Shane Moran - Alternation Journal
Shane Moran - Alternation Journal
Shane Moran - Alternation Journal
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ange of retrieval of the literature of colonialism. The argument irk the<br />
of the reviewer is convincing, but it has been made before in less expansive histor<br />
albeit without the detailed knowledge, keen logic and self-confidence of the aut<br />
What is strikingly original and provocative are the next steps of the argument.<br />
the cheap labour thesis<br />
Mamdani argues that his locus<br />
nzodc t.fcrccumz,lntion. Working<br />
conclusion that apartheid is uniquely African rather than the political product oft<br />
out of the operation ofthe cheap labour systeln. In his words:<br />
usually ullderstood as institutionalized racial domination. apartlieid was<br />
actually an attempt to soften racial antagonism by mediating and thereby<br />
refracting tile impact of racial domination Lhrough a rall&c of Native<br />
A~~thoritics (27).<br />
Apartheid kactured (he ranks of the ruled along a double divide, etllllic on the one ha<br />
rural-urban on the other:<br />
M~~~ tlran a response to 111c qucslion of securing cheap labor power in a<br />
srmi-illdustrial setting, 1 have argued that apartlieid needs to be llndcrstood<br />
as the ouicolne of an llr?e~rfing q~~estji~r order- in a setting boll1 semiintlustrial<br />
and colonial. Without denying illc importance of the selnlilldustl-ial<br />
context. 1 \lave illulniriated the ~igniticancc of tilc colonial<br />
colltest in understartding apartheid as aform of the state (295: c.a.).<br />
The Divided African S vicl Fle~izson<br />
This is a substantial clailn and Marndani has considerable illtellectual power to bat<br />
~t level here is a startling new idea, at anotherwe have to ask o~lrselveswhetherit<br />
not a re-interpret<br />
interpretation of a<br />
econoanic logic has a certain<br />
the s~lperstruct~lre for an expla<br />
me to be an inversion ofthe 1<br />
It is ulldeniab)e tha<br />
featul-es of segregation and a<br />
property ofwhites, ofblacks<br />
urban areas, etc.-expandin<br />
I 870~ in Natal (HemSon 1980). The apparatus of control was ready made,<br />
what powered tile developme:lt of pre-apartheid institutions further along these li<br />
Lv\ias an ecollornic impulse, a Inode of accumrrlation that interlocked with a inode<br />
domjllation, he point wllicli needs to be rnade here is that while the bif~~rcated st<br />
-- -<br />
sucl, as~)aviil wcls1,(1971) inllisstudy ofnativeafhirsi~iNatal: and DavidKaplall(197<br />
244 245<br />
ered defence is in order. The spectacular theoretical advances of the 1970s have<br />
, and the co~nplex reinterpretations of its essential tenets which have followed