In the context of South Africa, the question of the progression of the country into full equality is still a thorny one despite the nation’s relatively developed economy and steady economic growth that are arguably some of the impacts of globalization. The world and South Africa in particular has often been left at crossroads in serving its requirements for becoming a global capitalism, which is often inherent with considerably strict financial rules that leave such a country to languish under intense and immense financial pressure coupled with little room being left for such necessary reforms to be instituted.
In essence, pursuit of a fully globalized economy has a significant likelihood to bring down the nation-state and or render such a nation state to seemingly being powerless. It is also important to note that the loss of power for a nation is usually a systematic process that is also inherent with various manifestations. Such losses of power by countries including South Africa are mainly characterized by a general inability for a country to continually generate its crucial networks for power as well as domination over other countries. In other words, when state power or the nation state of a country has been diminished, or is in the process of being diminished because of the various processes of globalization, it is not uncommon for any attempt by such a country to reconstruct its national identities to appear to be undermined by the various forces and agents of globalization.
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"Contradictions Of Neo-Liberal Globalization In The Context Of Southern Africa".
On its part, south Africa cannot be argued to have been exonerated from facing the impacts of such powerful as well as contradictory forces of globalization as some studies have attempted to depict. In particular, the various administrations and or regimes that have been in place after the era of the infamous apartheid have consistently exhibited a relatively strong willingness to initiate changes that can effectively promote equality, but it is often thwarted by the various indecisions and other external as well as internal demands. As such, in spite of the fact that South Africa is one of the most, if not the most, developed economies in the African continent, a great deal of the populous country’s citizens are still suffering because of the various effects of globalization (Mittelman, 2011).
In particular, South African nationals have been having issues in the management of such dynamics related to the political, historic, economic and social space, more than a decade after the abolishment and or denouncement of racial bigotry in apartheid. This highlights the various contradictions of globalization of the neo-liberal. Notably, it is common for globalization to be misinterpreted to only make inference the process through which a country opens its economy, both locally as well as internationally, with a view to enhance development through increased business and employment of the various factors of production. It is also the development of a country in totality and in all other aspects of life for its citizens including increased political, social, economic and historical space that probably depicts the bigger picture of what globalization is or should be.
The different economic demands or ideals of globalization are often simultaneous with strongly established historical, political, social and economic demands anywhere across the globe, and South Africa was therefore not an exception. Specifically, the country has all along been struggling to find the appropriate approaches that can perfectly ensure that as the country continues to experience globalization in its economic front, these other ideals continue to be realized for the total good of its citizens (Lerche, 2007). Greater equality as well as equal treatment for such people who appear to have been disadvantaged by their color, gender and class has proved to be such an exhaustive task, even in the wake of great unprecedented globalization of the country’s economy (Moyo, 2008).
The existence or reality of an identity that seems to have been ethnically and historically fixed is undoubtedly and undeniably one of the most astounding contradictions on neo-liberal globalization due to the manner in which absence of politics has all along been desired in tackling the issue. As opposed to making such negotiations that can reasonably aid in the achievement of the various political goals as well as objectives, amid several dissenting voices, the tendency to always politicize the issue of dealing with the seemingly ethnically and historically fixed has been seen to become an impediment towards the realization of a fully globalized economy and functional country. Notwithstanding, the allure to claim such things as birthrights of various individuals on the ground of where they were born, territorial precedence, ancestry and tradition has often tended to carry the day, thereby jeopardizing the entire process of setting the country firmly on its path to full globalization (Taylor, 2003).
In what appears to probably become the greatest contradiction of South Africa’s neo-globalization process could be such misguided claims that were mainly advanced by the Afrikaner nationalist in conjunction with other academicians who shared the same views that the South African whites had the justification to forcefully subject the rest of the country’s non-white population to apartheid owing to the premise that both the white as well as black settlers had come to south Africa at about the same time. This therefore implied that the whites had more claim on the South African land, by the virtue of birth, and relative to the native blacks. This effectively presented yet another neo-liberal globalization issue of contradiction considering that land is such an important factor of economic production and its utilization and or employment is crucially important in the achievement of a fully globalized economy.
While globalization basically entails the opening up of an economy to both local as well as international investors, the arrival or the whites in South Africa ushered in an era of wrangles between the settlers, who included the English speaking settlers and the Afrikaners, over land ownership. In addition, South Africa the issue of identities amongst the black people, who constitute the majority of the nation’s total population, is still a thorny one owing to the presumed superiority of the white settlers as a spillover effect of the apartheid.
This has as a result continued to create a bad blood between the ethnicities as to undermine globalization’s theory of liberalism which requires the attainment of such human desires that are considered natural including economic welfare at the national and individual level as well as political liberty for all. The prevalent culture of involving misplaced politics such as of gender and race signifies the absence of political liberty for all South Africans and thus becoming the other contradiction of neo-liberal globalization. Therefore, despite the fact that South Africa is a relatively globalized economy, there are still a number of contradictions of the neo-liberal globalization such as absence of political liberty for South Africans.
- Lerche, J., 2007. A Global Alliance against Forced Labour?UnfreeLabour, Neo‐Liberal Globalization and the International Labour Organization. Journal of Agrarian Change, 7(4), pp.425-452.
- Mittelman, J.H., 2011. Rethinking “the new regionalism” in the context of globalization (1996). In Contesting Global Order(pp. 109-127). Routledge.
- Moyo, S., 2008. African land questions, agrarian transitions and the state: Contradictions of neo-liberal land reforms. African Books Collective.
- Taylor, I., 2003. Globalization and regionalization in Africa: reactions to attempts at neo-liberal regionalism. Review of International Political Economy, 10(2), pp.310-330.
