leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and other luminaries, new and old. But amid the politicians stood a different kind of figure, looking slightly out of place: a chubby, balding, middle-aged businessman named John Hall. Yet to the surprise of no one present, Hall was chosen unanimously to head the National Peace Committee they had just created in a bid to end the political violence blazing across the country. Although this moment was a turning point in South Africa's transition to democracy, it has been almost forgotten. Indeed, despite the acres of print dedicated to democratization in South Africa, commentators have largely ignored a crucial factor in its success: business. Business helped South Africa's transition to democracy to succeed by spearheading the creation and running of institutions to curb political violence. Before those bodies were formed, the spread of local-level clashes in black communities, stoked by elements seeking to destabilize the transition, had all but halted the delicate negotiations for democratization begun after Mandela's release from prison in 1990. Business intervention in the transition, while facilitated by narrowing differences between black and white leaders in civil society, took shape in novel initiatives driven by self-interest, shifting loyalties, and deeply held values. At the grassroots, it helped to set up a framework which permitted communication, built trust, and survived flare-ups of conflict among the warring parties, leading to local pacts to end violence and the formation of new local elites transcending party and racial lines.
Using Poulantzas' mode of analysis Charney provides a framework for understanding and periodising the state, and the phenomenon of ‘neocolonialism’ — often referred to, seldom defined. It shows that the neo‐colonial state has a different basis for ‘hegemony‘—clientelism—than in the centre states, and that it is particularist not ‘national’. It also explores the circumstances under which there could be a break up of the dominant class basis of and of factional popular support for the neo‐colonial state.
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