The African National Congress and its Critics: 'Predatory Liberalism', Black Empowerment and Intra-Alliance Tensions in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa is characterized by centralized, neo-liberal policymaking that perpetuates, and in some cases exaggerates, socio-economic inequalities inherited from the apartheid era. The African National Congress (ANC) leadership’s alignment with powerful international and domestic market actors produces tensions within the Tripartite Alliance and between government and civil society. Consequently, several characteristics of ‘predatory liberalism’ are evident in contemporary South Africa: neo-liberal restructuring of the economy is combined with an increasing willingness by government to assert its authority, to marginalize and delegitimize those critical of its abandonment of inclusive governance. A new form of oligarch power, combining entrenched economic interests with those of a new ‘black bourgeoisie’ promoted by narrowly implemented Black Economic Empowerment policies, diminishes prospects for broad-based socio-economic transformation. Because the new policy environment is failing to resolve tensions between global market demands for increasing market liberalization and domestic popular demands for poverty-alleviation and socio-economic transformation, the ANC leadership is forced increasingly to confront ‘ultra-leftists’ who are challenging its credentials as defender of the National Democratic Revolution which was the cornerstone in the anti-apartheid struggle.

'National Antiquities' and the Law

National museums, housing â??national antiquities', were a nineteenth-century cultural phenomenon throughout Europe. In the United Kingdom, they afforded the Treasury a means of preserving relics of antiquity claimed as treasure trove. While satisfying the desire of the scientific community for the preservation of archaeological finds, and national sentiment in Scotland and Ireland, Treasury practice undermined the British Museum's eponymous mission. This paper traces the development and legal consequences of the Treasury policy of national allocation of treasure trove, including the discussion in the Museums Committee of 1898â??99 of the â??nationality' of objects and artefacts, and considers the potential wider significance of â??national antiquity' in the context of changing constitutional arrangements in the United Kingdom in the 1920s, and in the future.