blow to the hopes of big business.
The proposed reforms, crystallised in the CODESA process towards a transitional government, are not about a liberal South African white regime having seen the injustice of apartheid. Rather it is about a political elite which has seen the unworkability of the apartheid system modernising South African capitalism.
The maintenance of 'racial up the bulk of a super-exploited working class, and whites the bulk of a capitalist and middle-class elite, is not dependent on keeping petty apartheid rules. in designated territories and relying on widespread migrant labour, is economically inefficient.For the white ruling elite old-style apartheid is unworkable economically and politically; a new form of running South African capitalism has to be found. new mechanism. It means, of course, that whites espe cially poorer whites will have to give up some of their privileges. In particular, space will have to be found for a new, emerging middle class. tionary wave of struggle by the non-white population of South Africa. What is being played out now is how that process will finish. The road of the ANC towards integrating the black population into a reconstituted South African capitalism is not set. masses can chart another course. referendum on reform, the odds were heavily on state president De Klerk winning a 'yes' vote. Nelson Mandela has warned that a 'no' vote would mean a lurch towards civil war. Certainly a 'no' vote would result in a further international isolation of South Africa and a in capitalism', a capitalist system in which blacks make For example, the Group Areas Act, keeping blacks The transition in South Africa is about finding that The mid-1980s culminated in a huge semi-insurrecIt remains to be seen whether the South African