Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

T/7e Dividect African S
id Hernson
annihilation of the tribal polity which was the first impulse in the colo
administrator's mind. Fear of the complete proletarianisation of African labourers
crucial to the change in policy.
This approach provided a clear link between economy and society bu
innocent of political elaboration, particularly in Legassick's (1974; 1997) work. TI
support for attelnpts to reconstruct the reserves, the encouragement of a traditional pet
bourgeoisie, the coercive nature of migrant labour whereby African migrants w
forced to return and renew links with the rural area, all show a logical connect
between the cheap labour strategy and the political superstructure. Later, of course,
cheap labour theory has been contested for relying on a functional and undynainic
of the relations between the political and the economic. It is well known that in
1960s and beyond, the dysfunctional side of political oppression became cle
apparent and apartheid became in living reality a regime of crisis. The separ
between politics and economics became a gulf, and intensified with the economic cr
endemic to late apartheid. But none of this amou~lts to grounds for rejecting
essential truths of the cheap labour argument in the foundations of segregation
apartheid.
In a sense capitalism appeared in South Africa in a weak fonn, able only
provide for the capitalist class itself, a white middle class and a privileged
class, while imparting misery and degradation to the majority. Its modernising mi
was so~nehow blunted, its destructive edge against traditionalism held back.
An electoral reform that does not affect the appointment of the Nativc
very opposite direction is undertaken in policy even though the extension Authority and its chiefs-which leaves rural areas out of consideration as
relations worked inexorably, if incompletely, to dissolve prior modes of produ so many protectorates-is precisely about the reemergence of a
More than any other issue, the land question shaped the character of colonial s
decentralized despotism! (289).
The market in land was incomplete and would remain incomplete, and the sustainin
patriarchal relations on communal land became the watchword of the great and weal
victor in electoral politics feels entitled to the right to rule over subjects through
Capitalism came late and, unlike the situation in post-war South Korea, Taiwan, ve Authorities, to appoint chiefs, etc.: 'the issue in a civil society-centred contest
Japan, the conquerors turned their swords toward the entrenchment of the old orde to be who will be master of all tribes' (289). The ethnicity OF the president is
these countries the essential hold ofold authority on the land was decisively broken 1 as the rural is governed through patrimonial relationships, and rural
in Africa the process appears essentially different as the old order is allowed to retai
allocation of land, by and large, and there is no general market in land. In South A
the most productive and extensive tracts of land were appropriated by the whi
the chiefs were reinforced in their power over the scraps which remained. Some ofth
were just sufficient to sustain, not a tribal mode of production, hut a modicu
for traditional family life and custon~. This was enough to disguise the i
absurdity of the Bantustans fro~n the rural poor. As could be anticipated, the
migrant held desperately on tp these plots as a relatively cheap family home.
econo~nic and the political intertwine, separate out, and recombine in different str
to reveal the essential relations of one of the most perverse and destructive so
our time. The weakness of Citizen nndSllbject is that the mode of political dominatio
foregrounded at the expense of these other factors. This said, one of the merits
Marndani's book is its perception of post-colonial political developme~lt and
complexity ofthe broad processes ofdemocratisation.