South Africa in Transition - Introduction

In their editorial introduction to the special edition of JSAS commemorating a decade of democracy in South Africa (JSAS, 31, 4 [2005]), Beall, Gelb and Hassim use the phrase ‘fragile stability’ to describe the state of the post-apartheid order. Reading further, it would be fair to say that they invest more faith in the ‘stability’ side of this duo than in the ‘fragile’ side. While they signal that ‘immense social problems … remain a threat to social order’, they none the less diagnose the foundations of South Africa’s democratic order to be fairly secure. ‘The non-racial regime is fully accepted as legitimate’, they write. Moreover, ‘state authority and capacity have been regenerated from a position of severe weakness at the time of the transition to a situation today where it has substantial capabilities in exercising basic functions such as policing, border control and taxation’ (p. 681).