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).