Title: Postcoloniality of a Special Type: Theory and Its Appropriations in South Africa
Abstract: Readers familiar with South African ideological debates of the I97os and 198os will have recognized the allusion in the title of this essay. Since I have no wish to baffle the uninitiated, what the title echoes is a theory called 'Colonialism of a Special Type' or, as it came to be known, CST. I begin by referring to CST out of a concern that the South African reception and circulation of theories ofpostcoloniality risk reinstating certain inadequacies of that earlier theoretical description of South Africa's political and cultural make-up. A document entitled 'The Road to South African Freedom: Programme of the South African Communist Party', published in 1963, inaugurated CST as a theory which held that the structure of the South African economic and social order was in all essentials identical with the relationship between a colonial power and its colony. A key passage in the manifesto claims that although South Africa may not be strictly speaking a colony but an independent country, nevertheless masses of our people enjoy neither independence nor freedom. The conceding of independence to South Africa by Britain in 191 o [ ... ] was designed in the interests of imperialism. Power was transferred not into the hands of the masses of the people of South Africa, but into the hands of the minority alone. The evils of colonialism, insofar as the non-White majority was concerned, [were] perpetuated and reinforced. A new type of colonialism was developed, in which the oppressing White nation occupied the same territory as the oppressed people themselves and lived side by side with them.
Publication Year: 1997
Publication Date: 1997-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 26
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