Politics in Southern Africa: State and Society in Transition (review)

Gretchen Bauer and Scott D. Taylor, rising young political analysts of Africa at the University of Delaware and Georgetown University, respectively, have written a much-needed and comprehensive text and analysis of the sociopolitical economy of the eight major states of southern Africa. Their approach is based on individual country chapters, their stance is a counter to Afro-pessimism, their tone is academically critical, their angle is only mildly left (neoliberal economic programs are regarded with skepticism), and their focus is on progress, on democratization. Country chapters are organized under six subheads: historical origins, society and development, state organization, representation and participation, political economy, and challenges for the twenty-first century. The introduction has a brief discussion on agent vs. structure as an approach that happily ends up eclectic, making the discussion unnecessary.

The book opens with a good argument (pp. 3–8) for considering southern Africa—ten of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) members—to be a region despite the diversity of its components. As settler colonies for the most part, the countries met the last wave of decolonization, and therefore many achieved majority rule through violence; they were involved in Africa's battle-line, either as front-line states or as the target. While sharply divided into former Italian and British colonies, they are intimately interconnected by trade, transportation, migrant-labor flows, and the liberation struggle, and they have been free of military coups, unlike much of the rest of the continent; instead, they subscribe to electoral democracy.

The subsequent chapters bring out additional political features, which could be developed further in a regional analysis. As they move from the national-liberation-movement stage to pluralist democracy, the states have stopped at the dominant-party stage of evolution, even in the rare cases of alternance, and with it, the increasing concentration of power in the hands of an executive presidency. The two trends reinforce each other: the dominant party supports a powerful presidency, and the president controls a dominant party.

In contrast, a frequent feature of the region has been a strong development of civil society and a vigorous role that grassroots organizations have played in interest expression and aggregation—functions normally assigned to political parties. Rising to fill the need, civil society can be put back in its place by strong-party-government measures, possibly to rise again when needed. The book emphasizes these conditions; it would be interesting to see a further analysis of their direction and consequences on political development.

The ends are pulled together effectively on other topics initially treated within the country chapters. One topic is the AIDS pandemic, reviewed in a section in each chapter and then treated to an excellent and extensive summary chapter on the dimensions of the crises. The book assays in detail not only the medical impact of AIDS, but its social, economic, security, and political effects. On this good background, a fuller treatment of the two concluding subsections, on the prospects and methods of treatment and prevention, would have been welcome. The chapter ends (p. 298) with an accurate identification of political leadership as the "supervariable" in the AIDS equation.

Another topic of special attention is women and politics, analyzed with a thorough and comprehensive evaluation of women's role in the liberation struggle and the democratization effort thereafter. It contrasts the legal and political advances of women with the disadvantages that women's (often unchanged) social position confers.

Finally, a multitopic chapter covers aspects of regional relations. A useful, succinct review of the regional organizations brings out the disinclination of South Africa to play a motor role in the region through SADC, preferring rather to aim for a role on the broader stage of globalization. The same theme dominates the discussion of South Africa in the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD). While the rebuttal remains to be made—that it is indeed better to...