South Africa's current transition in temporal and spatial context

This article analyses South Africa's current postapartheid transition in th e light of earlier transformations of its social and economic order. The fi rst of these prior transformations is the abolition of slavery and the shif t to Liberal capitalism, which took place in the early nineteenth century. The second is the rapid industrialization of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each of these transformations, as well as the current transition, is explained as being partly the outcome of a broad shift in ca pitalist practice, innovated in the metropoles of the global economy. Due t o South Africa's situation within global economic networks, each of these s hifts, at different times, raised the threat of a dislocation in South Afri ca's prevailing social order. However, each prior transformation and, it wi ll be argued, the current transition, has been 'managed' by established eli tes so as to ensure minimal change to the overall distribution of privilege . This conservative 'management' of shifts in capitalist practice, it is su ggested, has been facilitated through South African elites' historic engage ment with cultural discourses circulating across a global terrain. In this article then, contemporary South Africa is located within both material and discursive networks which have historically influenced the country's distr ibution of privilege.