ARTICLE SOUTH AFRICA IN THE 1990s: THE LOGIC OF FRAGMENTATION AND RECONSTRUCTION Ari Sitas Any intellectual worth any salt in the South Africa of the 1990s is caught between Utopian and dystopian forms of thinking: the openness of the transition and the new dynamics it has unleashed invites the formulation of concrete alternatives; at the same time patterns of behaviour within the 'status scripts' (see below) of a new black middle-class and the responses of an older white one, invite pessimistic scenarios. Dystopian thinking has both an analytical and a moral core (Kumar, 1987). It, on the one hand, magnifies social trends and tendencies and, on the other, warns of anti-social outcomes; Utopian thinking by contrast willfully ignores such trends and attempts to lift us over the hill to gaze how the possible could become real. For us, caught up in the initiatives of creating a South Africa without exploitation, racism and other forms of oppression, such thinking, attempts to preserve a logic of emancipation intact, but in the same instance, it also magnifies the threats to the project and the disintegration of the movements that have nurtured it. There are serious threats to the democratic and socialist vision of the liberation movement in South Africa and there is a marked disintegration of the movement itself (Sitas, 1995:Marks , 1996). It is not only that we are making the mistake of substituting the 'political movement' and later, the 'political party' for the social movements that underpinned them, as Mahmood Mamdani (1992:193) warned from his work on Africa's post-colonial experience, but that also, the transition itself has its own logic1 of fragmentation and dis-empowerment. In this paper, I will attempt to provide an overview of some significant trends that are a result of the democratisation and globalisation of our society; I will then use a few examples from the area I know most: the trade union movement and hope to illuminate the challenges facing those whose democratic vision has remained intact despite the pressures. TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) 37 ARTICLE SITAS Globalisation The first pressure and trend is an economic one - it parades under the word 'globalisation', and defines our entry into the world's markets that are being homogenised through GATT and competition; having enjoyed relative isolation during the Apartheid period, industries are once more vulnerable to the ebb and flow of a new world economic system (Industrial Strategy Project, 1995). South Africa lacks any substantive share of the innovations that have made the micro-electronic revolution possible and is adjacent to the hub of the new centres of global production. If it is indeed true that by the year 2020, 68 per cent of the world's production is to be concentrated in the Indo-Pacific Rims, save substantive natural resources, South Africa lacks many of the other ingredients that spell 'success': pliable and flexible labour (Industrial Strategy Project, 1995), managerial systems that are based on traditions of loyalty and dedication (Sitas et al, 1995), labour forces with differentiated means of subsistence (Hart, 1996) and enough finance capital to enhance its capacity. Already the pressures are here: the clothing and textile industry has been shedding labour as cheaper commodities are ravaging its protected markets. But what must also not be forgotten is that there are sectors strong enough to take all the advantages offered: for example, the iron, steel and non-ferrous metal industries are having their export books filling up rapidly indeed. The crucial point though is that economic development and restructuring has shifted from being 'auto-driven' to being externally coordinated. The constant praise of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki's and Minister Trevor Manuel's more 'cosmopolitan' economic policies, masks a sense of hopelessness and realpolitik:'rather than seeing these institutions (World Bank, IMF) as God or the Devil incarnate, my view is the agnostic one that says - Shit! This thing is here! It's alive ...' (T Manuel, Mail and Guardian, 3 April, 1996;. In the past, both the monopolisation of the economy and the aggregation of business sectors within large employer associations created, within balance of trade limits, a national economic trajectory. Simultaneously, the apartheid state attempted to harness socio-economic resources and create its own version of development. As a counter-foil too, the political 'culture' of the liberation movements, the trade unions and civics sought to capture the citadels of power, harness social resources, redistribute wealth and nudge the country into a different economic trajectory. Instead, on the eve of the transition from an apartheid society, when the African National Congress swept through the elections and at a moment when its alliance with the SACP and COSATU promised substantive changes, South Africa's 38 TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) SITAS ARTICLE experience of a re-entry into the world economy has scuttled our 'harnessing will' and has confused notions of autonomous choices. Rather, fiscal policies that are in essence neo-liberal have pervaded any decision; the lack of investment capital for growth has made decisions sensitive to the prevailing global free-marketeerism, social reconstruction programmes were toned down (Adelzadeh and Padayachee, 1994) and development and popular empowerment has been subsumed under macro-economic stability based on, excuse the expressions, the anarchy of the market and the political economy of structurally adjusted windfalls. As shall be seen below, this pressure has put severe strains on social movements and especially on the relationship between trade unions and the state. Institutional Transition The second pressure arises from the major institutional transition underway to restructure life away from apartheid's controls and prohibitions. Each institution within or outside the state is being transformed in its racial and gender composition, its structuring and its orientation. Whereas in the past the 'bureaucracy' was formed to entrench racial domination, to prohibit and exclude population groups, to differentiate services and to bolster a bantustan administration - in the present - from the government department to the school, from the prison to the pension office, all these are being merged and changed under a triple-logic: trimming the state; changing the demographics of the civil service in all its stratified categories; changing the roles of each department to 'deliver' social services, ie the RDP (Sitas, 1995). The raison d'etre of the liberation movement was to capture the bureaucracy, transform it, and place it to the service of the empowerment of ordinary people in the cities and in the countryside: its democratisation was a means to a broader democratic end (Cronin and Suttner, 1986). The pressures around this democratic transition and the resistances it has created, has made the 'ends' opaque and the 'means' - the power struggles within institutions - the goal of the transition. Within this context, new 'status scripts' have arisen that empower people to position themselves within a new hegemonic language. Here a small digression is necessary: I want to call 'status scripts' the stories, legitimations and symbolic references a social group uses to distinguish itself in its competition for resources, power or influence from others within social institutions. Such 'scripts' are a claim for differentiation and constitute a differentiated claim. Such scripts might arise within the parameters of a broader hegemonic discourse or ideology or at times of transition and change when TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) 39 ARTICLE SITAS plausible entitlements are many, they can occur in and by themselves without a broader axiomatic grip. For example, the RDP has opened up the space for dozens of 'status scripts' within institutions and within civil society - it has provided opportunities for NGOs to mobilise and position themselves as development agencies, for black professionals to mobilise for institutional advancement, for black teachers to resist students' demands and for students to challenge educational practices; for 'customary' politicians to resist modernists and the other way around, and so on. The implication has been to create a tension between two sets of practices, transformative and restorative - whereas the first attempts to change the functioning of the bureaucracy to respond to the broader socio-economic demands of the country, the second uses the new dispensation to restore entitlements. In this context black people, always the minority within such institutions, due to apartheid legacies, have mobilised for affirmative action, promotion through black solidarity or ethnic networking to change the personnel profile of organisations. As the Minister of the Public Services and Administration Zola Skweyiya asserted there is 'more emphasis on representativity within the public service than in changing the way the public service works' (Mail and Guardian, December, 1995). Finally, in the bantustan administration where at least a majority of black civil servants occupied most of its posts, there has been such corruption, inefficiency and incompetence, that 'trimming' and 'downsizing' has been the norm. Without much imagination, both the models of a 'trimmed' state and the new forms of training for the civil service are also 'externally' developed and packaged between institutions like Harvard's Kennedy School and its effort to help shape the future black administrators. Of course, the bureaucracy was corrupt, unaccountable and unjustifiably large, what it lacked both in numbers and systems was a development delivery structure. This fact though, clear in the RDP founding document, has disappeared from debates. Invariably the new status scripts and the mobilisation of social sentiment has 'racialised' all debate, dialogue and exchange. The goal of non-racialism and democracy has been subsumed under racial empowerments and dis-empowerments and by implication, any argument about non-racialism has been marginalised as the monologue of a white liberal or left constituency. Of course other scripts are emerging too: gender-based, ethnic-based, allegiance-based on locality or political party and so on; such a complex institutional transition is highly contested and fraught with difficulties. It is nevertheless a central issue for our wide-ranging democratic revolution. 40 TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) SITAS ARTICLE New Circuits of Power The third pressure derives from the emergence of new circuits of power in the state and in civil society. Both access to the state and civil society networks and their creation and mobilisation is a new means to the accumulation of wealth. What is often forgotten in debates around South Africa is that the African population was precluded by law and force during the segregation and apartheid years from owning any means of production. The successful black entrepreneurs were a product of resilience and marginal gains in the nooks and crannies of the system - they succeeded despite rather than because of capital-state relations (Kuper, 1965; Nzimande, 1989). Now, such barriers are gone and the opportunities exist for the growth of a capitalism of a different 'hue'. As Minister Skweyiya stated too: 'the ANC should not shy away from blacks becoming capitalists. The only question is how to achieve it?' (Mail and Guardian, December, 1995). The highly organised, monopolised and gigantic financial, mining and industrial sector that has kept the economy in white hands, is a stumbling block to black aspirations (TURP, 1994). None of them had the ability to generate corporations large enough in financial and productive clout to enter the economy on his or her own basis. The few attempts to emulate Afrikaners in the post-1930s period, to mobilise their own financial resources through savings and ethnic business associations are too new to assess. What has been swift though has been the creation of new circuits: local black entrepreneurs in alliance with foreign capital are entering the market in a significant way - the prospect of government connections and new opportunities are cementing such 'alliances'; networks based on religious and ethnic connections (Islamic, Indian, Malaysian) are capturing aspects of the economy. Finally, pressures to privatise state assets and to un-bundle the conglomerates are spreading cycles and cycles of entrepreneurial initiative. The implication has been two-fold: firstly, 'harnessing' the economy and developing a 'national' economic interest is well nigh impossible. There is no space at the moment through which a late-twentieth century non-racial Van der Bijl could define a national, autonomous economic direction with the state playing a coherently central role. Secondly, a new populism is on the rise, based on these new circuits of power that ranges from a multi-fundamentalism to various versions of 'tribal' identification. TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) 41 ARTICLE SITAS Cultural Imperialism The fourth pressure, arises from the pernicious influences that are beginning to enter through the channels of cultural imperialism.2 The subtle changes within the US media, the growth of multi-culturalism and identity-packaging have given the US the psychic monopoly over how we 'see ourselves' (Wilson and Dissanyake, 1996). The rise of a new cultural brokerage and diversified markets - the exploitation by media moguls of the Afro-American experience has produced a new racialised and ethnicised electronic populism. As the mass media have been invading the homes, so has the new Americanisation of African sentiments begun. Alongside this, the music industry has been turning youthful discontent into aggressive style and has begun invading the homes reinforcing all the above 'packaging'. Part of the liberation effort had been the oral mobilisation of millions of people through indigenous performance rituals and cultural formations. These were an essential component of popular affirmation and growth. Alongside them, powerful cultural associations emerged that mobilised thousands of ordinary people. These have been marginalised: they have been nudged off the mainframe of identity construction and turned into parochial, community-based subaltern identities. As long as there is no 'global packaging' for the Freedom Charter any cultural freedoms and local diversities will have to be 'chartered'. (At best, some such performance genres have been commodified and have been included into the categories of 'World Music'.) The Customary The most resilient component and pressure has been the reemergence of the 'customary'as an aspect of the post-1980s dispensation to bind both white and black conservatives. Linked to both notions of self-determination and 'tradition', a version of ethnicity, embedded in the colonial and apartheid past has resurfaced. Its public face is about the preservation of tradition and ancient custom, its 'own affairs', encoded over the last century: control over land, its allocation, ritual monopoly and patronage from the state. This notion of the 'customary' which was also about influx control and the control of black labour, the consolidation of migrancy and the pass system has resurfaced without its labour repressive functions. In tandem with this, a new politics of 'customary familialism' and a new 'mothering' of the nation, a neo-traditional Africanism has started challenging the victories in the politics of gender, the Women's Coalition and women MPs have started achieving legislatively in the last few years. Whereas the 42 TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) SITAS ARTICLE 'customary' speaks for all, it demarcates lands that it deems to be under its jurisdiction. Patterns of Transition The above discussion of pressures or trends is significant in the following ways: firstly, it tells us that globalisation is not a simple 'economistic' issue that affects in any 'uni-directional' way our society. What this new entry into the world's markets does though, is to reduce the capacity of our state to shape convincingly its citizen's economic future. Secondly, one knows that there are many capitalist interests that see their 'connectivity' to flows of international technology and capital as an opportunity that helps national imperatives. The irony in South Africa is that it is presented as the 'empowerment' of the hitherto dispossessed. Thirdly, that the state itself has become the terrain of struggles between power-blocs with competing agendas. The broad majority of radical democrats and socialists in the ANC who have been responsible for substantive libertarian legislation are caught up in the tentacles of a civil service which is the home of a double-resistance: from the 'old' and from the 'new' circuits of power. Their ability to change the state in line with the principles of the RDP has been proscribed. Fourthly, it points to the tremendous forces transitions unleash in racially repressive societies in the recreation of their dominant classes. This recreation or, better, this reconfiguration generates a logic of disintegration that shapes and affects the social movements that have ushered the transformation in the first place. Although at the broadest level these patterns conform with what Charles Tilly (1978) argued about broader political arrangements shaping the form and functioning of social movements, what can be missed are the subtle ways in which the latter continue shaping the logic of the broader process. And, they also conform with Skopcol's (1979) insight that revolutionary vanguards and organisations can never shape transitions at will, rather they are shaped and the conditions they face are shaped, by broader structural forces, not least of which is the international economic and political parameters. Fifthly, the much vaunted 'transition' theories that attempt to trace the patterns consequent to the democratisation from authoritarian regimes, with their notions of 'elite pacting' and market re-entries and necessary compromises (Adam et al, 1994, Ginsburg et al, 1995), ignore the new opportunities and contradictions such contexts generate. In the next few pages it is important to trace how these 'pressures' have affected and have induced responses from the broadest possible array of resistance TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) 43 ARTICLE SITAS movements in the country, before some broader critical comments can be made about transitions. The African National Congress, since its un-banning and re-invigoration in South Africa, inherited all the dynamism and problems of the social movements affiliated to the United Democratic Front: the volatile youth movements, the civics, NGOs, CBOs, women and rural committees and so on. It started a process of harnessing all these initiatives inside its structures as leagues, branches and regions. It also set, together with the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the democratic 'alliance'. On the economic socio-economic front it took on board the COS ATU-related Industrial Strategy Project's recommendations for 'growth through redistribution' and with some consultation from the civics, the Reconstruction and Development Programme. The Congress's majority in the Government of National Unity facilitated the adoption of these policies as state priorities. Nevertheless, 'globalisation' and the re-entry of South Africa into international trade and economic relations created the imperative for fiscal discipline as the 'debts' incurred by the previous regime had to be controlled. Furthermore, resistance from the dominant classes and their financial networks scuttled the imperative of mass housing and development as the levers for redistribution and growth. This, together with GATT and trade treaties, and the need to break cartel-pricing of basic commodities, shifted priorities to a 'trickle-down' approach: economic growth had to precede the availability of funds for social development and privatisation of state assets would help in efficient services and generating surpluses for development. Secondly, the need for institutional change to 'deliver' the RDP by orchestrating the transformation within Ministries and their Departments through the Presidential Office has failed. Internal resistance and political pressures reduced the office into a mechanism for the screening of funding applications and projects. Without progressive parliamentary legislation and some real ministerial initiatives, the RDP would have remained an ineffective government mechanism. Thirdly, the new 'circuits of power' that were opened up through political office have made it possible to start dislodging old forms of nepotism embedded in Afrikaner interests and create opportunities for black entrepreneurs- as the encouragement of small businesses and affirmative action have become the cornerstone of government policy, so has this embourgeoisment increased. Fourthly, the complex cultural movements that have challenged the apartheid dispensation and had informed ANC policy, have been fragmented between a corporate-civil society agenda for the 'freedom and encouragement of the arts' 44 TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) ARTICLE and an ethnic Afro-centrism. Whereas most funding for such initiatives came from the international community as part of the 'struggle', the new dispensation brought with it significant broadcasting, media, film and music industry networks have sought ways into the South African market through the movement's cultural leadership. The lack of funding for local initiatives, the underdevelopment of local infrastructures, the vulnerable oral and multi-lingual basis of South African performances has been marginalised. This has led to new forms of cultural brokerage that has weakened the resonance of the 'local'. The violence, finally, and the reemergence of 'traditionalism* through Inkatha, the Zulu Royal House and the Congress of Traditional Leaders has affected the future of the most vulnerable rural communities. The tightening of chiefly control over land (as opposed to the movement of people) and the increase of their influence and Provincial and National levels has reinforced authoritarianism and heredity. Many social concerns have shifted from issues of development and democracy to competing claims to authenticity in forms of rule and obedience. Furthermore, it has forged the wrong dichotomy of 'the' urban, modern, changing democratic centres which gets juxtaposed in the popular media against the preservationist and authoritarian hinterland. Such reemergence has brought with it new ways for status scripts to emerge within and outside the liberation movement. All the above processes in concert have affected the capacity of a radical democratic core within the ANC and has strengthened a version of nationalism that is about the empowerment and accumulation paths of a new power-bloc. Indeed, it has shifted the language of democracy back to a conservative period in the ANC's history before the Youth League's challenge in the 1940s that ushered the Freedom Charter on the one hand and a revolutionary Africanism on the other. It is a power-bloc of pragmatic populists who unlike die old ANC are heirs of a new global metropolitan process of empowerment. This, reshaping of a new political elite finally has been a further nudge towards the logic of disintegration of social movements. I hope the magnitude of this logic of disintegration can be expressed: it has been very rare to have a society, so deeply mobilised on the basis of race and dispossession; furthermore it has been rare indeed to have also have had a black working class, organised and leading the challenge to apartheid and the initial processes of transformation. And it has been simultaneously numbing to realise that there are deeper processes and forces that force themselves onto the historic stage. The strongest social movement in South Africa was concentrated around the black working class and its democratic trade unions. But as Von Holdt and TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) 45 ARTICLE SITAS Webster (1992) have argued, COSATU its largest federation and its most militant had moved from social movement-unionism to embrace a more 'strategic' one: influencing policy, participating and shaping tri-partite arrangements with the employers and the state, and in the lack of any 'harnessing will' by the state or capital, making sure that macro-economic policies are in place for job creation and growth. The mass mobilisations against apartheid, the cultural explosions in its mass gatherings have given way to the pragmatic politics of alliance-building with the ANC, the SACP and with other union federations and social movements. As its General Secretary Sam Shilowa argued, 'we are either being accused of being a conveyor belt and in bed with the government, or we are called spoilers who just bark at all ministers and want to exercise the right of veto over government policies' (Mail and Guardian, 2 February, 1996). More than that, they are caught between a militant rank and file that feel entitled the fulfillment of immediate demands and are ready to use any form of direct action to achieve them and assisting in the development of a 'participatory culture' for nation-building and world-class performance. They are also caught between managements' progressive rhetoric and the reality of 'downsizing', 're-engineering' and 'deregulation', their knee-jerk response to global competition. Finally, they are faced with a new militancy, from newly organised state sector employees who are into their own self-advancement rather than the development of community-sensitive and transformative practices. The effects of all these pressures have been significant: a weakening of the trade union movement and a lack of vision of how to respond to the new global challenges. Wherever one looks, be it among the black youth movements that shook apartheid, the black women networks that sustained the most vicious counter-revolutions, the grassroots community organisations and civics, a process of fragmentation and redefinition is occurring with fundamentally new dynamics. Perhaps, the best way of explaining the complexity of transition in social movements is to use the most active and militant leadership core of a trade union shop steward committee from the early-1980s to display the real trends. RIPCO has been a mass producing company in Durban that spawned some of the most volatile shop-steward leaderships: starting from the shopfloor, its leaders were crucial in trade union, civic, cultural and political developments in the country. In 1984,15 of them were elected to lead 1400 others in their struggle against management and apartheid controls.3 What follows is a brief description of what has occurred to them: Three of these fifteen have retired and have willingly returned to their ancestral lands where, at a price, the chief allowed them to reoccupy what was their 46 TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) SITAS ARTICLE seeming inheritance. Their relationship with the chiefs has been strained, as they were taxing the people to arm their 'special forces' to carry out a war against the 'comrades'. What these retired workers did was to use their urban networks to also run 'spaza' shops and to use part of their earnings to buy guns, 'just in case'. They are growing basic subsistence foods and vegetables and they are trying to replenish their cattle stocks. Two have been 'downsized' due to international competition. A whole line from the factory has been cancelled because an associate company is producing it at half the price on the Far East. They have linked with kinship networks and they are heavily involved in business activities in the informal sector. One has voluntarily left, used patronage systems in the countryside and the city, set up sewing sweatshops involving family members; used the opening of the markets in Southern Africa to sell pinafores at all the migrant worker junctions; used the chiefs and the administration to get contracts; set up a hundred women who were unemployed in a Midlands rural area to 'train' in cloth making; got the project funded as gender-sensitive training programme; received generous funds from donors and is applying to the RDP, and has started a 'putting-out' enterprise at way below union rates. Two have been associated deeply with Inkatha-linked initiatives and mobilisations, including an active participation in urban militia to fight the ANC. One of them was promoted by management to become a personnel officer and then left. One has risen through the ranks to become the COSATU Natal chairman; a central figure in the 'alliance' and now a member of the provincial government. One has been dismissed because of political activities in the mid-eighties: he is now an activist in left revolutionary groups in areas south of Durban where he is organising among squatters and the poor - much of the direct action there relates to his group's activities. One has been a rising cultural and political star. Recorded, published, celebrated, he left the factory to join a progressive project, generously funded by international donors. As an oral person he could not keep his job in the new South Africa, as his skills of rhetoric and mobilisation were not crucial anymore. He is unemployed, helping in the organisation of peasants in the rural areas, helping both the SACP and Catholic 'base' theologians with organisation and is a vociferous critic of the GNU. He is a link between traditional authority and an eco-tourism project from white networks in Durban. One has been on cultural committees as a union representative and has emerged as a strong exponent of Zulu cultural initiatives in the province as against the 'bourgeois' efforts that are 'destroying our culture'. Although a strong ANC TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) 47 ARTICLE SITAS civic leader in one of the townships in Durban, on issues of culture he is working alongside many Inkatha-related groups. Two remain central labour leaders and behind the moves to establish a distinctive working class voice in the region and 'push for democracy and socialism'; they are both central in the civic life of their townships (one of them was elected as a municipal councillor) and work closely with radicalised youth on community projects; they are also members and activists in the SACP and look after three charities in the townships. One has been killed in the violence. Finally, a younger generation has taken over the positions abandoned by the above - half of whom are on a variety of extra-mural courses for self-advancement and exactly half are part and parcel of a new militancy that is running through the shopfloor - they feel entitled to radical reforms. One of them was an Umkhonto we Sizwe combatant. In short, there is a shift from a militant social movement approach to a variety of initiatives, not necessarily connected, each with its own dynamics, compromises and innovations that spells both resistance and accommodation to the central arrangements of the GNU. In a broader study of black worker aspirations in KwaZulu Natal (Sitas, 1995): • Thirty four per cent of the black worker leaders from the 1980s disagreed that there was any genuine cooperation between management and labour; • Thirty five per cent stated there was indeed no cooperation, whereas 21 per cent claimed very good cooperation in the new South Africa. More interestingly, 80 per cent felt that the RDP was the most worthwhile policy to be pursued but 70 per cent felt that it will not be delivered because the ANC was a prisoner of the GNU. In a similar vein, 68 per cent felt that the violence in KZN would not decrease but 88 per cent of them felt that peace was necessary and a priority; at a more personal level 87 per cent of them felt that they needed training for self-advancement. Finally, 71 per cent felt that their dream future was outside of the cities: they dreamt of a prosperous homestead within a communalist country life. And, 62 per cent felt that 'nothing will come their way' without 'struggle'. In short the form and nature of the trade union movement has changed and its ability to shape the transition is wavering. Such an observation can be multiplied further afield to cover most social movements in South Africa. The realist pessimism enunciated in black worker responses paints a future of cooperation 48 TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) SITAS ARTICLE and struggle - a struggle for the 'soul of the ANC and a possible parting of the ways if the 'soul' turns to be made from neo-liberal iron. To return to the currents of dystopian thinking: a South Africa without significant social movements, or fragmented and weakened ones would be a highly authoritarian society. Increasingly, the democratic wings of parliament will be clipped; their ability to influence policy and direction will be marginalised; their voice will not reach the media; their campaigns for will run out of flinders and backers and development will turn into electoral rhetoric - the language of empty promises. Similarly, their 'weakened' nature will not necessarily mean- quiescence on the ground. Ordinary people will continue challenging arrangements in manifold ways. Increasingly too, there will be rank and file challenges alongside a variety of mobilisations called for by the ruling bloc of pragmatic populists to entrench desired directions. It will mean that the nature of the opposition and the nature of its demands will lose its substantive libertarian nature. Furthermore, globalisation, in an economy like South Africa's with many resources at its disposal will spell doom to some sectors but opportunities to many others. The opportunities for leading capitalist firms to exploit their dominance in Africa and to transfer financial resources to find other 'globalised' pastures will be a reality. It will also shake South Africa's trade unions and social movements to genuine internationalist approaches to cooperate within broader regions and economic blocs. Although this has started to occur in the Indian Ocean Rim, and as a response to Nigerian, Swazi and Basotho struggles in Africa, it is far from a consolidated vision. Without a constant challenge from below, poverty, inequality and powerlessness will continue into the 21st century. The trends are real, sectors within the ANC are losing their classical democratic vision, in exchange for the switchboards, corridors and desks of power. And yet, the Utopian side in each one of us wants to disagree: there are ways of responding to globalisation, to the institutional changes around us, to our neo-packaged identities, to the 'customary', that are profound, democratic, and praiseworthy. NOTES 1. By 'logic' I mean a structured process that has discernible patterns. For example, Sartre in his Critique of Dialectical Reason (London, 1976) attempted to demonstrate how a dialectical logic of group-formation leads to the formation of collective movements and then how movements ossify and fragment. Similarly from a more functionalist perspective Smelser tried to show how social movements emerge. For my own work on the emergence of forms of resistance Neither Gold Nor Bile: Industrial and Labour Studies and Socio-Economic Transformation in KwdZulu Natal, University of Natal: Inaugural Lecture. 1995. TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998) 49 ARTICLE SITAS The following discussion is a summary of concerns enunciated in a number of culture policy networks: the KwaZulu Natal Arts and Culture Council; Broadcasting policy and the Congress of South African Writers. Interviews conducted between January-March, 1996 for a broader personal project/book on the making of the 'comrades' movement in South Africa. REFERENCES Adam, H et al (1993) South Africa's Future, Berkeley: University of California Press. Adelzadeh, A and V Padayachee (1994) 'The RDP White Paper: reconstruction of a development vision?, Transformation, 25. Cronin, J and R Suttner(1986) The Freedom Charter 1956-1986, Johannesburg: Ravan Press. Ginsburg, D et al (1995) Taking Democracy Seriously, Durban: Indicator Press. Hart, G (1996) "The Rise and Fall of a Taiwanese Production Network on the South African Periphery'.Working Paper no.6, Institute of International Studies.Berkeley. Industrial Strategy Project (1995) Improving Manufacturing Performance in South Africa, Capetown: University of Cape Town Press. Kumar, K (1987) Utopian and Anti-Utopian Thinking in the 20th Century,Oxford: Blackwell. Kuper, L (1965) An African Bourgeoisie, New Haven: Yale University Press. Mamdani, M (1992)' Concluding Comments', Transformation 18/19. Marks, M (1996) 'The Diepkloof Comrades Movement', Paper presented at the HSRC Social Movement Conference, Durban. Nzimande, B (1989) 'The Corporate Guerillas- Class Formation and the Corporate Petty Bourgeoisie in South Africa, PhD Thesis, University of Natal. Sitas, A (1995)'Where is the Labour Movement Going to in KwaZulu Natal?" South African Labour Bulletin, 19,6. (1995) 'Reconstruction or Transformation?' Rick Turner Memorial Lecture, University of Natal, Durban (forthcoming in Theoria). - (1995) Neither Gold Nor Bile: Industrial and Labour Studies and Socio-Economic Transformation in KwaZulu Natal, University of Natal:lnaugural Lecture. Sitas, A et al (1995) Managing Change in KwaZulu Natal, HSRC Report, Durban. Skopcol, T (1979) States and Revolutions, New York: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, C (1978) From Mobilisation to Kevo/u/ion,Reading:Addison-Wesley. TURP (1994) The Sourcebook on the South African Economy, Durban: Y Press. Von Holdt, K and Webster, E (1992) From Social Movement to Strategic Unionism, Paper presented at the Australian Industrial Relations Conference. Wilson, R and W Dissanyake (eds) (1996) Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary, Durham: Duke University Press. 50 TRANSFORMATION 36 (1998)