The Political Utility of "State Failure" in South Africa

• In Event: Up for Interpretation? Reflections on Methods, Concepts, and Policies

Abstract

South Africa was hailed as a miracle for its largely peaceful transition from apartheid to multi-racial democracy in the mid-1990s. Many indicators—from access to improved water sources and formalized housing to citizen participation in democratic practices and independence of the judiciary—point to a society that, if not miraculous, has actually performed quite well in delivering on both substantive and procedural democracy, as well as demands for dignity and equality (see, e.g. Lieberman 2023). Yet, since the end of the 1990’s, the specter of “state failure” has been a key talking point in South African political discourse. The indicators of state failure have ranged from economic inequality and the crime rate to corruption and labor disputes. The orators using this turn of phrase are academics, incumbent and campaining politicians, the right-wing and the left-wing. The invocation of “state failure,” which is sometimes paired with reference to both the economic and democratic decline in neighboring Zimbabwe, is an omni-present critique in post-apartheid South Africa. But what does it actually mean, and where does it come from? To what ends is the idea of “state-failure” used, and for which constituencies? I find that references to state failure begin in earnest in the period of transition between Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki’s presidencies, and become more frequent and more varied in the decade following. While these references to failure are often a strategy of opposition politicians, references to "state failure" seem to have hardened into a rhetorical device for flagging any shortcomings of the ruling (and dominant) African National Congress. Yet such references also seep into the public imagination, with more and more public opinion polling showing that the South African public views the South African state as failing, even while so many indicators point to broad successes of democratic governance. This paper will use discourse analysis from mass-media and archival sources to examine the rhetorical phenomenon of “state-failure,” and what it means in practice, and what are the resultant consequences are for democracy in South Africa.

Author

• Carolyn Ethel Holmes, University of Tennessee