Privatisation has both an economic and a political face. In South Africa, this Janus-faced character is revealed by the juxtaposition of economic and political arguments for and against the process of privatisation initiated by the National Party, during the transition to majority rule. This paper argues that the NP set out to fundamentally reorganise the structure of South Africa's political economy as an exit strategy. Although it justified privatisation by employing economic arguments, this ostensible depoliticisation masked political motives. Ironically, the weak economic case reveals the political face of privatisation in South Africa. The timing and context of South Africa's privatisation process is difficult to defend on economic grounds, but it did make political sense.

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Hollowing out the state

State collapse is one of the most important security threats in Sub-Sahara Africa. The George W. Bush administration's National Security Strategy includes failed and failing states as a national security priority. The U.S. European Command, whose area of responsibility includes much of Sub-Sahara Africa, are "concerned about ungoverned areas descending into chaos with terrorist and warlords…."2 The United Nations is trying to restore order to numerous collapsed states in Africa. Nonetheless, while there are discernable patterns to state failure and collapse, not near enough attention has been paid to them. This is a problem, of course, primarily for Sub-Sahara Africa, but increasingly, as well, for the rest of the world that has interests in that continent. This essay will point out these patterns. It will briefly describe and explain state collapse in West Africa and in Central Africa. It will then use those patterns to discuss the possibility of collapse in Zimbabwe and the potential contagion effects for the southern African subcontinent.

Post-apartheid South Africa has recast its regional relations. Nonetheless, much of the literature depicts its policy as a projection of captured interests, for instance big business as embedded in Pretoria's apparent neo-liberal turn. Instead, post-apartheid South Africa's regional relations represent a political compromise, albeit not necessarily an explicit one, that reflects the different visions of South Africa's regional role and their respective political bases. Because their policies reflect the push and pull of competing constituencies, democratic states are rarely one dimensional. Post-apartheid South Africa is no exception, as it attempts to square the political circle of competing political constituencies, such as big business and labour. South Africa's regional relations and, in particular, its policy of regional economic cooperation/integration, are best understood as a reflection of the competing interests within its domestic political economy.

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