Democratization in South Africa

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Hermann Giliomee (1995). Democratization in South Africa. Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 110, No. 1 (Spring 1995). The Academy of Political Science.

Type	journal article
Scope	Wider apartheid literature
Method	synthesis review
Period studied	1960–1995
Regions	South Africa
Themes	politics ideology elections, transition post apartheid, sanctions divestment, macro fiscal finance debt, inequality poverty unemployment, demography urbanisation, comparative theory, business and state
Citation key	giliomee1995

Argument

Giliomee argues that South Africa lacks the social requisites for consolidating liberal democracy, namely broad-based economic development and national homogeneity, so an orthodox liberal democracy is unlikely. The NP's 1990 decision to negotiate was an elite initiative shaped by a shrinking white demographic base, economic stagnation and sanctions, and a changed external environment, rather than a capitulation to revolutionary defeat. The transition resembled 'transplacement': neither the NP nor the ANC was decisively defeated, so both made compromises, including power-sharing. He tests the Lipset/Rustow structural requisites against the O'Donnell-Schmitter elite-pact framework and concludes that the likely outcomes are a durable racial power-sharing pact or a one-party-dominant system.

Evidence and method

Secondary literature on democratization (O'Donnell and Schmitter, Huntington, Lipset, Rustow, Horowitz, Weffort); statistics on GDP growth, investment, government spending, education enrolments, wages and income; opinion polls; author interviews (Mandela, civil servants on the 1984 cabinet committee); a 1986 Broederbond document; press and speeches.

Place in the debates

• Elite initiative vs elite response to black struggle as the cause of reform and negotiations (see Why apartheid ended: reform, transition and elite bargaining). Mainly an elite initiative. The regime was not forced to negotiate by revolutionary pressure, since the security forces remained coherent and the 1986 State of Emergency set back the extraparliamentary movement. Economic, demographic and external pressures shaped the elite's choice. This is set against Price's view of a state forced by struggle.
• Sanctions effectiveness (see Sanctions, disinvestment and the anti-apartheid movement). Sanctions played a definite but complex role. Financial sanctions (the 1985 bank refusals to roll over loans) were the most serious, while trade sanctions were circumvented. Disinvestment mattered chiefly by triggering the 1986 US Act, and ideological and diplomatic isolation may have been more effective than economic sanctions.
• Prospects for liberal democracy: Smooha/Hanf/Adam/Van Zyl Slabbert optimism vs structural scepticism (see Post-apartheid economic policy, governance and corruption). Rejects the optimistic view of a 'common society'. He stresses persistent racial and ethnic cleavages and extreme inequality, which make consolidation of liberal democracy unlikely.
• Structural requisites (Lipset, Rustow) vs contingent elite pacts (O'Donnell-Schmitter) (see Why apartheid ended: reform, transition and elite bargaining). Treats them as complementary, not exclusive, following Lipset. Pacts are made within structural constraints.

Findings

• Economic growth collapsed from the 1960s to the 1980s, with causes both unrelated to and intertwined with apartheid. (p. 8)

  Increases in the gross domestic product (GDP) declined from 5.7 percent in the 1960s to 3.4 percent in the 1970s and 1.5 percent in the 1980s.

• Investment fell below the level needed to replace worn-out capital, so growth was impossible. (p. 8)

  During the 1980s gross fixed investment plummeted from 26 percent of GDP in 1983 to 16 percent in 1991.

• Weak private investment sharply reduced industrial job creation and worsened unemployment. (p. 8)

  the number of new jobs created in the industrial sector dwindled from 448,000 in the 1960s to a mere 28,000 in the late 1980s.

• Public consumption and debt servicing rose sharply, making the fiscal burden of the late apartheid state heavy. (p. 8)

  In 1975, interest on public debt was only 5 percent of government expenditure; by 1992 it had spurted to 19 percent, making it the largest single item of government expenditure.

• Financial sanctions, not disinvestment or trade bans, were the most damaging form of external economic pressure. (p. 7)

  The most serious were financial sanctions triggered by the refusal of Chase Manhattan and other international banks in 1985 to roll over loans.

• The white demographic share shrank, producing a skilled-manpower shortage that undermined apartheid bureaucracies. (p. 6)

  By 1985 the proportion of whites to the total population had fallen to 15 percent, and it is projected to fall to 11 percent by 2010.

• Black educational expansion and some narrowing of the racial wage gap occurred, yet African poverty and unemployment remained extreme. (p. 18)

  In 1980 black skilled and semiskilled workers earned little more than half the wages of their white counterparts; by 1990 this had risen to 70 percent.

• Mass poverty and unemployment among Africans place South Africa outside the income zone where democratization is normally expected. (p. 18)

  The income of 70 percent of Africans and of 57 percent of the total South African population falls below the minimum subsistence level. More than 40 percent of the labor force

• Neither side was defeated, a stalemate that produced a negotiated power-sharing settlement. (p. 10)

  the white government and the opposition had check-mated each other. Neither could move unilaterally

• The ANC set aside nationalization in exchange for affirmative action and restitution, giving the settlement an economic counterpart. (p. 16)

  the ANC was prepared to downplay, if not completely discard, nationalization in return for pledges to promote black advancement through affirmative action

• Whites retain economic power well beyond their numerical weight, which supports power-sharing rather than simple majority rule. (p. 20)

  own more than 90 percent of the productive resources, pay almost four-fifths of income tax, and have the capacity to engage in tax strikes.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Interviews by author with civil servants attending the special cabinet committee meetings (1984 committee on political rights for Africans)	interviews oral history	c.1984 committee; interviews date not given	Establishes that specialists presented demographic scenarios to the committee, convincing De Klerk that coercion was no solution.
Afrikaner Broederbond document 'Political Values for the Survival of the Afrikaner' (unpublished, c. July 1986)	union or movement records	c. July 1986	Illustrates the reevaluation of strategy within the Afrikaner cultural elite toward a new constitution acceptable to the majority.
Calculations on consumer and investment spending by Rudolf Gouws, Rand Merchant Bank (used by Finance Minister Derek Keys)	national accounts macro	1983-1991	Supports claims that investment fell while government consumption spending rose, with comparisons to Chile and Hungary.
Die Burger, 31 March 1990 (De Klerk speech); Die Burger, 22 November 1991; Sunday Star, 17 March 1990	newspapers periodicals	1990-1991	Source of quoted statements by De Klerk and negotiator Gerrit Viljoen on negotiation strategy and backward legitimacy.
Transcript of TV interview with De Klerk, 14 May 1989, and House of Assembly Debates, 23 May 1989	parliamentary debates	May 1989	Documents De Klerk's view that a perpetual-opposition NP would be a death knell, so negotiations were only about power-sharing.
Interview by author with Nelson Mandela, 12 March 1992	interviews oral history	12 March 1992	Supports account of pre-negotiations from July 1986, with Mandela insisting on meeting Botha only 'as equals'.
Cabinet ministers' public and private interviews 1988-89 and senior party spokespeople in the 1992 referendum campaign	interviews oral history	1988-1992	Supports claim that sanctions both hindered and contributed to the government's decision to negotiate.
Opinion polls on electoral expectations and elite attitudes (post-February 1990; end 1989; July 1992-April 1993; white support for ANC mid-1993), incl. E. G. Lombard MA dissertation, Stellenbosch 1991	household or labour survey microdata	1989-1993	Establishes ANC expected seat share above 60%, white elite attitudes to negotiation, and NP/ANC support trends.
Surveys of African political attitudes and education (unspecified), and Horowitz's synthesis of almost all 1980s opinion surveys	secondary literature compilation	1980s	Supports claims on discontent rising with African education and on ethnic cleavages and attitudes to power-sharing.
World Bank per capita GNP data (1988) and Huntington's per capita income comparisons	international trade or finance data	1988	Places South Africa in the income zone where democratic transitions are expected.
Unspecified official socioeconomic series (African schooling enrolments 1960-85, wages, disposable income shares, household income 1985, unemployment, housing, infant mortality, GDP growth, central government employment, public debt interest)	official statistical series	1960-1992	Documents both expanding African education and incomes and persistent racial disparities and economic stagnation.
Demographic data on white share of population (1910-1985, projected to 2010)	population census	1910-2010	Shows white share fell from 20% to 15% and is projected to fall to 11%, underlying the 'weakening demographic base' argument.
ANC National Working Committee statement, 18 November 1992, and Joe Slovo statement (FBIS, Radio South Africa, 20 November 1992)	union or movement records	November 1992	Shows ANC leaders admitting organizational weakness and inability to defeat the state, supporting the stalemate/transplacement argument.
April 1994 election results and subsequent opinion polls	election returns	1994-1995	Supports claims of racial voting, ANC dominance and a possible one-party-dominant system.

Inference

Quantification: Illustrative figures.

Comparative-theoretical argument applying democratization frameworks (Lipset requisites, Rustow, O'Donnell-Schmitter, Huntington's transition types) to South Africa. Illustrative macroeconomic and socioeconomic indicators and elite interviews and documents support an interpretive account of the NP's decision to negotiate and of the transition's character.

Key claims

Claim	Basis	Strength
The NP's decision to negotiate was driven by a weakening white demographic base, economic stagnation and a changed external environment rather than defeat. (p. 86)	Demographic figures, 1984 cabinet committee interviews, Broederbond document and macroeconomic indicators, used illustratively.	Partial data
Economic decline since the 1970s, falling investment and rising state consumption created business pessimism that sanctions compounded. (p. 89)	Gouws/Rand Merchant Bank calculations and unspecified GDP, investment, employment and debt series.	Partial data
South Africa lacks broad-based economic development: it has two nations, a white one within and an African one below the zone for democracy. (p. 99)	World Bank GNP data and unreferenced income, unemployment, housing and health statistics.	Partial data
The transition was mainly a transformation by the NP with elements of transplacement, because neither side was defeated and the security forces stayed united. (p. 95)	Public statements, negotiation chronology, polls of white support, comparison with other transitions, and ANC statements.	Illustrative or anecdotal
Ethnic and racial cleavages persist, so liberal democracy is not the likely outcome and Smooha-Hanf's 'common society' view lacks conviction. (p. 101)	Horowitz's synthesis of 1980s surveys, 1994 election voting patterns, and asserted white control of resources.	Illustrative or anecdotal
Post-apartheid South Africa is likely to be a racial power-sharing pact or a one-party-dominant system, not a liberal democracy. (p. 104)	April 1994 election results, opinion polls, and comparison with Mexico and Taiwan.	Asserted

Gaps in the evidence

Most statistics (schooling, wages, income distribution, GDP, investment, demography) are given without series, year or table citations, so the quantitative claims cannot be checked. The claim that sanctions and demography moved the elite relies on a few interviews and one Broederbond document, whereas cabinet minutes, party caucus records and Broederbond archives, which became accessible after 1994, would test it better. Systematic survey data on African and white attitudes (e.g. HSRC and Markinor polls) and election returns would better support the claims on ethnic voting and cleavages.

Replicability: Data poorly documented.