South Africa The Present As History From Mrs Ples To Mandela & Marikana (John S Saul & Patrick Bond)

South Africa: The Present As History - From Mrs. Ples To Mandela & Marikana (Paperback)

John S Saul, Patrick Bond

The world wanted South Africas true, liberated history and the writing of it to begin in 1994, but deep contradictions have quickly bubbled to the surface, revealing a society gripped in turmoil.

The results of all this have been, of course, paradoxical: a series of elections since 1994 seemed to confirm the ANCs hold, both popular and legitimate, on power. Yet, simultaneously, South Africa has found itself with one of the worlds highest rates of protest and dissent, expressed both in the work-place and on township streets, in universities and technicons, clinics and central city squares. 16 August 2014 saw the lives of nearly three dozen platinum mineworkers end prematurely and violently. The premeditated Marikana Massacre demonstrated to the world how little Nelson Mandelas ANC had changed South Africas core power relations, notwithstanding the dramatic, heroic victory over racist rule in 1994.

South Africa: The Present as History traces South African history from early days through the long European conquest and into two decades of democracy. The current socio-economic paradox one that finds inequality, unemployment and poverty worsening since 1994 reflect Mandelas early 1990s concessions, choices which reduced the pursuit of genuine socio-economic and political transformation to the mere realisation of what can best be termed low-intensity democracy.

Analysing tensions exemplified by Marikana, the authors consider potential futures for an increasingly volatile society. Genuine liberatory possibilities could continue to be vanquished but that is not the only possible results of todays turmoil.