| This dissertation presents an actor-oriented theory of transitions from authoritarian rule and tests it on the case of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa between 1966 and 1979. It begins by critiquing prevailing structuralist theories of regime change as reductionist, economistic, and elitist, and suggests an alternative based on collective actors and discourse, focused on three causal factors: oppositional social movements, changing state-society relations, and the institutions of civil society.;The case study begins with a historical review, examining the prevalence of clientelism and corporatism in black communities and the half-hearted opposition offered by legal black opposition movements before their banning in 1960. It then examines social mobilization by the regime during the 1960s boom, intensifying clientelism and traditionalism along with repression to help conservative black elites build significant followings. The roots of regime crisis are traced to the emergence of new local solidarities in urban communities, their establishment of collective identities, and the birth of the Black Consciousness Movement BCM in the black university, church, and press. Crisis developed as the BCM sought to create an independent civil society: forming an elite, co-opting black social communications institutions, and public discourse of militant opposition. These politicized urban black society and promoted local mobilizations, increasingly autonomous and national, unlike patronized, parochial action in the past. After police fired on protesting Soweto students in 1976, one local action snowballed into a series of general strikes and mass protests. The regime's brutality made Soweto a mobilization space; BCM organization, local social networks, and civil society institutions came together in Soweto and in solidarity actions elsewhere. The resulting crisis shook the regime, redefined the limits of allowable discourse, and created the space for extra-parliamentary mass organization that ultimately ended white minority rule in South Africa. |
