The Opening of the Apartheid Mind: Options for the New South Africa / Edition 1

by Heribert Adam, Kogila Moodley

Overview

Refusing to be governed by what is fashionable or inoffensive, Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley frankly address the passions and rationalities that drive politics in post-apartheid South Africa. They argue that the country's quest for democracy is widely misunderstood and that public opinion abroad relies on stereotypes of violent tribalism and false colonial analogies.

Adam and Moodley criticize the personality cult surrounding Nelson Mandela and the accolades accorded F. W. de Klerk. They reject the black-versus-white conflict and substitute sober analysis and strategic pragmatism for the moral outrage that typifies so much writing about South Africa. Believing that the best expression of solidarity emanates from sympathetic but candid criticism, they pose challenging questions for the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela. They give in-depth coverage to political violence, the ANC-South African Communist Party alliance, Inkatha, and other controversial topics as well.

The authors do not propose a solution that will guarantee a genuinely democratic South Africa. What they offer is an understanding of the country's social conditions and political constraints, and they sketch options for both a new South Africa and a new post-Cold War foreign policy for the whole of southern Africa. The importance of this book is as immediate as today's headlines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520081994
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	06/28/1993
Series:	Perspectives on Southern Africa , #50
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	277
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Heribert Adam is Professor of Sociology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His books include Modernizing Racial Domination (California, 1971) and also with Kogila Moodley, South Africa Without Apartheid (California, 1986). Kogila Moodley is Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is editor and co-author of Race Relations and Multicultural Education (1984).

Editorial Reviews

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)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Adam and Moodley ( South Africa Without Apartheid , LJ 8/86) have written a systematic sociological analysis of the current political movements in South Africa. The first three chapters set South Africa in world context and detail steps leading to compromises considered totally impossible a decade ago. Detailed chapters on the African National Congress, black consciousness, Inkatha, and the far-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement give a view of the strengths and weaknesses of these organizations that is quite different from that provided by many scholars. The final chapter on the country's future concludes that the ``the most rational and also the most likely scenario for South Africa is a social-democratic pact between business, labor, and key state bureaucracies, as practiced in postwar Germany.'' Excellent notes, an extensive bibliography, and a very helpful annotated list of selected Southern African journals and newsletters add to the value of this book. Of interest to scholars and well-informed lay readers.-- Maidel Cason, Univ. of Delaware Lib., Newark

Library Journal