African Association of Political Science

African Association of Political Science
Towards Understanding New Forms of State Rule in [Southern] Africa in the Era of
Globalization
Author(s): Michael Neocosmos
Source: African Journal of Political Science / Revue Africaine de Science Politique, Vol. 6, No.
2 (December 2001), pp. 29-57
Published by: African Association of Political Science
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Afr.j. polit, sci. (2001 ) Vol. 6, No. 2,29-57
Towards Understanding New Forms of

State Rule in [Southern] Africa in the
Era of Globalization
Michael Neocosmos*
Abstract
In the recent process of transition in Africa since the 1980s, theform of state rule has
been changing in many important ways as have the relations between the state and
( civil) society. One of the changes in this process concerns the demise ofdevelopment
as a national state project through which state rule was reproduced and legitimized
( culturally and politically) up to the 1980s. While the collapse of thisform of rule of
the developmental state is now apparent, a clear alternative has yet to become
evident in Africa. Oftenformal multi-partyismand elections have been introduced,
while at the same time a single-party predominant system has been prevalent to the
extent that the earlier ruling parties often continue to control state institutions. In
this context, relations between state and civil society may not always exhibit the
same kind of obviously repressive characteristics as before, and various alternative
forms of legitimation are being experimented with (e.g., rights discourse, national
"visions", reconciliation, neo-liberal multi-partyism, new forms of corporatism,
etc.). This paper addresses several theoretical problems surrounding the analysis
of new forms of state rule in Southern Africa in particular. These seem congruent
with the current phase of globalization. It seeks to elucidate the workings of
developing alternative modes of rule, one based on the plunder of national mineral
assets by members of the ruling elite, another legitimized through a state constructed
consensus. It debates the various components of the consensual state in South
Africa in particular and assesses the extent to which these have been achieved.
Introduction
We know that the struggle for power is the struggle for a lie. What is needed
in these times of globalization is to build a new relationship between
government and citizens. (Sub-Comandante Marcos, Le Monde Diplo
matique, March 2001.)
1027-0353 © 2001 African Association of Political Science

30 Michael Neocosmos
From the perspective of democratization and theestablishment of popular sovereignty

and genuine emancipation in Africa, one of the main issues of concern is to develop
a theoretical perspective capable of enabling an understanding of politics in its own
terms. This is the only alternative to conceiving politics in a way which reduces it to
the economy, history,ethnicity,culture or even to the state. It is these various forms
of reductionism which inexorably lead to essentialist conceptions in theory and to
undemocratic politics in practice. Understanding forms or modes of politics in
Africa means rethinking relations between state and society on the continent.
Central to 1iberal discourse, has been a conception revolving around the idea that
politics is reducible to the state or that the state is the sole legitimate domain of
politics. For liberalism, "political society" simply is the state. This idea has
permeated so much into African opposition thinking, for example, that it has
become difficult to conceive of an oppositional practice that is not reduced to
capturing state posts or the state itself. One of my main intentions here, is to
establish the highly limited and limiting nature of this perspective, especially in so
far as the process of democratization is concerned. It is indeed important to stress
that if the concern is to conceptualize a genuinely popular form of democracy in
which popular institutions are sovereign, in which politics is truly emancipatory
(Balibar, 1997), then politics need to be conceived in a different manner. In par
ticular, this means visualizing a popular domain of politics beyond the immediate
purview of the state, over which the state needs to exercise some form of hegemony,
but which conversely may also be in a position to influence state politics and hold
the latter to account. My other main concern to brieflyoutline some of the features
of state rule (of state-society relations) as they have developed in Africa in the
context of the globalization of neo-Iiberal ideology and practice.
State and Society in Mutual Relation

Even sophisticated and subtle accounts of state and society often fall short of
accurately accounting for political change simply because of a failure to
systematically encapsulate the relationship between state and society within their
narratives, and because of theirtendency one-sidedly to stress the ability of the state
to "invent" and enforce social relations. Moreover, whilè the state cannot substitute
itself for social activities, it should not be assumed either that any social institution
can be substituted for the state itself. For example, although it seems to have been
understood thatstate authoritarianism in Africa has been systematically suppressing
and substituting itself for the popular self-activity of social groups and individuals,
this cannot just be corrected throughsimply demonizing the state and proposing that
its functions be replaced by equally unaccountable "non-governmental organizations"
(NGOs) which are taken, by neo-liberal discourse, to be the main components of
civil society in Africa today (Beckman, 1992).
It is in the context of the relations between state and society that the concept of
"civil society" becomes useful. "Civil society" as understood here refers to society
in so far as its political character is concerned. It is its organizational and

Towards Understanding New Forms of State Rule 31
institutional forms which give thatsociety a "civil" (political) character. The use of
the term here does not imply any agreement with the way it is sometimes used in
neo-liberal Africanist political science, as an "arena of choice, voluntary action and
freedom", and as necessarily liberatory in relation to a supposedly monolithically
authoritarian and corrupt state. Neither does its use imply that the relations between
state and civil society are always confrontational. What it does suggest rather, is that
there is a dimension of society which is "civil" and thus implicated with the state in
the reproduction of political power. As such, any process of democratization, a
process that would have to transform the nature of power in society as well as in the
state, along with the relations between them, must start from a perspective which
sees state and society as fundamentally interconnected. It is the concept of civil
society as Gramsci in particular understood, which expresses this interconnectedness.

Marx had already argued that the existence of civil society is itself intrinsic to a
process of capitalist development, one whereby the realms of politics and society/
economy become separated and distinct so that rather than being combined as under
feudalism, politics now becomes relegated to the state while society and the
economy (i.e., civil society) are largely de-politicized (Meiksins-Wood, 1995: ch.
1; Gibbon, 1986). In such cases the state itself tends to be, according to Marx,
bureaucratic and authoritarian. The apparent "externality" of the state from society
thus masks its underlying links with society and the potentially political nature of
the latter. As a result the state may also appear as a "neutral" "above" society
body
while at the same time, the unequal and oppressive character of is
society
reproduced by the state. Therefore, authoritarianism and the absence of politics in
civil society can coexist more or less happily with a "developed" civil society and a
seemingly universalistic or "neutral" state existing above the conflicts between the
particularisms of society. Democratization cannot therefore be equated with or

reduced to any "deepening" or "vibrancy" process in civil society as contemporary
liberal Africanist social science maintains.
Moreover, politics can only become democratized if as a necessary prerequisite,
civil society becomes politicized. The basis for a democratic politics must be the
recovery of politics within civil society, in other words, to begin with the centrality
of a realm of politics outside or beyond the state domain. Democratic politics
beyond the state also implies the creation of a fully politicized citizenry, a process
which presupposes pluralism but is not reducible to it. But such politicization
cannot be a sufficient condition for a democratic politics. After all, the state can
itself politicize civil society "from above". The politicization of civil society should
be supplemented by the democratization of the state in order for a democratic
transformation of politics to be successful. Therefore, in order to be able to conceive
of a democratic society, a fully active citizenship needs to be combined with a
democratization of the state: the two are inseparable conceptually and politically,
one does not make any sense without the other.
In liberal conceptions, the state domain is the sole source of politics, or in other
words, "political society" is itself the state, there is no politics beyond the state

regulated and controlled political arena. Liberalism is therefore unable to recognize
the existence of politics outside this state-controlled domain. Africanist neo

liberalism therefore has a problem as it tries to find alternatives to what it has seen
as a corrupt, incompetent and irredeemable state. Its anti-statism is only skin deep
as the "civil society" itprefersis one which operates clearly within the state domain
of politics. Thus, in so far as the neo-liberal notion of civil society in particular is
concerned, it is worth noting that this amounts to a formal conception from the point
of view of the state. What I mean is that here, civil society is only said to exist when
it is granted formal recognition by the state. For liberalism, a civil society of secret
societies and illegal organizations cannot be conceived while it is stressed thatcivil
societies are incompatible with authoritarian states. Here, civil society is formally
circumscribed by the state which also legitimizes its existence, hence the fact that
the former is often equated with "interest groups" (today referred to more innocuously
as "stakeholders".
Thus, civil society can be said to be part of the state domain of politics because
its existence is premised on its legitimacy in the eyes of the state. Conversely, the
same position also implies recognition by civil society organizations of the
legitimacy of the state. This view cannot include explicitly "revolutionary"
organizations within civil society. It is to emphasize this point, and also to stress
civil society's class-ideological character, that Gramsci referred to it as bourgeois
civil society—in other words, a civil society well ensconced within a (bourgeois)
state domain of politics and political consciousness. The neo-liberal conception of
civil society is one defined by the state itself.1
However, the state should not be allowed to dictate whether popular organizations
are legitimate or not, and neither can intellectual inquiry allow itself to narrow the
concept to adhere to state prescriptions; only socitiy itself can bestow such
legitimacy. In this sense South Africa, for exam' 'e, -an be said to have had an
extremely powerful and "vibrant", as well as politicized, civil society in the 1980s
despite the quasi-legal nature of most organizations which comprised it. In fact, it
was the political distance of these organizations from the state, the fact that they had
exited the state domain of politics, which accounts for the "vibrancy" of civil
society in South African townships during the 1980s (Neocosmos, 1998). Also in
neo-liberalism, "rights" are seen as formal and universal, and thus not subject to
debate or contestation because of the fact that they are deemed to be scientifically,
technically or naturally derived, and it goes without saying, they are supposed to be
state sanctioned if they are to achieve the status of universal truth.
Under such conditions, it is clear that civil society is already part of a state
domain of politics, and usually appears to be "apolitical" if the state is evidently
"uni versalistic" in form. Interest groups lobby for favours and for "their share of the
cake", which they claim is not large enough; they do not demand rights and social
entitlements. In other words, the authoritarian nature of the state is not questioned
by them, they simply wish to access its resources and favours. Here, frankly
political questions regarding the entitlements of various social groups are hidden

under issues of state-legitimized technical expertise, claims for greater access to

state resources, and the deployment of state largesse. In most cases in Africa, the
problem of authoritarianism, irrespective of the number of political parties or

interest groups in existence, revolves around the absence of such entitlements and
rightsand is linked to the absence of an active citizenship which corresponds to this

state of affairs. The liberal view must, therefore, be jettisoned in favour of a more
inclusive conception, which goes beyond the notion of a civil society exclusively
composed of politically neutral "interestgroups" within a unique state-monopolized
political domain.
Today in Africa, it is the development of political identities not necessarily
reducible to economic concerns, which have become more apparent in the opposition
and resistance to state authoritarianism. It is such identities which define political
arenas. They are formed in relation to the state but from within civil society. If we
see political arenas or domains as structured largely by political identities, we can
also start to see that politics can also exist outside a state-controlled domain and may
exist within society itself.
Moreover, the state itself possesses features (authoritarian, bureaucratic,
managerial, etc.) which are not reducible to socio-economic class characteristics. In

fact, it is arguably the authoritarian nature of such state practices which has
exercised a determining effect on the political character of the ruling class or elite,
rather than the other way around as hasrisually been assumed. This is because such
a class or elite constitutes itselfas a political unity through its melding with the state
power. On the other hand, the economic and social attributes of such a politically
dominant class can be determined from within civil society, although in Africa, as
is well known, the tendency has been for the state to have a dominant role to play in
elite accumulation. However, it must be emphasized that it is state authoritarianism
and unaccountability which has historically enabled predatory accumulation and
socio-economic class formation among members of the state personnel; in other
words it is state practices, rather than class ones in the strict sense, which have been
determinant in the process of ruling class formation. When it comes to the political
as well as socio-economic characteristics of the popular or subaltern classes and
groups, these have invariably been constituted from within civil society and, as
such, their political practices have tended to be much more contradictory.
Rather than simply reducing political forms, consciousness, identity and
practice to the economic characteristics of various classes and groups in civil
society, it may therefore be more useful to distinguish between differentforms and
domains of politics characteristic of the state and of the elite/rulinggroup who are
associated with it on the one hand (elite politics, state politics, dominant/hegemonic
politics, etc.), and those domains and forms of politics practised by those excluded
from and oppressed/coerced by it on the other (popular politics, subaltern politics,
etc.). This distinction must be undertaken on the basis of the social relations,
cultural practices and discourses within which each exists (Chatterjee, 1993). While
the "domains" of politics refer to the differentarenas in which politics takes place,

"forms" or "modes" of politics refer to different political practices. The central

points are that the state is not the exclusive domain of politics, and that state forms
of politics are not necessarily the only ones in existence.

In general, the fundamental reason for the difference between the politics of the
hegemonic groups and those of the subaltern groups in society is related to the role
which the state itself plays in each. In particular, the ruling classes and groups
establish their hegemony through the state and hence through one form or other of
authoritarian, bureaucratic or administrative political practice. These various forms

of politics are by their very nature state-founded politics, if not wholly étatiste in
nature. Such politics always restricts democracy in one way or another and to some
degree or other. These kinds of politics may differalong a continuum between say
liberal democracy and militarism, but they always exhibit elements of a bureaucratic
or authoritarian practice, simply by virtue of the fact that they are founded on the
modern regime of power. Militaristic politics (currently dominant in several
African states such as Congo, Rwanda, Eritrea, Angola, etc.) constitute an extreme
form of statism or elite politics in which minimal concessions are made to
democratic practices, while liberal democracy is more clearly able to make such
concessions. It can be argued that the latter usually results from pressures from
subaltern groups and subaltern politics and is usually a means to coopt or deflect
these simply in order to produce consent (Rueschemeyer, Stevens and Stevens,
1992). In Good's words "liberal or representative democracy is a phenomenon of
this century which expresses not the fulfilmentof democratic aspirations but their
deflection, containment, and limitation" (Good, 1997: 253). It often suggests a
ruling class or elite which is secure and confident in its ability and in its (purportedly
natural) "right" to rule.
Therefore, the hegemonic project of the ruling classes or groups is founded on a
politics which is structurally and fundamentally undemocratic (irrespective of the
complex contradictions between various interests or positions within the state
apparatuses), as it has to manage state rule bureaucratically. Its undemocratic nature
may be more or less tempered and restricted by popular pressures and especially
democratic prescriptions emanating from within civil society. These subaltern
forms of politics emanating from within civil society are clearly contradictory,
including as they do both authoritarian as well as democratic forms of politics and
may be expressed in completely different representational forms from those
associated with the modern state (e.g., religious, "traditional", literary, theatrical,
etc.), but they may possibly form a distinct domain of a counter-hegemonic project
(Chatterjee, 1993). If it is to be more than a state-centred project, this has to be
founded on a popular-democratic politics and thus on aproject forthe democratization
of the state itself.
Popular-democratic or consistently democratic politics are the only kind of
politics which are trulyemancipatory and of greatest interest to the majority of the
people of Africa—the poor and the oppressed. Democratic politics therefore are to
be found primarily within civil society as, despite the contradictions within it, the

domain of state politics is founded on administrative, managerial and bureaucratic

concerns, the nature of which is anything but democratic. How state politics ended
up being so dominant in Africa (étatisme) is fundamentally connected to the nature

of the state and to the historically developed relations between state and civil society
there.
The State and Civil Society in Africa

Three historical periods of the relations between state and society in Africa are
important: the colonial period, the post-colonial period (1960s-1980s) of the
developmentalist state, and the post-developmentalist period of the 1980s to the
present. Each period can be distinguished by differentmodes of state rule, in other

words by different forms of state-society relations.
The Colonial Period

The colonial period is of central importance in understanding the contemporary
state and its relations with society because it was during this period that certain
fundamental features of the post-colonial state were constructed. Colonialism was
not (Said, 1994: 9) primarily about territorialacquisition nor was it fundamentally

about the (arbitrary) drawing of boundaries. As Mamdani (1996, 1998a) shows
extremely well, it was not a question of geography but primarily a question of
politics. It was about the imposition of an alien form of state rule over a subject
population. The state did not simply exercise social control in order to regulate
individuals but it was primarily founded on the coercion of (majority) groups of
people and nationalities in particular.
It is widely recognized that the colonial state was profoundly founded on
coercion. As Crawford Young puts it: "nothing was more alien to the telos of the
colonial state than a civil society. Sovereignty required forcible subjugation; there
were few illusions that it could rest on any principles but overwhelming military
power" (Young, 1994: 223). Coercion (of the extra-economic variety) affected
peasants primarily and workers in so far as the latter existed and were not simply
wage-labouring poor peasants. Forced labour, forced contributions, forced
cultivation, forced removals and forced development all contributed inter alia to the
reproduction of the modern regime of power as well as to the exploitation of the
majority of the population. The power structures of existing societies were

transformed and made to fulfil the roles of lower level state apparatuses so that
tradition/culture and authoritarian state became closely intertwined in the process
of indirect rule. The kind of capitalism which developed in Africa during the
colonial period can therefore be described as state-coercive capitalism.
Central to the colonial form of state rule in Africa was not only the coercion of
peasants and workers, but also the oppression of women and "youth" as the
anthropological conception of African society, a knowledge upon which the state

depended for its control, saw this society as structured around family and kinship
relations usually of an authoritarian, patriarchal and gérontocratie kind. The

"tribalization" of African society for the purposes of indirect rule during the late
colonial period, centred on the making of a particularly oppressive tradition which
was based, not only on colonial interests, but which also sought support primarily
among chiefs, elders, men, the wealthy and dominant ethnicities in colonized
society (Vail, 1989). This colonial interventionhad the importanteffectof restricting
to a minimum differentiation between society, economy and culture (i.e., civil
society) on the one hand, and state power on the other. As a result, authoritarianism
was entrenched and democracy systematically restricted in rural areas in particular.
Moreover, it was generally the case, initially at least, that resistance, particularly
among the rural-based colonized population, tended to operate from within these
specifically authoritarianconstraintsand to be profoundlymarked by them (Mamdani.
1996; Neocosmos, 1995).
The British had already developed a clear philosophy of separateness on the
issue of government and administration in their older colonies which Chatterjee
(1993; 16) refers toas the "rule of colonial difference" whereby cultural difference
between colonizers (civilized) and colonized (uncivilized) was seen as justifying
the authoritarianism of the state. In addition, it also justified the teaching by
colonizers of their "child-like" colonial charges to advance and progress towards a
cultural state where they could then benefit from and responsibly utilize modern
forms of government and administration. Until then, cultural backwardness was the
main impediment to a universalistic state. From this essentialized hierarchical
notion of difference it was easy to move to a position which stressed separateness in
political systems through indirect rule as a way of resolving this contradiction, as

the "native question"—the thorny problem of how to rule the subject population—
was revisited in the late 1920s. Mamdani (1996) has shown how this system of
indirect rule controlled rural Africa differently from the manner in which urban
areas were ruled so that the state took a "bifurcated" form. Mamdani shows
clearly
how this policy of ethnic segregation, eventually developed in South Africa under
the name of apartheid, became the general form of state rule during the late colonial
period in Africa. Colonialism therefore naturally restricted politics to the state, but
it tended to do so in a way which demarcated two forms of rule, one of which was not
alien but based within a culture and practice (in, however, state-distorted forms)
emanating from within society and popular practise itself.
As—in conformity with authoritarian exigencies—society and economy on the
one hand, and the political realm on the other, were not clearly demarcated during
the colonial period, the formation of resistance (civil society) organizations
combined socio-economic demands with frankly political ones within an overall
nationalist anti-colonial movement. Thus, as they took up such nationalist positions
(of various kinds), these organizations were politicized, born as much of a socio
economic as of a political struggle, a distinction rarely made by them. The fact that
this resistance initially occurred outside the state domain of politics, was one of the
reasons why their political character independent of the state, could no longer be
tolerated once independence had been achieved, as they contested the legitimacy of

a state-controlled domain of politics. Adversarial politics between the state and

these civil society organizations had to be undercut for the imposition of state
hegemonic national unity in the post-colonial period. This was done through the
state project of "national development" which was an attempt to give each sector in
society something, and to ensure the dominance of a domain of state politics over a
fast-receding popular domain of politics.

Related methods of incorporating such organizations into the state domain of
politics also included "expert" advice from civil society organizations from the
erstwhile colonial power (or other countries, or even United Nations organizations
such as the ILO) such as the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) advisers to
African trade unions, for example. Such organizations were of course already part
and parcel of state politics in their own countries (or in the case of the ILO, part of
a supra-national state structure). The central lesson they invariably taught was the
necessity for trade unions (in this case) to abandon their more obvious political
positions and concerns and to restrict themselves to representing the interests of
their members by acting as efficiently organized interest groups. In other words,
African trade unions were being taught about the advantages of being incorporated
into the state domain of politics. This process was always presented as a simple
technical one, of course, or as one of the "maturation" of trade unions in the third
world, but never as the state-political process which it evidently was.
The Developmental State

The post-colonial period saw state rule structured around a project of a
being
national character whilst maintaining some of the fundamental features of its
colonial predecessor. The most obvious politico-economic continuities, as noted on
many occasions, were the forms of state appropriation based on extra-economic
coercion of peasant producers in particular and continued forms of coercive state
regulation. On the other hand, the racially ordered division of labour was transformed
and restructured through a more clear class differentiation the African
among
population in both its upper and lower strata. Among the upper strata, a section of
themiddle-class professionals demarcated itselffromtherestof the petty-bourgeoisie
and accumulated through access to state resources and links to foreign capital.
Among the lower strata, a minority of peasants and artisans became transformed
into capitalist farmers and small capitalists through access to state amenities and the
removal of racial barriers to capital accumulation. Employment opportunities were
created in the civil service in particular as state posts were Africanized and thus de
racialized.
This changed political economy informed and constrained the possibility of
new forms of rule. The post-colonial state could not rely solely or even on
primarily
force and coercion as the colonial state had done, as it had to secure its hegemonic
rule through greater use of legitimizing processes. The combination of authori
tarianism and paternalistic social which and characterized
democracy developed
this state was centred around the state of development. It was
project development

which would unifythe nation, and only the state which had the capacity to undertake
such a wide-reaching project as a national bourgeoisie was weak. In its radical
version made famous by Nkrumah and theorized in dependency theory,the idea was
to achieve economic independence after political independence had been won. In
whatever version and irrespective of the political colour of the regime, economics
was to take precedence over politics, and democratic institutions were seen as
superfluous, as obstacles to the process of nation-building as they encouraged

ethnic threats to national unity. Politics and debate were seen as luxuries that poor
countries could not afford as they were ethnically divisive. Rather what was
required was economic development (Shivji, 1988; Chachage, 1999, Mamdani,
Mkandawire and Wamba-dia-Wamba, 1993).
Central to this state ideology of developmental ism was a close combination of
political and economic processes. In fact,the process of development or accumulation
itself was one which was not simply state-dominated and coercive, but at the very
centre of the state's existence. The most obvious aspects of this process have been
debated at length in the literature. For example, the role of parastatals as vehicles for
the economic exploitation of the peasantry through iniquitous pricing policies as
well as their role in bureaucratic accumulation is well known. Also much debated
are the opportunities afforded for private appropriation of resources by state
channelled aid along with the corresponding centrality of patron-client relations as
a form of class rule. Moreover, the fact that these resources were
appropriated rarely
productively invested but rather put into speculative ventures, real estate, transport
or commercial ventures, meant that very little accumulation in the strict sense took
place. The fact that the post-colonial state had to secure support from aspiring
accumulators among the middle class to some extent its use of "neo
explains
patrimonial" practices. This feature of the state cannot, however, be used as a
universal key to explain the state itself without collapsing into crude essentialisms
which often dominate in current Africanist political science (Mamdani, 1990,
Beckman, 1992).
At the same time it must be recalled that while the development undertaken
during this period was state-directed and thus top-down and ultimately coercive, it
was supported politically and financially by Western donors and international
institutions(including the"Bretton Woods Twins"). Concurrently,the state genuinely
secured support from large sections of the population through the mobilization of
national sentiment and the provision of social infrastructureand subsidies. It also
provided, in most cases, basic state functions and provisions through a sometimes
increasing reliance on overseas development assistance. These included some basic
infrastructure,social services, low-level co-operative financing, subsidization of
inputs, extension services and so on. In combination these often provided a kind of
"cushion" which, while it failed to promote accumulation on a broad scale among
the people, was sometimes successful in contributing towards restricting the
process of impoverishment, especially among rural producers.
This form of state must be qualified as a "developmental state" not with

reference to its possessing (or lacking) a technical capacity to ensure that development
takes place as the term is sometimes understood today (Mkandawire, 1998), but
rather because it secured its rule through its ubiquitous and fundamentally
authoritarian (statist) conception of development in which the reproduction of its
rule was contingent on the success of its economic ventures. The emphasis in
characterizing the state should be placed on its political character and not on its
supposedly politically neutral technical or administrative capacities. Clearly, the

ideology it employed was highly political. It served as a justification for state
authoritarianism,typifiedmost obviously by one-partystates.What was delegitimized
was not politics as such, of course, but democratic politics. The masses of the people
who had been mobilized in anti-colonial struggles were systematically demobilized.
Popular organizations, trade unions, political parties—the bases of an organized
civil society—were either banned or incorporated into state structures, while their
leaders were either imprisoned, banned, killed or bribed. Liberal multi-partyism
was rejected as a threat to state-controlled national unity (nation-building) and to
the very existence of the state itself largely because it was seen as giving voice to a
politicized ethnicity which was itself founded within social structure. The state
attemptedto establish itsuniversalism throughcoercion and fundamentally continued
as an "excrescence" (to use Marx's term) on the body of society, detached from the
day to day cultural activity of the people. State forms and state politics were evident
within society as a struggle raged between elite forms and more popular forms of
politics within villages, ethnic groups and whatever socially founded communities
were in existence. Thus, even under conditions of state collapse, popular politics
(authoritarian or democratic in form) were often able to continue existing at the
level of civil society itself.
In sum, the colonial state as well as the post-colonial state in its authoritarian
developmental form, both reproduced ethnic particularistic allegiances, while (and

because) they were simultaneously suppressing them from above.2 Ultimately, the
development process based on a strategy of state-led import-substitution

industrialization, foundered on the twin rocks of statism and globalization and with
it the legitimacy of the state itself was questioned. The crisis which befell this mode
of state rule at the end of the 1970s and early 80s was both economic and
predictably
political. Economically, the failure of development to provide basic needs for
African populations was exacerbated by the precariousness of African economies
in the world economic system as a result of the collapse of raw material markets in
the mid-70s. The crisis of legitimacy which ensued was exacerbated by Structural
Adjustment Programmes (SAP) which advocated economic "liberalization" or
state "withdrawal" from the market which undercut whole classes' of
possibilities
reproduction and systematically altered (and informalized) people's survival
strategies. The nation-state entered a crisis as ethnic, religious and regional entities
contested its existence. Pressures for political liberalization sometimes taking the
form of political conditionalities by western donors restricted themselves to calls
for multi-partyism, elections and respect for human rights,while popular demands

for democratization "from below" often went beyond this to demand popular forms
of government and accountability of leaders to the led (Olukoshi and Laakso, 1996;
Olukoshi, 1998b). The South African popular movement of the 1980s went the
furthest in demanding the democratization of social relations and of the state
(Neocosmos, 1998).
The Post-Developmental Period
Clearly, development as a state-led consciously planned project can today no longer

suffice as a legitimizing principle in Africa, while in certain instances (Congo,
Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, forexample) the existence of the state itself
is being contested. Currently new processes of rule under different conditions are
being worked out throughout the continent. These include at one extreme the Kenya
(or Cameroon) "model" where Moi has been able to continue securing his
personalized rule while introducing multi-partyelections which his party controls.
At the other extreme it includes the South African case which is said by most
accounts to be a paragon of liberal democracy and to have been produced by a
miracle of negotiations between departing racists and incoming black nationalists.
Furthermore, the issue of state corruption is now also becoming an unavoidably
public issue. However, with the dominance of liberal conceptions of politics in the
current general discourse on the state in Africa, there is a reticence to address the
fundamental cause of corruption which is undeniably to be found in a popularly
unaccountable power. The most that liberal conceptions can propose on this issue is
to make one state department or commission the policeman or overseer of others.
The state is therefore expected to police itself. Nevertheless, the struggle against
corruption in Africa is unavoidably linked to the struggle for genuinely popular
democracy. However much liberal discourse tries to skirt around this issue, it is
difficult to avoid this fundamental implication. This is especially true given the
weakness of professional associations in Africa, which is itself largely derived from
the fact that they lack a monopolistic power over professionals and and
knowledge,
the consequent weakness of their policing functions (as compared to Europe where
they developed from the powerful medieval guilds).3

Such kinds of functions can rarely be democratically fulfilled by what are
currently referred to as NGOs, as these are overwhelmingly dependent on the state
itself, on foreign donors or on powerful politicians (see, for example, Kiondo,
1994). In this context, the dominant perspective on state-society relations in Africa
by liberal scholarship is one which has been dismissive of the African state as
fundamentally corrupt and largely irredeemable in practice. The same perspective
has searched for an alternative to this apparently demonic state, and to have
appears
found it in an idealized conception of civil society understood as a realm of "choice,
voluntary action and freedom" and reduced to NGOs (Beckman, 1992). It should be
pointed out that the net effect of this conception and practice, has been not just for
donors to bypass governments, as they seek apparently more palatable clients,
without in any way contributing to a democratization of the state itself. This process

has also had the fundamental effect of turning citizens and potential active
participants with entitlements and "voice" into clients and passive consumers of
donor largesse. It can therefore be fundamentally "disempowering" rather than
"enabling" in its orientation, and has very little to offer regarding popular
democratization in Africa, as a genuine emancipative democracy must rest on the
mutual recognition of rights and not on the granting of freedom from above
(Balibar, 1997: 22). This process has as its fundamental objective effect, the
expansion of the state domain of politics to include NGOs and hence to legitimize
state rule both at home and abroad. At the same time, it makes possible a new form
of accumulation among the petty bourgeoisie through what has been aptly called
"social entrepreneurship" (Fowler).
Two new forms of state rule seem to have come into prominence in the new
epoch of globalization. One may be called the "warlord state" (e.g., DRC, Angola,
Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia), another formcan be referredto as the "consensual
state" (e.g., RSA, Botswana, Namibia). In either case they seem to correspond to
new globalized neo-liberal conditions; in either case politics is restricted to a
specific state or elite domain, but in radically differentways.
Collapsed States?
The idea of "warlord state" is based on the notion that it is in the economic and
political interest of ruling elites to systematically pursue warfare and insecurity to
the detriment of their country's social fabric and to the overwhelming majority of
the population. It has been suggested that huge amounts of profitcan be made by
plundering the natural resources of countries under conditions of insecurity. This
plunder is undertaken by local and regional elites, as well as transnational corporations
as they all seek truly staggering profits. The case of the DRC is perhaps the best
example in which political elites from neighbouring countries as well as local rulers
and their transnational partners carve up the country's resources. According to the
South African periodical the Financial Mail (15/01/1999):

If the risks are high in Angola or the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
where President Laurent Kabila's troops are battling rebel forces, the
business rewards can be dazzling. These and other warringAfrican countries,
like Sierra Leone and the Republic of the Congo (Congo Brazzaville) are
rich in mineral deposits with scant, if any, regulatory restrictions—a
glittering lure for foreign companies (cit. Taylor, 2001: 5).
Clearly then, the central state is here unable to provide the basic conditions of
socio-economic life for its citizens including basic security, markets, communica
tions, etc. Rather the state constitutes an extreme version of a vehicle designed for
the self-enrichment of members of the elite and engages in constant warfare with
other elites based in other parts of the national territorywho are also engaged in
plundering natural resources and the population. Militarism rules, as does extreme

factionalism, the constant search for the highest bidder, etc. Wamba-dia-Wamba).
In Taylor's words:
a number of state el ites in the Great Lakes and Southern African regions have
ceased to use the mantle of sovereignty to promote the collective good, but
instead have used it to help bolster their own patronage networks and
weaken those of potential challengers (ibid.: 11).
Of course, under such circumstances such elites have very little incentive to
resolve conflicts and findpeaceful answers to theirdifferences. Whether such elites
ever used sovereignty to promote the collective good is a moot point, however, such
warlordism has been made possible precisely by the neo-liberalism which insists on
the withdrawal of the state from the market and the short-termist and unregulated
conceptions of economic activity so prevalent in today's hegemonic economic
discourse. It is perhaps also worthwhile commenting that to refer to these states as
"collapsed states" as is sometimes done is singularly unhelpful for a number of

reasons.
First, the idea of "collapsed state" tends to be used with reference to any crisis
situation with the result thatthe genocidal state of Rwanda under Habyarimana was
also said to have "collapsed" despite all the evidence to the contrary (see, e.g.,
Longman, 1998). Second, the absence of the state which this term seems to suggest,
would logically also imply the absence of politics or at least of a political culture.
While this may be true among the elites who have had no qualms in engaging in
systematic slaughter ratherthan in political discussion when the former has been in
their interest, it is certainly not the case among the people. "Collapse" would seem
therefore to reduce the state to the existence of central state institutions which have
in most instances ceased to function, at least for the majority of the citizenry.
However, the fact that such institutions had in the past the primary function of
leaching the population of its resources and conditions of life, suggests that such
collapse may not necessarily have been such a bad thing! Surely the point must be
that large numbers of the people of Africa have lived under such oppressive
conditions, thatthe issue is not one of collapse or not, but ratherone of accountability
or the lack thereof. It is after all quite clear that state functions can be carried out in
conditions of central government "ungovernability" in urban or rural communities,
as well as within whole ethnic groups. Moreover, this can be done probably with
greater legitimacy than any central state has been able to achieve given its
overwhelmingly authoritarian history.
How can states be collapsed or non-existent and countries still exist? Surely this
suggests that countries are held together by other social forces and that, if this
holding together requires politics as a public arena fordebate in order to occur, then
this politics must exist within society itself, relatively independent of central state
authority. After all this is what writers like Foucault and movements such as
feminism have been saying for years: viz., that politics is prevalent within social
relations and cultural relations everywhere. Politics cannot be reduced implicitly or

explicitly to the state, politics can always be found, to various degrees, outside the
state. What matters is the character of this politics, not whether it exists or not.
The Consensual State

Another new form of rule in the new post-developmental period is an attempt to
establish state legitimacy by following the western model of liberal democracy
through the establishing of a "consensual state"—a state founded on a elite-driven
political consensus. This is the case in South Africa and in some other countries such
as Botswana and Namibia. In Africa this form of state has been based on single
partypredominance, as one based on the alternation of elite parties in power, which
would have to attempt to emulate the universalistic attributes of the western state
while combining these with a state form actually founded on colonially initiated
particularisms, is largely impossible. However, characterizing the state in terms of
the characteristics of parties (single-party, multi-party, no party, predominance)
remains squarely within the narrow limits of liberal assumptions for which political
participation is predicated on the existence of parties. It fails to address the more
serious questions regarding the characteristics of the forms of rule by the state over
society (Neocosmos, 2001a). After all, politics can exist outside political parties,
the notion of "political movement" suggests as much.
In order to elucidate new forms of rule it has to be recognized that in a number
of African countries, state discourse and practise are towards
geared primarily
achieving consensus with notable consequences forpolitics such as thedelegitimizing
of political activity in society, i.e., that beyond the predominant party/state
consensus, as "extremist", "foreign inspired", or whatever. In the Western liberal
model, consensus is established through multi-partyism and the alternation of
different parties representing different sections of a ruling class or elite. The system
works precisely because each party is given access to the benefits of state in
power
turn,and predictably so (e.g., alternation of two similar political parties in Britain
and the United States, "cohabitation" in France) even though the increasingly low
turnout at general elections creates a problem of legitimacy for the political system.
The consensus is further underwritten by the power of the mass media with
(along
other ideological apparatuses) and by regular state-cultural discourses on the
national interest and so on.
In Africa, given the notorious inability to unify the ruling elite into a coherent
class, as access to state resources implies jobs, careers, contacts and resources for
accumulation for certain sections of the ruling elite at the expense of others who are
excluded from all the perks, other ways have to be found to achieve consensus if at
all. It was this economically-founded sectarianism which had formed the basis for
the one-party systems on the continent the heyday of the developmentalist
during
state. If anything, the economic position of the middle classes has become more
precarious since the 1980s in several African countries as a result of SAP (e.g.,
Mustapha, 1992). This economic precariousness is thus arguably even more
conducive to sectarianism than it was previously. With the insistence on multi

partyism by westernpolitical conditionalities, crude one-partyism has been displaced,

but its conditions of existence have remained leading to institutionalized
"predominance".4
The case of South Africa is a useful illustration of this process of building
consensus. Constituted in a conjuncture of the resuscitation of political and
economic liberalism in the post-cold war period, and given the extreme power of an
already established capital with a (political as well as economic) role (or pretensions
to a role) on the world scene, it is clear that the South African post-apartheid state
had to achieve legitimacy and hegemony through differentmeans than simple one
party authoritarianism or developmentalism. The main characteristics of the way in
which a consensual state was achieved in South Africa differed from the Western
model because of its African historical context.
The consensual state in Africa has to be a national state, it has to establish a
national consensus, around a national legitimizing process of some kind. It has to
confront foreign domination and in the case of South Africa, white power and
privilege. As the South African state sees itselfas a "world player" in the neo-liberal
global arena, the anti-imperialist aspects of this dimension are minimal . This is
related to the dominant ideology of South African exceptionalism, according to
which South Africa is visualized as having more in common with Southern Europe
or even Latin America than with the rest of Africa, because of its relatively
industrialized economy. Unlike in the case of the African developmentalist state of
the 1970s, which attempted to build national unity around a national project—
namely development—there is no national state project in South Africa. Of course,
given the centrality of the state in the processes of development investment

planning,
and so on during the post-war social democratic or Keynesian consensus, after the
collapse of this political paradigm in the 1980s, such unifying state projects became
no longer quite so easy to construct.
Rather, the national unification process in South Africa while still referredto in
official discourse as "nation-building", is not centrally founded on an ideology of
development. In fact, this was attempted and jettisoned mid-way through the first
ANC administration as the neo-liberal rightacquired ascendancy over the statist left
within the government. The South African state's national is not based
legitimacy
on any one single overriding project, but on a number of state initiatives which
attempt to produce a national consensus (so far reasonably Thus we
successfully).
can speak of the development of the post-apartheid state as the development of a
"consensual state". This legitimation process has a strong authoritarian dimension
as we shall see. The main ways in which this consensual state is being constructed
are as follows:
1. Nationalism. As in other African countries in the post-independence period,
the post-apartheid state attempted to secure legitimacy primarily by incorporating
the nationalist political organization (ANC) which emerged as the representative of
the people-nation within it and to meld with it. The nationalist political organization
had achieved victory precisely by embodying the nation to form a political

movement founded on a diverse social movement in ci vil society. As a "movement"

it saw itself as representing different strands of civil society (workers, youth,
women, businessmen, chiefs, etc.) and it still attempts to create national unity by
convincing itself and constantly asserting that it does indeed still represent the
nation, long after it has transformed itself into a political party with all the sectarian
attributes this implies. Thus the ANC is in formal alliance with organizationally
independent sectors such as unions and has largely incorporated previously
independent women's and youth organizations within it. At the same time, state
posts are being Africanized and jobs are provided forthe new petty-bourgeois elite
within the state apparatuses (so-called affirmativeaction). This feature of the ruling
party of nationalism is similar to that of other such parties (and one-party systems)
in post-colonial Africa. However, as noted above, there is no single national project
around which the state-party can mobilize the nation (Neocosmos, 1998 and 3.
below).
2. Multipartyism/Constitutionalism. As in the western liberal model, a multi
party system has been set up in a way that political parties dominate over elected
representatives. Party bosses have immense power of patronage over party

membership. Parties either become fused with the state or operate like mini-states.
Political parties for the most still express racial divisions. However, it is political
parties which are elected and not individual members of such parties. The party
bosses have inordinate powers in deciding who is on a party list and impose their
candidates on local branches and regions. Indeed the internal operations of the ANC
are becoming more and more obviously authoritarian (see 3. below). A liberal
constitution is in place and a court is charged with defending the constitution against
the state itself and the state party the ANC. Members of this court are as yet not
clearly making judgments against the state which has appointed them. African
countries in general have been renowned for having extremely liberal constitutions
which their states have proceeded to systematically ignore, or transform
bypass
(Shi vji, 1991 ). The latteris not yet the case in South Africa where constitutionalism
has so far prevailed.
3. Predominance. The potentially contradictory aspects of 1. and 2. are

reconciled through a system of predominance whereby one party (the ANC)
regularly acquires the overwhelming majority of votes. Multi-partyism exists for
ensuring the legitimacy of the main party's dominance and hence of the state itself.
Single-party predominance means that many (if not most) of the benefits of a one
party system (for the elite) can be retained, while at the same time securing
legitimacy in the eyes of the west and in those of the economically dominant white
capital. Predominance also means that one party becomes heir to "the nation', it
becomes identified with the nation and criticisms of it amount to attacks on the
nation and on its supposed national intentions such as social justice forthe majority
of the population of black South Africans. It must be stressed that one-party
predominance cannot suffice to denote a type of state; to assume that it does is to
place undue emphasis on the electoral system alone (multi-party, no-party, single

party, one-party predominance). Zimbabwe which has a clear predominant party

system, has evidently less in common with South Africa than with a one-party
system (Laakso, 1999). This is simply because the state there has shown itself
incapable of securing its legitimacy in civil society beyond the firstfew years of
independence. It is universally considered as illegitimate throughout civil society,
and multi-partyism has quite simply failed to secure its legitimacy because single
party dominance has been achieved through evident electoral fraud and systematic
state coercion, inter alia, features which are common to one-party systems.
Consensus or its absence as a way of securing the reproduction of the state power
(consensus as a principle of legitimation) appears to be much more fundamental in
characterizing the state than the kind of electoral or party system in operation.
4. Statism and State Consciousness. The equating of political consciousness
and state consciousness dominates the popular perspective, in other words it is
maintained that "politics is the state and the state is politics" (Wamba-dia-Wamba:
1994: 250). The state is seen as the provider. It will "deliver" development or will
pass whatever legislation is necessary to ensure that development is "delivered"
either by itself or by private capital. Political problems and issues such as ethnic,
racial and gender oppression, inequality and poverty, are all addressed through
legislation and policy, administratively and technically, rather than politically
(though planning is no longer in vogue). This amounts to transformation or
development "from above". It is no longer a question of the people or communities
"making history", of being in control of the state as was attempted, at least at a local
level, in the 1980s, but of political passivity and apathy (see 3. above). Erstwhile
popular organizations are now transformed into "interest groups" or "watchdogs"
and a civil society is formed which corresponds, in all major respects, to the liberal
model. This civil society is unquestionably part and parcel of the state domain of
politics. Its leaders all sit (or aspire to sit) on the appropriate state-fundedcommissions
and state bodies for which they get handsomely paid. The established consensus is
thus a state or elite consensus. The state is internalized in consciousness by those
wishing to democratize it,so that the only way towards transformation is to achieve
state positions. All politics is reduced to state politics and to "capturing" state posts;
state politics thereby soon appears to be "natural" and therefore inevitable. Society
is expected to be transformed "from above" and new bureaucracies are created for
this purpose with the result that millions in aid money for the poor is said to be still
unallocated as a result of "administrative bottlenecks" while, of course, the creation
of jobs for the favoured is made possible in the bureaucracy.5
5. Corporatism. Corporatism is evidence of the incorporation of erstwhile
popular organizations into the state domain of politics. It is one way in which a
national consensus is achieved, but this way is reserved for those organizations of
civil society which cannot be directly incorporated into the party of nationalism
proper. In South Africa this has primarily meant trade unions and refers less to
civics, as these have largely collapsed, and even less to official women's organizations
which have lost theirindependence. Such corporatism operates through institutions

such as the National Economic and Development Labour Council (NEDLAC)

whose decisions are in fact more and more ignored by the government. Another way
in which incorporation into state structures is undertaken is through formal
alliances with the state party in which civil society organizations are given a direct
stake in the state and potentially damaging threats to the state-structured national
consensus are avoided (e.g., the alliance of the ANC with the Congress of South
African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party). At the same time
regular attempts are made to bring in as many individuals with nationalist credentials
as possible into state posts at high levels, thus tying as many members of the new
elite as possible to the state through career paths and access to perks on government
commissions and so on (Neocosmos and Selinyane, 1999).
In Botswana, the incorporation of NGOs (the main source of criticism of the
state) within the state domain of politics has taken all kinds of inventive forms
beyond (crucially important)state fundingto include "breakfasts with the president",
permanent state councils, and the regular inclusion of (usually unelected) NGO
officials through the provision of travel expenses and perdiems to conferences in
the west and elsewhere. This is of course referred to as "consultation with all
stakeholders" thus providing it with a veneer of democratic legitimacy. The
problem, however, is that in most cases these NGO officials represent no one but
themselves. Ultimately, therefore, this simply creates a consensus exclusively
among the middle classes as it is these who are provided with access to the trough of
perks and jobs to the exclusion of the majority of the population of whom around 48
percent are said to live in poverty.

6. Reconciliation. In South Africa, a reconciliation programme ostensibly
between races but (as I argue elsewhere, Neocosmos, 2001b) actually between the
new and old state managers has been undertaken, while justice for the majority vis
á-vis past state depredations and systematic atrocities has been (Mamdani,
precluded
1998b). The legal basis of the old state has not been contested or seen as illegitimate,
neither has the basis of its colonial statism been critiqued. Rather, its legitimacy has
been confirmed and thus the threats from the agents of the old state on the new have
been undermined at the expense of the people. The process of reconciliation has also
been one of the formation of a post-apartheid national ruling class cutting across the
races.
7. Ideological Vision. An ideological "vision" propounded by the state has to
be available. This also has to possess a "national" character in order for such a
consensus to acquire hegemonic dominance. as noted,
Although, "development"
does not constitute such a vision, social justice, especially economic justice, is
regularly mooted by the state as in desperate need of achievement. Yet the
overcoming of poverty has not been even remotely initiated as unemployment has
been increasing (so-called jobless growth). The idea of "development" or whatever
impoverished component of it is left (such as infrastructural provision) is seen
simply as particularistic and not as national and universalistic, because it only
affects a sector of the population—the "most disadvantaged'. This general dis

cursive orientation is a direct result of the neo-liberal economic perspectives and
policies which hold a central place within the state ideological consensus. These are
not designed to incorporate social welfare programmes and subsidies, land reform
programmes, poverty alleviation and other social democratic statist prescriptions as

central state tenets but only as peripheral ones. While the state asserts that it is
indeed engaged in such social welfare policies to some extent, the contradictions of
these assertions with the neo-liberal paradigm are becoming more apparent.6
Another "vision" is the ideology of an "African renaissance" propagated by
intellectuals in close proximity to the new President, Thabo Mbeki. According to
this view, a "new dawn" is emerging for Africa under South African leadership.
What this "new dawn" consists of is not altogether clear apart from the fact that it is
said to be congruent with neo-classical economic ideology (see Lodge, 1999: 96
109).7 It appears to be mainly a way for the black South African business elite and
intelligentsia to assert a new found confidence, as accumulation takes place among
a ne w group of rich state-connected South Africans sometimes referred to in official
discourse as a "patriotic bourgeoisie".* This slogan is also mooted as a way of
providing a government of national unity between the ANC and some obviously
"African" pol itical parties such as the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), but not itshould
be noted with those nationalist parties created as a result of disaffection from the
ANC such as the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the United Democratic
Movement (UDM).
As a result of this state-defined consensual discourse, criticisms of the ANC can
be labelled as "foreign" (outside the national consensus), as either the utterances of
racists or ex-racists if such criticisms are made by whites, as disloyal remarks if
made by blacks, or simply as foreign inspired. The labelling of someone as standing
outside the (state defi ned) national consensus is very difficult to answer as one South
African commentator has recently stressed:
Whenever freedom is to be curtailed, restrictive actions are justified by

patriotism, boerehaat, anti-Soviet activities, communist activities or racism.
The censure is powerful for it identifies the critic as someone standing for
perversion of the consensus and, accordingly, defence is almost impossible

(Mail and Guardian, Vol. 16, No. 9, 3-9 March 2000).
However, what is not emphasized so much in this remark, is the fact that this
discourse of exclusion is a state discourse whoever may be uttering it. This state
perspective is complemented by an outright chauvinism in relation to non-South

African Africans most evidently apparent in the actions and statements of state
bureaucrats, university employees and informal sector participants in particular,

who see their jobs, careers and/or access to state perks as threatened by Africans
from abroad. The changed attitudes towards migrants from the sub-region who still
seek employment in South Africa is also an important indication of this crude state
directed or elite-inspired chauvinism (Neocosmos, 1999; McDonald, 2000). In this
discourse, an arrogant South African exceptionalism in which South Africa is

distinguished from the rest of Africa in terms of its supposed superiority and
similarity with the west (and/or Latin America) is combined with pretensions to be
a leader in Africanness (in some ways similar to certain African-American
conceptions), a position which leads to obvious contradictions as those noted
above.
Broadly speaking, as a result of this discourse, democratic prescriptions on the
state are delegitimized and said to be impossible, such as, for example, the equal
treatment of all inhabitants of the country, including, in particular, migrants from
other African countries. The basis for this discrimination is given legal support
simply because the South African constitution distinguishes between rights of
persons and rights of citizens, with the former being restricted in several important
respects most notably with regard to theirrightto engage in business (ibid.). In sum,
the false appearance of unanimity created by the consensual state suppresses
political differences, and tends to remove democratic prescriptions from view. The
net effect of the creation and imposition of an elite consensus by the state is to
delegitimize any forms of politics outside its narrowly defined and imposed
domain. No politics is allowed unless it accepts the parameters and practices of this
state domain of politics. The restriction on democratic political practice should
therefore be obvious as it excludes the possibility of dialogue and debate with (let
alone influence by) a subaltern domain of politics independent of the state.
As the consensual state attempts to secure its legitimacy, the most important
contradiction it faces is between the success of this endeavour on the one hand, and
what are perceived to be the exigencies of accumulation as ascribed by neo-liberal
economics on the other. Clearly, neo-liberal economic conceptions do not usually
assert a serious social welfare dimension, and as the growth achieved so far in South
Africa has not been associated withjob creation but the opposite, job loss, criticisms
of neo-liberal policies ring true. Even growth is slowing to zero as reliance on
private investment means that the power of the trade union movement and the
government's inability to control crime are disincentives for foreign investors

compared with countries such as Malaysia and Turkey among others. If the
economy and state continue to show themselves to be unable to "deliver" resources
to the overwhelming majority of the population, or to confront the massive poverty
at present existing in the country (as stressed by the most senior politicians), more
and more strain will be put on the ability of a consensus to deliver popular
legitimacy to the state.9
Consensus as a way to secure the state's legitimacy does not operate quite so
evidently in the countryside which is still very much under the control of chiefs.
However, the countryside can be and has been safely ignored by the state as it is not
usually (unlike say in Kenya) the site for alternative power bases to the state
consensus (with the possible exception of right-wingdie-hard Afrikaner nationalists
wanting to restore the old order). This ignoring of the countryside by the state is
evident in the complete lack of progress in any serious implementation of a land
reform programme which was one of the main planks of the ANC's nationalist

appeals during the liberation struggle. Apart from the case of Kwazulu Natal where
rural power bases and votes are crucial in determining who holds power in the
province, in other provinces, the countryside simply follows the town, so far
anyway. The industrial and urban character of South Africa does indeed tilt the
balance heavily in favour of the urban areas as the main centres of power, but this
need not remain so forever.

Other sources of contradiction include: the selection of state personnel from
certain particular social groups (e.g., "affirmative action") as opposed to others,

emphasizing particularism vis-á-vis the state's universalistic principles,10 the con
tradiction between an Africanist ideology and the oppression of foreign Africans
and petty chauvinism, the contradiction between the urban and the rural areas where
the majority of poor are located and where development has yet to be seen, the
contradiction between the growing middle class of both blacks and whites and the
majority of the poor, the contradiction between the state and elite claims regarding
the democratic nature of the country and massive poverty, and the contradiction
between a formal adherence to gender equality and the systematic oppression of
women illustrated by an estimated one million rapes a year, a fact which is
depoliticized in state discourse by its relegation to a realm of individual violence.11

A furtherpotential long-term threatto this liberal mode of state politics is the decline
in the turnoutat elections which is usually an indicator of popular disaffection with
the system, but this has not yet manifested itselfin legislative elections and may take
some time to do so in South Africa (Friedman, 1999). On the other hand, the turnout
at the recent local elections was by all accounts low, a fact which gave rise to
comments on political apathy among the ANC' s constituency (Mail and Guardian).
However, in the rest of Africa outside South Africa and a few other countries,
multi-partyism has not been able to secure for the state the legitimacy it has been
seeking, as the old pre-multi-party ruling elite has largely been able to secure its
position and access to state resources through the adoption of multi-partyism
(Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal, Gabon, etc.). At the same time SAPs have not produced
the levels of development predicted. As a result, calls for more popular forms of
development and democracy—in other words the general detaching of demo

cratization from multi-partyism as a prescription on the state—are becoming less
isolated (Olukoshi, 1998a, 1998b). There is an intellectual trend developing in
Africa which argues for forms of democracy which go beyond liberal democratic
prescriptions on the state because, if grafted on a colonial foundation, these cannot
give rise to genuine democracy (Mamdani, 1987; Wamba-dia-Wamba, 1993,1994;

Olukoshi and Laakso, 1996; Chole and Ibrahim, 1995; Olukoshi, 1998b, 1998c). It
has also been argued that donors' current interest in notions of "good governance"
is not unrelated to attempts to neutralize these more popular democratic prescriptions
on the state (Olukoshi, 1998a).
It is becoming clear that in Africa at least, the state cannot democratize itself.
Political parties, rather than being links between civil society and the state as
maintained by liberal democratic theory, are state agencies for placing members of

dominant social groups into powerful state posts, with the consequent reproduction
of an extremely powerful and corrupt elite which is seen quite apparently to be
accumulating at the people's expense through access to state resources. Parties are
instruments for reproducing sectarianism at the expense of the national interest. In
actual fact, it should be recalled that the liberal conception of politics is premised on
the view that the state ("political society") is the exclusively legitimate domain of
politics. If civil society were itself to be politicized so that a popular domain of
politics were in existence legitimately, political parties as presently constituted
could become redundant, or at the very least contested as the exclusive form of
political organization.
The crude economic reductionism of neo-liberalism, whereby a free market is
said to be the best guarantee of democracy, has undermined our ability to think
about democratic politics because debate and discussion are precluded by reference
to external exigencies on politics. Thus, at present, we are told continuously that the
"economic reality of the market" demands a particular type of politics, which must
be of necessity neo-liberal. If we are indeed serious about developing genuinely
democratic prescriptions on the state (Lazarus, 1996), we need to transcend such
theoretically reductionist and politically authoritarian conceptions.

The resurgence of ethnic movements in Africa has seemed to question the very
nature of the nation state. The predictions of the modernization paradigm according
to which ethnic identities would soon be replaced by national ones as the process of
state consolidation unfolded, has proven to be achimera. While this process has not
been restricted to Africa, it is on that continent that this process has been the most
widespread. The context for this has been provided both by the process of
globalization itself as well as by the bankruptcy of the developmentalist state model.
The collapse of Fordist regimes of accumulation worldwide and their reliance
on cheap labour in the third world generally, has meant that both capital on one side
and labour and the peasantry on the other have both been to make
trying up their
declining capacities (for sustained profit on the one and for reproduction on the
other) at the expense of each other. The squeezing of the working people of Africa
and the struggle for access to the state, the traditional source of accumulation for the
elite, has had as one of its effects, the recrudescence of ethnic mobilization. The
often genuine grievances regarding the post-colonial state's partiality in its largesse
with regard to "development goodies" and its systematic mistreatment of minorities
(or majorities), has been a major source of discontent as well as an easy method of
raising followers, thus easily leading to sectarian politics.
However, ethnic mobilization has had a contradictory character in Africa.
While some ethnic movements have been putting forward authoritarian demands
which concern the retention of privilege and have led in extreme cases to "warlord
states", others have been concerned with the extension of democratic rights, not just
to individuals but to oppressed groups. In fact, the resistance to SAPs and their neo
liberal agendas has not only been undertaken by the poor, women (who are at the
sharp end of household reproduction) and youth (who have slipped through all the

strained security systems), but also by ethnic communities who find their
environmental and cultural legacy systematically destroyed (as in the Delta region
of Nigeria, for example). The increased state authoritarianism as a result of the
forcing of SAP down the people's throats has also had an ethnic bias as the scramble
for protection against the state and the saving of "one's own" has often taken
precedence over the struggle for democracy. The recent popular upsurge in
Zimbabwe is only the most recent manifestation of resistance against the extremely
predatory combination of the post-Fordist regime of accumulation and state
authoritarianism in Africa. The demands of resistance organizations and by the
struggle for democracy on the continent have, however, not cohered as yet into a
broad movement with a transnational dimension.
Conclusion: Towards a New Mode of Politics

Clearly both warlord states and consensual states attempt to restrict politics to a
specific elite domain, well beyond the cultural practices of popular politics
embedded in the day to day lives of the majority of the population of their countries.
They do so, however, in fundamentally differentways. While the former has little
need of a principle of legitimation and tends to rule primarily through violence and
terror,the latterdepends on such legitimation provided primarily,but not exclusively,
by a process of universal suffrage. Nevertheless, state violence is never completely
out of sight. The kind of political culture which each form of rule leads to also
differs. The former tends to lead to a culture of militarism and opportunism among
the elite, fear among the oppressed, but also to inventiveness resistance and
popularly based alternatives as the people need to organize at community level

simply for survival purposes. Clearly such popular forms of politics should not be
idealized as they can include racist or ethnic militaristic politics as well as
democratic ones, but they seem to enable the posing of alternative state
popular
structures, as central ones are so clearly oppressive and illegitimate. In other words,
the possibility exists for the development of a subaltern domain of politics which
would challenge the monopoly of politics in the state domain.
The latter form of state tends to lead to a culture of apathy and self-censorship
among the people (Wamba-dia-Wamba) as popular movements are demobilized
and as the state is seen as a god on earth which is expected to "deliver" benefits of
various kinds fromemployment to development to housing. Rights discourse tends
to be concentrated within the state domain of politics. Popular politics in so far as it
exists seems to be less concerned with rights, individual rights in particular.12
Popular politics within a subaltern domain has a tendency to shrink as popular
involvement in politics is restricted to voting every five years or so, and as the latter
shows itself as more and more irrelevant to people's lives as its benefits are
restricted to a small minority of corrupt politicians. The resultant civic apathy and
ignorance leaves people open to the scapegoatism, racism, ethnic chauvinism,
violent sexual oppression and to the simplistic rhetoric of opportunistic politicians
who target the weaker members of society to benefit their own careers. This is

particularly the case in those countries where there is little in terms of a popular
history of resistance to oppression (such as in Botswana). In South Africa, given the
historyof popular struggle, although political apathy is widespread (witness the low
turnout at the recent local elections), instances of democratic popular struggles
among individual communities and organized groups still exist, although these are
quite isolated and easily ignored by the state.
Clearly new forms of state rule in historically new contexts tend eventually to
give rise to new modes of politics of resistance. The central conception of these new
modes of politics must be a popularly based politics which eschews the attainment
of state power as a prerequisite fordemocratization (at best) as the lesson of history
must surely be that there can be no democratic transformation "from above".
Rather, following Marcos's statement heading this paper, such new modes of
politics should have as their goal the development of a new popularly based
democratic relationship between state and society.
Different forms of state rule tend to give rise to differentforms of resistance. It
seems, for example, that the only effective antidote to the militarism of warlord
states is a mass movement for peace, one where communities reassert their right to
life and simple existence, peace and security, guaranteed by a popularly accountable
state. Clearly, there are many possibilities for international cooperation on such
issues but it should be noted thatthis means the assertion and recognition of a realm
of politics outside the state domain, within communities themselves.
This is also the case in the consensual state form,but in this case a popular realm
of politics must emerge in difierentsites withotherdemands to stress the unacceptable
and authoritarian nature of the state consensus. In either case, recognition of a
popular or "subaltern" domain of politics means of necessity a new conception of

citizenship with an accent on the reaffirmationof recovery of politics as a popular
rightand the removal of the monopoly of politics by professional politicians. At the
level of theory, this means beginning to develop a different understanding of
politics, one which legitimizes the contradictory but potentially liberating character
of popular practices and culture.
Notes
♦Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Botswana.
'This is theoretically and politically similar to reducing the economy to its

"formal" (i.e., state recognized) constituents alone, while excluding the so-called
"informal" sector from economic activity (the latter is said to exist "outside" the
economy, etc.). Economics here simply follows state conceptions.
2At the same time there were other state forms which were not strictly
developmentalist such as the Congo-Zaire state at one extreme generally characterized
as a predatory state and the Botswana at the other, a liberal state. Incidentally, both
were rentier states.
3Even Transparency International, the German-based NGO, stresses the role of
civil society organizations (in conjunction with state ones it adds) in the control of

corruption in Africa. See the interview with its director on SABC News Hour, 10/
10/1999.
"•Arguablyitis thisprecariousness and uncertaintyand the intensifiedcompetition
which they have engendered, which have provided the conditions forextreme cases
such as "warlord states".
5Such as the so-called NDA (National Development Agency) whose task it is to
allocate state funds to NGOs and which a year after its creation had only allocated
a tenthof its R340 million (Mail and Guardian, 12-19 April 2001 ).
6
See, for example, the South African Labour Bulletin, Vol. 22, No. 2, April
1998.
7 The
point here is to criticize the notion of "African renaissance" as employed
by the South African state and not the idea itself. In fact, it is important to struggle
to provide a popular democratic content to this idea which would give it an
emancipatory character. See, for example, Wamba-dia-Wamba (1998).
8
Lodge (op. cit.: 108) notes that it is striking how this discourse has become
dominant alongside the accelerating black share of market capitalization on the
Johannesburg Stock Exchange "from 11 black-owned companies worth R4.6
billion in September 1995 to 28 companies representing a capitalization of R66.7
billion—10 percent of the total share holdings listed—in February 1998 ...
Between 1994 and 1997, the number of black South Africans earning more than
R5000 a month jumped by 52 percent, from 310000 to 472 000".
9 Recent
figures on income distribution suggest that the income of the (largely
white) richest 20% of South African households is 45 times greater than the average
income of the (largely black) poorest 20% of households (Maharaj, 1999:2). At the
same time, as I have already noted, the black middle class has been rapidly
increasing as a result of government "affirmative action" policies, some would say
at the expense of the majority of the poor; see, for example, The Economist, 2 Oct.
1999. The Mail and Guardian (Vol. 16, No. 4, 28 Jan.-3 Feb. 2000) cites recent
research which notes thatbetween 1991 and 1996 in South Africa: "the richest 10%
of blacks received an average 17% increase in income, while the poorest 40% of
households actually suffered a fall in household income of around 21%".
10
The fact that "affirmative action" is seen as of greater benefit to "Africans"
than to "coloureds', is a real political issue in the Western Cape province even if we
leave aside the state-nationalist consensual consideration of "whites" as a unified
homogeneous group of racists or potential racists and their exclusion from state
posts if not ANC card-carrying members.
11
Maharaj (op. cit. : 2) forexample, notes that,in South Africa, one in every three
women is in an abusive relationship, a woman is killed by her partner every six days
and there is a rape every 35 seconds.
l2Mamdani's (1996) dichotomy between rights discourse—urban and tradition
'
discourse—rural is problematic. In Botswana, for example, a discourse on women s
rights does have some resonance among rural communities as does a
particularly
discourse on citizenship and group rights. On the other hand, corporal punishment
is meted out regularly under the legitimacy of customary law and the latter tends to
be the dominant form of rule over the popular classes, whether rural or urban based.

A liberal discourse on individual rights tends to be a middle-class phenomenon in

that country, the discourse on tradition or group rights more of a popular discourse.
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African Association of Political Science

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Towards Understanding New Forms of

1027-0353 © 2001 African Association of Political Science

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.51 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 16:47:31 PM

From the perspective of democratization and theestablishment of popular sovereignty

State and Society in Mutual Relation

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society as Gramsci in particular understood, which expresses this interconnectedness.

particularisms of society. Democratization cannot therefore be equated with or

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.51 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 16:47:31 PM

regulated and controlled political arena. Liberalism is therefore unable to recognize

the existence of politics outside this state-controlled domain. Africanist neo

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under issues of state-legitimized technical expertise, claims for greater access to

problem of authoritarianism, irrespective of the number of political parties or

rightsand is linked to the absence of an active citizenship which corresponds to this

managerial, etc.) which are not reducible to socio-economic class characteristics. In

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"forms" or "modes" of politics refer to different political practices. The central

of politics are not necessarily the only ones in existence.

authoritarian, bureaucratic or administrative political practice. These various forms

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domain of state politics is founded on administrative, managerial and bureaucratic

up being so dominant in Africa (étatisme) is fundamentally connected to the nature

The State and Civil Society in Africa

present. Each period can be distinguished by differentmodes of state rule, in other

The Colonial Period

not (Said, 1994: 9) primarily about territorialacquisition nor was it fundamentally

wage-labouring poor peasants. Forced labour, forced contributions, forced

reproduction of the modern regime of power as well as to the exploitation of the

majority of the population. The power structures of existing societies were

anthropological conception of African society, a knowledge upon which the state

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political systems through indirect rule as a way of resolving this contradiction, as

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a state-controlled domain of politics. Adversarial politics between the state and

fast-receding popular domain of politics.

The Developmental State

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superfluous, as obstacles to the process of nation-building as they encouraged

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supposedly politically neutral technical or administrative capacities. Clearly, the

developmental form, both reproduced ethnic particularistic allegiances, while (and

development process based on a strategy of state-led import-substitution

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The Post-Developmental Period

Clearly, development as a state-led consciously planned project can today no longer

they developed from the powerful medieval guilds).3

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South African periodical the Financial Mail (15/01/1999):

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"collapsed states" as is sometimes done is singularly unhelpful for a number of

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The Consensual State

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partyism by westernpolitical conditionalities, crude one-partyism has been displaced,

given the centrality of the state in the processes of development investment