Africa Notes: Who's Where in the Debate on "Nationalization'' in South Africa - July 1990

Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, an architect of the African independence movement of the early 1960s, counseled in his writings that an oppressed people had to seize control of the political kingdom in order to gain control of their economic destiny. Events in South Africa since Nelson Mandela was released from prison in February 1990 have stood this maxim on its head.

The public debate at this moment does not revolve around the new political order being addressed in prenegotiations "talks about talks" between the government and the ANC. Instead, the most contentious issues relating to South Africa's future now argued in public are economic-economic justice, redistribution, and restructuring. The buzz-word around which the debate focuses is "nationalization."