Adam Habib

South Africa: Anti-Apartheid NGOs in Transition

Under apartheid, there were an ever-increasing number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) concerned about challenging the South African state and furthering a nonracial democratic society. In the 1990s, with the transition to an African National Congress-led democratic government, these organizations underwent profound changes. This article describes the key dynamics of this process, outlines the challenges currently confronting the new NGO sector, and concludes that the prospects for progressive NGO work in dealing with the poor and marginalized are constrained by the prevailing neoliberal economic climate.

Political alliances and parliamentary opposition in post-apartheid South Africa

Democratization, Vol.7, No.1 (Spring 2000), pp.1–00 PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON South Africa’s second democratic election in 1999 sparked a public debate on the necessity for a viable parliamentary opposition. This has recently shifted into higher gear as a result of the decision by the Democratic Party (DP) and New National Party (NNP) to merge prior to the 2004 elections and to campaign under a single banner as the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the local government elections to be held in November 2000. The ANC, in response, has interpreted this as a ganging up of white parties, and has even suggested that perhaps black parties should think of doing the same. This racial polarization of the debate is unfortunate for it prevents a measured consideration of what the nature of opposition should best be for the purpose of consolidating democracy. Yet such a sober analysis is made necessary by a number of developments since the first democratic election in 1994. First, the structure of the political system was dramatically changed in 1996 when parliament, acting as a Constituent Assembly in terms of the ‘interim’ constitution of 1994, resolved not to extend the transitional power-sharing provisions. Those had seen the former ruling party, the National Party (NP) participate in government, alongside the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) as junior partners of the majority African National Congress (ANC) in a Government of National Unity (GNU). While the IFP opted to remain in government and continues to be represented in Mbeki’s post-1999 cabinet, the NP (which subsequently renamed itself the NNP) decided to withdraw and thereby undermine the elite pact that had initially shaped South African democracy. Released from the conditioning effects of these pacting tendencies, opposition parties, and in particular the DP, adopted an increasingly

Parliamentary opposition & democratic consolidation in South Africa

We print below a contribution which argues the need for an effective electoral opposition in South Africa that is class and policy‐based rather than racially conceived. It can be linked both to recent articles on shifts in the ANCs policies and economic strategy (Saul, Gall, and Adams, all in Review 72 of 1997, McDonald in 75, and Padayachee, and Hall, in 76 — both 1998), and to earlier Debates pieces on the relationship between nationalism and democracy in South Africa, notably that by Robert Fine in Review 45/6 (1989).

Labour Relations in Transition: The Rise of Corporatism in South Africa's Automobile Industry

The ownership, management, and supervision of South Africas automobile industry has since its inception been overwhelmingly white. It was also highly oppressive in that the foremen, armed with powers of hiring, promotion, and dismissal, ruled the shopfloor with grim determination. Black workers, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, increasingly confronted these labour relations practices with collective industrial action that sometimes made enterprises ‘ungovernable’. Over the last few years, however, structures and agreements have risen that serve to eliminate confrontations and place profitability at the centre of everyones concerns. This consensual approach to labour relations is informed by corporatism, and involves the participation of unions, employers, as well as other collective bodies, in state institutions.

Election ‘99: was there a ‘coloured’ and ‘Indian’ vote?

Abstract In the Run‐up to the 1999 elections, both academia and the media assumed that there would be a ‘coloured’ and ‘Indian’ vote. This article challenges this assumption through a disaggregation of the election results. It illustrates an electoral heterogeneity within these communities with various classes voting in different ways. Moreover, the article demonstrates that lower income coloured and indian people were more reluctant to vote for the ANC while the more privileged sectors threw in their lot with the ruling party. It concludes that this is largely the result of the simultaneous application of an affirmative action policy with a neo‐liberal economic programme; the results of which enhance the material vulnerability of the poorest sectors of the indian and coloured communities.

From pluralism to corporatism: South Africa's labour relations in transition

ABSTRACT This article focuses on how and why South Africas model of labour relations changed in the course of the countrys transition to democracy. It discusses and categorises the differing models of labour relations in the 1980s and 1990s within the backdrop of a review of some of the theoretical literature on forms of interest representation. Thereafter, it discusses how corporatism, and its institutions and processes, evolved in South Africa. Finally, the article investigates why political elites and social movements advocated and implemented a transition from a pluralist to a corpo‐ratist model of labour relations.

The institutional crisis of the University of the Transkei

The principal thesis of this article is that the University of the Transkeis (UNITRAs) institutional crisis can best be understood as a product of the dialectical interplay of structural and agential variables. The primary structural factor informing this crisis is UNITRAs location in the institutional landscape of higher education - a location that confines it to servicing financially poor and academically disadvantaged students. Agential variables include among others, managerial failures to develop a strategic plan and establish administrative and financial systems of control, and the omissions and commissions of other stakeholders like council, staff, students, the Department of Education, and the Chancellor of the institution. Agency behaviour and decisions are seen to entrench UNITRAs structural location in the landscape of higher education, thereby precipitating its present crisis and institutional malaise.

Projecting Peace in Apartheid South Africa

This article analyzes what it meant to pursue “peace” in apartheid South Africa, and shows that a clear and coherent strategy of achieving “peace with justice” was pursued —in the 1980s—by a network of non-governmental organizations which were seeking to build a non-racial democratic South Africa by building the future in the present. This approach added to the orthodox repertoire of non-cooperation anddefiance, and played a crucial role in making a democratic South Africa possible.