ABSTRACT
This chapter examines briefly Heribert Adam's thesis of co-optation. He believes in the capacity of the regime to co-opt such substantial numbers of blacks as to transform South Africa into a consociational democracy along European lines. The colonial analogy is truly apposite and appropriate to understanding South Africa. South Africa has a classical colonial system, certainly a classical system of internal colonialism combined with a parliamentary democracy of sorts within the herrenvolk. In effect, the present South African government since 1948 represents a constituency which is almost exactly 10 percent of the total population, a constituency which is defined in the first instance in terms of being a nationalist movement of white Afrikaners. So, in effect, the ruling regime of South Africa is a captive of a system in which a monopoly of political power is a sinequanon of maintenance of those economic privileges of the white working class and petty bourgeoisie.
