Perspectives on Southern Africa

Adam and Moodley, authors of the prescient 1986 book South Africa Without Apartheid, offer a sophisticated, accessible analysis of South Africa's recent past and make predictions for the future. Drawing on both academic and popular literature as well as firsthand resarch, the authors declare South Africa ``a laboratory for the new global compromise between the North and the South.'' Nuanced in their analysis, they reproach the white government for trying to freeze economic inequality, criticize the African National Congress's ``false triumphalism'' and ideological ambiguity, warn of a growing and less-compromising black nationalism and suggest that recent political violence has more complex causes than most acknowledge. Adam and Moodley recommend that foreign governments try to level the political playing field rather than assist specific groups, and list six areas, from policing to tourism development, in which the West can help. The authors predict that South Africa will likely not descend into the authoritarian populism of Zimbabwe or the ethnically driven warfare of Yugoslavia, and that it will rather develop peacefully like post-war West Germany, thanks to a social-democratic pact between business, labor and the state. (July)