by Michael Neocosmos, 1994 (Published in Politea in 1996)
The 1980s in South Africa witnessed an explosion of
popular-democratic struggles championed by a host of autonomous civil
society organisations whose activities became central in the campaign
against the apartheid system and the quest for the creation of a
democratic state. By the 1990s, however, especially in the lead up to
and after the election of the ANC into office, South African politics
appears increasingly to be subjected to the same broad logic of statism
that was experienced in other parts of Africa at the dawn of
independence from colonial rule. At the heart of this statism is the
defeat of the popular movements which, in South Africa, as in the rest
of Africa, were so vital in the struggle for political change, being the
oppositional forces with the popular democratic tradition and agenda
that offered the best chance for the emergence of a democratic state.
Increasingly depoliticised, the role of the popular movements has been
emptied of the vitality that can ensure that `the people' are able to
generate and make autonomous democratic prescriptions on the state. The
politicisation of civil society and the democratisation of the state are
projects in the South African transition which will have to be revived
if the authoritarianism that inheres in statism is to be defeated. This
is the challenge before the democratic forces of opposition and change
in contemporary South Africa.
