Regional Trends and South Africa’s Future

Abstract

More attention has been devoted in the past to the analysis of the future of southern Africa than to that of any other region on the continent. The region’s mineral and industrial wealth, the complex mélange of races and cultures, the long history of co-operation and conflict between settlers and indigenes, and the extent of Western involvement in capital formation and investment in the diverse states have all played their part in granting southern Africa this prominence in debate about Africa’s future. But in particular, the slower progress of the different countries of Southern Africa towards decolonisation and/or ‘majority rule’ as compared with virtually the whole of the rest of the continent has centred analysis upon the issues raised by the longevity of white minority rule; in other words, what are the prospects for regional stability or change, reform or revolution? To what extent is settler-rule dependent upon or independent of support from the capitalist west? What would be the global and strategic consequences of a fundamental change in class and race relations throughout the region? And so on.