Professor Colin Bundy
South Africa’s Negotiated Settlement: Brave New World or Long Shadow of the Past?
Summary
How might we understand the negotiated settlement – an intricate series of encounters between the apartheid government and the African National Congress that commenced when they found themselves in a ‘hurting stalemate’ and opted to negotiate themselves out of it? This presentation outlines what both players hoped to achieve; their concessions and compromises; and what they arrived at. The eventual agreement delivered sweeping political change but broad continuity in the economic sphere – with what implications for ‘the new South Africa’?
Professor Colin Bundy
Historian Colin Bundy retired after a career as an academic and university administrator. He served as vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, principal of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and principal of Green Templeton College, Oxford. As a scholar he was best known for his Rise and Fall of a South African Peasantry and was co-author (with William Beinart) of Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa. He has published widely on South African history and politics, and this lecture draws upon two of his books in the Jacana Pocket series: Short-changed? South Africa since apartheid, and Poverty in South Africa: Past and Present.
To the very, very best of my knowledge, the ANC negotiated in good faith. I don’t think there was any plan or plot subsequently to subvert the liberal and democratic aspects. However, I think it’s equally clear that elements within the ANC have undermined, or in your turn, subverted, many of the democratic aspects that were negotiated, and this was not entirely under the Zuma presidency, but accelerated enormously in those years. Cronyism, crony capitalism, corruption, straightforward looting, all of those could only be pursued by undermining and weakening democratic structures, and I’m afraid that that is part of the history of the last 20 years.
By and large, South Africa has avoided that partly through very, very conscious attempts, particularly under the leadership of, successively, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, and Thabo Mbeki to balance their Cabinets and their structures across ethnic or language. I prefer those to tribal, but across those groupings in South Africa, and by and large, that holds.