Roger Southall’s attempt as an academic, let alone a South African one, to write a comprehensive and modern analysis of Southern Africa’s former liberation movements is as brave as it is compelling. First of all, given the modern nature of the processes and trends being analysed, it is the kind of political history which is not “dead” but very much alive and therefore on the move. Secondly, since the national liberation movements or NLMs that Southall analyses are now the rulers of the very countries that once marginalized them, his research may not necessarily be something that the current governments of South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe wish to know about. Thirdly, it is only through transparent and thorough research that politically sensitive history can be unravelled and this is precisely what the author has achieved with his Liberation Movements in Power: Party and State in Southern Africa.
One of the main questions historians must always ask themselves before starting their research and analysis, in order to sort out useful propositions, is “where does it begin”? Southall begins his quest for answers with nineteenth century settler colonialism in the first chapter and attempts to connect it all the way through to twenty-first century Southern Africa in the last one. His conclusions are confronting and leave little room for the romantic idealism of the 1980s and 1990s: not only have national liberation movements such as the SWAPO, the ANC and ZANU-PF failed to live up to expectations, they are now posing a increasing threat to the new democratic systems they helped to establish. The author looks at the possibility that expectations were perhaps too high and explores factors which are unique to the reciprocity of on the one hand the machinations of NLMs and, on the other, the economies and political systems they inherited. The ANC, notes Southall, started off as an early twentieth century elitist club of missionary-educated blacks who were proponents of gradual emancipation and “remained suspicious of militant action” (31-33). It was not until the 1950s that this NLM became an actual mass-action organisation with aims for national unity, albeit only grudgingly so.
Southall points at ways in which the machinations of NLMs are seemingly or actually contradictory, such as roots in socialism versus government policy through neo-liberalism and democracy as the end versus authoritarianism as the means. Whereas the end justified the means during the struggle for liberation, the means becomes the end in various degrees of undemocratic practices. Southall concedes that in order to run an effective clandestine organisation there may not be much room for democratic practices. However, in trying and succeeding to capture state power from white minority rule and establish majority systems, NLMs committed themselves to principles such as constitutionalism and liberal democracy. Principles, the author argues, they have never bothered to pay much heed to as liberation movements, so is it then surprising that authoritarianism rather than pluralism prevails once an NLM starts to rule?
Another factor that Southall highlights is the reciprocity between former NLMs (i.e., now ruling parties) and the state. Southall describes the rise of the “party-state” in post-liberated Southern Africa and the increasingly blurred lines between the ruling parties on the one hand and state institutions on the other. He expresses a fear about “the drift towards the predatory state” (269). This type of state, where just like in the later apartheid days the parliament’s powers are increasingly marginalised, becomes victim of the ruling party’s meddling and/or patronage in vital institutions and parastatals such as the judiciary, the police and the power company. Combine this with the awesome potential of former NLM’s to compete for grassroots political support once they are in power, the newly established system is in peril because of erosion from within. One of many examples can be cited from SWAPO’s support gathering mechanisms in the Namibian national elections of 1999. Opposition parties, black or white, were fought not with political arguments but with character murder, intimidation and declaring of no-go areas for opposition volunteers in towns where SWAPO already held sway. The ruling party’s slogan was “SWAPO is the nation and the nation is SWAPO”, suggesting that a vote for an opposing party would mean an unpatriotic one (124).
Southall also points out that in Zimbabwe the judiciary has lost most of its credibility in terms of defending and upholding fundamental human rights when it was purged by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF. The ruling party did not greet repeated rulings by constitutional and supreme courts that its land redistribution policies were in fact illegal and had to be stopped with much enthusiasm so it replaced and/or intimidated judges until cases like those of dispossessed farmers were not being taken seriously anymore. The current judges’ loyalty lies with the ruling party, rather than with the law. The Zimbabwean police has been similarly discredited and turned into “an unaccountable arm of the party” (150).
While acknowledging major and problematic legacies such as institutionalized racial divisions, massive socio-economic inequalities and, at times, poor governance infrastructure, Southall concludes that the former liberation movements have failed to live up to expectations. Moreover, after being in power since the 1980s and 90s, they have lost their political and moral compasses at best or, in the worst case, are now nothing more than predatory machines not looking to lead but to plunder and exploit. Organisationally, former NLMs will probably be able to survive as ruling parties but at what cost? He stresses in his final propositions that through inherent flaws and contradictions in NLMs structure they may not be fit to rule a country and explains clearly how he has arrived at his analysis.
The only point of critique that I have is that the author has chosen not to include any geographic illustrations, specifically to map some of the major changes the region has gone through in the time period covered in the book. Other than that, Roger Southall’s account of Southern Africa’s liberation movements in power will provide the reader with a transparent insight into the historical background leading up to present-day political conditions and is certainly worth a read.
