The book takes a hard look at internal developments and class formation in the region and explores the complex dynamics underlying the ‘failure’ of socialist transformation, demystifying the highly-simplified ‘destabilisation’ thesis and pointing to some of the problems that forces for change in South Africa itself may have to face in the 1990s. The chapters make significant reference to changing present and future relations with South Africa, and to the impact of internal changes on the development of neighbouring countries.