| | This issue is concerned with the continuing crisis and conflict in southern Africa, in particular with the emergency in South Africa which has lasted 20 months to date. The eighties have seen a massive intensification in the struggle against apartheid both internally and in the region. Within South Africa, popular opposition to the apartheid state now comes from an ever broader spectrum of society black and white, Marxist and Christian, proletarian and migrant. Even capital has begun to doubt that apartheid is the best guarantor of its profits and has sounded out what an alternative, democratic arrangement might demand of it. Thus businessmen, led by the head of Anglo-American, met with the ANC in Lusaka in 1986 while elements of the white intelligentsia flew to Dakar for more talks in 1987. Capital has not yet abandoned apartheid but it is beginning to hedge its bets. As Levin points out in this issue, whilst the apartheid state undoubtedly remains strong a decisive shift of momentum away from it has occurred in the last few years. |
