Abstract:
This study has as its objective the explication of the collapse of the apartheid system in South Africa through a study of the contradictions generated within that system by political and economic forces of segregation in a rapidly industrialising and highly plural society. The study draws on archival data in unpublished, private, public, academic and popular records and sources. It situates such data in the theoretical field that explores the political economy of segregation in contemporary plural society as well as theoretical insights from earlier studies of political economy of the genesis and eventual breakdown of slavery in North America and Eoripe. Against a background of the earlier period of its rise and consolidation, the study traced developments leading to apartheid's institution, its attempts are reformism and engagement of apartheid forces, to democratisation and eventual collapse with a post script of the post-apartheid era from 1994. A central force shaping these developments, according to the thesis, has been changing nature of production, political and ideological relations at the local (South African) and global levels, with the changing nature of the South African political economy (from predominantly rural to predominantly industrial) and the international climate of opinion incrementally serving as gravediggers of the apartheid edifice. In this regard, the study, shows how the shifting coalition of interests which made segregation possible in the first instance, ultimately led to changes in the power equation over time, which culminated in the collapse of apartheid. In emphasising a dissonance between increasing complexity of economic and polity on the one hand, and the viability of segregation on the other, the there is provides further insights of global and comparative relevance to the issue of how some systems of segregation (racial, ethic, gender, religious, regional) persist while others unravel.
