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4 - The Business of Business Is Politics

Political and Electoral Violence in South Africa and Kenya

from Part II - Business, Political Crisis and the Provision of Broader Social Stability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2019

Antoinette Handley
Affiliation:
University College, University of Toronto
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Summary

Examines the private sector response to a period of intense political violence centred on a struggle for control of the state in Kenya and South Africa respectively. In each case, key political elites at the heart of the state were implicated in this violence and this was therefore a high-risk area for business to venture into. Nonetheless, in South Africa, certain business leaders came to understand the need to confront and nudge the apartheid state towards political reform because they feared that their business interests might be wiped out in a racialised political conflict. On a practical level, the centralised and concentrated nature of South African capital also made it easier for business to organise, as did the overall nature of the institutions that structured the relationship between the country’s predominantly white political elites and its majority black population.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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