South Africa Pushed to the Limit: The political economy of change

Hein Marais's latest book is a fascinating and insightful sequel to its 1998 predecessor, South Africa: Limits to Change. This earlier volume provided a critical reflection on the origins of the contemporary South African political economy and the key features of the initial post-apartheid era. The new volume extends this analysis both in terms of providing a richer examination of the pre-1990s transition and, most significantly, a deeper and more critical engagement with the policy, practices, and theoretical debates of the first 17 years of the post-apartheid era. In undertaking this task, the author presents the reader with one of the most comprehensive and detailed analyses of the current state of South Africa's society, economy, and politics currently available. While there has been a noteworthy increase in the number of scholarly books examining the experiences of the South African state in recent years, such as M. Gevisser's A Legacy of Liberation; R. W. Johnson's South Africa's Brave New World; A. Feinstein's After the Party, A. Russell's After Mandela, and M. Allen's Globalization, Negotiation, and the Failure of Transformation in South Africa, none provides such a comprehensive coverage of so many aspects of contemporary South African society, economy, politics, and policy debates as this volume does. The book is an impressive 556 pages in length and is divided into 14 chapters. The first three examine the politics of nationalism, the rise of the ANC, the political transition in the 1990s, and associated economic challenges. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the economic policy debates of the early 1990s and the endorsement of neo-liberalism. Chapters 6 to 11 examine a series of core themes blending sectoral foci with policy debates and theoretical discourse. Themes examined in these chapters include: employment, poverty and inequality (including crime), social protection, HIV/AIDS, health, and education. The last four chapters are of a more reflective nature, examining first the key debate on the value of the ‘development state’ model, while the second chapter in this section details the leadership crisis in the ruling party and the transition from Mbeki to Zuma. The last two chapters, while being strongly anchored in an examination of ruling party politics and power struggles, provide insight into some of the key dilemmas with which South Africa is currently grappling. Core themes running through the volume include the dominance of the ruling party and associated power struggles, the dominance of the neo-liberal agenda, the apparent dependence on the mineral and energy sectors, and the persistence of poverty and social services challenges.