University of Pretoria etd – Van Wyk, B J (2005) THE BALANCE OF POWER AND THE TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH AFRICA by BARRY VAN WYK Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MAGISTER HEREDITATUS CULTURAEQUE SCIENTIAE (HISTORY) at the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies Faculty of Humanities University of Pretoria Pretoria 2005 Supervisor: Dr. JEH Grobler Co-supervisor: Prof. A Mlambo University of Pretoria etd – Van Wyk, B J (2005) CONTENTS Page Introduction 1 PART I: ‘Winning all the battles and still losing the war:’ 16 The passage of the political balance of power in South Africa. Chapter 1: Built not to last: 17 The origins and implementation of the political balance of power in South Africa. Chapter 2: The trusted assessment becomes an assured anomaly: 43 The gradual departure from the political balance of power in South Africa. Chapter 3: Assertively deferring the inexorable: 59 The last irrational cavort of the political balance of power in South Africa. Chapter 4: Corresponding shifts of power: 102 Fomenting linkage between the ANC and the South African government. PART II: ‘The economy of this country always has and will 131 continue to remain central to our struggle for national liberation:’ The induction and perpetuation of the economic balance of power in South Africa. Chapter 5: Resolving political dissonance amid nascent 132 economic collusion: The arduous inauguration of the economic balance of power in South Africa. Conclusion 166 Bibliography 171 Summary 198 Opsomming 199 University of Pretoria etd – Van Wyk, B J (2005) Julle is die oorheersers en julle die vertrappers van ons wat sterk is, maar magteloos verneder; julle maal ons soos koring, julle eet ons soos brood; tog haat ons julle nie: omdat julle mens is en die dood ook deelagtig, is julle ons broers; maar julle is siek aan die lasterlike hoogmoed. Daarom moet julle tot neederigheid genees word, gebreek word deur ons in ons magtige opstand tot eenvoudige vreugdes, tot die heilige lye, tot ‘n nuwe onmiddelikheid van die heldere aarde; maar as julle dood en ‘n vrot plek in ons volk is, dan sal ons ‘n mes vat en vinnig, genadiglik sny deur spiere en vleis tot genesing. - NP van Wyk Louw Black and white make a contrast. Black stands out clearly on white, White is sharp and visible on black. White on white is bland to invisibility, Black on black merges into infinity. Black needs white, white needs black, To write a song, or right a wrong, To make a pointer, or point to our maker. And if they merge into subtle shades of grey? Or find an identity in being differently the same? Then they will have found their place and role in this earth, this life, Which needs both night and day. - DJ Gynes University of Pretoria etd – Van Wyk, B J (2005) INTRODUCTION The greatest danger – and the danger which, to a certain extent, Government did not escape in the past – is to think in ideological instead of realistic and pragmatic terms. This does not mean that all principles and policy standpoints must be thrown overboard. To date many ideological –isms, such as socialism and fascism, have run aground because, like religion, it was regarded as an absolute truth, instead of a political policy which continuously has to keep pace with changing realities.1 - Gerrit Viljoen, Minister of Constitutional Development, 1990. This is a study of the transition to democracy in South Africa. It is not intended to be an exhaustive account of the events that marked the abolition of apartheid and the introduction of democracy in South Africa, but it is rather an attempt – within a broad theoretical framework – to pose and address the seminal historical question of why apartheid ended as it did, and why democracy superseded apartheid in South Africa. Inherent in this decisive endeavour of asking why, however, is also the concomitant historical obligation of asking how. Hence this study seeks to both portray at length and interpret in depth the historical process of South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. Thus, while the prime focus of this study remains an analysis of the actual transition from apartheid to democracy, a comprehensive understanding of this transition, it was thought, requires a thorough understanding of the factors and processes that underpinned the establishing and perpetuation of the system of apartheid in the first place. A methodical and descriptive examination of the entire period of what is historically known as apartheid (thus 1948- c.1990) is therefore also incorporated into the elaboration of the theoretical analysis of the transition to democracy attempted in this study. Since the 1970s there has been a vigorous historiographical debate on the character of the conflict during apartheid and of the subsequent democratic transition in South Africa.2 Two schools of 1 Progress with negotiations (Interview with Gerrit Viljoen), in RSA Policy Review, Volume 3, Number 5, 1990, p. 20. 2 Details for the discussion on the historiography and methodology of the transition are largely taken from A Habib, The transition to democracy in South Africa: developing a dynamic model, in Transformation 27, 1995; DR Howarth, Paradigms gained? A critique of theories and explanations of democratic transition in South Africa, in DR Howarth and AJ Norval (eds.), South Africa in transition. New theoretical perspectives; E Webster and G Adler, Toward a class compromise in South Africa’s ‘Double Transition’: bargained liberalization and the consolidation of democracy, in Politics and Society, Volume 27, Number 3, September 1999; H Marais, South Africa: limits to change. The political economy of South Africa’s transition. 1 University of Pretoria etd – Van Wyk, B J (2005) thought have predominated in this debate. On the one hand, scholars associated with the liberal modernisation school have maintained that the struggle in South Africa was one characterised by conflict between racial or national groups, and that the racial character of class inequality was a consequence of the White monopoly of political power. Scholars associated with the Marxist or neo-Marxist school, on the other hand, have insisted that the conflict in South Africa should be ascribed to differences in class, and that race is merely often the means by which class has expressed itself in South Africa. Conversely, liberal modernisation theorists have maintained that apartheid and capitalism were essentially incompatible since the strictures of apartheid had not taken cognisance of the structural requirements of the economy. Thus historians like Lipton [Capitalism and apartheid: South Africa, 1910-1984 (1986)] and Bromberger and Hughes [Capitalism and underdevelopment in South Africa, in J Butler, R Elphick and D Welsh (eds.), Democratic Liberalism in South Africa: its history and prospect (1987)] have argued that the cheap labour system and the inadequate education meted out to Blacks under apartheid contributed to a crippling skills shortage and an underdeveloped home market. Michael O’Dowd [South Africa in the light of the stages of economic growth, in L Schlemmer and E Webster (eds.), Change, reform and economic growth in South Africa (1978)] also suggested that South Africa’s repressive labour system was typical of advanced capitalist democracies in an earlier stage of their development, and that the rationalising imperatives of capital accumulation would over time erode apartheid. Democracy, O’Dowd concluded, was perfectly compatible with capitalism in South Africa, and its realisation would be a product of evolutionary change. Marxist and neo-Marxist theorists, however, have tended to delineate the relationship between capitalism and apartheid as a functional one. Capitalist industrialisation in South Africa, historians like Legassick [South Africa: forced labour, industrialisation and racial differentiation, in R Harris (ed.), The political economy of South Africa (1975)] and Johnston [Class, race and gold: a study of class relations and racial discrimination in South Africa (1976)] maintained, was dependent on the availability of cheap labour, and thus the state modified the existing reserve system to enable it to support workers’ families as they travelled as migrant workers to service the expanding mining industry of South Africa. Democracy, Legassick [South Africa in crisis: what route to democracy?, in African Affairs, 84 (334)] and other Marxist historians insisted, was incompatible with a market economy in the light of the peculiar path of capitalist development in South Africa. With the advent of the transitional period in South Africa, however, some of the conclusions of both schools were progressively rendered obsolete. Liberal modernisation theorists who foresaw the evolutionary progression of capitalism to a less stratified order found great 2 University of Pretoria etd – Van Wyk, B J (2005) difficulty in explaining the increased conflict engendered by capitalism after 1973, while Marxist scholars who had previously denied the possibilities of democracy emerging within the framework of a market-based economic and social system were hard put to explain the emergence of a post-apartheid, democratically elected government in South Africa. Nevertheless, some Marxist scholars countered by claiming that, while the realisation of democracy was possible, the actual de-racialisation of capitalism in South Africa was improbable. The literature on South Africa’s democratic transition has generally utilised a programmatic or descriptive form. Much of the earlier literature