South Africa Without Apartheid: Dismantling Racial Domination (review)

218 SAIS REVIEW that encompasses (1) relations with the United States, (2) the newly industrialized countries and a potential intra-Pacific technological alliance, and (3) relations with Europe. Unfortunately, Oshima describes only vaguely the dynamics of the Japanese-European relationship and fails to pinpoint Japan's interests in cooperation with Europe. This collection of essays provides a wealth of ideas on the state of European science and technology vis-à-vis the United States andJapan. While generally lacking detailed data, the essays add depth, color, and hope to a broad policy discussion that is too often clouded by pessimism. Unfortunately, the book does not conclusively examine European-Japanese relations. Nor does it touch on the effect of European technological advances on the markets, competitiveness , and use of technology in developing countries. Despite its disappointments , A High Technology Gap? clearly presents some pressing issues in U.S.-European-Japanese relations and offers some thought-provoking recommendations. South Africa Without Apartheid: Dismantling Racial Domination. By Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley. Berkeley, Calif. : University of California Press, 1986. 267 pp. $18.95/hardcover. Reviewed by Chris Allen, M.A. candidate, SAIS. South Africa Without Apartheid presents solid social analysis and clear ideological commitment in a scholarly field littered with glib pronouncements and simplistic judgments. Adam and Moodley's collaborative work brings to the South Africa debate what it often lacks: a rigorous, academic perspective combined with a personal awareness of the realities of life and politics under apartheid. (Moodley was born, and grew up, in the country.) The pair present trenchant discussions of current developments in South Africa and apply a refined critical theory to make sense out of the confusion. In the end, they argue for a reformist approach to change in the troubled racist state. The authors lay out the major groups in the South African fray: the racist Afrikaner Hersigte Nasionale party and its ruling technocrats, the various unions, Zulu chief Buthelezi's Inkatha group, Oliver Tambo's African National Congress (ANC), and the United Democratic Front (UDF). Adam and Moodley examine the directions in which each of these groups have been moving and how they are likely to respond to future changes. The authors stress that active black resistance will not be eliminated by negotiations, legislative changes, or economic benefits in the absence of concrete steps to broaden political participation. Economic growth and class formation seem to be pushing South African politics in a new direction as class begins to cut increasingly across racial lines. Class formation, the authors argue, lends itself to an establishment of nonethnic, horizontal identity groups and a need for mobilization on an individual rather than a group basis. At the same time, traditional ethnic politics are being replaced by a technological rationality, a bureaucratic insistence that nonracial solutions are not feasible, however desirable they might be. This technological BOOK REVIEWS 219 rationality, as elsewhere, attempts to depoliticize issues, making them the subject of rational analysis rather than impassioned struggle. Adam and Moodley point out that in the absence of political participation everything is politicized, as education and union policies become symbols of government repression. The overall analysis, while incisive, has some major problems. Most disturbing is Adam and Moodley's abiding faith in the power of economic growth to eliminate racial divisions. It is true that the development of a diverse, capitalintensive economy has diminished the importance of control over labor— control that historically has been the key to entrenched racial privilege. But only a fraction of the black population is needed to overcome the current shortage of skilled labor that will lead to the marginalization of an increasing number of "surplus laborers." Though there are economic costs to apartheid, whites still benefit from low relative wages and low costs of social reproduction. Apartheid and growth, therefore, are far from incompatible. Further, as Adam and Moodley point out, "embourgeoisement" has not provided more people with a stake in the existing system but with an increased political consciousness, an awareness of their deprivation. Thus a bigger South African pie does not lead inevitably to the elimination of apartheid, nor does it ensure the system's peaceful demise, contrary to the common wisdom of the South African...