The Legacies of Liberation: Revolution, Liberal Reformism, and Political Development in Southern Africa

Noor, Salih O.

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-f3wj-d974

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The Legacies of Liberation: Revolution, Liberal Reformism, and Political Development in Southern Africa

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The political history of late twentieth-century Southern Africa was dominated by violent liberation struggles against settler-colonial domination in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. All five countries experienced prolonged settler colonialism, followed by conflicts in which revolutionary national liberation movements (NLMs) sought to both end settler-colonial domination and build more inclusive and equitable nations through rapid and basic structural changes. Between 1975 and 1994, these movements achieved political power in each country, and have since dominated the national political arena in the post-settler colonial period. However, the five countries charted divergent paths of political development marked by different state and social structures. In the last decade or so, three distinct political regimes have consolidated in the region, each characterized by varying degrees and patterns of political inclusion, structural inequalities, and national polarization. This include: less inclusive semi-democracies, with moderately unequal, post-racial societies (i.e., Mozambique and Angola); a militarized semi-authoritarianism, with the least unequal but extremely polarized society (Zimbabwe); and inclusive multiracial democracies, with highly unequal societies polarized by racial and post-racial class divisions (i.e., South Africa and Namibia). What explains the dramatically contrasting trajectories of political development in post-settler colonial Southern Africa? Alternative explanations focus on diverse factors, including deterministic structural conditions of the settler-colonial period, politico-organizational factors related to the liberation struggles, and relatively recent political events unique to each country. This study takes a different, comparative-historical analytical approach. Central to this approach is a critical juncture period—the “liberation reform episode”—during which radical nationalist elites took control of state power in all five countries and pursued dramatically contrasting reform strategies. Further, the study argues that the differing reform policy choices set the countries on political development paths that were path-dependent and that led to differing legacies of liberation. The critical-junctures framework of analysis adopted in developing the path-dependent explanation reveals that the distinct political legacies were a result of strategic choices made by political leaders during a well-defined episode of structural changes. Radical liberation elites, the analysis shows, pursued sharply contrasting reform choices due to variations in structural conditions and the timing of liberation in each country. In some cases, they enacted radical reforms, involving rapid and basic restructuring of the state, the destruction of structural inequalities, and a high-modernist approach to nation-building seeking to homogenize subnational differences. The radical reform pattern was evident in Mozambique and Angola, where liberation leaders were less constrained by domestic-structural factors or the international context of the 1970s. In the remaining cases, political elites adopted liberal reforms characterized by gradual reforming of inherited state structures, reduction of racial and class inequalities, and promoting democratic nation-building accommodating subnational sentiments. The liberal reform package was implemented in South Africa and Namibia, where liberation leaders were far more constrained by structural factors and world-historical changes of the 1990s. In Zimbabwe, the international context of the 1980s permitted nationalist leaders to thwart the initial liberal reform choice, leading to a pattern of stalled-liberal reforms defined by less democratic state and nation-building and failure to reduce income, wealth, and land inequalities. The contrasting reform choices were contingent outcomes difficult to predict based on standard structural factors or ideological beliefs of liberation actors. Instead, a conjuncture of domestic-structural factors and world-historical period of the liberation reform episode defined distinct sets of opportunities and constraints that impinged on liberation elite choices. The differing reform approaches, in turn, provoked varying patterns of backlash in the aftermath of the reform period. In the radical reform cases of Mozambique and Angola, radical state restructuring, coercive power consolidation, and high-modernist nation-building set into motion a violent conservative backlash by armed groups mobilizing traditional rural elites and the peasantry antagonized by radical agrarian reforms, the suppression of tradition, and centralized state policies. In contrast, liberal reforms in South Africa and Namibia generated a social-democratic backlash by the popular sectors, which reacted to deepening social inequalities, mass unemployment, widespread poverty, and neoliberal policies of the reform period. Finally, in the stalled-liberal reform case of Zimbabwe, neither fully liberal nor fully radical policies triggered a broad-based liberal backlash by the urban popular sectors as well as political and civic forces. In this context, less inclusive power-consolidation and nation-building strategies of the reform period ultimately gave rise to liberal demands for political, civil, and human rights, on the one hand, and the liberal approach to inherited structural inequalities, poverty, and development left the urban popular sectors disaffected, on the other. The distinct backlashes led to counter-responses from national governments. In Mozambique and Angola, governments counterreacted to the conservative blowback with political and economic liberalization, involving renewed political inclusion, the restoration of traditional and religious privileges, and transition to market economies. However, authoritarian and violent legacies of the reform period hindered the emergence of fully inclusive political regimes and the bridging of deep-seated political cleavages from the reform years. In South Africa and Namibia, the social-democratic challenges prompted renewed efforts for the reduction of structural inequalities and expanding opportunities for the urban and rural black poor. However, while helping solidify inclusive multiracial democracies, the liberal legacies of the reform period reproduced racial and intra-black disparities that further deepened polarization. Lastly, in Zimbabwe, the government’s response to the liberal backlash involved political and economic liberalization alongside a violent redistribution of white-owned land and renewed political exclusion. The authoritarian response reproduced repressive and militarized state structures, while renewed exclusion and highly inequitable land redistribution further deepened racial, class, and regional polarizations. The stable structures emerging from the resolution of the dynamic of reactions and counterreactions embody the enduring legacies of liberation that dominate present-day Southern Africa. The argument differs from conventional approaches to political change in post-settler colonial Southern Africa. Firstly, despite shared antecedents of the settler-colonial period and the revolutionary struggles, post-liberation Southern Africa has been characterized by varying development trajectories that are path-dependent. Secondly, these processes and their outcomes are attributed to the critical juncture of liberation reforms that strongly shaped the state and socio-structural legacies of twentieth-century liberation struggles. Whereas the political-regime legacies closely resemble state structures of the reform period and its aftermath, the patterns of social inequalities and polarizations, that bear diminished socio-structural features of the late settler-colonial period, echo social structures and conflicts arising from the reform period. Lastly, the analysis shows that liberation ideology and legitimacy once exploited by political elites no longer serve as reliable mechanisms of institutional stability and reproduction. In recent decades, this rested on the former liberation parties’ control over state power and resources, and varying degrees of democratic contestation, patronage, political cooptation, and state violence. The critical-juncture approach shifted analytical focus to the turning point of national liberation as a foundational episode with far-reaching implications. The argument is illustrated with rich archival and quantitative data that allowed evaluating—at a fine-grained level of analysis—rival explanations emphasizing background conditions of settler colonialism, political differences among the liberation parties, or relatively recent political events. The evidence strongly supports my argument that the contrasting legacies of liberation are rather outcomes of varied reform approaches of the liberation reform period. Beyond providing an empirically grounded theory of political development in postcolonial Southern Africa, the analysis yields implications of broader relevance for comparative politics and historical sociology. It specifically offers insights and propositions for analyzing long-run impacts of decolonization in Africa, especially instances of violent decolonization in certain African and non-African countries, as well as revolutions, conflict, and other periods of abrupt change during the postcolonial era in others. This can be achieved by applying the critical-junctures framework to specific junctures involving conflict resolution, political settlement, and the subsequent dynamics of post-conflict scenarios. Finally, by emphasizing the role of leadership and strategic choice during episodes of major change, the study will contribute to comparative-historical and path-dependent explanations of political development. In sum, this study offers insights with broader implications not just for state and society in Southern Africa, but for understanding decolonization legacies, conflict dynamics, and major transformative episodes across diverse contexts.

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