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Federal Aspects of the New South African Constitution: Prospects for Regional Integration

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Abstract

Federalism has traditionally divided scholars as a method of government. Harold Laski in his days at the London School of Economics believed that ‘federalism was dead’ and William Livingston argued in 1956 that federalism was only meaningful if the various diversities in a society, such as ethnic, cultural and language differences, could be ‘territorially grouped’.1 William Riker on the other hand turned against federalism in the 1960s — having been formerly a champion of it — since he believed it blocked the civil rights movement and equal opportunity in the US.2 Now that totalitarian socialism is dead federalism may be workable and enduring for many plural societies based on diverse cultural and ethnic groups.

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Notes

  1. W. Livingston, Federalism and Constitutional Change (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 4.

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  2. W.H. Riker, Federalism, Origin, Operation, Significance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964), Chapter 6 passim.

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  3. E.A. Walker, A History of Southern Africa (London: Longmans Green, 1962).

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  4. A. Lyphardt, Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty One Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).

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  5. see also John Dugard, ‘Do we need a Bill of Rights — The South African Experience’, Amnesty International (Australian Newsletter), 10, 3 (April 1992).

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  6. Marina Ottaway, South Africa — The Struggle for a New Order (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1993).

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  7. Patrick Laurence, ‘Provinces Face Test of Autonomy’, Sydney Morning Herald, 11–18 May 1994.

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  8. Leo Marquard, A Federation of Southern Africa (Oxford: OUP, 1971)

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  9. Alan Paton, From Utopia to Uitenhage (Johannesburg: SAIRR, 1985)

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  10. This section draws on Klaas Woldring, ‘The Desirability and Feasibility of Federalisation in South Africa’, unpublished MA thesis, University of Sydney (1969)

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  11. ‘The Prospect of Federalisation in Southern Africa’, The African Review, 3, 3 (1973), 453–78

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  12. Roger Southall, ‘Lesotho and the Reintegration of South Africa’, occasional paper, Department of Political Studies, Rhodes University (1991).

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  13. Kader Asmal, ‘Constitutional Issues for a Free South Africa: Decentralisation of a Unitary State’, Transformation, 13 (1990), 81–95.

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  14. Development Bank of South Africa, Report of the Panel of Experts of the Regional Industrial Development Programme as an Element of the Regional Development Policy in Southern Africa (Halfway House, DBS A, 1989)

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  15. HSRC, ‘Regionalism as Approach to Constitutional Change’ in RSA, 2 000: Dialogue with the Future — Constitutional Development in South Africa (Pretoria: HSRC, 1988).

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  16. Urban Foundation, Policies for a New Urban Future Series: Regional Development Revisited (1990).

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  17. Fanie Cloete, ‘Regionalism in South Africa — Constraints and Possibilities’, paper presented to the HSRC conference on regionalism (February 1991)

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  18. Louw Van Wyk, ‘The Economic Development Regions as a basis for federalism in South Africa’, conference paper read at University of Bonn (1990)

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  19. Albert Venter, ‘South Africa: (Con) Federal Structures’, Plural Societies, XIX, 1 (1990)

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© 1996 Macmillan Press Ltd

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Woldring, K. (1996). Federal Aspects of the New South African Constitution: Prospects for Regional Integration. In: Rich, P.B. (eds) Reaction and Renewal in South Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24772-1_11

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