The question of freedom: Post-emancipation South Africa in a neoliberal age

Abstract

The early 1990s saw one chapter in world history coming to a close and another just as surely beginning. After the fall of the Wall, the collapse of communism, and European unification, changes on a planetary scale, the new era promised both uncertainty and possibility. Yet while it may have appeared that such a revolution in politics and economy was limited to the North, other such changes were unfolding to the South. In South Africa, the end of apartheid and the collapse of minority rule raised questions about that postcolony's place in the new geopolitical configuration and the vulnerability of its markets no less than its political ideals. Because South Africa's liberation struggle had concluded after "actually existing socialism," there was a sense in which the old Marxist-Leninist 1 and Pan-Africanist principles, so instrumental to the struggle, were no longer salient. Bearing little relevance for a new era, they quickly eroded with the introduction of a different kind of revolution-a revolution of the market. Copyright © 2010 University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.