Abstract
Analysts of South African politics and society have been reluctant to focus upon the role of the state despite the fact that the April election was largely about who was to take control of it. It is true that the political transition that has been occurring since 1990 represents a wide ranging process of political mobilisation that, after decades of conflict and repression, pushed the white state in February 1990 into a path of political negotiation. However, the new interim constitution that was negotiated between the NP and ANC was also a device for the transfer of power from a white settler state to a new ruling group made up of a coalition of different parties. This transfer was not a colonial one whereby a European metropole handed over power to a new nationalist regime, for it occurred within the existing sovereign state structure of South Africa that had been created in 1910. If a revolution has been occurring in South Africa, it is largely one within juridical and constitutional means and has avoided the breakdown of state structures that has happened in some other African societies such as Mozambique and Angola. It seems particularly relevant therefore to ask what sort of state system has facilitated this political transition and what will be its role and influence on the programme of reconstruction of the new South African government.
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Notes
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Rich, P.B. (1996). Apartheid, the State and the Reconstruction of the Political System. In: Rich, P.B. (eds) Reaction and Renewal in South Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24772-1_3
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