Economic policy and power relations in South Africa's transition to democracy

South Africa's leading anti-apartheid organization, the African National Congress (ANC) entered the period of transition in the early 1990s with only an impressionist economic vision. But for all its limitations it was a (state-led) program of development directed at alleviating the legacy of poverty and inequality. The ANC was forced to begin to fashion a set of modeled economic proposals around which it could at some level "negotiate" with other organizations and social groups and contest an election. As in the case of the negotiations around a post-apartheid constitution, the economic program ultimately adopted differed significantly from the organization's original vision. The new economic program was a fairly orthodox neoliberal one. The shift in economic policy, we would contend, was the result of the ANC's perception of the balance of economic and political power at both the global and local level. This article critically examines these political and economic interactions in the South Africa of the 1990s; attempts to explain the reasons underlying the shift in economic policy; and ends with some reflections on the ways in which the South African experience in economic policy reform either elaborates or revises existing theories of transitional societies. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.