The contributions in this issue mark the tenth anniversary of democracy and political liberation in South Africa. They are a selection of the papers originally presented to a Workshop organised in September 2003 in Johannesburg by the Democracy and Governance section of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. We are grateful to Roger Southall, its director, and to John Daniel for organising the conference, agreeing to a joint publication of papers with ROAPE and co-editing this issue. All the contributors are scholars and activists living and working in South Africa.
In the previous issue of this journal (ROAPE 84), the author argued that international anti‐corruption efforts created conflicts between aid donors and African debtor governments because they attacked the ability of local interests to control and appropriate state resources. The control of corruption is an essential element in the legitimation of liberal democracy and in the promotion of global markets. However, it also threatens the local accumulation of wealth and property (dependent as it is on access to the state) in post‐colonial Africa. This article explores another dimension of this problem, namely the way in which clientelist forms of political mobilisation have promoted corruption and intensified crisis. Clientelism has been a key mechanism through which political interests have built the electoral support necessary to ensure access to the state's resources. In turn, it has shaped a politics of factional competition over power and resources, a politics obsessed with the division of the political spoils. The article argues that this process is not unique to Africa. What is different, however, is that factional conflict and its attendant corruption have had such devastating consequences. This reflects the particular forms which clientelism has taken on the continent. There is a need, it concludes, to find ways to shift African politics towards issues of social justice and government performance and away from a concern with a division of the state's resources.
Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum.With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent will produce eagerness; 50 per cent positive audacity; 100 per cent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent and there is not acrime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave trade have amply proved all that is here stated. T J Dunning, quoted in Karl Marx, Capital I (1976:926, fn.).
This paper explores aspects of the tension between, on the one hand, international efforts by multilateral and bilateral creditors and aid donors to reduce corruption in developing countries and, on the other, the role played by political corruption in promoting local accumulation of wealth, property and capital in Africa. The process of globalisation includes a concerted effort to reduce the costs and increase the predictability of international business activities. The effort has been particularly directed at countries undergoing economic restructuring and democratic change. The weak bargaining position of African states, where debt and underdevelopment make dependence on international creditors and aid donors especially acute, has led to a variety of direct, unsubtle pressures to force these states to undertake 'governance' reforms. While many of these measures address important problems undermining African development, they also misunderstand the nature of corruption as an African problem in two important ways. First, they seek to impose rules and norms of proper public behaviour, developed for and within liberal democracies, in environments where liberal democracy is not established. And, second, they threaten the dependence of the African petty bourgeoisie on access to the state and its resources. In the context of underdevelopment, local accumulation rests heavily on political power and the ability it provides to appropriate public resources. Corruption provides a means of transferring public resources to the new middle class and bourgeois strata which emerged in the post‐colonial order. And underdevelopment ensures that dependence on political power for accumulation is continuous. Africa's development crisis has intensified dependence on the political domain even more and increased conflict as claimants fight over a diminishing pool of resources. Far from arresting the upward spiral of corruption, liberalisation and governance measures imposed by the donors have encouraged the development of new forms of corruption.
In the previous issue of this journal (ROAPE 84), the author argued that international anticorruption efforts created conflicts between aid donors & African debtor governments because they attacked the ability of local interests to control & appropriate state resources. The control of corruption is an essential element in the legitimization of liberal democracy & in the promotion of global markets. However, it also threatens the local accumulation of wealth & property (dependent as it is on access to the state) in postcolonial Africa. This article explores another dimension of this problem, namely the way in which clientelist forms of political mobilization have promoted corruption & intensified crisis. Clientelism has been a key mechanism through which political interests have built the electoral support necessary to ensure access to the state's resources. In turn, it has shaped a politics of factional competition over power & resources, a politics obsessed with the division of the political spoils. The article argues that this process is not unique to Africa. What is different, however, is that factional conflict & its attendant corruption have had such devastating consequences. This reflects the particular forms that clientelism has taken on the continent. There is a need, it concludes, to find ways to shift African politics towards issues of social justice & government performance & away from a concern with a division of the state's resources. 16 References. Adapted from the source document.
Political corruption ‐ the misuse of public office or public responsibility for private (personal or sectional) gain ‐ has been an important theme of the neo‐liberal policies of adjustment, conditionality and democratization in Africa. Having identified the state as 'the problem', and liberalization and democratization as 'the solution' to that problem, it was inevitable that efforts to eradicate and control the widespread corruption characterising post‐colonial politics would be given a high priority by 'the donors'. From the outset, proponents of structural reform linked political corruption to authoritarianism as an explanation of developmental failure, thereby identifying the arguments for democratization and 'good governance' with those for liberalization. This paper explores the way in which corruption has been understood in this 'governance' agenda and the efforts that have been made to control it by improving institutional performance and policing ‐ greater transparency and accountability, more effective oversight and punishment ‐ and by building a political culture intolerant of corruption. In general, however, legal and administrative reform has produced disappointing results and corruption has flourished and even increased. Failure has compounded cynicism and weakened faith in democratic change. Such failures suggest: firstly, that the anti‐corruption strategies pursued by international donors and imposed on African debtors are inadequate because of weaknesses in their conception of the state; secondly, that the reforms introduced through liberalization (a weakening of the state, deregulation and privatization) create new conditions in which corruption can flourish; and, thirdly, that fundamental features of African politics will need to change before such anti‐corruption measures can hope to succeed.
Das Thema Korruption wird seit Beginn der 90er Jahre offen als eines der zentralsten Probleme afrikanischer Volkswirtschaften diskutiert. Die internationale Gebergemeinschaft hat in ihrer Politik gegenüber afrikanischen Staaten eine Doppelstrategie eingenommen, die durch Wirtschaftsliberalisierung und politische Demokratisierung korrupte Praktiken der afrikanischen Eliten bekämpfen will. Der Autor befaßt sich in dem vorliegenden Beitrag mit dem Phänomen der Korruption, weist darauf hin, daß es durchaus kein exklusiv afrikanisches Problem ist und überprüft kritisch die Wirkungen der westlichen Strategien zur Bekämpfung der Korruption in Afrika. In seinem Fazit vertritt er die Auffassung, daß Liberalisierung und Demokratisierung zumindest vorübergehend genau diejenigen staatlichen Institutionen schwächen, die zur Bekämpfung der Korruption notwendig wären. (DÜI-Spl)
Criticizes the anti-corruption strategies pursued by international donors and shows how weakening of the state, deregulation, and privatization create new conditions in which corruption can flourish.
The global proliferation of communal conflicts has its parallel in South Africa where the end of apartheid produced new demands for the recognition of group rights and ethnic interests. These run directly counter to the insistence of the ANC and its allies on a secular democracy based on equality of citizenship. Ethnic conflict, and particularly the violence in KwaZulu/Natal, has led to a renewal of interest in the study of ethnicity, particularly in problems related to its definition and to its nature in the South African context. Such issues raise questions about the role played by ethnicity in contemporary politics and about its place in the process of democratization. Although the renewed interest in ethnicity is timely, questions exist about the extent to which ethnic claims in South Africa have widespread support, or represent evidence of the resurgence of ethnicity rather than the assertiveness of heavily‐armed political machines.
Ausgehend von der Tatsache, daß mit der Abschaffung des Apartheidsystems in Südafrika ethnische Interessen und Konflikte eine neue Rolle eingenommen haben, geht der Autor den Fragen nach, welchen Ursprungs die Ethnizität in Südafrika ist, welche Rolle sie in der gegenwärtigen Politik und im weiteren Demokratisierungsprozeß spielt. Dabei stellt er zunächst zentrale Thesen aus der wissenschaftlichen Literatur über Funktion und Ursprung von Ethnizität vor, um anschließend die Entwicklung von Ethnizität in Südafrika unter der Apartheid, in der marxistischen Theorie, in der Politik von Inkatha und in der Demokratiebewegung zu analysieren. (DÜI-Spl)
Whether ethnic conflicts have widespread support or arise from the assertiveness of heavily-armed political machines; some focus on mobilization of Zulu identity by Inkatha, the major political party of KwaZulu.
