The State of Apartheid by Wilmot G. JamesReview by: Jennifer Seymour WhitakerForeign Affairs, Vol. 65, No. 5 (Summer, 1987), p. 1120Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20043278 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 10:35

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Council on Foreign Relations is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ForeignAffairs.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 10:35:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

1120 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

THE STATE OF APARTHEID. Edited by Wilmot G. James. Boulder

(Colo.): Lynne Rienner, 1987, 210 pp. $25.00. This collection, assembled by a South African sociologist, takes a new

look at what are by now fairly old issues. Examining the main state institutions in a period characterized by what the editor terms "a breakdown in governance," the contributors point to the increasing assumption by the trade unions of a political role never intended for them; the overall collusion of the courts in the maintenance of the status quo; and the ambiguously extended role of the military. They also see extremely interesting possibil ities for change, including the end of government options for indirect control of blacks and the potential for future collapse of the National Party into military rule or surrender to the democratic opposition.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA: A GUIDE FOR AMERICAN DONORS. By Michael Sinclair. Washington: Investor Re

sponsibility Research Center, 1986, 102 pp. This useful handbook provides a succinct interpretation of the politics

of black activism as background for its practical guidelines on dealing with

organizations in South Africa (enumerated in an appendix). Based on

interviews with a number of middle-level organizers and community work

ers, the report explores their judgments about areas of greatest need and describes their highly ambivalent reactions to American aid.

SOVIET POLICY TOWARDS SOUTH AFRICA. By Kurt M. Campbell. New York: St. Martin's, 1987, 272 pp. $32.50.

A very thorough and dispassionate analysis of all facets of the U.S.S.R.'s

approach to South Africa, this study covers espionage, the U.N. and the

ANC, but is most interesting on the lesser-known areas of Soviet-South African minerals collaboration and the history of their relationship since the Boer War. Campbell's main conclusion about Soviet involvement: low in geopolitical terms, the importance of South (and southern) Africa to the

U.S.S.R. fluctuates?it could become extremely important as the situation heats up?but to the Soviets the main interest of the area now and later is

political and ideological rather than strategic.

ESSAYS ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF RURAL AFRICA. By Robert H. Bates. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, 178 pp. $12.95 (paper).

In this revised paperback edition of his 1981 Markets and States in Tropical

Africa, the author builds in part on his earlier work but extends his purview to the colonial and precolonial periods, exploring the interaction of private interests with public institutions and policy. Of particular value is a brilliant examination of forces leading to the centralization of societies still highly

fragmented, based on historical and ethnographic reports from 36 African

societies. Looking at relationships in the evolution of central political institutions and ecology, trade and level of conflicts, Bates focuses on

conditions that abet the emergence of "dominant actors."

PEASANTS AGAINST THE STATE: THE POLITICS OF MARKET CONTROL IN BUGISU, UGANDA, 1900-1983. By Stephen G. Bunker.

Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1987, 284 pp. $27.50. Buttressed by interviews, this painstakingly detailed account of political

activity among a group of small coffee farmers in Uganda should be of real

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 10:35:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions