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

South Africa's leading anti-apartheid organization, the African National Co ngress (ANC) entered the period of transition in the early 1990s with only an impressionist economic vision. But for all its limitations it was a (sta te-led) program of development directed at alleviating the legacy of povert y and inequality. The ANC was forced to begin to fashion a set of modeled e conomic proposals around which it could at some level "negotiate" with othe r organizations and social groups and contest an election. As in the case o f the negotiations around a post-apartheid constitution, the economic progr am ultimately adopted differed significantly from the organization's origin al vision. The new economic program was a fairly orthodox neoliberal one. T he 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 globa l and local level. This article critically examines these political and eco nomic interactions in the South Africa of the 1990s; attempts to explain th e reasons underlying the shift in economic policy; and ends with some refle ctions on the ways in which the South African experience in economic policy reform either elaborates or revises existing theories of transitional soci eties. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.