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An Economic Model of the Apartheid State
Abstract
Rather than a rigid racial ideology, it is argued that South African apartheid was a pragmatic response of a white oligarchy to changing economic and political constraints. Consequently, the degree to which apartheid principles were applied and enforced by the South African state varied over time. A public choice model is developed to explain apartheid as endogenous policy, the parameters of which are determined by political support-maximizing politicians. The model suggests that the enforcement of apartheid was responsive to changes in such exogenous variables as defence costs, the gold price and the reservation wage of black unskilled labour. Predictions of the model hold implications for the causes of the democratic transition of the 1990s, including the role played by international sanctions.
Riffing on J.M. Coetzee’s 1991 essay The Mind of Apartheid, the public persona of boeremusiek celebrity Nico Carstens, and his much-publicized disavowal of boeremusiek, is the focus of this chapter. I consider the boeremusiek of the 1950s as part of apartheid’s aesthetics of perversity by analyzing the presence of the racialized other in Carstens’s music, and how the label “boeremusiek” and Carstens’s public persona functioned as fetishes for containing racialized values that were disavowed from within dominant definitions of Afrikaner whiteness. By theorizing Carstens’s boeremusiek (and the astounding amount of money he earned and subsequently squandered) around Georges Bataille’s notion of “expenditure,” I speculate on how boeremusiek functioned as excess within the “general economy” of apartheid. As fetishes tend to do, the disavowed heterogeneity of boeremusiek invigorated rather than undermined racial thinking in the early apartheid period.
Le roman africain donne à lire et expérimenter différents états de déliaison (écologique, sociale, politique) qui fracturent notre monde. Ces ruptures affectent non seulement les relations inter-personnelles, les spiritualités, les systèmes éthiques, mais aussi le lien à l’environnement. En prenant pour corpus un ensemble d’œuvres majoritairement issues d'Afrique subsaharienne, cette thèse envisage ces expériences de déliaison comme des symptômes de maux plus profonds que les institutions chargées de la gouvernance, qu’il s’agisse des États ou des instances internationales, savent nommer et quantifier, mais peinent à combattre. Notre hypothèse est que la littérature, par le partage d’expérience qu’elle autorise, est susceptible de recréer du lien là où il a été brisé. À l'échelle de la fiction, ses stratégies narratives et stylistiques mettent en scène des manières de faire du lien au-delà de l’humain. Cette communauté élargie que créent les romans est la pierre angulaire d’une gouvernance écologique fondée sur la prise en compte de toutes les voix et la reconnaissance du rôle joué par l’Histoire et la mémoire. La littérature joue alors un rôle éthique et politique, en invitant les lecteurs et lectrices à participer à ce mouvement de mise en commun d’un sens partagé à travers une nouvelle relationalité.
Despite the promise and optimism surrounding the post-apartheid transition, South African society continues to be highly racialised in its discourses, identities and practices, even within the very strategies that aim to change power relations and heal racialised divisions. Renowned for its brutal past practices, the wine industry in South Africa has long been associated with white power and black exploitation, and remains dogged by continuing allegations of poor working conditions and labour abuses.
Through in-depth, longitudinal fieldwork, this book considers how different ethics interact and draws attention to the positive changes and continuing development challenges faced in South Africa. Situating practice at its heart, it brings a novel, everyday and micro-scale dimension to understandings of empowerment in the post-apartheid South African wine industry. It develops a critical analysis of the interplay between practice, as scaled and inherently spatial, and discourse to conceptualise how 'big' concepts such as empowerment are articulated, materialised and experienced at the ground level. Through this, it gives voices to the marginalised who experience 'empowerment', setting these within the context of their relations with the other stakeholders who shape this engagement. This book contributes to broader critical social science debates around ethical development and questions of power and empowerment in development interventions. This is critical to reducing the disconnection between policy aims and realities within development and empowerment initiatives, as well as enabling (ethical) commodities to be strategic in retaining their appeal throughout their networks.
Immigration is often viewed as a proximate cause of the rising wage gap between highand
low-skilled workers. Nevertheless, there is controversy over the appropriate
theoretical and empirical framework for measuring the presumed effect, and over the
precise magnitudes involved. This paper offers an overview and synthesis of existing
knowledge on the relationship between immigration and inequality, focusing on evidence
from cross-city comparisons in the U.S. While some researchers have claimed that a
cross-city research design is inherently flawed, I argue that the evidence from cross-city
comparisons is remarkably consistent with recent findings based on aggregate time
series data. In particular, cross-city and aggregate time series comparisons provide
support for three key conclusions: (1) workers with below high school education are
perfect substitutes for those with a high school education; (2) “high school equivalent”
and “college equivalent” workers are imperfect substitutes, with an elasticity of
substitution on the order of 2; (3) within education groups, immigrants and natives are
imperfect substitutes. Together these results imply that the average impacts of recent
immigrant inflows on the relative wages of U.S. natives are small. The effects on overall
wage inequality (including natives and immigrants) are larger, reflecting the
concentration of immigrants in the tails of the skill distribution and higher residual
inequality among immigrants than natives. Even so, immigration accounts for a small
share (5%) of the increase in U.S. wage inequality between 1980 and 2000.
This paper considers the economic sanctions that were applied in the mid-1980s to pressure the South African government to end apartheid. It asks what role those sanctions played in the eventual demise of the apartheid regime and concludes that the role was probably very small. An alternative explanation for the regime change is offered: the communist bloc combined to bring about the change. If one is to argue for the efficacy of sanctions, two key obstacles are their limited economic impact and the substantial lag between the imposition of sanctions and the political change. Since sanctions preceded the change of government, it is impossible to rule them out as a determinant. However, their principal effect was probably psychological. The implication is that the South African case should not serve as the lone major instance of effective sanctions. Keywords: Sanctions, South Africa, Political Economy, Trade J.E.L. classification: F14 2 Sanctions on South Africa: What did th...
International sanctions are often imposed in response to interest group pressures in the sanctioning countries. Lobbying by those interest groups is likely to increase when political disturbances in the target country make individuals in the sanctioning countries more aware of the target regime’s objectionable behaviour. But sanctions also can help to induce political changes in the target nation if they increase the ability of opposition interest groups there to exert influence. Using time-series data on anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa, it is shown that those sanctions were endogenous. The intensity of sanctions increased as a result of increases in black political unrest in South Africa. At the same time, increases in sanctions had an immediate positive effect on the level of political dissent as measured by black strike activity. In the longer-run, however, sanctions lowered black workers incomes and caused a decline in black strikes.
Acknowledgements - Introduction - PART A LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN ECONOMY, 1910-33 - Population and Economic Growth, 1910-33: A Survey - Agriculture, 1910-33 - Diamonds, Gold and Coal, 1910-33 - Industrialisation Begins, 1910-33 - Transport and Distribution, 1910-33 - Banking and Finance, 1910-33 - External Trade and the Balance of Payments, 1910-33 - PART B THE OPEN ECONOMY, 1933-61 - Population and Economic Growth, 1933-61: A Survey - Agriculture: Beginning the Transformation, 1933-61 - The Expansion of Mining, 1933-61 - The Industrial Transformation of South Africa, 1933-61 - Transport and Distribution, 1933-61 - Banking and Finance, 1933-61 - External Trade and the Balance of Payments, 1933-61 - PART C THE MODERN ECONOMY TAKES SHAPE, SINCE 1961 - Population and Economic Growth since 1961 - Agricultural: Completing the Transformation since 1961 - The Diversification in Mining since 1961 - Expansion and Slow-down since 1961 - Transport and the Retailing Revolution since 1961 - The Financial Revolution since 1961 - External Trade and the Balance of Payments since 1961 - Notes - Index
Explores the interaction of racial policies and economic interests in South Africa. The main emphasis is on the years since 1960, but it covers the whole period from the Union of South Africa in 1910 to the introduction of the 'tricarneral' constitution in 1984, and it also assesses the prospects for the future. Examines the pressures for and against apartheid, and the changing interests and power of industrialists, farmers, mine workers and white workers. Analyses the conflict between Afrikaner nationalists and the English and more broadly, the relationship between class and race in South Africa. Since the late 1960s, the costs of apartheid have risen, and capitalists who oppose at least some aspects of it have become more influential. Attempts to adhere rigidly to apartheid induced economic contradictions and threatened the living standards of white South Africans, shows that no major interest group has persisted in pressing for apartheid when it became clear that it would have to pay the costs itself rather than passing them on to others. Looks at the strengthening of black opposition to white rule as levels of skill and education have risen and as external support for that oppostion has grown. -from Publisher
In this paper, I shall dispute the widely held belief that all effective sanctions would greatly hurt poor South African blacks. Rather, it is likely that bans on exports of high technology to South Africa and imports of South African gold and diamonds would cause labor-intensive sectors to expand, thereby limiting the impact of a general recession on unskilled nonwhites. Still, several types of sanctions, such as those on oil, would have a severe impact on poor nonwhites. In addition, forced divestment would result in windfall capital gains for white South Africans; such gains would not be realized, however, if the ban were on new investments only. Finally, I shall discuss the need for infrastructural aid to help South Africa's neighbors weather the storm. Judicious aid to these countries is also important in inducing both Western and South Africanowned investments away from South Africa.
A general equilibrium model of the South African economy in the 1980s is constructed, focusing on the labour-market distortions created by legal and customary restrictions on nonwhite labour mobility. The model is static and calibrated to the data of 1980; its simplified representation of the economy incorporates five production sectors, two race categories, two skill levels, and five kinds of labour-market constraints. Three counter-factual simulations are conducted:
The measured changes owing to a transition to free labour markets, large as they are, represent no more than lower-bound estimates of the effects of apartheid since the simulations deal only with the racial restraints on labour markets and do not contemplate possible racial redistribution of the ownership of land, physical capital, or human capital.
The paper analyses the gap in earnings between white and colored people in South Africa in 1970 and 1980. The gap is decomposed into its ‘explained’ and ‘discrimination’ components and, from a model of occupational attainment, into wage-and job-discrimination. Job discrimination decreased between 1970 and 1980. Colored people in younger experience cohorts experienced a significant decline in discrimination between 1970 and 1980, most of which was due to a decline in job descrimination. Discrimination against those in older experience cohorts appears not to have declined.
Pressure for divestment and mandatory disinvestment sanctions directed against South Africa are an instance of domestic interest groups in one country seeking policy change in another. The link from shareholder divestment to disinvestment by firms is tenuous, however (since South Africa-active firms do not seem to suffer as a consequence of divestment pressure), and legislated sanctions are likely to have unpredictable and sometimes perverse effects on the extent of apartheid practices.
Apartheid is a regulatory system designed to effect redistributions in favor of white workers and farmers at the expense of black workers and white capitalists. This paper uses a competitive interest group theory of the apartheid state to formalize a collective choice analysis of apartheid as endogenous policy. The "level" of apartheid is conceived as a continuous variable that is determined by the relative influence of competing interest groups within the white polity and by the costs of maintaining and defending apartheid institutions. Some empirical implications of this approach are explored. Copyright 1989 by Oxford University Press.
South African apartheid is a social system arising from the economic conflict of competitive interest groups. During the past four centuries, this struggle has not been linear: Changing economic and demographic conditions have tended to make white and non-white subclasses net complementary factors at certain times and net substitute factors at others. Moreover, such cross-elasticities in production are not clearly delineated along racial lines. For example, the synergy of white capital and black labor formed the essential social "evil" which apartheid, promoted by white labor and farm interests, was created to expunge. Hence, isolating apartheid via international sanctions is inherently problematic. The imposition of apartheid itself was accompanied by extensive South African-imposed trade barriers. Copyright 1988 Western Economic Association International.
South Africa 's apartheid system was enormously costly and ultimately collapsed because the inefficiencies created by apartheid policies escalated as the economy's structure changed. Labor market regulation and industrial decentralization policy inhibited efficient resource utilization, especially as the manufacturing sector became dominant. Apartheid educational policies generated skill shortages. A mercantilistic development strategy distorted trade patterns, exacerbated dependence on foreign capital inflows, and created chronic balance of payments difficulties. The administrative and defense costs of implementing apartheid were onerous and rising. These internal weaknesses enhanced South Africa's vulnerability to capital flight, changes in world prices and business cycle conditions, and political changes abroad. Ultimately, apartheid was abandoned because its costs came to exceed its benefits to white South Africans. The internal dynamics of the system dictated the retrenchment of apartheid, which in all probability would have occurred even without foreign sanctions. Copyright 1997 by Oxford University Press.
This article examines how factor intensity rankings between industries and the economy-wide asymmetry in the degree of factor substitution combine to influence the manner in which changes in relative commodity prices affect the factoral distribution of income. (The reciprocal influence of factor endowment changes on the composition of outputs is also discussed.) The analysis is undertaken in a general three-factor, two-commodity framework, the minimal sized model that allows both influences to affect factor prices and admits of the possibility of complementarity between factors. Factors which are good substitutes find their returns behave somewhat similarly when commodity prices change while factors which are complements experience strongly asymmetrical fortunes. A crucial role is played by a comparison of the share of the ‘middle’ factor in each sector.
Many advocates of sanctions against South Africa have proposed that such measures will reduce the wealth of white South Africans and thereby raise the costs of apartheid to those who benefit from it by such a large amount that whites will voluntarily choose to terminate the apartheid system. This paper examines the likely effects of disinvestment sanctions on the survivability of apartheid. An ‘interest-group’ model of the South African state is developed, in which apartheid policies are treated as endogenous outcomes of a political decision-making process. The effects of sanctions are introduced through the impact of international capital flows and asset prices on the major interest groups within the white electorate. It is shown that disinvestment policies may not diminish apartheid via market effects, but could have an impact upon the political costs of maintaining apartheid institutions.
This paper examines the operational consistency and logical nature of apartheid with reference to capitalism and socialism. The radical/Marxian slogan that identifies apartheid as racial capitalism is rejected based upon the internal contradictions implied by this phrase. These contradictions are revealed through an understanding of private ownership, freedom of choice in the market, and competition to the essential components of capitalism. On the contrary, it is argued that the collectivist/interventionist claims of apartheid are more consistent and compatible with socialism. The individualist claims of the market system are inconsistent with the operation of apartheid. Copyright 1990 by WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG
American sanctions on South African apartheid. Program in Applied Public Policy Research Working Papers 1, Institute of Governmental Affairs
- T W Hazlett
The Transition to Democracy in South Africa: Trade, Contest and Sanctions
- B P Rosendorff
- Lowenberg AD