jim said
"the ANC would still have had Soviet backing"
if we are to do some kind of counterfactual, what if type of analysis and we return to, say 1994, when the ANC was elected to office, and if we assume they would have had soviet backing, we might have peel back ....
which Soviet Union? the one that Gorbachev was reeling in?
or, we may speculate that Marxist governments in Moz, Angola and Zimbabwe (and the new South Africa) would coalesce around a re-invigourated SADC, Customs Union etc...
all fascinating stuff, but not much with which to work
Is http://www.ilagardien.com My little space in the e-world: A profit-free zone :-)
________________________________ From: "farmelantj at juno.com" <farmelantj at juno.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Wed, 10 March, 2010 11:41:36 Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] FYI & Comment if you Wish
I think that if the cold war had not ended, the western powers would have been much more reluctant to see an ANC government in South Africa, and they would have put less pressure on the apartheid regime to negotiate with the ANC. On the other hand, the ANC would still have had Soviet backing, and so to that extent might have had greater leverage in negotiations concerning future South African economic policy.
As I recall, the ANC was through the 1980s classified officially as a "terrorist" organization.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
---------- Original Message ---------- From: Matthias Wasser <matthias.wasser at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] FYI & Comment if you Wish Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:00:33 -0500
On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 11:50 AM, farmelantj at juno.com <farmelantj at juno.com>wrote:
>
>
> I think the ending of the cold war
> had a lot to do with the kind of
> deal that the ANC was able to
> negotiate. With the passing of
> the Soviet Union, the ANC was
> under much greater pressure from
> the US and EU to bow to the
> neoliberal consensus, which as it
> so happened would leave the South
> African economy in the hands of
> the same people who owned and
> ran things under the apartheid
> regime.
>
If the Cold War hadn't ended, would the Western powers have accepted a presumably unreliable black government in the first place? I have no intuitive idea of how much domestic vs international concerns weighed on these things. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
____________________________________________________________ Water Heater Some like it hot. Click now for a reliable new water heater! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=et5vW39NIOx2Tz_mRQO_GQAAJ1DoEMrytxsVXKlEh0tvqeWlAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGIAAAAAA=
___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk