anglo-Boer War when the two coastal colonies were joined by two new ones previously Boer republics the British were keen to remap the entire territory of South Africa. Despite plans drawn up in 1903 only three projects were begun. There are a few references to similar mapping of the Southern Transvaal and a preliminary paper on the Cape Colony Reconnaissance series by Board. The latter series at 1:250,000 covered the north-west region of the Colony, 35 sheets were surveyed and/or compiled but only 33 were published. The Royal Engineer Survey teams responsible for mapping the Cape Colony were withdrawn in November 1911 leaving most of the rest of the Colony to rely on poor maps of varying accuracy and quality dating to the recent war or before it. This paper not only charts the progress of mapping the series known as GSGS1764 from analysing published maps, but draws on collections in London and Cambridge which contain unpublished compilation material and the elusive model sheet for the series. Its discovery and description throw light on the War Office’s requirements for mapping in the dying days of an era of colonial mapping.
    [Show full text]
  • Archival Research in the United States: a South African's Mission1
    Archival Research in the United 1 States: A South African's Mission Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/17/2/135/2743419/aarc_17_2_lx59207w33103450.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 By H. M. MOOLMAN Embassy of the Union of South Africa ITHERTO little-known and often unsuspected American- South African relationships in the spheres of history and H culture are being uncovered by archival research conducted in the United States under a project of the Union of South Africa. This project aims at supplementing the South African Government archives, by microfilm or other copies of material of historic inter- est relating to South Africa known or believed to be available abroad. In 1951 three archivists were appointed for overseas research, their fields including Great Britain and other Common- wealth countries, Europe, and the North American Continent. The fruits of their research will be preserved in South Africa's National Archives for study by future historians and other research work- ers, possibly even from America and other countries. The "New World" was allocated to a South African historian and former Rhodes scholar, Dr. C. F. J. Muller, faculty member of the University of South Africa. With Washington, D. C, as his headquarters, his research field included also Canada, Bermuda, and any other adjoining territory or island whence historical data relating to South Africa might be culled. A big field and a huge task for one man! Dr. Muller, however, rolled up his sleeves in the Nation's capital and delved into the most obvious repositories of historical material on South Africa, the National Archives and the Library of Congress.
    [Show full text]
  • Statute of Westminster, 1931. [22 GEO
    Statute of Westminster, 1931. [22 GEO. 5. CH. 4.] ARRANGEMENT OF SECTIONS. A.D. 1931. Section. 1. Meaning of " Dominion" in this Act. Validity of laws made by Parliament of a Dominion. Power of Parliament of Dominion to legislate extra- territorially. 4. Parliament of United Kingdom not to legislate for Dominion except by consent. 5. Powers of Dominion Parliaments in relation to merchant shipping. 6. Powers of Dominion Parliaments in relation to Courts of Admiralty. 7. Saving for British North America Acts and application of the Act to Canada. 8. Saving for Constitution Acts of Australia and New Zealand. 9. Saving with respect to States of Australia. 10. Certain sections of Act not to apply to Australia, New Zealand or Newfoundland unless adopted. 11. Meaning of " Colony " in future Acts. 12. Short title. i [22 GEO. 5.] Statute of Westminster, 1931. [CH. 4.] CHAPTER 4. An Act to give effect to certain resolutions passed A.D. 1931. by Imperial Conferences held in the years 1926 and 1930. [11th December 1931.] HEREAS the delegates of His Majesty's Govern- W ments in the United Kingdom, the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland, at Imperial Conferences holden at Westminster in the years of our Lord nineteen hundred and twenty-six and nineteen hundred and thirty did concur in making the declarations and resolutions set forth in the Reports of the said Conferences : And whereas it is meet and proper to set out by way of preamble to this
    [Show full text]
  • The Union Parliament, the Supreme Court, and the "Entrenched Clauses" of the South Africa Act
    The Union Parliament, the Supreme Court, and the "Entrenched Clauses" of the South Africa Act EDWARD MCWHINNEY* Yale University The current constitutional crisis in the Union of South Africa, which has seen the judges of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court locked in combat with Prime Minister Malan and his Na- tionalist Party Government, has excited a good deal of attention throughout the world, because of the explosive nature of the legis- lative proposals from which the crisis has arisen. It has also cer- tain special interests for Canadian constitutional lawyers. In the first place, South Africa, from the time that it became one Union in 1909, has had the problem, like Canada, of the com- petition within its boundaries of two distinct, sometimes conflict ing, and from the long-range viewpoint possibly irreconcilable, "living laws", 1 stemming from the two separate European races by whom the government of the country has been exercised. Secondly, South Africa, like Canada in 1867, came into, exist- ence for international purposes as a self-governing Dominion within the then British Empire; and, with the progressive trans- formation of the British Empire into a British Commonwealth of Nations, and finally into an un-prefixed Commonwealth, South African jurisprudence has been troubled by those same problems of constitutional theory - revolving around such concepts as "Dominion status" and the "sovereignty of the Parliament at Westminster"- that have been vexing Canadian constitutional *Edward McWhinney, LL.B. (Sydney), LL.M. (Yale) . Barrister-at-law (New South Wales Bar). Faculty of Law and Graduate Department of Political Science, Yale University.
    [Show full text]
  • South Africa Under Apartheid
    South Africa under Apartheid © the CJPME Foundation, Analysis 2014-004-v1, issued May, 2014 “ ( I)t was a crime to walk through a Whites Only door, a crime to ride a Whites Only bus, a crime to use a Whites Only drinking fountain, a crime to walk on a Whites Only beach, a crime to be on the streets past eleven, a crime not to have a pass book and a crime to have the wrong signature in that book, a crime to be unemployed and a crime to be employed in the wrong place, a crime to live in certain places and a crime to have no place to live. Every week we interviewed old men from the countryside who told us that generation after generation of their family had worked on a scraggly piece of land from which they were now being evicted, … people who had lived in the same house for decades only to find that it was now 1 declared a white area and they had to leave without any recompense at all.”—Nelson Mandela OVERVIEW: Although racism and informal segregation are features of many societies around the world, they reached their zenith with the imposition of formal apartheid in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. The key elements of apartheid are not unique: spatial segregation by race/ethnicity; mechanisms to control the movements of members of the indigenous people now deemed non-citizens of the new nation-state; military occupation and violent suppression of protest; and denial of citizenship and voting rights to the disadvantaged group in order to prevent them from using electoral means to effect change.
    [Show full text]
  • South Africa's Black Homelands: Past Objectives, Present Realities and Future Developments
    SPECIAL STUDY/SPESIALE STUDIE TH£ SOUTH AFRICA'S BLACK HOMELANDS: PAST OBJECTIVES, PRESENT REALITIES AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS Deon Geldenhuys THE SOUTH AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS DIE SUID-AFRIKAANSE INSTITUUT VAN INTERNASIONALE AANGELEENTHEDE Peon Geldenhuys is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg. At the time of writing this paper he was Assistant Director, Research, at the South African Institute of International Affairs. The last section of this paper was published as "South Africa's Black Homelands: Some Alternative Political Scenarios", in Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, April 1981# It should be noted that any opinions expressed in this article are the responsibility of the author and not of the Institute. SOUTH AFRICA? S BLACK HOMELANDS: PAST OBJECTIVES, PRESENT REALITIES AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS Deon Geldenhuys Contents Introduction ... page 1 I From native reserves to independent homelands: legislating for territorial separation 3 II Objectives of the homelands policy, post-1959 6 III Present realities: salient features of the independent and self-governing homelands 24 IV Future Developments 51 Conclusion 78 ISBN: 0-909239-89-4 The South African Institute of International Affairs Jan Smuts House P.O. Box 31596 BRAAMFONTEIN 2017 South Africa August 1981 Price R3-50 South Africa's Black Homelands: Past Objectives, Present Realities and Future Developments Introduction A feature of the South African political scene today is the lack of consensus on a desirable future political dispensation. This is reflected in the intensity of the debate about the Republic's political options. Local opinions cover a wide spectrum, ranging from the white 'right' to the black 'left1, i.e.
    [Show full text]
  • English in South Africa
    English in South Africa Raymond Hickey, English Linguistics University of Duisburg and Essen email: [email protected] 1 Southern African countries 2 Location of the Republic of South Africa 3 Physical geography of South Africa 4 5 Climatic regions of South Africa 6 Early Cartography of Africa 7 Africa (1550) by Dutch cartographer Sebastian Münster 8 Africa (early 17c) by English cartographer John Speed 9 History of South Africa 10 History of South Africa 1)Indigenous peoples of southern Africa inhabit the region. Their descendents are to be found in the Kalahari Basin of Namibia, Botswana and parts of South Africa and speak a variety of languages, between which the genetic relationships are not always easy to determine. 2)In the early centuries CE Bantu peoples begin to move into the area of southern Africa. Their descendents constitute the black population of South Africa. 11 Bantu Migrations from Central to Southern Africa 12 History of South Africa 3)The first European to explore the coast of South Africa was Bartolomeu Dias in 1488. In 1497 the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and opened the Indian Ocean for European colonial trade. 4)In 1654 the first Dutch settled in the Cape region, led by Jan van Riebeeck who established a colony there for the Dutch East Company interested in trading in spices. 13 Jan van Riebeeck(1619-1677) arrives in the Cape in 1652 to found a station for the Dutch East India Company between the Atlantic and Indian oceans. 14 The Dutch East Indies during the early colonial period 15 The southern Dutch dialects spoken by the first settlers developed over time into Cape Dutch Vernacular which was standadised in the early twentieth century and officially called Afrikaans.
    [Show full text]
  • Southern Africa
    24 Southern Africa SHULA MARKS For much of the twentieth century British policies in southern Africa have been dominated by calculations about South Africa. The Union, later Republic, of South Africa has occupied a unique position in British Imperial strategy and imagination. Undergirding this status materially was South Africa's gold, while sustaining it ideologically were the labours of Sir Alfred Milner's 'kindergarten', that group of bright young men from Oxford who were brought to the Transvaal to reshape its institutions after the South African War (1899-1902), and who were themselves reshaped by the experience. As Lionel Curtis, ideologist of Imperial Federation, put it in a letter in 1907: 'South Africa is a microcosm and much that we thought peculiar to it is equally true of the Empire itself... When we have done all we can do and should do for South Africa it may be we shall have the time and training to begin some work of the same kind in respect of Imperial Relations.'1 Interconnected networks of City, Empire, and academe gave South Africa its importance to the advocates of Commonwealth at least until 1945. The role played by the 'kindergarten' in the unification of South Africa provided its members with a model for their wider vision of Imperial Federation, propounded in their Round Table movement and their journal of the same name; the fortunes made by mine magnates such as Rhodes, Beit, and Bailey were devoted to furthering the schemes of the Round Tablers, whether through scholarships, chairs of Imperial history, or the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House; their friendships For the purposes of this chapter, southern Africa has been defined as the Union of South Africa, the High Commission Territories (Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland), Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi.
    [Show full text]
  • Notes and References
    Notes and References Introduction 1. M. Legassick, 'South Africa: Forced Labour, Industrialization and Racial Differentiation', in R. Harris (ed.) The Political Economy of Africa (Massachusetts, 1975), p. 250. 2. H. Wolpe, 'Capitalism and Cheap Labour-Power in South Africa: From Segregation to Apartheid', in Economy and Society, I, 4, 1972. 3. M. Lacey, Working for Boroko. The Origins of a Coercive Labour System in South Africa (Johannesburg, 1981). 4. S. Marks, The Ambiguities of Dependencein South Africa. Class, Nationalism. and the State in Twentieth-Century Natal (Baltimore and Johannesburg, 1986), p. 38. 5. M. Legassick, 'The Making of South African "Native Policy", 1903-1923: The Origins of "Segregation" , (seminar paper, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London University, 1973), p. 1. 6. It should be noted that to say that segregation provided the political and social conditions for the long-term reproduction of capitalism as a system begs several questions. How long is the long-term? Is capitalism a single system, or does it make more sense to speak of capitalism as embracing varying systems of accumulation, all of which involve different degrees of exploitation? 7. S. Marks, 'Natal, the Zulu Royal Family and the Ideology of Segre­ gation' , in Journal of Southern African Studies (Henceforth JSAS), IV, 2, 1978, 177. 8. J. W. Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (Cambridge, 1982), p.3. 9. P. B. Rich, White Power and the Liberal Conscience. Racial Segregation and South African Liberalism 1921--60 (Johannesburg and Manchester, 1984). 10. G. H. Nicholls, South Africa in My Time (London, 1961), p.
    [Show full text]
  • The South African War As Humanitarian Crisis
    International Review of the Red Cross (2015), 97 (900), 999–1028. The evolution of warfare doi:10.1017/S1816383116000394 The South African War as humanitarian crisis Elizabeth van Heyningen Dr Elizabeth van Heyningen is an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. Abstract Although the South African War was a colonial war, it aroused great interest abroad as a test of international morality. Both the Boer republics were signatories to the Geneva Convention of 1864, as was Britain, but the resources of these small countries were limited, for their populations were small and, before the discovery of gold in 1884, government revenues were trifling. It was some time before they could put even the most rudimentary organization in place. In Europe, public support from pro-Boers enabled National Red Cross Societies from such countries as the Netherlands, France, Germany, Russia and Belgium to send ambulances and medical aid to the Boers. The British military spurned such aid, but the tide of public opinion and the hospitals that the aid provided laid the foundations for similar voluntary aid in the First World War. Until the fall of Pretoria in June 1900, the war had taken the conventional course of pitched battles and sieges. Although the capitals of both the Boer republics had fallen to the British by June 1900, the Boer leaders decided to continue the conflict. The Boer military system, based on locally recruited, compulsory commando service, was ideally suited to guerrilla warfare, and it was another two years before the Boers finally surrendered.
    [Show full text]
  • South Africa's Experience of Regional Currency Areas and the Use Of
    South Africa’s experience of regional currency areas and the use of foreign currencies Lambertus van Zyl1 1. Introduction This paper focuses almost exclusively on South Africa’s current and potential experience of regional currency areas in the Common Monetary Area (CMA) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). There is no evidence that foreign currency is being used in any meaningful way inside South Africa. Thus no official and very little unofficial dollarisation has taken place in South Africa notwithstanding significant exchange control liberalisation in recent years. On the contrary, the South African rand is used extensively as legal tender in other countries comprising the CMA while anecdotal evidence points to the rand being accepted as payment in some other countries in SADC. However, no statistics are available to corroborate the extent to which the rand is used outside the CMA. There are various regional integration initiatives involving the southern African region, each with its own programme of action. South Africa is not directly involved in all these initiatives. South Africa, for instance, is not a member of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa or the Cross-border Initiative. However, as their objectives are focused on regional economic integration, they overlap with the objectives of regional initiatives to which South Africa actively subscribes, such as the recent decision by African heads of state on the creation of an African Union and a common monetary bloc as well as the Southern African Customs Union. Of most relevance to this paper, however, is South Africa’s membership of the CMA with Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia.
    [Show full text]