Legitimating the Illegitimate: State, Markets, and Resistance in South Africa offers a profound examination of the apartheid regime’s efforts to sustain power and privilege amidst mounting internal contradictions and external pressures. Focusing on the intersections of state control, labor dynamics, and market systems, the book unpacks the paradoxical attempts by South African leaders to frame their racially oppressive system as legitimate. Through detailed research and interviews with government and labor officials, it reveals the state as a fractured and inefficient apparatus, undermined by its inability to fully control African resistance or enforce racial domination within a rapidly changing political economy.

This incisive analysis challenges earlier portrayals of the apartheid state as a unified, effective tool of racial capitalism. Instead, it illuminates the regime’s vulnerabilities, from the tensions inherent in its labor control mechanisms to the ideological shifts employed to mask its waning grip on power. With a critical lens on both state and market dynamics, Legitimating the Illegitimate highlights the transformative impact of African resistance and offers a nuanced understanding of the interplay between coercion, ideology, and systemic change. This book is essential for anyone seeking to grasp the complexities of state power, economic systems, and social movements in deeply divided societies.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.