SOUTH-AFRICA AFTER 30 YEARS

This is an account of a 1989 revisit to South Africa after an absence of nearly 30 years from my 1960-61 fieldwork. It contains both an analysis of what has changed and what has not, and some speculations about future developments. It concludes, with a pessimism that I hope will be invalidated by events, that South Africa is still a deeply divided society; that racial, ethnic and class cleavages can be expected to endure and continue to have political releVance; and that multiple processes of political fragmentation on several fronts militate against the prospect of a peaceful, negotiated transition to a unitary, integrated, universalistic democracy. © 1990 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.