Here is a Table: A Philosophical Essay on History and Race/Ism in South Africa 9781928314783, 9781928314790

Table of contents :
Here is a Table A Philosophical Essay on History and Race/ism
Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Incwadi ngokufinyeziwe
Introduction
Some notes on our method
Understanding Race/ism
The Argument of this Book
The Structure of the Book
References
I. Racism and the Marginality of African Philosophy in South Africa
Introduction
The Study of Racism and Philosophy in South Africa
Racism, the Eurocentric University and the Marginality of African Philosophy in South Africa
A Brief History of Western Education in South Africa
A Brief History of Philosophy in South Africa
Some General Characteristics
The Afrikaans-Continental Tradition
The Anglo-Saxon Tradition
The Contemporary Practice of Philosophy and the Marginality of African Philosophy
Developments in Curricula and Research Agendas
Conclusion
References
II. African Philosophical Hermeneutics: The Critique of Eurocentrism and Ubuntu as a Philopraxis for Liberation
African Philosophical Hermeneutics
The Critique of Eurocentrism
The Indigenous Re-Orientation of Philosophic Work: Ubuntu as a Philopraxis for Liberation
Some background notes concerning “Ubuntu” in the “new” South Africa
Our approach
African Philosophy of Race through Ubuntu
Ubuntu Philosophy
Philosophy in Ubuntu
The ontology of ubu-
Umu- and the epistemology of –ntu: being human vs human-being
-ness versus -ism
Ubuntu Philosophical Anthropology and the Concept of Race
Umuntu ngumuntu nga Bantu
Ngu muntu or akusi umuntu?
Ubuntu as a Philopraxis for Liberation
References
III. The Racism of History in South Africa
History and Philosophy
What is History?
What are Historical Facts?
The Interpretation of History and Liberation
South African Historiography
The British Imperialist School
The Settler School
Afrikaner Nationalist
Die Groot Trek (The Great Trek)
(Bloedrivier) The Battle of Blood River
The Anglo-Boer war
English Liberal-Pluralist School
Neo-Marxist – Radical School
Prolegomenon to an Africanist Historiography in South Africa
Conclusion
References
IV. A Critique of the Analytic Conception Of Race
Introduction
Analytic Philosophy: General Characteristics
Some general characteristics of Analytic Philosophy
Analytic Philosophy and History
Analytic Philosophy And Liberalism
Metaphysics and Theory
Empiricism and Liberalism
A Critique of Analytic Conceptions – The Case of South Africa
Eusebius McKaiser’s “Heard the One About Blacks Who Can’t Be Racist?”
McKaiser’s Appraisal and Criticism of the Argument
Criticism 1 “The argument fails by its own standard”
Criticism 2 “The argument is an insult to Blacks rather than a complement”
Criticism 3 “The definition of racism was wrong all along”
Our Appraisal of the BCBR Argument and Critique of McKaiser’s Account
Statement 1: “whites are ugly”
Statement 2: “Whites are Stupid”
Tom Martin’s Own-Race-Absent Racism
Martin’s Argument
1. The operativity of ORA in theory
2. The Operativity of ORA in Practice
Conclusion
Critique
1. Issues Related to Historicity and Method
2. Triviality
Conclusion
REFERENCES
V. An African Philosophical Critique of the Liberal Conception of Non-Racialism
Introduction
Some Africanist Notes on White Liberalism
Sobukwe’s Africanist Conception of Racism
Critique: Against Liberal Non-Racialism- Multi-Racialism as the New White Supremacy
Sobukwe’s Non-Racialism as an Anti-Racism and a Basis for Today’s Struggle
The African Carpenter - Sobukwe’s Tree Becomes a Table: Biko’s Black Consciousness Critique of Non-Racialism
Introduction
Biko’s Conception of Racism
Black Consciousness: Anti-Racist Racialism or Non-Racial Anti-Racism?
Black Consciousness as Anti-“non-racialist” Anti-Racism
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

HERE IS A TABLE A PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY ON HISTORY AND RACE/ISM

Ndumiso Dladla

Here is a Table: A Philosophical Essay on History and Race/Ism Published by African Sun Media under the SUN MeDIA imprint All rights reserved Copyright © 2020 African Sun Media and the author The author and the publisher have made every effort to obtain permission for and acknowledge the use of copyrighted material. Refer all enquiries to the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, photographic or mechanical means, including photocopying and recording on record, tape or laser disk, on microfilm, via the Internet, by e-mail, or by any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission by the publisher. Views reflected in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher. First edition 2020 ISBN 978-1-928314-78-3 ISBN 978-1-928314-79-0 (e-book) https://doi.org/10.18820/9781928314790 Set in Bookman Old Style Cover design, typesetting and production by African Sun Media Cover image: © publicdomainpictures.net SUN MeDIA is an imprint of African Sun Media. Academic and general works are published under this imprint in print and electronic formats. This publication can be ordered from: [email protected] Takealot: bit.ly/2monsfl Google Books: bit.ly/2k1Uilm africansunmedia.store.it.si (e-books) Amazon Kindle: amzn.to/2ktL.pkL Visit africansunmedia.co.za for more information.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword .........................................................................................................

i

Preface .............................................................................................................

ii

Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................

iv

Incwadi ngokufinyeziwe ...................................................................................

v

Introduction .....................................................................................................

1

Understanding Race/ism .................................................................................

5

I.

Racism and the Marginality of African Philosophy in South Africa .......... 12

II.

African Philosophical Hermeneutics: The Critique of Eurocentrism and Ubuntu as a Philopraxis for Liberation .................................................... 41

III.

The Racism of History in South Africa ..................................................... 59

IV.

A Critique of the Analytic Conception Of Race ........................................ 91

V.

An African Philosophical Critique of the Liberal Conception of Non-Racialism ......................................................................................... 117

Index ............................................................................................................... 152

FOREWORD Even before Plato, the “treeness” of the tree gave human beings only an abstract idea of a tree. It thus left open the question of the specific tree that was either being observed or spoken about. The author, Ndumiso Dladla also leaves the reader to wonder about the specific tree he has in mind because the tree which informs the title and book, is not identified. Is it the biblical tree of the knowledge of good and evil that he has in mind? Is it the mustard tree written about in the bible? Is it the famous “greenwood tree” of Thomas Hardy? These questions suggest that the reader may either engage and prolong the “guess which tree” game or simply ask the author to be specific about the tree he has in mind. The answer to the latter is indeed to be found in the content of the book. A famous proverb in the indigenous vernacular of the people of Africa is that no one can embrace the baobab tree. Wisdom, according to this proverb, is born and obtained only in the context of conversations and, even contestations between and amongst human beings. To recognise this is to concede that the quest for truth is at the basis of conversations and contestations amongst human beings. Is there the “trueness” of truth akin to Plato’s “Ideas”? This is the implicit question of the title of Ndumiso Dladla’s book. It seems more than necessary to read the text with the purpose of finding out how he treats this question with particular reference to the enduring problem of epistemic and social justice in South Africa. MOGOBE RAMOSE Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University Department of Clinical Psychology, Ga-Rankuwa SOUTH AFRICA

i

PREFACE It would be strange if a reader of this book was not by now confused. Firstly, by the seeming contradiction between the title and the cover image. Secondly by the prelude written by Prof Ramose which is in part a discussion of treeness rather than tableness. Even If not confused by these seeming contradictions the reader, I expect will be wondering about the strange title that we have chosen, what tables at all have to do with philosophy, history and race. In South Africa it would not be difficult to begin imagining for example the racial dynamics of furniture manufacturing and carpentry and the likelihood that much like the history of sugar farming or gold mining there was an evil and long story to be uncovered. The table of our title however, though it is drawn from South African history is a political philosophical metaphor. The title “Here is a Table” is drawn from the structure of the concluding essay of this book “An African Philosophical Critique of the liberal Conception of Non-Racialism” and is the result of a poetic revelation on the relationship between two political metaphors which are continuous between the best-known representative of the PanAfricanist tradition in South African history Mangaliso Sobukwe and his ideological descendant Bantu Biko. It is an expression of both our opinion and study that despite some controversy, there is a harmonious continuity and unity between the ideologies and philosophies of Pan Africanism and Black consciousness. Sobukwe in 1959, famously delivered a speech entitled “Here is a Tree”, in which he expressed the permeability of Africanity. He there gives his best exposition of his conception of nonracialism which holds that for thitherto non-Africans to become Africans they should relinquish title to territory over Africa and accept the sovereignty of the indigenous conquered people. Only once such has taken place and the historical injustice of conquest and dispossession has been resolved can we become one people under the great branches of the African tree. Biko some years later describes the situation using the metaphor of a table (which we have chosen to conceive of as wood and originating from Sobukwe’s tree) he writes that liberation will not find expression from Blacks joining the table of whites. Instead it will mean Blacks taking ownership of the table which is rightfully theirs, arranging it in African style and then inviting those whites who are willing to sit on such a table back to eat upon it. It is from the continuity of these metaphors that our title is drawn. The book you are about to read draws its critical apparatus from the traditions represented by the authors of the metaphor we have borrowed. It is also the inspiration for the cover of this book which was an attempt to conceive just what Biko’s table might one day look like.

ii

The central contention of this book is that following the problematic “negotiated settlement” of the early nineties. Some amongst the indigenous conquered people conquered people joined the table, at least very few of us did whilst the rest remain locked outside the house nowhere near the dining room. We move from the understanding that Biko’s table is still outstanding and it is the purpose of any liberatory thought both to conceive of it and realise it. The events of the recent political past, such as the rise of the Rhodes Must Fall movement and the Fees Must Fall movement may be the beginning of an awakening amongst African people that their table is arranged in someone else’s style and they are being kept away from it. The humble hope of this book is that it may contain some useful small sketches which will help those interested in getting the table back to its rightful owners and decorating it in the appropriate fashion. NDUMISO DLADLA Pretoria, Silverton May 2016

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, to my teacher Mogobe Ramose who has demonstrated through his life that the love which philosophers are known by need not always be unrequited. To my parents for my education which began long before classrooms and continues long after them. Thank you also for the steadfast support I have enjoyed from you in the pursuit of endeavours that have not always made perfect sense. To my circle of friends/teachers and comrades Melusi Mbatha, Bra Steve Lebelo, Molora Mabeba, Thabang Dladla, Joel Modiri, Alfred Moraka, Ntokozo Dladla and Athi Joja. Amongst them a special word of thanks to Thabang who assisted in the surprisingly difficult task of translating a precis of the book into our mother tongue isiZulu. Although the philosophical implications of the difficulty and the historical situation which brings it about are touched on implicitly in this book, it shall be the task of another one to address them directly. To the various people who have provided platforms to support the engagement of our work by a larger audience than afforded by the universities, sister Iman Rapetti, sister Quraysha Sooliman and sister Deshnee Subramey, thank you. Lastly to Anjuli, to whom it is impossible to specify the cause of my gratitude.

iv

INCWADI NGOKUFINYEZIWE Lencwadi imayelana nomlando nangokucwasa ngokobuhlanga eningizimu Afrika. Imayelana nokuqhubekela phambili ngokungavinjiwe ukucwasa ngokobuhlanga obubhekiswe kubantu abamnyama ngaphezu kwezivumelwano zango 90s nokubakhona komthethosisekelo ngo 1996.

Ingqikithi

yodaba

akusiko

ukuthi

ukucwasa

kuyaqhubeka

kodwa

kunomthethosisekelo, kepha yiwona mthethosisekelo okuvikelayo futhi kungeke sakuqeda lokucwasa singaqedanga ngomsuka wakhona okunguthathelwa komhlaba ngokubulala nokucindezelwa

abantu

bomdabu.

Asisuki

ekutheni

lelizwe

laseningizimu

Afrika

lingelabobonke abahlala kulona okungukugwaliseka kulokucwasa. Kumele sibhekane nalenkinga ngokweqiniso, okungukuthi l Afrika ngeyabamnyama kusukela mandulo. Isahluko sokuqala sikhulumisana ngobandlululo amanyuvesi okuzikhombisa ngokucekelwa phansi kwendlela yokucabanga kwabantu. Isahluko sesibili kuzoba yingxoxo ngoBuntu, kodwa hhayi mjengakuqondaobamhlophe ngezindlela zabo kodwa ngokuyindlela zamantu abansundu okuyibona sisuka sokulwa ngokuzivikela kwe Nkosi uShaka, uCetshwayo Kanye noSekhukhune. Okwabayiko okwasusa impi ka Bhambatha nokusungulwa kwe PAC (Pan-Africanist Congress) Kanye ne BCM (Black Consciousness Movement). Yibo ke Ubuntu esizozikhumbuza ngabo kulesahluko. Kwisahluko sesithathu sikhuluma ngendlela esibuka ngakhona ukunqotshwa kwethu nokuthi singazikhulula kanjani kulomlando ongabanga wabelungu. Kwi sahluko sesine sikhuluma ngendlela I analytic philosophy, okuyiyona philosophy efundiswa

kumanyuvesi

amangesi,

idida

iqiniso

lokuphila

ngokucwaseka

okudala

ukulingana okungekho kwi zenzo zabelungu kithi Kanye nokuzivikela kwethu. Siphetha ngokuthi yi Philosophy yama Afrika engakuveza ngokugcwele ukucwaseka nokuthi singakuqeda kanjani. Kwi Sahluko seSihlanu sihlola umqondo ka Bantu Biko Kanye no Mangaliso Sobukwe mayelana nalodaba lobuhlanga sikuqhathanise nokubuka kwabelungu abakhuluma isingisi. Esikutholayo ku Sobukwe naku Biko wukuthi ngeke kwaphela ukutuseka kobulungu ngaphandle kokuba kubuye umhlaba kulabo owathathwa kubo okungukuqeda konke ukucwasana kumsuka wakhona. uma sekwenzekile loko yima singaqala ukukhuluma ngokuhlala sonke njengabalinganayo.

v

INTRODUCTION The last three hundred and sixty-three years in South Africa have been characterised by a protracted succession of various struggles. In light of this feature of that experience, one historian has recently referred to the period of South African history since the conquest of the indigenous people in the unjust wars of colonisation as “A History of Inequality”1 Central to the systemisation of inequality has been the development and use of the experience and concept of race. This has in actual historical terms not only meant the installation and development of White Supremacy as an ordering principle within the political sphere but seen its realm of influence extend over all human experience in South Africa ever since the conquest of the indigenous people in the unjust wars of colonisation. 1994 is largely represented as the birth year of democracy2 in South Africa. It supposedly marked also the coming to an end of the age of White Supremacy. The coming into effect of the liberal constitution, Act 108 of 1996 with its founding value of non-racialism was envisioned to prevent the unjust use of power in South Africa. Ironically, it upholds and ensures the continuity of White Supremacy. In the academy and public discourse one of the results of the widely held view that White Supremacy has ended in SA has been the attempt to obfuscate the meaning of racism 3 and extend its semantic range to include various kinds of relations, actions, attitudes and judgements. This obfuscation has been given effect too through the courts and Chapter 9 institutions,4 inaugurating in some quarters, a debate concerning precisely what racism (and nonracialism) means.

1 2

3

4

Terreblanche (2012). This is a view which our reading of South African history must contend with even when one restricts the period of consideration exclusively to the time since the defeat of the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. What emerges certainly is an exclusive democracy not unlike that of Ancient Athens. This representation also has the mischievous implication that the apartheid state and its predecessor colonial governments were the result of the work of a few unpopular tyrants rather than the deliberate and popular political systems with the majority support of the white populace in South Africa. Important to note also is that neither the United Nations nor many Western countries doubted the democratic credentials of pre-1994 South Africa. Pre-1994 South Africa was a member of the UN and had Ambassadors representing it in many Western countries. Our opting for the term race/ism is to indicate the severalty and jointness of the concepts of race and racism. The idea is that racism itself is predicated on the conception of races themselves. Although in the course of the book we will at times discuss ‘race’ and ‘racism’ separately, we follow Mangaliso Sobukwe in that any serious invocation of race and theory of human racial differentiation is already a racism except where such discussion serves the purpose of destructing the very tenability of such a theory. Although Anthony Appiah conceives of a differentiation without valuation which he argues must be called “racialism” as distinct from “racism”, we will show throughout our historical essay that differentiation, unaccompanied by valuation has not yet occurred in history. In South African law Chapter 9 Institutions is used to refer collectively to institutions established concerning the constitution Act 108 of 1996 to safeguard democracy. They include but are not limited to the office of the Public Protector, The South African Human Rights Commission, The Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities and The Commission for Gender Equality.

1

Because of the supposed equality of racialised people, attempts to identify and resist racism are often treated and theorised as forms of racism. Some commentators have gone as far as to explicitly suggest that a truly philosophical account of racism must necessarily be divorced from the history of racism.5 This is philosophy without anthropological-historical grounding. It is the special feature of analytic philosophy6 for a long time associated with the English-speaking “liberal” universities. Ours is to refute the tenability of ahistorical conceptions of racism. We propose to provide an adequate philosophical account which is necessarily historically grounded. The purpose of this book is two-fold. First, it is to address particularly the philosophical problems underlying the mistaken diagnosis that the identification and resistance of racism by its victims is itself a form of racism. Second, this work intends to provide a philosophical account of racism based on the South African experience. Understood in one way this book’s primary theoretical aim can be characterised as an exposition of the synonymy between racism and White Supremacy through a philosophical critique of a historical conceptions of racism. The central contention advanced by this book is that an attempt to a-historicise racism and represent it as such subtracts experience and meaning from it and so also robs it of truthfulness. It also reduces White Supremacy to one of racism’s mere contingencies and ends up, for example, incorrectly equating epiphenomena such as anti-whiteness to White Supremacy. Our argument throughout the book is that a correct understanding of racism is necessarily historical and that dislocating racism from its historical basis, purpose and development necessarily produces untenable results both hermeneutically and ethically. SOME NOTES ON OUR METHOD Our method can broadly be described as African philosophical hermeneutics. Following in the footsteps of several of our forbearers who came to think in a world and Africa already in the grip of bondage and oppression. Our understanding of African philosophy is as first and foremost as a philosophy of liberation and as a practice of resistance. Surely a human-being who comes of consciousness in a world in which her bondage is taken for granted must of necessity reflect upon the condition of this bondage, its causes and devise ways in which to gain freedom. African philosophy understood as a liberatory enterprise is a philosophy whose primary concern is doubly the liberation of the oppressed people by whom it is constituted through 5

6

2

Philosophically trained political analyst Eusebius McKaiser makes this very formulation in explicit terms when he writes writes “We must divorce a clear and philosophically attractive account of racism from the history of racism… I would simply define racism as unfair or unjust discrimination on the basis of race- it follows that Blacks can be racist too” (McKaiser 2013:79). See Ankerhurst (2010) and extensive study on the ideological and political history of Analytic philosophy.

reflections of and the liberation of philosophy itself in its historical complicity in the oppression of people. In the present work the experience which we shall focus on is racism. It is racism from which we seek liberation and our reflections are directed against the philosophy

that

obfuscates rather

than

elucidates

racism thereby

sustaining

its

oppressive power. One of the dimensions of analytic philosophy that sustains its false authority and capacity to obfuscate is the pretension to universality that it maintains whilst denying its own hermeneuticity. Our understanding of philosophy is that it is about understanding that invites action. In order to understand something dialogue is necessary. On this we follow Ramose’s insight that “Dialogue is the method and means of doing philosophy.” It is reliance on reason and not force as the means to resolve conflicts even if the resolution may be to agree to disagree. Dialogue is an indispensable element in the definition of philosophy precisely because it demands the positive recognition of the other as a partner and not just a partner but an equal partner by virtue of our human equality. Equal partnership on this understanding does not necessarily mean that all the partners in the dialogue possess cultures that automatically must be accorded equal weight. On the contrary, the cultures are sites of comparison on the basis of dialogue as equal partners. The outcome of the dialogical comparison is neither the putative superiority nor inferiority of one culture over another. Instead, it is the validity or invalidity of particular cultural norms or practices tested against the power of reason. 7 Thus conceived, dialogue consists, in part at least, of questions. Questions are, of course, always asked by someone from somewhere. The reason for the questions is tied much with the identity of the asker who derives both his ignorance and will to know from his identity and experience. Central to our conception is the understanding that philosophy when it is philosophy proper is not about itself as a reified ‘objective’ abstraction inviting only interpretation. On the contrary, philosophy proper is inescapably about experience upon which it reflects critically.8 Experience always originates out of a particular place and time. Because philosophy originates out of a place and time it unfolds out of a specific historic actuality which informs its perspective.

9

On this

understanding, interpretation can hardly be the sole and final destination of philosophy. Informed action is also part and parcel of the meaning of philosophy.

7 8

9

Ramose (2014:74). Enrique Dussel (2002:3) elaborating this point writes “philosophy, when it is really philosophy and not sophistry or ideology, does not ponder philosophy. It does not ponder philosophical texts, except as a pedagogical propaedeutic to provide itself with interpretive categories. Philosophy ponders the non-philosophical; the reality. But because it involves reflection on its own reality, it sets out from what already is, from its own world, its own system, its own space”. Nkrumah (1970).

3

Although hermeneutics itself comes out of a history in search of objective interpretation,10 in philosophical hermeneutics beginning with Heidegger we find now Gadamer teaches us that it is our prejudices or prejudgments that constitute our being rather than our actual judgments11. According to him the “prejudices constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience the world, our prejudices are simply conditions whereby we experience things and encounter what it is they say to us”.12 Gadamer considers the attitude of objectivity (a-historicality) as inappropriate for the descriptions of Dasein’s encounters since encounters are not something we can possess but rather something that possesses us, in his own words “we are possessed by something and precisely by means of it are opened up for the new and different and true”.13 This perspective is an example of the hermeneutic consciousness exposited by Heidegger. It is a consciousness which open to engagement in and with the text instead of imposing preconceived

so-called

scientific

methods

against

the

text.

African

philosophical

hermeneutics then describes here a position of interpretation from the perspective of the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation.14 We agree with Serequeberhan that as a practice of resistance “African philosophy has a double task: de-structive and constructive. In this it is a practice of resistance, for it is engaged in combat on the level of reflection and ideas, aimed at dismantling the symmetry of concepts and theoretic constructs that have sustained Euro-American global dominance. It is a resistance focused on challenging the core myths of the West–its self-flattering narratives concerning which its domination of the earth was justified. The practice of African philosophy is consequently internal to the very process through which the formerly colonised world is presently reclaiming itself. It is, in this sense, a concrete practice of resistance.”

15

In view of the foregoing, the present work will comprise both the ‘de-structive’ aspect of critiquing the analytic philosophical conception of racism and the constructive aspect of providing a historically grounded and critical philosophical account of racism. South Africa is the specific case in point for exploration and investigation.

10

11 12 13 14 15

4

In earlier approaches to hermeneutics like that of Schleiermacher’s and Dilthey’s we find the concern is still to devise methods by which to exorcise the historical consciousness of the interpreter out of the interpretation or, at the very least, to restrict or subject it to certain critical arrest. These Hermeneuticians seem to consider the situationality, historical consciousness of the interpreter as an obstacle which inhibits the hermeneutic consciousness and threatens the possible success of the interpretation- that is its validity and accuracy. They then as such meditate methods to govern it accordingly in various ways. See Grondin (1994) for an extensive discussion on the history of philosophical hermeneutics within the western tradition. Gadamer (2006). Gadamer (1977, 72-88). Gadamer (1977:74). Okere (1983), Serequeberhan (1994). Serequeberhan (2009).

UNDERSTANDING RACE/ISM We understand racism as the systematic doubt concerning the humanity of the other, which through the passage of time is unjustifiably elevated to the status of truth. The purpose of the systematic doubt is to pursue the relentless dehumanisation of the other. The pursuit of this purpose in practice necessarily invites challenge and resistance. This understanding of racism applies to the South Africa erected upon the questionable “right of conquest” claimed by Europeans when they conquered the indigenous people of South Africa in the unjust wars of colonisation. Racism from a philosophical point of view rests on the underlying ontological-biological claim that the quality of being a human-being, possessed by some segments of homo sapiens is different from that of others. This ontological-biological claim becomes the basis for the ethical differentiation or discrimination between those who regard themselves as human beings proper and those whose humanness is arbitrarily claimed to be defective. The underlying purpose of this ontological-biological fallacy is to pursue the dehumanisation of the other “with a clean conscience”. Following Biko and Fanon and Kwame Toure before him, we define racism as consisting of more than simply discrimination but also having “the purpose of subjugation or its maintenance”. As More correctly observes “subjugation” properly speaking entails the notion of power, power which involves the ability to control and enforce compliance.16 A study of South African history will reveal not only that the systematic doubt has originated from Europeans and has been directed against the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation but will also show the systemisation of this doubt (an exercise of power) in the creation of a fictitious ontological-biological hierarchy based on the reification of reason and the gradation of humanness according to skin colour.

The Pre-Adamism adumbrated by Isaac La Peyre extrapolated the fallacy of ontological hierarchy into the spiritual domain and thus established “spiritual racism.”17 For at least three decades the theology of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa fed on this insight in its erection of the edifice of separate racially designated churches in the worship of supposedly the same christian God.18

16 17 18

More (2008:51-52). Ramose (1999:18). See Soyinka (1998) for a discussion of our choice to use christian with lower case “c” and god with a lower case “g”. and Dunbar Moodie’s … (Moodie, 1975) for an excellent treatment of Afrikaner Nationalism.

5

An examination of European thinking in the history of South Africa19 reveals both the origins of the doubt and its systematisation in the forms of (Cape) Liberalism and later Afrikaner Nationalism.20 The former is a tradition where if it has upheld the equality of human beings, has contradicted itself for instance through its unquestioning attitude towards the dubious “right of conquest” it owes its very presence in the country to. It has additionally often imposed questionable conditions on the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation which have served as arbitrary possibility conditions for their tutelage and “civilisation” but without recognising them as human beings. The latter has maintained unapologetically exclusive but arbitrary attribution of humanity only to the colonial conquerors and their posterity. It justified the conquest and subjugation of the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation through questionable philosophical and theological grounds.21 The thought and practice of the indigenous conquered people has on the other hand, represented an entirely different approach. It has never idealised the conquest and subjugation of people or attempted to justify their inequality. It has rather sought to resist oppression and dehumanisation and liberate the oppressed on the basis of the principle that holds no more or less than that the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation enjoy a humanity22 second in quality to none. A study of philosophical writing produced by and the teaching taking place about racism in the liberal English-speaking universities (where it takes place at all) shows the tendency towards a conception of racism that is free from history or experience. 23 This superficial understanding has already begun to be the basis of numerous events in social and political life.24 Ours will be to show that in addition to being void of history, the conceptions which have gained ground, also originate from the side of the oppressor who continues to dominate the public discourse, academy and the professions. The domination happens both through the statistical under-representation of the oppressed in these institutions and through the unjustified continued dominance of the epistemological paradigms of the oppressor.25

19

20 21 22 23 24

25

6

see for example (DeKiewit 1957) (Ngubane 1963) (Gerhart, Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology 1978) (L. Thompson 1990). see for example (Moodie 1975) (Ross 1993) (B. Magubane 1970). see (Moodie 1975). (Lembede 1996) (Sobukwe, 1959) (Biko 1978) (Magubane 1970). see (McKaiser 2013) (Martin 2009) (J. Wanderer 2010) (Hull 2014 and 2015). For example: The disbanding of the forum for Black journalists by the Human Rights Commission see: http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/action/media/downloadFile?media_fileid=962 and Mngxitama (2009) (Ramose 1999:5-28).

We also aim to show that this systematic and sustained endeavour to obliterate the historical memory of racism in South Africa in the name of philosophy is philosophically questionable and ethically indefensible because of its suppression of social justice.26 The problem as stated above is philosophically relevant for at least two reasons: Hermeneutically, it results in a meaning which is foreign to the actual experience of racism by Africans who are as a group of one of its targets (as our study of the history of the philosophy of racism will show). Ethically, through the generalisation of the meaning and application of racism by its dislocation from its own developmental history and purpose, an equivalence is created between the violent injustice of dehumanisation and oppression on the one hand and rational sometimes hostile self-defensive responses on the other. This is, in fact, the creation of a false equation between the victim and the victimiser, oppressor and oppressed. It also reduces the seriousness and singularity of morally unjustified racist violence (structural or otherwise) and its moral reprehensibility and the urgency of the need for its expiry and the remedy of its results. The thought and actions that stand in defence of this existential condition and wilfully pursue its perpetuation are not ethically defensible. Instead, they underline the urgency of the need for an ethical remedy to this condition. THE ARGUMENT OF THIS BOOK Our understanding of racism is that it is the systematic doubt concerning the humanity of the other. It is a means to an end, namely, to pursue the dehumanisation of the other for one’s sole and exclusive benefit. The doubt is in itself ethically indefensible. Yet, it ultimately acquires the status of an incontrovertible truth around which economic and political life is organised and conducted. This has been and continues to be the reality in South Africa today. In South Africa today numerous Black people, sometimes public figures and sometimes ordinary citizens are being accused of racism. It is noteworthy that this takes place when they are trying to address the issue of racism itself. That these charges are sustainable at all within the public discourse reveals an underlying misunderstanding of the nature and reality of racism itself. This book intends to address this problem by providing a philosophicalhistorical examination of the problem of racism. Our hypothesis is then that a philosophical-historical study of racism will reveal that it has only ever been and continues to be White Supremacy. In South Africa the actuality of the

26

(M. Ramose 2004).

7

doubt is that it has always arisen from one side (“whiteness”) and directed itself against the other (“Blackness”). Our purpose is to show that racism properly speaking is White Supremacy and that it cannot be properly understood without the aid of African philosophy. THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK In Chapter One we begin the chapter with a discussion of the contemporary (post 1994) South Africa and the attempts by the, government, media, academe and judiciary to represent it as an era of the “non-racial”. We then turn our focus specifically to the relevance of race and racism to philosophy as a discipline in particular as well as to the broader history of education in South Africa. We conclude by considering the racist underpinnings of the marginalisation of African philosophy in South Africa today. In Chapter Two we broadly set out the tenets of our critical method African philosophical hermeneutics. We discuss both its negative dimension as a critique of Eurocentrism as well as its constructive dimension which we show has its basis both in the indigenous African philosophy of Ubuntu and in the resources of the liberation struggle of the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. In Chapter Three, because the central claim of our critique of analytic philosophy’s conception of racism is that it is ahistorical, we focus on the historicity of race in this chapter. We do so by paying attention to the way in which racial ideology has affected the writing of history in South Africa by examining competing interpretations of South African history by her conquerors. We then set out some possibility conditions for the writing of an Africanist history which is by necessity at once both the history of liberation and the liberation of the academic discipline of history itself. In Chapter Four In this chapter we focus on the tradition of analytic philosophy. We pay particular regard to its relationship to empiricism and its aversion to history. We also show its relationship to liberalism and British nationalism despite its pretensions to a-politicity. After this examination we turn to examine some recent examples of writing on race by analytic philosophers paying particular regard to the problems of a-historicity, triviality and ideology. Our understanding is that such approaches produce both hermeneutically and ethically questionable results. Finally, in Chapter Five we examine the concept of liberal non-racialism which we show is the ethical and political attendant of what at methodological and epistemological levels is empiricism. We contra-distinguish liberal non-racialism with the more historically astute Africanist conception of non-racialism which we call liberatory non-racialism. We do so by paying special attention to the writings of Mangaliso Sobukwe and Steve Biko.

8

REFERENCES Ankerhurst, T. 2010. The Cultural Politics of Analytic Philosophy. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Biko, Steve. 1978. I Write What I Like. London: Bowerdean. DeKiewit, Cornelius W. 1957. A History of South Africa. Oxford University Press. Dussel, E. 2002. The Philosophy of Liberation. Translated by Aquilana Martinez and Christina Morkovsky. Wipf and Stock Publishers. Katy Katopadis vs The Forum for Black Journalists, GP/2008/0161/L BIOS (South African Human Rights Commission 2008). Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2006. Truth and Method. Continuum Publishers. — 1977. Philosophical Hermeneutics. Edited by E Palmer. University of California Press. Gerhart, GM. 1978. Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology. University of California Press. Giliomee, H. 2003. The Afrikaners: Biography of a People. Tafelberg Publishers Lembede, AM. 1996. Freedom in our Life Time; The Collected Writings of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede. Edited by Robert Edgar and Musmza L. Ohio University Press. Magubane, BM. 1970. The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa. New Press Review. Martin, T. 2009. “Own Absent Racism.” South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 28 (No. 19). https://doi.org/10.4314/sajpem.v28i1.42903 McKaiser, E. 2013. There's a Bantu in my Bathroom, Debating Race, Sex and Other Uncomfortable South African Topics. Bookstorm. Moodie, TD. 1975. The Rise Afrikanerdom: Power Apartheid and the Afrikaner Civil Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ngubane, JK. 1963. An African Explains Apartheid. Greenwood publishers. Nkrumah, K. 1970. Consciencism, A Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonisation. Monthly Review Press. Okere, T. 1983. A Historico-Hermeneutical investigation of the Conditions of its Possibility. University Press of America. Ramose, MB. 1999. African Philosophy Through Ubuntu. Harare: Mond Books. Ramose, MB. 2004. “In Search of an African Philosophy of Education.” South African Journal of Higher Education vol. 18 (no. 3): 138-160. https://doi.org/10.4314/sajhe.v18i3.25487 Ross, R. 1993. Beyond the Pale: Essays on the History of Colonial South Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Serequeberhan, T. 1994. The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy. Routledge.

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—. 2009. “African Philosophy and The Practice of Resistance.” Journal of Philosophy: A Cross Disciplinary Inquiry 4. https://doi.org/10.5840/jphilnepal20094914 Soyinka, W., 1999. The Burden of Memory and the Muse of Forgiveness. Oxford University Press. Thompson, L. 1990. A History of South Africa. Yale University Press. Wanderer, J, ed. 2010. Introduction to Philosophy: Course Reader PHI1024F (UCT. Cape Town: UCT Campus Copy and Print.

10

"On one of those occasions, Mr Mandela looked at me sombrely and said 'you know Dikgang, I had remarkable respect and admiration for Robbie'. 'He had clarity of thought and was an ideological giant'. I asked, 'Tata, who is Robbie?' 'Oh Dikgang, I meant Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe,' he replied. I asked him why the PAC had attracted so few votes. He replied" 'You see in my view, the PAC behaved like a pine tree. A pine tree is tall and firm even when there is strong howling wind. It stands erect until it is felled down and broken by the wind. We, in the ANC , were like the willow tree [isihlahla somyezane]. It bends in the face of headwinds. It sometimes hangs downwards to find water. You see, Dikgang, tactics are sometimes more important than principle" - Dikgang Moseneke , My Own Liberator, Picador 2016 "Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum" – Author Unknown

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I.

RACISM AND THE MARGINALITY OF AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY IN SOUTH AFRICA

In the following chapter we will begin with a brief discussion on the continuity of White Supremacy and racism in South Africa despite wide attempts by the institutions of opinion (public discourse, journalism and academe) to represent the present time as non-racial or post-racial. After a discussion of the contemporary context we will turn our focus specifically to the relevance of race and racism to philosophy and the implications this has for African philosophy in particular. We will then briefly examine the history of Western education and the practice of philosophy in South Africa from the point of view of African philosophy and its marginalised status in South Africa. INTRODUCTION In the years following the “negotiated” settlement of the early nineties and especially since the adoption of the new constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 108 of 1996 (hereinafter “the constitution”), a conception of non-racialism has come to rise which dominates the public and academic and legal discourse. This is so since the constitution which also pronounces itself the supreme law of South Africa in its founding provisions also proclaims South Africa as a democratic state founded on the values of “non-racialism and non-sexism” amongst others. In the past 20 years we have borne witness to the rise of non-racialism in South Africa applied by the courts and supporting institutions to various situations. The courts have ruled, for instance, that the existence of “Blacks only” organisations is unconstitutional.27 They have even gone as far as outlawing the singing of liberation songs28 which point to the continued racial disparity in the country on the basis of this questionable interpretation of nonracialism. In 2015, labouring under the banner of non-racialism, we have witnessed Afriforum lay a complaint against President Jacob Zuma in the South African Human Rights Commission for suggesting that South Africa’s modern troubles originate in 1652 – the year in which the indigenous people began their multi-century war of liberation against their European conquerors.

27 28

29

29

Affirmative

action

and

other

measures

at

social

and

professional

See the SAHRC Matter GP/2008/0161/L BIOS: Katopodis v The Forum for Black Journalists. See Afri-Forum and Another v Malema and Others, Case No.:20968/2010, BCLR 1289 (EqC) September 12, 2011 and especially an extensive analysis of it in an article by Joel Modiri(2013) dealing specifically with the problem of race and racism within it. See ‘Zuma Charged with Hate Speech”, South Africa Today, January 18, 2015 http://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/zuma-charged-with-hate-speech/.

12

transformation of South Africa are also resisted by certain political quarters in the name of non-racialism The dominant conception of non-racialism which appears to prevail in South Africa is akin to what philosopher of race Theo David Goldberg has called anti-racialism which is to be distinguished from anti-racism.30 Anti-racialism has its ideal effect in critical terms as the prevalence of a racism without races. In such a situation the categories of race which were used to systematically oppress the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation and differentiate them from the conqueror are required to fall away. This decategorisation is no more than a name change. It is purely nominal since it is not at once the existential de-categorisation of the racialised subjects. The falling away of the categories of race neither subtracts the unjustly gained privilege and power of the beneficiaries of racism nor does it restore freedom, justice, dignity and equality to the victims of racism. The effect of this approach is ultimately to leave the consequences of a history of injustice undisturbed. This conception of non-racialism very often has left the historical victims of racism without recourse to justice. They are instead under its rule themselves accused of being racist in their pursuit of social justice. A study of South African political history shows that this dominant conception of nonracialism discussed above originates from the political side of those who conquered the indigenous people of South Africa in the unjust wars of colonisation. More particularly, it originates from the English-speaking settler populations and their philosophical tradition of Cape Liberalism. Much like its more explicitly racist conservative counterpart Afrikaner Nationalism which can be traced to the Dutch settlers who began their wars of the conquest of South Africa in 1652, it also has its basis upon an unquestioned ethically questionable “right of conquest” which has its origin in Western philosophy.31 This dominant idea of non-racialism has also historically enjoyed and continues to enjoy considerable attention and support from academic institutions and the philosophy departments and philosophers in them. In both their tendency to universalise and coercively impose the European experience of being human upon others in the name of truth and objectivity in science, philosophy departments in South Africa have remained wilfully ignorant of African philosophy. In the case of South Africa this is particularly questionable since African philosophy is precisely the philosophy of the indigenous conquered people; the numerical majority in the country. It is a philosophy which has its basis in African history and culture and concerns itself with the experience of oppression and liberation from it.

30 31

(Goldberg, 2006:257). (Day, 2008:92-111).

13

It is in light of the foregoing that we propose to examine the history of philosophy in South Africa with special regard to the problem of racism. THE STUDY OF RACISM AND PHILOSOPHY IN SOUTH AFRICA Racism must be of concern to all philosophers in all areas of philosophy. Racism is not just a topic for ethics and political philosophy. The existence of systemic racism- its consequences for the structures of the societies in which philosophy is done and for how philosophy has been done and by whom- has deep implications for epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and philosophical methodology. - Sue Babbitt and Sue Campbell, Racism and Philosophy (1998:2) Race and racism have until approximately the last twenty years, typically received little academic attention in (Western) philosophy departments,32 particularly in South Africa. A rise in the prominence of what is commonly called the critical philosophy of race has to some extent succeeded in making the point that racism is a philosophically relevant subject 33 and has implications for philosophy in at least two main ways which are interrelated. The first is that (Western) philosophy has itself been complicit and continues to be either explicitly or tacitly involved, in the construction of the theoretical edifice of racism and racist thinking.34 There are now countless texts which specifically examine the racism of the “great Western tradition”,35 with often surprising revelations about the bodies of work of thinkers like Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Montesquieu and Voltaire. 36 There are as many texts dealing with enquiries about the philosophical implications of these expositions for the meaning of their work. The second way is that even in those places where philosophy has not itself been directly responsible, it nevertheless is competent and able to assist. Where philosophy is unable to assist in the solution of problems of race, it can certainly assist us in the gaining of a better understanding about the origins of the problems, their nature and workings. Thus, there is no provision for philosophy to be a passive spectator in the discourses on racism and the practical implications thereof. In South Africa even other disciplines such as political science, sociology, history and psychology fare quite badly with regard to the taking up of the question of racism as a matter 32

33

34 35 36

Here Western describes the tradition of philosophy originating in Continental Europe and the United Kingdom and later spreading to Australasia, the United States of America and Canada including the colonies of the former European colonial powers. In the post-colonial era this philosophy is challenged from within the former colonies resulting in philosophical and ideological tension between the former colonial powers and the liberated colonies. Our study is restricted to the Anglo-Saxon practice and its main philosophical tradition, Analytic philosophy see (Mills, 1998). See Taylor (2011), Mills (1997,1998); Gordon (1995, 2007, 2010) also the recent journal published out of Pennsylvania State University called Critical Philosophy of Race https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/critical_philosophy_of_race/toc/por.3.2.html (visited on January 30th 2016). See Serequeberhan (1990), (Eze, 1997), Ramose (1999). see for example Eze (1997) and Serequeberhan (2007). see for example (Gordon 2007, 2008) Mills (1997, 2007, 2008) Serequeberhan (1991, 2007).

14

for serious scientific enquiry. The situation in philosophy is arguably even worse. Writing in the American context about a similar situation Charles Mills (1998) has suggested that part of the reason for this is “the self-sustaining dynamic of the ‘whiteness’ of philosophy, not the uncontroversial whiteness of most of its practitioners but what could be called, more contestably, the conceptual or theoretical whiteness37 of the discipline”.38 He suggests that this theoretical “whiteness” has by itself been enough to discourage Black post-graduate students considering a career in the academy which in turn causes certain traits to go either wholly or very weakly challenged to maintain the “consistently monochromatic” character of the discipline.39 Problematic as this may be in the United States of America, surely the problem is even more serious in South Africa where Africans make up most of the population. Racism received very little attention in South African philosophy as can be seen in both the worlds of teaching and in publishing.40 Despite South Africa’s worldwide fame as a “once”41 Racial Polity,42 surprisingly little work has been done or rather seen light in South African philosophy specifically examining the philosophical significance of racism.43 Much of this involves the general under-representation of the historical victims of racism from academic philosophy in South Africa as well as the continued commitment to ignorance of African philosophy (itself arguably a consequence of racism) as can be seen by the overall commitment to continue along the colonial lines of mimesis of either continental or analytic philosophy in South African departments of philosophy.44 In the next section we examine racism in the South African university both from the perspective of African philosophy and its exclusion from philosophy.

37

38 39 40

41

42

43

44

In our discussion we will opt for Eurocentrism rather than whiteness, Africanity rather than Blackness and African Philosophy rather than Black philosophy. Following Serequeberhan who defines Eurocentrism as a “pervasive bias located in modernity’s self-consciousness of itself. It is grounded at its core in the metaphysical belief or idea (Idee) that European existence is qualitatively superior to other forms of human life” The essay appears in ‘Philosophy from Africa, A Text with Readings’, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press 2002, Edited by PH Coetzee and APJ Roux p.64-78. Our choice of this option will be explained in section 1.3. Mills (1998:2). Ibid. More (1996 and 2004). In recent history the University of Pretoria in 2014 introduced its first course with a component on racism after the Louise Mabille affair (to be discussed in 1.3). The course was however discontinued in 2015. The university of Cape Town’s course of Ethics for 2nd years in 2010 included Kwame Appiah’s problematic analytic treatment of race “Racisms” and has since January 2014 introduced a course called “philosophy of race” which we will discuss in a subsequent section dealing with the character of AngloSaxon philosophy education in South Africa. Part of the task of this work will be to question the popular assumption that White Supremacy ended with apartheid. See Mills (1997) paper which bears the same name, it also a appears as a chapter in his collection of philosophical essays on race Mills (1998). Mabogo Percy More has, for example, in the last 20 years published numerous philosophical essays many of which with not appeared in philosophy journals. Amongst them are “African Philosophy Revisited (1997) [in Alternation, a literary journal]; “African Renaissance: The Politics of Return” [in the African Journal for Political Science] (2002) “Black Solidarity: A Philosophical Defence (2007) [In Theoria]. It is the case that where race has been treated in South African philosophy this has happened largely within the English-speaking universities. In the case of Afrikaans universities, the University of Pretoria in 2014 introduced into its curriculum a new course on Race and The Enlightenment in the 2nd semester which was discontinued in 2015.

15

RACISM, THE EUROCENTRIC UNIVERSITY AND THE MARGINALITY OF AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY IN SOUTH AFRICA To deny the existence of African philosophy for the sake of maintaining existing standards in education is to undermine the very nature of education and science. It is at the same time to make the questionable claim that the curriculum is free from ideological tension – Mogobe Ramose, The Struggle for Reason in Africa (2003: 6) A Brief History of Western Education in South Africa45 The school and university as they currently46 exist in the South African were founded by the European settler. Initially the school was to serve the settler’s immediate personal interest fulfilling the wish to remain intimately connected to ‘the metropolis’ or “source” (of civilisation and culture). The curriculum and approach to teaching were as consistent with the trends in the original home of the settler as possible. The initial objective was to ensure that the graduate of the university in the colony received an education comparable in character and quality to that of her counterpart at home.47 Phillips writing of the universities in the Cape Colony suggests that their founding administrators were “keen to inculcate the cultural dominance of English into the new colony”48 and drew on various models of British universities. The mimesis of the universities in the metropole could be seen, according to Phillips, in teaching and examining procedures as well as the curricula, even “the very architecture of the seating in lecture rooms” was borrowed from Glasgow and Aberdeen. 49 As such, the university had an unnatural existence of being deliberately ignorant of the space and experiences within the place in which it existed. Later, the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation were admitted into schools and universities. With the disseising of the land and its resources which had previously provided for the subsistence of the African, the conquered were thus immediately thrust into a state of severe unnatural but structural, systematic and systemic poverty. In

45

46

47

48 49

Some of the content of this section is abstracted from an article published by the present author in 2012 in a book chapter titled “Decolonising the University in South Africa a precondition for Justice”. The use of “presently” is to emphasize the point that we do not take it for granted that education was invented by the colonizer. Instead, as Mugomba and Nyaggah (1980:1) suggest following from an observation which had been expressed by Nyerere especially, “ Indigenous African Education was relevant and closely linked to the spiritual and material aspects of life before colonization[...] there was little separation of learning and productive labour nor any consequent division between physical and intellectual labour. This educational process reflected the realities of African society and produced people with an education which equipped them to meet the material, spiritual and social needs of the society”. So then even if the systematic education which existed prior to the arrival of the conqueror could not be called ‘school’ in Southern Africa it is nevertheless in a significant number of aspects comparable. McKerron (1934:15) in his History of Education in South Africa (1652-1932) writes “The early settlers at the Cape were proud of their mother country, then at the zenith of her glory and desired to transplant the old life as little changed as possible”. Phillips (2003:123). Phillips (2003:126).

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the face of this reality, the logic of survival compelled the conquered to abandon labour as a teleological positing and to enter into the new world of employment established unilaterally by the conqueror.50 In the world of employment, it was apparent that those with the benefit of “Western Education” enjoyed better pay and more bearable work, so the older people were forced to recognise the benefits of the education that the missionaries and state over time imposed on Africans. From the side of the coloniser who increasingly recognised the value of and encouraged the education of Africans, it was to serve the dual function of providing the job market with more skilled labour and in turn generate a new population of consumers 51 of the products of Europe and those produced in the local factories. The other purpose of education, supposedly an altruistic and humanitarian one was to civilise (humanise) the as yet “sub-human African” by introducing her to the culture, language, religion, values and knowledge of her supposedly superior conqueror. The assimilation of such values either by gentle persuasion or subtle coercion was deemed to be the possibility condition for the ascent to the level of human-being on the part of the indigenous conquered people. In all of this education of the conquered, her identity, language, historical contribution, culture and perspective were of course absent. As long ago as 1934 educationist Loram is quoted trying to explain the high-drop out and failure rates of the children of the indigenous conquered people in the formal education system of South Africa writing that “We have forced the Native child through a course of study which he can dimly conceive. We have taught him subjects foreign to his experience in a language which he cannot understand. At first, he comes to school eager to receive the education which he thinks has made the white man his master. For years [social pressure] causes him to continue [...] and when he wants to know the why and wherefore of things, he sees no meaning in his school work. He finds no satisfaction in doing the tasks given to him [...] no wonder he becomes listless in his school work, fails to satisfy those in authority and either leaves school or remains there unwillingly”.52 Even after 1994, 60 years after the abovementioned study was written. A year which supposedly marked a fundamental transition in the politics and practices of South Africa 50 51

52

Ramose (2002:4). M.E McKerron (1934:176) for example writes “South Africa is not likely to find a large market for most of her manufactured goods in Europe, Asia or America, where her most influential competitors are already well established. Her most obvious market is among the millions of non-Europeans in Africa itself, but the purchasing power of these people will remain low if they remain in an uncivilised state”. cited in McKerron (1934:174).

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from substantive injustice to hollow formal justice; from oppressive and tyrannous to democratic and fair, it would appear very little has in fact changed in the identity of the university in general, save for its admission policy which now allows for the admission of Africans to all South African universities. The identity and project of the university however remains unchanged. It continues to be as Ali Mazrui so appositely observed- “a transmission belt” of Western educational paradigm.53 Much of the curriculum in South African universities is still obdurately chauvinistic and not even, as might arguably be the case with other parts of the world, a locally-derived cultural chauvinism but the most classical and unapologetic Eurocentris.54 It has a bias against and condescension towards “non-European” thought and even more especially against the African thought and experience. The scholars, theories, methods and experiences favoured are usually exclusively Western. In the case of African philosophy for example after previewing a typical South African curriculum and teaching programme one could be forgiven for assuming that African philosophy did not exist.55 In the review of several academic programmes in the country it would be reasonable to assume that there were not world-renowned African scholars. Yet, such scholars have existed long before the birth of 1994 South Africa. The historical continuity of such scholarship is present in South Africa, often expressing views different from the Euro-American and Eurocentric poles. The reality is that there is plenty of such scholarship coming out from all over the continent and throughout the African Diaspora56 and this country specifically.57 Worse so is the fact that some of this work has specifically problematised Eurocentrism, its unjustifiability and the dangers of its dominance in Africa. This is a critique and call which although it is

53 54

55

56 57

Mazrui (1978:366). Following Serequeberhan we define Eurocentrism as “a pervasive bias located in modernity’s self-consciousness of itself. It is grounded at its core in the metaphysical belief or idea (Idee) that European existence is qualitatively superior to other forms of human life”. Serequeberhan (2002:64). Examining what are generally considered the most prestigious English and Afrikaans universities in the provinces of the Western Cape and Gauteng ‘the universities of (1)Witwatersrand and (2)Cape Town on the one hand and the universities of (3) Pretoria and Stellenbosch on the other we found that except for a minor treatment of ‘ubuntu’ in an introductory course to Ethics at Wits, none of the universities had even a single course in African Philosophy, there is no philosophy programme in France without an emphasized focus on French philosophy or Germany without German Philosophy. For the undergraduate philosophy prospectuses of the listed universities see: (1) Wits http://web.wits.ac.za/Academic/Humanities/SocialSciences/Philosophy/Undergraduate/Units+Outline.htm; (2) UCT - http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/philosophy/undergrad_courses.htm (3) UP http://web.up.ac.za/default.asp?ipkCategoryID=1981&sub=1&parentid=1230&subid=1260&ipklookid=9 (4) SUNhttp://sun025.sun.ac.za/portal/page/portal/Arts/Departments/philosophy/programmes/Tab/undergrad.pdf (All four webpages were accessed on January 30th 2016). see for example Mudimbe (1988), Oyewumi (1997), Amadiume (1987). Magubane (1970), Mafeje (1971), Nolutshungu (1975).

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strangely enough ignored in South Africa has been heard in several parts of the West, with some European philosophy departments prescribing such works. There are, of course, some exceptions in South Africa but in most cases where Africa is considered at all it is usually ghettoised, under the auspices of African Studies or Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Although the contemporary meaning of “ghetto” is “a part of the city, especially slum area, occupied by a minority group”,58 its original meaning referred to “the quarter of the city, chiefly Italy where Jews were restricted”.59 Ghettoising comes to mean then both placement of someone in an inferior and precarious place subtracting from equal citizenship and an ethnic quarantine where those ghettoised are identified for particular ethnic or racial reasons. What one finds in practice then are African history, politics, epistemology, psychology within this Ghetto where the history, politics, philosophy and psychology departments in the same university continue to exist undisturbed in their unbending Eurocentrism and racism. In this way “that African stuff” has no way of affecting the mainstream (read Eurocentric) and dominant curriculum. The effect of the prefix “Africa” before philosophy or history is the same effect as that of scare quotes, diminution or a question mark. What happens is then that African philosophy and philosophers, history and historians may be found in the African Studies departments where real (read Western) philosophers and historians may be found in the philosophy and history departments. While Africa as a place of some Other may justify the existence of African studies in Europe or the Americas, where the European or American is silently prefixed against other disciplines or studies, its existence in Africa suggests precisely that all else, that is, those disciplines not specifically prefixed with “African” are non-African. The reason for the foregoing is the persistence of doubt concerning the reality or quality of African knowledge and the importance and value of the experience which brings it about. It is a doubt which has its philosophical foundation in the racist doubt concerning the humanity of Africans themselves. In the academe it is largely the reason for which we continue merely to have universities in Africa rather than African universities. In light of this general history and character of the university let us now turn our attention to philosophy in South Africa specifically. A Brief History of Philosophy in South Africa I call colonial philosophy that which was exported to Latin America, Africa and Asia beginning with the sixteenth century (the universities of Mexico and Lima were founded

58 59

Concise Oxford English Dictionary (2009:598). The Shorter Oxford Dictionary on Historical Principles (1984:848).

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in 1552 with the same academic ranking as those of Alcalá and Salamanca) and especially the spirit of pure imitation or repetition in the periphery of the philosophy prevailing in the imperialist [centre]. Enrique Dussel, The Philosophy of Liberation (1985:11). Although generalisations are of course dangerous, colonialism and colonisation basically mean organisation, arrangement. The two words derive from the Latin word colĕre, meaning to cultivate or design. Indeed, the historical colonial experience does not and obviously cannot reflect the peaceful connotations of these words. But it can be admitted that colonists (those settling in a region) and colonialists (those exploiting a territory by dominating a local majority) have tended to organise and transform nonEuropean areas into fundamentally European constructs. Yves Valentin Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa (1988:1). Some General Characteristics The purpose of the discussion under this section is not so much to provide an exhaustive history of philosophy in South Africa but rather a brief overview of the history of institutional philosophy. Our purpose also rather than a systematic study of trends and specific contributors is to show the basic colonial, Eurocentric and racist structuring of philosophy departments and their practices since their beginnings. We do this in order to provide context of the contemporary situation which will be discussed in 2.1.3. In an article entitled Philosophy in South Africa Under and After Apartheid, Mabogo More (2004) argues that Apartheid was merely the name of a juridical specification of a long existent, violent and racist colonialism which properly started in 1652 with the arrival of the Dutch. Apartheid as such then has limited historical significance and is often used in an obfuscatory manner to distort the length of time over which liberation has been outstanding and to deflect attention from the conquest of indigenous people in the unjust wars of colonisation. More writes “the name ‘Apartheid’ emerged- in its legal sense- in 1948 as a means of strengthening and perfecting an already existing system of racial discrimination and domination rooted in attitudes of whites ever since they came into contact with the African”.60 He concludes, in the case of academic philosophy before Apartheid, that it was fundamentally and ideologically no different from philosophy during Apartheid. There have been two basic traditions of colonialism in South Africa; the Dutch and the British. The former may be traced back to the arrival of the Dutch in 1652 as well as subsequent European populations who immigrated into that community over the years. This Dutch population has also despite its self-declared re-identification as Afrikaner and its

60

More (2004:151).

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language Afrikaans, relied on Continental Europe for inspiration of its cultural, religious, intellectual and political life. The latter can roughly be traced back to the 1820s, it was formalised and strengthened after the discovery of diamonds and then gold. The evidence of these two “traditions” may be seen in the systems of law in South African history which are still dominant today, as well as in language, culture and education. The nature of imitation in higher education which we discussed in Section 1.2.1 has also largely adhered to these traditional types. Philosophy has been no exception in this regard. A self-evident feature is exclusion; the deliberate and sometimes forcible negative discrimination of the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation to ensure and sustain political, legal, cultural and even religious separation between them and the colonial conqueror. This logic of deadly and destructive exclusion is the enduring leitmotif guiding the conqueror in the forging of relations with the conquered. The Afrikaans-Continental Tradition The beginnings of institutionalised philosophy in South Africa were at the theological school in Stellenbosch in the mid-19th century61 where a number of professors offered tuition in the history of philosophy. Several Afrikaans universities were then formed in the Orange Free State, Pretoria and Potchefstroom. Amongst early notables were Dr WA Macfayden who began teaching ethics and political science at the University of Pretoria in 1911 and was appointed as Professor of philosophy and political science the following year where he taught until his death in 1924. Amongst the assortment of offerings he introduced during his tenure were essentials of later Apartheid thought such as city planning and eugenics.62 According to Duvenhage, in a study of the development of institutionalised philosophy at the Afrikaans universities during the 20th century, for instance at Stellenbosch, is the influence “of a certain blend of continental philosophy and Protestant theology (influenced by the powerful Dutch Reformed Church). This is evident, for example, in the works of Kirsten, Degenaar and Rossouw. He suggests that even in Pretoria the trend was the same but observes that the Pretorians Rautenbach, Oberholzer and Dreyer were more conservative.63 According to More (2004), there developed from the religious and cultural traditions of the Afrikaner people- a certain distinct Calvinist and Neo-Fichtean tradition especially at Potchefstroom. Many of the advocates of this philosophy studied in Europe under philosophers such as Schelling, Herder or Fichte and were under the influence of mostly 61

62 63

Nash A; (1997) “Wine-Farming, Heresy Trials and the Whole Personality: The Emergence of the Stellenbosch Philosophical Tradition 1916-40”. South African Journal of Philosophy 16(2): 55-65. For those interested in a non-exhaustive but illuminating overview of the philosophical traditions in South Africa see, Peter Duvenhage’s essay “Is There a South African Philosophical Tradition?” in Presby G, Smith D and Abuya PA, Nyawarth, (Eds) (2002) Thought and Practice in African Philosophy, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Nairobi. Duvenhage (2008:110). Duvenhage (2008:112).

21

Dutch and German philosophers.64 From the doctrines of divine election and predestination in Calvinism were the justification for the social ideology of a chosen people which justified racial conquest and domination. From Fichte the concept of nature was invoked to justify the maintenance of separation between groups of different languages as well as his view of the individual sub-ordinate aspect of the Absolute Spirit which reveals itself historically in the life of the community. Much of this thinking was to provide a philosophical basis to Apartheid under the leadership of the Afrikaner nationalist party. Once Apartheid had commenced (after 1948) most Afrikaans university philosophers explicitly defended it. A variety of approaches were employed towards this end including Rawls’s Theory of Justice.65 It was, however, Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology which were put to greatest misuse. Phenomenology, for instance, was the basis of the Apartheid state’s philosophy of education (Fundamentele Pedagogie) (Fundamental Pedagogy) the development of which was headed by the Afrikaans University of Potchefstroom for Christian Higher Education.66 A study of the Christian

National

Education

Report,

for

phenomenological categories with neo-Fichtean

instance,

will

show

a

combination

of

notions.67

The relationship between the academe and political power however extended beyond mere intellectual support. The historical relationship between racist ideology and practice in the development of universities reveals a tangible and historical agenda. Writing of the Afrikaner secret society known as Broederbond in 1978, political journalists Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom state that: “The Broederbond has an abiding passion for control of education because of the obvious advantages this holds for any organisation wishing to influence the minds and lives of young people. Consequently, its representation in the top echelons of all the Afrikaans speaking universities is extremely strong”.68 In their book on the Broederbond this claim is accompanied by an extensive list of former rectors, chancellors and chairpersons of council who were well-known “broeders”. If the list were extended to the general professoriate and ordinary academics employed at these universities, the number would grow quite exponentially. Amongst those who would come to light are several philosophers who at one point in time taught at some of these universities. Prof Nico Diederichs was by far the most famous broeder philosopher, going on to become the first vice-chancellor of the Rand

64 65 66 67

68

More (2004:151). More (2004:153). Ibid. Quoted in More (2004: 153): “We believe that the teaching and education of the children of White parents should occur on the basis of the life and world-view of the parents. For Afrikaans-speaking children this means that they must be educated on the basis of the Christian-National life and world view of our nation. In this life and world-view, the Christian and National principles are of basic significance and they aim at the propagation, protestation and development of the Christian and National being and nature of our nation. By the national principle we understand love for everything that is our own with special mention of our country, our language, our history and our culture”. Strydom and Wilkins (2012:14-15).

22

Afrikaans Universiteit (later the University of Johannesburg) and Finance Minister before becoming State President of South Africa in 1975. Before his rise to academic administration and politics, Nico Diederichs had been chair of political philosophy at the University of the Orange Free State and had studied in both Holland and Germany,69 had made several politically relevant contributions in his academic career. He had, for example, theorised a social metaphysics opposed to human equality in his Nasionalisme as Lewesbeskouing en sy Verhouding tot Internationalisme (Nationalism as a Weltenshaaung and Its Relation to Internationalism).70 Just to quote an example from one of his treatises: “Only through his consecration to, his love for and his service to the nation can man come to the versatile development of his existence. Only in the nation as the most total and inclusive human community can man realise himself to the full. The nation is a fulfilment of the individual life”. 71 Elsewhere Diederichs (cited in Moodie, 1975: 154) argues: “and one man is more human than another to the extent that the spiritual powers within him are more expressed and developed … The only equality which must be accepted is the equality of opportunity for each to bring that which is within him to full expression”.72 More73 argues that Diederichs’ Calvinist Nationalism was during Apartheid realised in all domains: social, cultural, educational, religious and political. Diederichs was however, hardly the only politically minded and active Afrikaner academic. There were several more senior Broederbond members who had senior positions at universities. This fact is not unlikely to have affected philosophy departments amongst others, with regard to the appointment of personnel, the selection of curricula and the epistemological paradigms favoured. Amongst senior Broeders who were Vice Chancellors or Rectors of universities, for example were, Dr Hilgaard Muller (former Minister of Foreign Affairs) at the University of Pretoria, Prof Samuel Pauw, University of South Africa.74 Professor W.L. Mouton the University of the Orange Free State, Professor E.J. Marais at the University of Port Elizabeth (now Nelson Mandela Metropolitan university) and Professor Tjaart van der Walt at the University of Potchefstroom. One need only wonder whether there is a family relationship between these paragons of Apartheid and some of the academics, either still active in universities or just recently retired. If there are indeed family 69 70 71 72 73 74

Moodie (1975:154). Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. More (2004:153). Serfontein (1979:83; 86).

23

relationships, then it is pertinent to ask how far – to translate an Afrikaans idiom – has the ‘apple fallen from the tree?’. At the University of South Africa as well there was Herman de Vleeschauwer a Kant specialist who was Chair of the Philosophy Department from 1951 through to 1965. A professor who was an escaped convict for Nazi-war crimes committed during the German occupation of Belgium during the Second World War.75 Vleeschauwer’s immigration was preceded by a correspondence with none other than Nico Diederichs who was by that time a member of parliament for the National Party.76 The aim of the correspondence was to convince the latter of his usefulness for the country. The temptation and necessity to wonder what sort of intellectual legacy these men left at these departments and the extent to which it survives to date is curbed by contemporary events and practices at these universities. Some of these events and practices will be discussed later. The Diederichs-de Vleeschauwer amity represents a natural relationship between Apartheid and institutional philosophy in South Africa. To all appearances, the successors of de Vleeschauwer as heads of the Department of Philosophy, including other academic staff, were likely to have been sympathetic to Apartheid either as members of the Broederbond or the National Party. It is unlikely that at the time, Professor Samuel Pauw, himself a member of the Broederbond and Vice-Chancellor of the University of South Africa, would have sanctioned the appointment of academic, even administrative staff who posed a substantial and serious challenge to Apartheid. The demise of Apartheid delivered with it an irony in the history of the Department of philosophy in the University of South Africa. The irony is that unlike de Vleeschauwer, a Belgian fugitive from his association with Nazi-war crimes, yet another Belgian, a refugee from the injustice of colonialism, racism and Apartheid in South Africa was appointed Head of the Department of Philosophy; this was Professor Ramose. A comparative study of the meaning and impact of heads of the Department of Philosophy from De Vleeschauwer to Ramose, is beyond the scope of this research. Suffice it to state that since Ramose’s appointment, the struggle for epistemic justice as an ineradicable ethical imperative for social justice in South Africa became the living reality of academic discourse and, continues. The Anglo-Saxon Tradition Academic philosophy at English-speaking universities began at the University of the Cape of Good Hope, established in 1873 (More 2004 and Duvenhage 2007). It was characterised from the off-set, with a focus on the British philosophical tradition studying empiricism and figures such as Locke, Berkeley and Hume. One of the first philosophers to occupy the chair of

75 76

Delport and Dladla (2015, 30). Delport and Dladla (2015, 30).

24

philosophy at the South African College (later the University of Cape Town (UCT) was R.F.A. Hoernlé. He became one of the major figures in the intellectual formulation of South African Liberalism.77 In his inaugural address in 1923 as Professor of Philosophy at another English University, The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Hoernlé stressed the significance of liberalism in a multi-racial society such as South Africa. A text he authored in 1939 with the title South African Native Policy and the Liberal Spirit argued for racial separation as opposed to assimilation.78 It is noteworthy that Apartheid was exactly a tangible juridical realisation of this kind of view. It would appear as More observes then that “both the Anglo-Saxon and Continental traditions may have been used to provide justification for racial and cultural discrimination before official Apartheid in 1948 and during Apartheid in the years that followed”.79 Later philosophy in the English universities, whilst continuing to uphold the liberal spirit, became increasingly associated with analytical philosophy. The analytic philosophers took what has been described by some as a “neutralist position”.80 The proponents of this position held that philosophy ought to be pursued for its own sake without involving itself in social and political issues of its day. More summarises their argument as follows “since according to [them] philosophy is a second-order activity concerned mainly with the logical analysis of concepts, the task of the philosopher is therefore the clarification of the logic of concepts and their meaning. Social and political issues are not accordingly the task of the philosopher qua philosopher but qua active citizen”.81 It must be noted though that despite this popular selfconception of analytical philosophy, there certainly are historical exceptions. Some analytic philosophers have been thoroughly engaged in the social and political worlds both through their activism and philosophical work. Bertrand Russell is one such example. The political disposition of the English-speaking philosophers must however not be overemphasised at the expense of examining some of the political activities that occurred within these departments. In a recent article, historian Teresa Barnes writes about how the Englishspeaking universities have, as with most individual politicians and activists, been overcelebrated for their “struggle” and “resistance” against Apartheid. This mostly through the slanted discussion of their quest for academic freedom and students they produced, becoming anti-Apartheid activists. She makes the focus of her paper an examination of the extent to which the English-speaking or so-called ‘open universities’ were complicit in the sustenance and support for Apartheid in South Africa. Dealing in particular with the case of UCT’s philosophy department, some interesting details about that university’s departmental

77 78 79 80 81

More (2004:153). Ibid. Ibid. More (2004:154). Ibid.

25

history emerge which contradict the idea that philosophers “Stayed Out of Politics” to use Ronald Aronson’s phrase (1990). Professor Andrew Howson Murray, who held the chair of UCT’s department of philosophy and ethics from 1937-1970 was a well-known and widely employed collaborator and agent of the Apartheid regime. In the course of his academic work Murray, for instance, contributed chapters to volumes published in honour of two conservative South African philosophers the Belgian ex-Nazi fugitive Herman De Vleeschauwer of Unisa and Stoker of the University of Potchefstroom.82 Barnes writes “As a philosopher and educator, Murray’s perspective was that the concept of pluralism was the only answer to the challenges of life in a multi-racial society. Although in other settings pluralism can be a reasonable call for democratic decentralisation, in Murray’s hands it was deformed into an apology for Apartheid”.83 Barnes draws on a variety of his writings and those of his students’ marked copies of examination papers to support her reading that for Murray pluralism became a “euphemistic legitimation for injustice”.84 It is arguable, but one might suggest that an Ethics professor’s most significant work can occur outside of the classroom. Murray appeared as the state’s anti-communist expert in the Treason Trial where he was “brought in as a state witness by the pro-Nazi, chief prosecutor Oswald Pirow”.85 Murray’s main task as expert witness was to identify the accused’s writings as “communist”. The defence famously successfully had him unknowingly analyse his own earlier writings which he classified as communist.86 According to Barnes, Murray continued to testify against anti-Apartheid activists well into the 1980s. Murray also worked for the Publications Appeal Board (the main South African censorship body from the 1960s until the 1980s).87 According to Barnes, “Murray was the head of the political committee of the Board and wrote several opinions that were central in the Board’s decisions to ban books and silence authors of critical political materials”.88 He in some instances recommended authors be investigated by military intelligence. Barnes goes on to show that he was not the only professor at UCT who worked for the Apartheid regime but that there were countless, spies and agents at the so-called open universities who did such work.

82 83 84 85 86 87 88

Barnes (2015:21). Barnes (2015:22). ibid,23. ibid,24. Ibid. ibid,25. Ibid.

26

English-speaking universities, very often lay claim to producing some of the anti-Apartheid movement’s most important liberals. Liberalism has historically been predominantly the political tradition of English-speaking South Africa. It has also been rejected numerously from within the ranks of African politics. At one stage by the ANC Youth League of Anton Lembede which saw liberals as trustees that were stifling African political development and agency. 89 The most famous critique of liberalism and its rejection however came some approximate 25 years after Lembede when a group of Black students split from the liberal National Union of Students and formed the South African Students Organisation (SASO). Liberals were criticised as political hypocrites in pursuit of the enjoyment of the moral reputation of rejecting White Supremacy while enjoying it fully. The BCM rejected the paternalism and condescension of the liberals and their long history of speaking for the indigenous conquered people. This is practice which had a long history traceable to the petitionists of the Cape Colony in the 19th century and the Native Representative Councils in the 20th century. Most significant however was the realisation by the proponents of BCM that the liberals’ rejection or opposition of Apartheid was not necessarily also an endorsement of historical justice. The Progressive Party (the most influential liberal political formation since the late 1950s) for instance, was still advocating for a qualified franchise for Blacks in the 1970s. Many self-professed liberals also approved proposed political reforms akin to Hoernlé’s 1940s parallelist social theory. Never mind the restoration of sovereignty and the titles to the territory of South Africa. It is worthwhile to note that in 2015 the “decolonisation of universities” movement was initiated at the English-speaking universities by students who echoing the course of the BCM in the 1960s and 1970s complained about silencing, paternalism and Eurocentric cultural chauvinism at the universities. We conclude this section simply by noting the interesting development that since the end of Apartheid, English-speaking white South Africans (philosophers amongst them) have become especially more openly socially and politically active. It is, incidentally, some of this group’s work on racism in recent years and its influence on the public sphere that has led to the problems this book means to treat. We will turn to them in Chapter 4. In the next section we turn our attention on the contemporary situation of philosophy in South Africa. The Contemporary Practice of Philosophy and the Marginality of African Philosophy Around September 2013 an incident took place which caused a bit of a disturbance in the world of philosophy in South Africa. Louise Mabille, a young lecturer in philosophy at the University of Pretoria, made national news after she wrote a controversial article in the Afrikaans cultural blog Praag, run by Afrikaner intellectual and cultural activist Dan Roodt.

89

Maloka (2014:85).

27

In her article she wrote that Black South African males rape babies as a “cultural phenomenon”.90 To support her claim, she averred that they [Africans] had not even invented the word rape (and were impliedly unfamiliar with the concept) until their “meeting” with their enlightened civilisers from Europe. Mabille made these claims without recourse to historicallinguistic analysis. It is doubtful from reading the article whether Mabille speaks any Bantu language at all. She made her claims without giving reasons; supposedly the hallmark of the discipline in which she is expert. She resigned from her appointment at the university promptly and the university was quick to distance itself from her and her writings on the blog. Before issuing their final statement on the matter the university first attempted to justify Mabille’s actions by suggesting she was writing in her personal capacity and not on an academic site, though the eventual statement was an apology and advertisement of her resignation. More interesting was this statement from the Philosophical Society of South Africa which suggested that her writings were against philosophy.91 This is interesting when one considers the history of this discipline both in its silence and complicity in the past. One wonders precisely when it is that racism or silence about it92 suddenly became unphilosophical in South Africa. Although the response by the philosophical community in South Africa was to distance itself from Mabille and treat her as an offender who went against established ethics, we would do well to consider her a victim of the same system that sought to distance itself from her. Mabille was after all a student at a South African university and received all her degrees from Bachelors to Doctorate after 1994 in one of South Africa’s best universities. What does it tell us then about the university in this country that a graduate of the highest degree in the discipline that concerns itself with the good life and good reasoning, could write such a poorly reasoned explosion of blind hatred? It is difficult to imagine that Mabille is a recent convert to racism. Instead, closer to the truth is probably that she has held her views and expressed them throughout her studies, teaching and social life and publicly enough to have the confidence to publish them proudly on the internet in her own name and not expect serious consequences. The people who populate the

90

91

92

The article has since been removed from the Praag website http://praag.co.za/ which continues to publish racist vitriol but was discussed and quoted at the time of publication by several other authors for example Gillian Shutte’s Mail and Guardian article Racism and the whiteness Default, 30th August 2013 http://mg.co.za/article/2013-08-30-the-whiteness-default (accessed on 30th January 2016). It reads “the Philosophy Society of Southern Africa distances itself unequivocally from the views attributed to Dr Louise Mabille in her recent article in Praag. The PSSA is dismayed at the ignorant and racist views expressed within this piece. Both the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pretoria and the PSSA condemn her article in the strongest terms. Central to the philosophical engagement is the rigorous exchange of ideas; there is no place in such engagement for racism and prejudice”. It must be noted that during apartheid the SAJP contained a statement “The [Philosophical] Society is committed to the achievement of a just and democratic South Africa where there is no discrimination on the grounds of race, gender or creed”. However, the history of the Society’s publications and actions suggest it had no problem “staying out of politics”.

28

institutions that distanced themselves from her during this embarrassing incident were also likely former teachers, mentors, students and colleagues. When one considers the history of philosophy in South Africa and its character today what emerges is the likelihood that far from being exceptional, Mabille is, in fact, the rule. What is exceptional about her is that she was caught out. She is the double-victim of both a poor education which was in part responsible for her perspective and a scape-goat paraded as a convenient exception; a gangrened limb amputated to save a diseased body of which she was an ordinary and consistent part before wounding herself by exposure. Her expulsion was a wasted opportunity for thorough reflection which might get to the root cause of the problem her incident brought to light. It also prevented the philosophical community from moving a step closer to the necessary fundamental change which can liberate philosophy in South Africa. This was, however, no mistake. The body was merely preserving itself. The situation that prevails within the world of institutionalised philosophy today is little different from the process of imitation that has been going on since universities were first established in South Africa as described in the sections above. There are those who might suggest that things are beginning to change in the world of philosophy. One of the results of the Louise Mabille affair was that the University of Pretoria (where she was employed) has introduced (since July 2014), a course on Race and the Enlightenment. It is worthwhile to note that UCT, also in the same period (July 2014), introduced a course on philosophy and race. This brings us to the important issue of curricula and research agendas. Developments in Curricula and Research Agendas Writing about the history of curricula in South Africa Lehoko states that they were “traditionally content based” which is to say that “they were organised according to prescribed subjects offered at various stages.” The progress of students from one stage to the next depended largely on the extent to which they mastered or memorised the required content which was almost always tested by written examinations in a formal year-end exam. “Curricula were meant to direct teaching and learning and therefore, tended to be prescriptive and inflexible not often meeting the needs of particular groups of learners”.93 He goes on to state that this system permeated all sectors in education and led to numerous problems which persist to date. It was in light of this that as early as 1995 the transitional government of national unity published a White Paper on Education and Training (March 1995) which aimed to correct this. The correction aimed at the achievement of social justice. The key principles which were set out as necessary in the creation of new curriculum were, inter alia, legitimacy, relevance, credibility, coherence and integration.94

93 94

Lehoko (1997:154). Lehoko (1997:158).

29

Despite this expressed intention, the situation has barely changed judging from our own experience in the South African education system. Having experienced approximately 20 years of primary, secondary and tertiary education, 15 of them after the publication of the abovementioned article- this is something which has yet to change no less in the teaching of university philosophy. In their article, The Activity of Philosophy and the Practice of Education (2003), Hogan and Smith discuss the problem of teaching in relation to university education and philosophy. They suggest that there exist two distinct positions concerning the question of how “philosophical reflection can inform the conduct of educational practice”.95 The first position they trace back to Plato. This approach they characterise as purely theoretical. They suggest it derives its character directly from Plato’s metaphysical thought and the conception of truth as pure, objective, immutable and eternal. They contrast this position to one which they say is espoused by American philosopher Richard Rorty96 who declared doubtfulness about the value of philosophy to education and takes what might be taken as a pragmatic approach. He held instead that education had two functions. The first is “the socialisation of pupils into the communal historical narratives of their nation [the main function of primary and secondary education]”.97 The second function (reserved for higher education) would be concerned with “enabling students to ‘reinvent themselves’ in such a way that they would aspire to an open personal future for themselves and an open social future for their society”.98 The authors go on to discuss the tension between two conceptions of philosophy either as theory or as a lived and living practice. They blame Plato and his followers throughout the history of the Western tradition for the “reversal of the precedence of practice” to theory. Their suggestion is that this is because of Plato’s subscription to some idea of a “pure” and experientially untainted knowledge, something which even Socrates understood to “lie beyond the range of human achievement”.99 The failure to pay serious thought to Socrates in this regard is what historically led to the Western philosophy’s elevation of metaphysics to the highest level of philosophy. After the Enlightenment the increased tendency by philosophy to mimic the physical and natural sciences led to the eclipsing of metaphysics by epistemology. This was not much better as it was still hinged on some metaphysical presumptions of there being some pure, preexperiential truth, untainted by experience or perspective. The Enlightenment’s elevation of epistemology meant that “philosophy became dedicated in its search for foundations of certain knowledge. One of the educational and more broadly cultural consequences of this 95 96 97 98 99

Hogan and Smith (2003:165). Ibid. Rorty quoted in Hogan and Smith (2003:166). Rorty quoted in Hogan and Smith (2003:166). Hogan and Smith (2003:169).

30

orientation was that anything less than certain knowledge was seen to be a deficiency”. According to Hogan and Smith this stance remains quite influential in several parts of Western philosophy: “It influences educational thought and action by giving pride of place to the “transmission” of what is taken to be certain knowledge and prescribed competences”.100 To offer a corrective of this the authors turn (still firmly within the Western tradition) to the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer which emphasises the role that experience, history and situatedness play in the process of understanding. It comes from Gadamer’s insight that “It is not so much our judgments as it is our prejudices that constitute us a human”. 101 They analyse this as meaning: “first, prejudgements, presuppositions and preconceptions and other predisposing influences are inevitably at work already in anything that can be called human experience”.102 “Secondly these constitute a medium- the inescapably interpretive medium through which human understanding itself takes place” and “thirdly, though one may never fully break free of such predisposing influences, one may learn to subject them to the discipline of criticism”.103 Hermeneutics, they argue, promotes an orientation towards learning where dialogue as a pedagogical discipline assures “a rich understanding of the limitations and possibilities of human understanding itself”, “an informed but fallible conviction (convictions) about how human of the understanding might now best be advanced” and “the integrity of education as a critical and

constructive

practice

[…]

distinguished

from

both

theoretical

and

coercive

undertakings”.104 The hermeneutic approach “defends practical and political reason against the domination of technology-based science. It resists idolatry of scientific method and encourages the citizen virtue of decision making instead of delegating it to experts”.105 The authors, writing and thinking about the context of the UK, decry the point that philosophy has there tended to be offered as “a product, a set of conclusions to be learnt rather than as a practice to be engaged in”.106 This condition is typical of the spirit of an age obsessed with measurables, outcomes and conclusions. They conclude that “neither philosophy nor education is like producing artefacts whose quality can be tested and assured in much the same way as the output of a factory”.107 Although some philosophy departments in both the English-speaking and Afrikaans universities are currently or have at one time or another offered African philosophy courses,

100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

Ibid,172. Gadamer quoted in Hogan and Smith (2003:173). Hogan and Smith (2003:173). Ibid,173. ibid,174. ibid,176. Ibid. Ibid.

31

epistemic control over these courses is vested in white academics with rather dubious credentials to deliver the courses. The problem of course is not with their being white. It is rather with their somewhat sudden and evidently casual interest in the historical and the philosophical variety and depth of the experience of the indigenous African people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. This does not justify the prevailing white epistemic control over a subject in which they often deliver tutorial content that simply goes against the elementary common-sense knowledge possessed by the indigenous African people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. UCT has, for example, since 2014 hired a British lecturer to teach the philosophy race. The course is filled with an assortment of readings especially of academic debates in the North American situation but does not, with the exception of Steve Biko (A speech by Pixely kaSeme and an article by Barney Pityana are also included), contain any studies of philosophical work produced by contemporary African philosophers dealing specifically with the South African question. Through the detachment of the existential, political and economic dimensions of racism, it is turned to an analysis of concepts without reference to the history of conquest and dispossession, impoverishment and systemic killing of the indigenous conquered people: a killing that subsists in our time. Added to this criticism is a re-iteration of our discussion above on ghettoisation. The UCT curriculum has ghettoised the problem of racism keeping it far away from its courses on Ethics, Epistemology and Political Philosophy. These courses are taught in the orthodox fashion unsullied by discussions on the racist dimensions of the thought of the philosophers studied or the complicity of the discipline in the oppression of “non-European” people. The course, of course, is also an elective unlike Political philosophy and Ethics which are construed as “essential” to any philosophy programme worth the name. In this way the gesture of including the philosophy of race appears to be progressive at first sight. It appears to be correcting the historical problem of a decontextualised and quite frankly colonial curriculum. In the end, the addition of this course turns out to be a conservative gesture which only serves to prevent any substantial change and challenge of the status quo. As if to confirm the state of utter ignorance and disinterest in African philosophy, the lecturer and course convener of UCT’s philosophy of race course is, together with another academic from the African studies department, hosting a seminar series with the offensive title “Philosophy in Africa and Africa in Philosophy”. This title is reminiscent of two relevant historical episodes in the history of South African philosophy. The first was the publication of the Thomist from UCT, Augustine Shutte who in 1993 published a text titled “Philosophy for Africa”. It is not certain whether the organisers are aware that a dispute relating to precisely the philosophical implications of Shutte’s book arose. A decade later in the South African Journal of Philosophy, an African philosopher examined this text, not paying

32

insufficient attention to its title. He suggested that both the title and content of the book betrayed Shutte’s prejudice, despite his ignorance of Africa, that philosophy and Africa were two distinct and irreconcilable concepts. Ramose uses the metaphor of the doctor and patient, where philosophy is for Shutte Western medicine and he himself the all-knowing doctor there to treat the sick and medically ignorant patient Africa.108 Philosophy “proper” in the context of that book is Western philosophy. African philosophy on the other hand, is entirely absent from the scope of discussion. This is out of the sheer commitment to ignorance displayed by the expert doctor. Writing of his experience contributing to the editorial work of Oxford University Press’ widely influential “Philosophy from Africa”, Ramose explains that his argument was that the “from” in the title is not only reminiscent of the “for” in Shutte’s title but that it is also a subtle expression of doubt that philosophy “proper” can ever come from Africa. In other words, it is an expression of doubt about the meaning of “African philosophy”. On the ground of his objection to the persistence of this far from subtle doubt Ramose requested that his name to be omitted from the list of editors of the book though he was actively engaged in the editing until the finalisation of the book. It is thus significant that another publisher, Routledge, agreed to publish the same content of “Philosophy from Africa” under the title: The African Philosophy Reader. If the organisers of the “Philosophy in Africa and Africa in Philosophy” seminar series were aware of the dispute relating to Shutte’s publication, one would expect that they would have displayed sensitivity to their own vulnerability as they appealed to the ethically inappropriate and politically disputable “in” in the formulation of the title of the seminar series. It is thus ethically and politically offensive for them to have preferred to entertain and sustain the doubt that African philosophy exists. It is a wonder to us why more than a decade after this discussion has taken place Hull and Ntsebenza nevertheless opt for a seminar series bearing this problematic title. When one turns to the proposed topics to be discussed in the series, one realises the title is hardly a coincidence. All the proposed topics are thoroughly ignorant of the work that African philosophers have been engaged in over the past 60 years. Most of the proposed topics share a family resemblance with the title which conceives of Africa and philosophy as two unrelated species asking if the good doctor can help his patient in some or other regard. Examples included: “What distinctive concepts, ideas and arguments are contributed by African traditions of thought and practice to philosophical debates?”

108

Ramose (2003:125).

33

“What constructive insights can academic philosophy offer into problems- political, social, epistemological, metaphysical- specific to Africa, including South Africa?” “Do indigenous African traditions of thought provide alternative models of rationality which can challenge presuppositions of philosophical work in the “analytic” tradition?”109 Some time before Hull and Ntsebenza offensive seminar series, the International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS) also held an annual conference at Fort Hare University in East London during the month of May 2014. The conference was widely attended by members of the predominantly white philosophical community, especially in South Africa. In the majority of instances, what happened was that they simply directed rather than contextualised their usual staple of research questions and approaches to “Africa”. The result was a tasteless hotchpotch of less than spontaneous imaginings of hastily conceived philosophical titles such as Levinas and the Postcolonial: Re-thinking identity and difference. In the same spirit there was work which pretended to comparative analysis between Western and African authors where, for instance, the entire oeuvre of the Western author was studied as compared to a single text of the African one110. What was exhibited was a surprising lack conversation with African philosophy and a suspicious opportunism to appear to be “Africanising” while genuinely engaging their prejudices as little as possible. We expect that as the pressures of government to Africanise the curriculum and publishing increase there may be more and more single courses in African philosophy offered by South African universities. The effect of this, of course, as we described above in Section 1.2.1, will be to leave the damaging colonial philosophy untouched unless African philosophers – that is, those who take African philosophy seriously as an ethical and political question of epistemic and social justice - especially those of South African origin, are involved and engaged in the composition of the courses. On this basis, the exoticisation, othering and trivialisation of African philosophy will be diminished and ultimately brought to an end. The marginality of African philosophy and Africans in philosophy in South Africa today is a symptom of outstanding liberation socially, politically and economically. The “negotiated settlement” that brought into being the not so new South Africa after all upheld the philosophical doubt that the African is not rational animal. This is exemplified by agreeing to purchase back land seized by resort to ethically unjustified use of force and to treat such expropriation as justly acquired property deserving of constitutional recognition and protection. This necessarily implied the recognition of the right

109 110

see http://www.africanstudies.uct.ac.za/cas/events/2016/philosophy_in_africa. Mbatha (2014:135).

34

to retain and use resources acquired by use of ethically unjustified force and the transfer thereof by a valid formal legal procedure. Economic bondage to the successors in title to conquest in an unjust war was assured in South Africa. It follows that both political and economic freedom are yet to be achieved in the South Africa inaugurated since 27 April 1994. The attainment of liberation will for us require not simply the development and practice of a philosophy of liberation but also the liberation of philosophy itself. This philosophy itself needs to be liberated because it is a philosophy of oppression and a philosophy of oppressors which continues to justify the unacceptable conditions that most South Africans live in today. Dussel already observed in 1975 that: “[T]he colonial philosophers of the periphery gaze at a vision foreign to them, one that is not their own. From the centre they see themselves as nonbeing, nothingness; and they teach their pupils, who are something (although illiterate in the alphabets imposed on them), that really, they are nothing, that they are like nothings walking through history. When they have finished their studies they, like their colonial teachers, disappear from the map geopolitically and philosophically, they do not exist. This pathetic ideology provided the name of philosophy is the one still taught in most of philosophy schools of the periphery by the majority of its professors”.111 Conclusion We provided an historical overview of the history of education in South Africa and, philosophy in particular. In the course of this, we identified the character of philosophy and advanced reasons why the philosophy thus characterised preferred to disregard and exclude the African experience in the composition of the educational curriculum in general and, the philosophy curriculum in particular. We indicated that both the disregard and the exclusion have been and continue to be challenged by the indigenous people of South Africa conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. It goes without saying that through time the biological misnomer “Coloured” - a veritable ethical aberration and an ill-conceived political ploy to deny the humanity of the “Coloured” – together with the South African-Indian also formed part of the struggle against colonial and racial injustice in South Africa. In recognition of this history, the designation, the subjugated, oppressed and exploited people of South Africa will be used whenever contextually appropriate. We have shown also that to date the educational curriculum in general and the philosophy curriculum in particular is the terrain of contestation for epistemic and social justice. This contestation leaves no doubt that the struggle for authentic political liberation and economic freedom is yet to be won in South Africa. We have argued that in South Africa the liberation of philosophy will be realised once African philosophy is no longer simply an exotic option in 111

Dussel (1985:12).

35

the curriculum but the very grounding of philosophy itself through which other traditions are engaged. The philosophy of liberation is on the other hand, increasingly coming to light especially amongst the youth. It finds practitioners not necessarily recognising it as their source of activity, such as the #Economic Freedom Fighters party and the #RhodesMustFall, #FeesMustFall and UPrising movements. This chapter then has shown that there is sense in talk about the “unfinished business” of liberation in South Africa. The next chapter is a critical examination of African philosophical hermeneutics as the method and Ubuntu as a philopraxis in the ongoing endeavour to complete the “business” of in South Africa. No doubt, liberation properly understood, is a systematically elusive concept and thus its attainment once actualised gives rise to the need for liberation.

36

REFERENCES Aboobaker, S. 2013. “Baby rape blogger faces charges.” iol news. http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/baby-rape-blogger-faces-charges1.1571354#.VI56pYesjdk (accessed 16 May 2015). Aronson, R. 1990. Stay out of Politics: A Philosopher Views South Africa. Illinois: University of Chicago Press. Babbitt, S. and Cambell, S. 1998. Racism and Philosophy. Ithica: Cornell University Press. Barnes, T. 2015. “Beyond Protest: The University of Cape Town and complicity with Apartheid” (unpublished paper). Bernasconi, R. (Ed.). 2017. Critical Philosophy of Race. Harrisburg. Pennsylvania State University Press. Delport, T. and Dladla, N. 2015. “Südafrikas Kolonialphilosophie. Rassismus und die Marginalisierung

der

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Polylog.”

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interkulturelles Philosophieren, no. 33 (2015): 21-38. Dladla, N. 2017. “Towards an African Critical Philosophy of Race: Ubuntu as a Philopraxis of Liberation.” Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African philosophy, Culture and Religions 6 (1): 39 – 68. https://doi.org/10.4314/ft.v6i1.3 Duhaime, L. 2015. Duhaime’s Legal Dictionary (accessed April 2017). Dussel, E. 2002. The Philosophy of Liberation. (A. M. Morkovsky, Trans.) Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers. Duvenhage, P. 2002 “Is there a South African Philosophical Tradition?” In Thought and Practice in African philosophy, edited by G. Presby, D. Smith, P. A. Abuya and O. Nyawarth. Nairobi: Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Eze, E. 1997. Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader. Wiley-Blackwell. Cambridge, MA. Gordon, L. 2000. Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential thought. New York: Routledge. Gordon, L. 2008. An Introduction to Africana Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511800726 Hoernlé, R. F. A. 1945a. Race and Reason. Johannesburg: University of Witwatersrand. Hoernlé, R. F. A. 1945b. South African Native Policy and the Liberal Spirit. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand. Ki-Zerbo, J. (Ed.). 1981. General History of Africa: Methodology and African Prehistory. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lehoko, I. 1997. “Curriculum Transformation in a Democratic South Africa.” In Shaping Africa's Future through Innovative Curricula, edited by R. Avenstrup. Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan Publishers, 153–163. Little, W. and Onions, C. T. 1984. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2 Volume Set): Clarendon Press, Oxford.

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Mazrui, A. 1978. Political Values and the Educated Class in Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press. Maloka, E. 2014. Friends of the Natives: An Inconvenient History of South African Liberalism. Durban: 3MS Publishing. Mbatha, M. 2014. International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS) 20th Annual Conference, Conference theme: Re-thinking African Identity and Culture, 30 to 31 May 2014, Fort Hare University: Conference Report. New Voices in Psychology 10 (1): 134–136. McKerron M.E. 1934. History of Education in South Africa (1652–1932). Pretoria: Van Schaik. Mills, C. 1997. The Racial Contract. Ithaca. Cornell University Press. Mills, C. 1998. Visible Blackness: Essays in Philosophy and Race. New York:Cornell University Press. Mills, C. 2008. Racial Liberalism. New York: Modern Language Association of America. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2008.123.5.1380 Moodie, T. 1975. The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power Apartheid and the Afrikaner Civil Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press. More, M. P. 1996. “African philosophy Revisted.” Alternation 3 (1): 109–129. More, M. P. 2004. “Philosophy in South Africa Under and After Apartheid.” In Companion to African philosophy, edited by K. Wiredu. Cornwall: Wiley-Blackwell, 149–160. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470997154.ch8 Mudimbe, V. 1988. The Invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mugomba, A. and Nyaggah, A. M. 1980. Independence without Freedom: The political Economy of Colonial Education in Southern Africa. London: Clio Press. Nash, A. 1997. “Wine-Farming, Heresy trials and the Whole Personality: The Emergence of the Stellenbosch Philosophical Tradition 1916–40.” South African Journal of Philosophy 16 (2): 55–65. Nyerere, J. K. 1967. “Education for Self-Reliance.” The Ecumenical Review, 19: 382–403. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6623.1967.tb02171.x Oyéwúmi, O. 1997. The Invention of Women: Making An African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Phillips, H. 2003. “A Caledonian College in Cape Town and beyond: An Investigation into the Foundation(s) of the South African University System.” South African Journal of Higher Education 17 (3): 122–128. https://doi.org/10.4314/sajhe.v17i3.25411 Philosophical Society of South Africa. 2013. “Statement by PSSA Executive on Dr Mabille’s Recent Article in Praag”. Web.: http://philsafrica.wordpress.com/2013/09/18/statement-bypssa-executive-on-drlouise-mabilles-recent-article-in-praag/ (accessed in May 2015). Ramose, M. 1999. African Philosophy through Ubuntu. Harare: Mond Books.

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Ramose, M. 2002. “The Struggle for Reason in Africa.” In Philosophy from Africa: A Text with Readings, second edition, edited by P. Coetzee and A. P. J. Roux. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1–8. Ramose, M. 2012. “Reconciliation and Reconfiliation in South Africa.” Journal on African Philosophy, No. 5. Saone, C. and Stevenson, A. (Eds) 2009, Concise Oxford English Dictionary. New York, Oxford University Press. Serequeberhan, T. 1994. The Hermeneutics of African philosophy. New York: Routledge. Serequeberhan, T. 2002. “A Critique of Eurocentrism and the practice of African Philosophy.” In Philosophy from Africa: A Text with Readings, edited by P. Coetzee and A. P. J. Roux. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 64-78. Serequeberhan, T. 2007. Contested Memory: The Icons of the Occidental Tradition. Asmara, African World Press. Serfontein, J.H.P. 1979. Brotherhood of Power: An Exposé of the Secret Afrikaner Broederbond. London: Rex Collings. Strydom, H. and Wilkins, I. 2012. The Super-Afrikaners: Inside the Afrikaner Broederbond. Jeppestown: Jonathan Ball Publishers.

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II.

AFRICAN PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS:

THE CRITIQUE OF EUROCENTRISM AND UBUNTU AS A PHILOPRAXIS FOR LIBERATION Broadly speaking, Eurocentrism is a pervasive bias located in modernity’s selfconsciousness of itself. It is grounded in the metaphysical belief or idea (Idee) that European existence is qualitatively superior to other forms of human life – Tsenay Serequeberhan, The Practice of African Philosophy and the Critique of Eurocentrism (2002: 64). AFRICAN PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS Western Europe’s conquest of the indigenous people of other continents; the original inhabitants of their respective countries from time immemorial, beginning with the Americas in 1492 culminated in the colonisation of these people, including the people of Africa. The latter were subsequently treated as objects of the ethically unjustified slave trade, especially across the Atlantic. As we established in the previous chapter, colonisation involved mainly the re-organisation of all life in the colonies according to the patterns in Western Europe. In instances where the struggle to impose this ordering did not translate into full-scale genocides, it still very often meant the attempted annulation of modes of life in the conquered territories. This attempted epistemicide was a necessary complement to the social injustice the conquered people suffered at the hands of the colonial conqueror. Whoever and whatever survived the genocides and epistemicides was then subjected - under the ethically and juridically questionable “right of conquest” - to an order of things hierarchised in such a way that placed Europe both at the centre and zenith of human-Being. On this reasoning, being a human-being depended upon arbitrarily recognised proximity to “Europeanness”. Depending on how a specific colonialism was fashioned, “Europeanness” could be attained either wholly or partially by “conversion”, “civilisation” or “education”. This allowed for the ostensibly voluntary participation of the indigenous conquered people in their own epistemicides and swear to the new gods of Europe. It is for instance a prevailing practice that in the world of fashion that the styles of dress or hair of peoples other than West Europeans are called “Ethnic”. In the field of musicology, adherence to this differentiation is maintained with the appellation, Ethno-musicology. The suggestion of this insistence to differentiate is that only West European culture is culture proper and thus universalisable. The demand on thought, science and theory that before it attains the status of propriety, authenticity or scientificity it ought to be universal turns out to be a demand for such thought to deny its own specificity and experience. Compliance with

41

this demand is, in reality, is submission to Western Europe’s questionable claim to the right to describe and define experience, knowledge and truth for all other human beings in the name of the universality of science. It is precisely this arbitrary claim that this study proposes to submit to a sustained critical questioning from the standpoint of African philosophy. African philosophy as hermeneutics may be understood then as a refusal to give up the specificity of the African experience as the grounding basis for doing philosophy. Theophilus Okere, describing the ambition of his Doctoral thesis and work that followed it, suggests that it was much more than simply initiating a tendency or way of doing African philosophy. His work sought to show that “All philosophy is hermeneutics. Not only African philosophy but all philosophy is hermeneutical in nature, meaning simply that all philosophy is an effort of interpretative understanding, understanding one’s world, one’s environment, one’s culture or one’s reality”.1 Serequeberhan also suggests that African philosophical hermeneutics as a perspective counters itself to both the “particularistic antiquarianism of Ethno-philosophy and to the abstract universalism of Professional Philosophy. It does so in an effort to think through the historicity of our postcolonial ‘independent’ Africa. In doing so furthermore, it is fully cognisant of the fact that its own hermeneutic efforts are part of a struggle to expand and properly consummate our presently unfulfilled and paradoxical independence”.2 Our basic claim with the aid of the above is that philosophy is for us about understanding and action suited to the understanding. Seen from this perspective, philosophy proper is not about itself, locked in the contemplation and clarification of texts for its own sake. On the contrary, philosophy proper arises from and is about experience as living and lived reality.3 It goes without saying that experience is multiple and varied as well as time and space bound. To quote Serequeberhan “philosophy, African or otherwise is a situated critical and systematic interpretative exploration of our lived historico-cultural actuality […] in our case it is a critical and systematic reflection on the lived antecedents of contemporary African existence and thought”4. This existential condition constitutes what we have referred to as transformational dialogue as a necessity in the furtherance of human coexistence pursuing justice and peace. African philosophical hermeneutics then describes here a position of interpretation from the perspective of the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. It describes also a philosophy of liberation, not simply content to interpret the world from the perspective of the oppressed but with the understanding that interpretation is the first step to changing

1 2 3 4

Okere, (2005:4). Serequeberhan (1994:5). Dussel (2002:3). Serequeberhan (1994:3).

42

this situation so that the indigenous African people may once again be free according to their own understanding of freedom. THE CRITIQUE OF EUROCENTRISM In South Africa Ramose has suggested that the “African philosopher would at the very minimum be arguing for the liberation of African philosophy from the yoke of dominance and enslavement under the European (Western) epistemological paradigm”.5 It is precisely the ongoing un-freedom of the African people despite decolonisation and the end of Apartheid in South Africa that lead to his identification of a two-fold exigency which he describes as follows: “One [being] that the colonised people’s conception of reality, knowledge and truth should be released from slavery and dominance under the European epistemological paradigm” [...] The second exigency is that the evolving common [pluri]verse of discourse must take into account the rational demands of justice to the colonised arising from the unjust wars of conquest that resulted in colonial disseizing of territory as well as the enslavement of the colonised. These rational demands are specifically the restoration of territory to its rightful indigenous owners and reparations to them. This two-fold exigency is the indispensable necessity for the authentic liberation of [south] Africa […] our reflections on the need for the authentic liberation of [south] Africa are underlined by the thesis that whoever holds the key to the construction of theory does also hold the key to power”.6 In light of the two-fold exigency, we agree with Serequeberhan that as a practice of resistance African philosophical hermeneutics has at least a double task: de-structive and constructive. Serequeberhan borrows the notion of de-struction from Heidegger; he describes as destructive readings in which “one which undermines the text from within concerning the cardinal notions on which it is grounded, exposing the hidden source out of which the text is articulated. He goes on to explain that “the hyphen in variations of the term which he utilises is meant to emphasise that what is intended is not the ‘destruction’ (elimination, annihilation or demolition) of what is in question, but rather its critical unpacking or opening up to a radical enquiry or interpretation”.7 The destructive task often involves “our responsibility to hermeneutically elucidate what remains hidden: that is ‘a relevant reading that hasn’t been addressed thus far by the dominant Euro-American scholarship on the philosophic tradition”. 8 More practically it

5 6 7 8

Ramose (1999:37). Ramose (1999:36-37). Serequeberhan (2002:77). Serequeberhan (2002:65).

43

requires our critique of Eurocentrism which presents an obstacle to the authentic liberation of the African people and their philosophy. It is necessary to de-structure and expose the basic speculative core of lexicography, texts, discourses, laws, practices and philosophies which enslave and dominate the colonised people’s conception of reality, knowledge and truth (Ramose’s first exigency). In this work in particular, our efforts will be directed against the analytic conception of the experience of racism which originates from the English-speaking liberal political tradition and has a Eurocentric basis divorced from the experience and understanding of the indigenous conquered people9 who are both the historical and continued victims of race/ism in South Africa. Before our focused treatment of the analytic conception of racism in Chapter 4 we will in the next Chapter (3) read South African history itself destructively with view to disclosing the presuppositions and exposing the hidden sources out of which it is articulated. Resistance and the critique of Eurocentrism however are only a single phase of the journey towards true liberation. They deal with that part of freedom which we may describe as “free from”. Once we have successfully de-structed the codes of the oppression and uncovered their hidden sources or telos, it will be necessary to exercise the second part of our freedom, which can be described as “free to”. It is important to understand that the “freedom from” and the “freedom to” reflect more a conceptual rather than necessarily a historical sequence. In thinking about “freedom from”, “freedom to” is already thought out even if this might be just inchoately. One criticises something as wrong or right precisely because one has an already existing (even if not explicit) idea of bad or good. Thus, is there a mutual reinforcement rather than strict and rigid division between “freedom from” and “freedom to”. The historical dimension comes into the picture on the recognition that the actual realisation of “freedom from” is the precondition for the exercise of “freedom to”. The following questions should be understood against the background of this reasoning with regard to “freedom from” and “freedom to”. What kind of philosophy? What kind of society? What kind of humanness shall we have once we are engaged in the active exercise our freedom? It is essential to note that the separation of these dimensions of freedom and their content is a philosophical technique for conceptual clarity. In reality freedom is one indivisible wholeness, this is so also because the very critique of the unethicality of the prevailing order

9

In the case of South Africa, it is ethically and historically necessary to acknowledge that the Indian community, forcibly delivered to conqueror South Africa in 1860, is an integral part of the conquered peoples. Thus, even if this community was not colonised in South Africa, it should be henceforth understood that reference to ‘the indigenous peoples conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation’ does include them as well.

44

which we are to become “free from” unfolds according to the basis of an already existing philosophy which will provide the basis for the exercise of our freedom which we call “free to”. This brings us to the final part of our task, described elsewhere as constructive. That which deals precisely with the content of our philosophical basis for the critique of Eurocentrism as well as the matter of the construction of our liberation. THE INDIGENOUS RE-ORIENTATION OF PHILOSOPHIC WORK: UBUNTU AS A PHILOPRAXIS FOR LIBERATION Some background notes concerning “Ubuntu” in the “new” South Africa Over the past two decades there has been an enormous rise in interest in both academic (some philosophical) and public discourse on the subject of Ubuntu. This prolific rise has brought to birth research chairs, professorships and volumes of books, articles and prestigious status for several white South African, European and American scholars.10 It is, however our contention that most of these “Ubuntus” which taken hold are curiously “Ubuntus” without abantu (the Bantu-speaking people whose philosophy it is). Also, they are quite often “Ubuntus” without or isintu; the culture which is the basis for the philosophy of Ubuntu. It is perhaps for this reason that these anthropologically and culturally hollow versions Ubuntu continue to be employed in sustaining the epistemicide initiated at the conquest of the indigenous people of South Africa in the unjust wars of colonisation. In our time these versions are living examples of the exercise of the dubious “right of conquest” by the successors in title to this questionable “right of conquest”. Ramose11 has pointed out, for instance, in relation to the work Augustine Shutte, one of the pioneers of these “Ubuntus”, that his depiction of the South Africa to which his “ethic” is prescribed is based on a taking for granted of the right of conquest. Ramose argues that Shutte’s “failure to problematise the unjustified violence of colonisation” and his “faithful and uncritical restatement of the dogma of the history of South Africa according to the conqueror

10

11

This is philosophically relevant because as Ramose (2002:326-327) has shown in the case of Augustine Shutte. Most “[white South African authors] approach the question of Ubuntu […] from the point of view of the stranger to Ubuntu”. “As stranger[s], [they] stand at least one remove from ubuntu. The distance between [themselves] and Ubuntu means [they] are standing on a platform of experience, an epistemological paradigm which must reflect some minimum difference between itself and Ubuntu epistemology. To some extent this epistemological platform determines [their] way of looking at Ubuntu and interpreting it. [They] are looking at Ubuntu and interpreting it from the point of view of a European”. This observation extends to most white South African and American and European authors on the subject for example Praeg, Cornell, Metz and Keevy who have in the past decade written voluminously on the subject providing no known and satisfactory evidence that they have a working knowledge of at least one of the Bantu languages. This is a minimum conventional scholarly requirement for anyone who claims expertise in a discipline, for example, the claim to expertise in Greek philosophy requires a working knowledge of Greek. Ramose (2002:328).

45

reveals an ethical insensitivity towards the legitimate moral and political claims of ‘the San, ‘The Khoikhoi and the various Bantu people’”.12 Although it is not the purpose of this chapter to review the literature described above, it is worthwhile to note that most of the work published on the subject is subject to the criticisms above13. They are perfect instances of authors who are united in their blissful ignorance of work produced by African philosophers on the subject. All the above authors have also at various times sought to use Ubuntu in the justification of the constitution of South Africa (Act 108 of 1996) by advancing the indefensible argument that the philosophy of Ubuntu is compatible with the constitution. This is tantamount to using the philosophy of the indigenous conquered people of South Africa in the legitimation and justification of “the right of conquest”. In view of the enduring exercise of “the right of conquest” as described above, we seek to retrieve Ubuntu as understood by the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. The retrieval is an integral part of the continuing resistance against the unethical doubt concerning their quality as human beings. The Ubuntu philosophy we seek to retrieve is the one which was the basis of inkosi uShaka Zulu’s wars of resistance, Bambatha’s rebellion against imperial imposition and the formation of the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania and the Azanian People’s Liberation Army. Our approach African philosophy as a practice of resistance also has a second task which is closely linked to Ramose’s second exigency.14 This task is the indigenous re-orientation of philosophical work or what Serequeberhan elsewhere describes as the constructive aspect. He writes “In its constructive aspect the practice of African philosophy has to engage in the systematic and critical study of indigenous forms of knowledge and ‘know-how’ both practical and theoretic”.15 and adds “amongst other things, we- those of us engaged in African philosophy, have to be willing to learn from and critically study the concrete practices of various African liberation movements and struggles”.16

12 13 14

15 16

Ramose (2002:328). See for example Praeg (2008; 2014a; 2014b), Keevy (2014), Metz (2006, 2007, 2008, 2013, 2014). The second exigency is that the evolving common [pluri]verse of discourse must take into account the rational demands of justice to the colonised arising from the unjust wars of conquest that resulted in colonial disseizing of territory as well as the enslavement of the colonised. These rational demands are specifically the restoration of territory to its rightful indigenous owners and reparations to them. This twofold exigency is the indispensable necessity for the authentic liberation of [South] Africa […] Our reflections on the need for the authentic liberation of [South] Africa are underlined by the thesis that whoever holds the key to the construction of theory does also hold the key to power” Ramose (1999:36-37). Serequeberhan (2009:47). Serequeberhan (2009:47).

46

We accordingly understand the constructive aspect of our task to be grounded in two inseparable resources. These are the indigenous African philosophy of Ubuntu as well as the history and artefacts of the liberation movements and struggles some of which have their basis in Ubuntu. We will accordingly below provide both a concise exposition of African philosophy through Ubuntu as this is the understanding that forms the basis of our study. We will then make a case for the study of the liberation struggle and movements as philosophical resources which have provided us with an example of Ubuntu engaged in the practice of resistance. We will restrict ourselves as a result of the scope of this research project to the philosophy of race. AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY OF RACE THROUGH UBUNTU Ubuntu Philosophy Ubuntu is the Zulu or Nguni translation of a term which can be found amongst Bantuspeaking people throughout the continent of Africa. For example, it is known and understood as Botho in the Sesotho languages or Hunhu amongst the Shona speaking people of the Great Zimbabwe. It roughly translates to be-ing human or “humanness” rather than human-ism – a matter of philosophical importance which we will explore in the following section. Our purpose in this section is to exposit very briefly the philosophical basis of Ubuntu with the purpose of discussing what can be understood as the philosophy of race or absence thereof amongst the Bantu-speaking people who were conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. Ubuntu is the philosophical foundation of African philosophy amongst the Bantuspeaking people. Philosophy in Ubuntu We will rely on the work of South African philosopher Mogobe Ramose in our discussion of Ubuntu philosophy. In his philosophical analysis of Ubuntu, Ramose argues that the term should be approached as a hyphenated word: ubu-ntu with the prefix being ubu- and stem ntu-. Ubu- evokes the idea of be-ing in general. It is enfolded be-ing before it manifests itself in the concrete form or mode of existence of any particular entity.17 The ontology of ubuAt the ontological level there really is no strict literal separation between ubu- and -ntu they are instead Ramose suggests mutually founding, two aspects of being in one-ness and an indivisible whole-ness. Ubu- according to Ramose evokes the idea of be-ing in general, always oriented towards unfoldment that is incessant continual concrete manifestation through particular forms and modes of being. While Ubu- may be said to be distinctly ontological, -

17

Ramose (1999:40-53).

47

ntu is the point at which be-ing assumes concrete form or a mode of be-ing in the continual unfoldment and may be said to distinctly epistemological. Accordingly, then Ubuntu is the fundamental ontological-epistemological

category

in the

philosophy of the

Bantu-

speaking people. Umu- and the epistemology of –ntu: being human vs human-being Umu- shares an identical logic with ubu-. The two prefixes share the logic that each one of them denotes the highest level of generality in the sense that they specify nothing in particular. They are, as it were, dangling and will remain in that position until they are grounded by a particular suffix. The “dangling” aspect of these two prefixes also suggests the recognition that motion is the principle of be-ing. The activity implied in the concept of motion is the basis for the construal of ‘doing’, that is, the verbal element in the prefix ubu- but not umu-. The point then is that depending on their classification in the categorisation of being,18 some prefixes – once grounded by the relevant suffix – are gerundives or verbal nouns. Once they are grounded they become nouns. The difference is, however, that umu- belongs to a different class in the categorisation of nouns. In this particular case, the ubu- connotes the class of abstract nouns whereas umu- connotes the class of concrete nouns. Because of the verbal character inherent in ubu- when it is grounded by the suffix –ntu then Ubuntu is properly an abstract verbal noun. When joined with -ntu into umuntu, it refers to the concrete noun; human-being, homoloquens who is simultaneously homo sapiens, the specific: human-being- maker and subject of politics, law and religion. To make an English translation then, while Ubuntu can be thought of as describing the more general and abstract humanness or be-ing human, umuntu on the other hand, is the specific concrete manifestation. Umuntu is the specific entity which continues to conduct an enquiry into be-ing, knowledge and truth, something we would best consider an activity rather than an act, a process which cannot be stopped unless motion is itself stopped in line with this reasoning then ubu- should be regarded as be-ing becoming, verbal rather than verb. -ness versus -ism It is so according to Ramose that Ubuntu is always a –ness and never an –ism. The reason for this is the logic of ubu- being the recognition that motion is the principle of be-ing as explained in the immediately preceding section. This is corroborated by the Oxford Dictionary of Word Beginnings and Endings clarifying that although “the suffix is active in the language, […] words coined with it are often of transitory existence”. On the other hand, Entry 1. Of ‘ness’ in the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Current English reads: “forms nouns from adjectives

18

Ramose (2006:58-60).

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and sometimes other words expressing 1: a state or condition or an instance of this, and 2: something in a certain state.” ‘-ness’ amongst other things in the language of motion openly admits its temporality, as merely a state and stage in a much greater process, which is still to manifest itself in other ways. It is precisely the understanding of be-ing Human as verbal and continual motion, always in a constant state of revision, reconfiguration that makes the translation of Ubuntu into human-ism untenable. Humanness is the accurate rendition Ubuntu; of human-being becoming. Ubuntu may never be translated as humanism as several writers have done.19 The suffix “-ism” which is described by the Oxford Dictionary of word beginnings and endings20 as “forming nouns” is also described in the same entry as a creation of the 17 th century for the description of “distinctive practices, systems, political ideologies”. The “-ism” suffix creates the false impression that we are dealing with nouns as separate and distinct, independently existing entities. “Ism” inevitably fixates and arrests from motion some or other moment or aspect of reality. The result is the creation of the dogmatic and unchangeable, the foregone and finalised. Philosophically, it also has the effect of positing a “fundamental and irreconcilable opposition be-ing becoming which arises from the subject-object-verb understanding of the structure of language. This “false dogmatism and immutability constitute a false necessity based on fragmentative thinking”21. The cumulative conclusion arising from the above is that Ubuntu as an abstract verbal noun is linked ontologically to umuntu. This is a mutually reinforcing link in the sense that umuntu the concrete is the potential doer of Ubuntu in practice. In philosophical terms, umuntu precedes Ubuntu ontologically and, by virtue of such precedence umuntu in the progenitor of the epistemology of Ubuntu. The following section is an elaboration on this cumulative conclusion. UBUNTU PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE CONCEPT OF RACE Under this section we propose to briefly discuss the view of the Ubuntu understanding of the human being. We will do this through the analysis of a central aphorism of Ubuntu and some of the implications that arise out of it. Umuntu ngumuntu nga Bantu It is essential before providing an English approximation to disclaim the fact that the meaning of this maxim is inexhaustible by English translation. It is also important to note that

19 20 21

see Metz (2008); Cornell (2013); Praeg (2014). Quinion (2002:118). Ramose (2002:42).

49

although the example provided here for treatment is the isiZulu version, there exist equivalents for it in all the Bantu languages. Following Ramose we understand it to mean: “to be a human be-ing is to affirm one’s humanity by recognising the humanity of others and, on that basis establish humane relations with them”. The core meaning of this aphorism may be expressed philosophically thus: “For Black Africa, it is not the Cartesean cogito ergo sum but an existential cognatus sum, ergo sumus [I am related; therefore we are] that is decisive.22 The relatedness underlined by this aphorism means that Ubuntu as humanness obliges one to be humane, respectful and polite towards others. The obligation to be humane towards others is an ethical imperative based on the principle that one ought always to promote life and avoid killing. Ubuntu as ethics is inseparably connected to the recognition that motion is the principle of be-ing. The ethics of Ubuntu revolves around contingency and mutability. Accordingly, “there is no ethics as such, but only different ethical systems, with identical ideals”.23 We concur with Bujo but with the qualification that the ethical ideals are not always “identical”. Understood in this way, Ubuntu is the source as well as the embodiment of the ethics of the Bantu-speaking people. The implication is that be-ing a human being is simply not given or passive. Ubuntu is simultaneously gerund and gerundive. As such it is an orientation to the practice of the philosophy of Ubuntu. It is in this sense a philopraxis. Simply being born of the species, Homo sapiens may be a necessary condition to be a humanbeing but it is not sufficient. One ought to become – in the ethical sense – a human being. This, in the philosophy of Ubuntu, is an indispensable complement to the ontological condition of being a human-being. The be-ing of oneself is always dependant on one’s doing in relation to others. That is precisely the recognition of their humanity and the establishment of humane relationships with them. It is also the case that the human order is distinctly social, beginning with the language, one of the central instruments of our enquiry into the nature of be-ing as well as the world we construct with that language as its basis. Everything about ourselves requires others to have any significance and so too our human constructions assume this. Everything from language, law and politics has no meaning if there are not ‘others’ (abanye abantu) in its description, definition and practice. As Ramose has argued “what is decisive then is to prove oneself to be the embodiment of ubu-ntu because the fundamental ethical, social and legal judgement of

22 23

Bujo (2001:22). Bujo (1997:47).

50

human worth and conduct is based upon Ubuntu”.24 This brings us to the next part of our examination of the mechanics of this judgment. Ngu muntu or akusi umuntu? Ramose warns that a literal interpretation is without use as it would simply ask “is he human, or isn’t he?” 25 Instead this is an expression that should be seen as enquiry into the humanness; the ethical quality of being a particular individual. The judgment concerning a particular individual does not refer to any aspect of their biology. The determination whether one is umuntu or not has its basis on the known history of the actions of a particular person and whether such a person has in fact conducted herself humanely, that is, with Ubuntu. It is also technically possible for the judgment to be extended towards a group of people provided that a history of interactions is recorded between a given Bantu-speaking community and such a group of people. It is for instance the case that Europeans: “abelungu” are generally considered to not have Ubuntu. The effect of this is that by aggregation it might be said “umlungu, akusi umuntu”, he is white, he is not a human being. More precisely a question can be asked meaningfully “ungumuntu na?” to which the answer could be issued sensibly “cha ungumlungu”: no, he is white. This is not a mode of reasoning based on race. It does not have its basis in biology. Rather, it is an ethical judgment based on the historical interaction between the indigenous conquered people “abantu”, conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation and their colonial conquerors: “abelungu”. The kernel of this ethical judgment is the experience of the injustice in the forms of: (i) the so-called right of conquest, being the ethically unjustified usurpation of sovereign title to territory from the abantu to abelungu; (ii) political subjugation in the service of sustained systemic and systematic economic exploitation and, (iii) racism to consolidate political subjugation and reinforce systemic and systematic economic exploitation. Despite the constitutional change brought about since 1994, this experience remains unaltered. This is because

the

new

constitutional

dispensation

is,

politically

and

legally,

the

constitutionalisation the triple experience of the injustice we have just identified. Accordingly, it ought to be censured on ethical grounds regardless of the consent of the conquered delivered through the medium of “negotiations”. To demonstrate the ethical assessment that “umlungu akusi umuntu” is the fact that when an umulungu or indeed any non-Bantu person exhibits Ubuntu and contradicts the precisely negative history of interaction between her people and abantu, then it is said that “lomlungu unobuntu”: this white person has Ubuntu or even “lomlungu ungumutu”, that is, this white person is a human being. This shows that even when a historically negative relationship has been formed, that is, one in which the conduct of the other has negated the humanity of the

24 25

Ramose (2002:43). Ramose (2002:43).

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Bantu or any other human beings, their reasoning has been flexible enough to recognise humanness wherever, whenever and by whomsoever it presents itself. This kind of ethical judgment is distinctly and completely free of racism. Ngubane (1963) and Pheko (1990) both write of various Europeans who were accepted as abantu and were integrated into the Bantuspeaking communities and established humane relations with them. It follows then that the orientation towards as well as the burden of racist reasoning is alien to the philosophy of Ubuntu. Only a superficial understanding of the ethics of Ubuntu constitutes the basis for the hollow and unsustainable charge that Ubuntu is racist. UBUNTU AS A PHILOPRAXIS FOR LIBERATION “Ubuntu is not only a word or concept. It is not a philosophical abstraction in the fashion of Plato’s Ideas or Forms. On the contrary, Ubuntu is a lived and living philosophy of the Bantu-speaking people of Africa. It is a philosophy with a past, a present and a project in the future” Mogobe Ramose , Ubuntu: Affirming a Right and Seeking Remedies in South Africa (2014: 121). In addition to our reliance on the theoretical work of those professional philosophers who have gone before us within the discursive and academic spaces to deepen our understanding of the philosophy of Ubuntu, the basis and source of our philosophising will also extend to the culture and life of the indigenous African people. It will also especially learn from the several generations of groups and individuals who have been engaged since the unjust wars of colonisation in the struggle to assert the undeniable truth that the humanity of the African is second to none. These have included sovereign kings. such as amakhosi Shaka Zulu, Cetshwayo ka Dingiswayo, Sekhukhune, Dinizulu ka Cetshwayo and Bambatha. These heroic defenders of their sovereign title to territory were defeated by the colonial conqueror in the unjust wars of colonisation. Political formations and organisations such as the All Africa Convention, the Unity Movement, the PAC of Azania and the BCM including the South African Native National Congress are all part of the history of resistance against the colonial conqueror. Where it is necessary, we will also examine the comparable experiences and understanding coming out from other conquered people of the so-called 3rd world.26 It is from the history, theory and practice of these individuals and organisations and from culture of the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation that our philosophy comes.

26

We object to the appellation, “3rd world” because it is part of precisely what our work is criticising, namely, racism. Our objection is that the appellation is a condescending and benign racism based upon an untenable arbitrarily constructed racism. See in support of this, Parkinson 1977:24-25.

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We understand much of the struggle for liberation from its beginnings to have always had its basis in Ubuntu, in the understanding that human life is inter-connected, in the understanding that a ruler derives the authority to rule from and through the people. Furthermore, human beings were deemed to be equal status as human beings despite differences in the colour of their skins. It is precisely because of their conquest in the unjust wars of colonisation that the indigenous African people, title bearers to their territories since time immemorial, resisted and continue to resist their colonial conquerors including the successors in title to the conquest. This work is based on the history and philosophy of their resistance and struggle: our struggle for complete and total liberation with due recognition of the fact that the dynamism of liberation means that it cannot be achieved once and for all time. We now turn our attention to a brief examination of the political philosophical approach which arises out of Ubuntu and has referred to itself as Africanism. Africanism understood itself explicitly as a philosophy of liberation and reflected a moment in the development of the liberation struggle where certain members of the African National Congress sought to redirect the struggle and its approach towards an African cultural basis. This meant the reconnection of the struggle with the antecedent history of anti-colonial wars. This line of resistance understood its ultimate goal as the restoration, to the indigenous people, of full and unencumbered sovereign title to its territory. Although it may be argued that several of the tenets of Africanism such as the unification of fragmented and separate groups of African people into a single nation precede colonial contact, our interest here is with the nature of Africanism as a philosophy of liberation, that is, as it finds expression after the conquest of the indigenous people in the unjust wars of colonisation. As far as the original development of Africanism as a systematic philosophy is concerned, some regard Anton Lembede as its progenitor. Gerhart 27 makes this point thus: “[the] intensive study of history and philosophy had freed […] the mind [of] from any blind tendency to conform to the thinking of those around him and had stirred a fervent desire to create something in the philosophical realm which was new and uniquely African […] The total thrust of his ideas in the South African context was quite unprecedented”. Africanism as a philosophy of liberation took its starting place in Lembede in his dealing with the philosophical implications of the conquest, forcible dispossession of territory and oppression of the African people in their own country. It is important to note that the unapologetic assertion that South Africa is a “Black man’s” country, that it belongs to the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation, is precisely one of the features that distinguishes Africanist thought in South Africa from other indigenous political

27

Gehart (1978:62).

53

liberation organisations except the BCM. In addition to the legitimate claim that South Africa is “a Black man’s” country, Lembede also identified psychological and cultural oppression, a pathology of mind, in these terms: “[it is] assuming alarming dimensions… [and] manifests itself in such abnormal and pathological phenomena as the loss of self-confidence, inferiority complex, a feeling of frustration, the worship and idolisation of white men, foreign leaders and ideologies”. 28 Because of this, Africanism identified the liberation of the African intellectually, psychologically, culturally, politically and economically as one of its primary aims. It interesting to note – albeit parenthetically – that right from its inception the BCM declared the pursuit of exactly these aims by appeal to the same reasoning espoused by Lembede even though he was not explicitly quoted. On this point, the historical continuity between Africanist and Black Consciousness philosophies is strikingly conspicuous and unmistakable. The restoration of the African’s knowledge of and confidence in her own culture was aimed at affirming that the humanity of the African is second to none. The philosophical basis which informs the resistance to oppression can, for Africanist philosophy, then be found within African culture and history. Lembede, for example, writes repeatedly about the necessity of remembering the wars of resistance fought by the great sovereign kings of the past.29 As Gerhart30 points out the point was not to return to the past but to reinterpret the present as an extension of an heroic ongoing African struggle against conquest. Africanism’s conception of freedom and the character of the society and polity that would come into being as a result of the expression of that self-determination is also one which has its basis in African culture.31 In the discourse of African philosophy then Africanism could be categorised into the group which Henry Odera Oruka called nationalistic-ideological philosophy. This approach to philosophy is one which originates in the experience of the struggle against oppression in Africa. Many of its central theoreticians were gifted intellectuals, educated in various fields sometimes in Western academic philosophy itself, for example, Kwame Nkrumah and Anton Lembede. Few of them were however simply academics. They were soldiers, activists, freedom fighters, who distilled their thought in the process of the engagement of struggle. With a few exceptions such as Kwame Nkrumah, several of their works are not written as extended treatises in the fashion of academic philosophy. Instead, they survive as pamphlets, speeches, letters and notes which are nevertheless rich sources of social, legal, economic and political

28 29 30 31

Lembede (2015:140). Gerhart (1978:200). Ibid,201. see Lembede (2015), Sobukwe (1959) and Biko (2004).

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philosophies as well as epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. Robert Sobukwe’s Africanism, Leopold Senghor’s Negritude, Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa and Kenneth Kaunda’s African “humanism” come to mind as examples in this regard, not forgetting the poetry and writings of physician Presidents Agostinho Neto and Felix Houphouet-Boigny. Oruka describing the character of nationalistic-ideological philosophy writes that “It is clear that this philosophy is claimed to be rooted in the traditional or communal Africa, but it is explicit that it is actually a philosophy of the individual author concerned. Thirdly, this philosophy is practical and has explicit problems to solve, namely those of national and individual freedom”.32 Africanism also meets the minimum criteria set by Ramose, Serequeberhan and Okere, amongst others, for the practice of African philosophy, namely that it has its basis upon “the culture and experience of African people” and the “African philosopher would at the very minimum be arguing for the liberation of African philosophy from the yoke of dominance and enslavement under the European (Western) epistemological paradigm”.33 Robert Sobukwe, the founding president and important theoretician of the first organisation that was founded on an explicitly Africanist basis did not study academic philosophy formally. He was, however, explicitly engaged in political philosophy gained from African culture and, in part from his practical involvement in politics. He argued in several instances for the liberation of Africanist philosophy from the dominance of the Western epistemological paradigm. In view of our discussion above concerning the tension between –ness and –ism, the proponents of Africanism must be criticised for delivering an African philosophy derived from African culture in terms of an –ism. The criticism is pertinent on the ground that all of them were born and nurtured into and through the philosophy of Ubuntu. The importance of the criticism lies in the fact that it is a reminder that (i) even English or any other non-Bantu language is not necessarily the best medium of rendering the meaning of indigenous vernacular concepts, in this case, Ubuntu: (ii) one must be constantly alert to the distinction between

speaking

or

writing

in

English

–

(or

any

other

language)

–

and

philosophical reasoning. According to our criticism, the proponents of Africanism are guilty of the failure to distinguish between speaking or writing in English and, philosophical reasoning. We will make extensive use of the liberation philosophy of Lembede, Sobukwe and Biko in Chapter 5 (An Ethical Critique of the liberal Account of non-racialism). In the next chapter we examine the history of the theory and practice of racist oppression in South Africa together

32 33

Oruka (2002) [1978]:122). Ramose (1999:37).

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with the history of resistance before providing a conception of racism which has its basis in the lived experience of the indigenous conquered people.

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REFERENCES Bujo B. 1997. The Ethical Dimension of Community: the African Model and the Dialogue between North and South, Paulines Publications Africa: Nairobi. Bujo, B 2001. Foundations of an African Ethic. Crosswood Publishing Company: New York Curry, T. 2010 “The Derelictical Crisis of African American Philosophy: How African American Philosophy Fails to Contribute to the Study of African-Descended People” The Journal of Black Studies pp 314–333 Vol.42 No.3 Dussel, E. 2002. The Philosophy of Liberation (A. M. Morkovsky, Trans.), Wipf and Stock Publishers: Oregon. Gehart, Gail. 1978. Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology, University of California Press: Berkeley. Keevy, I. 2014. Ubuntu versus the Core Values of the South African Constitution. In Ubuntu: Curating the Archive L Magadla S. Praeg L. (eds) and pp. 54-95. University of KwaZuluNatal Press: Pietermaritzburg. Lembede, AM. 2015 Freedom in Our Lifetime: The Collected Writings of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede, Kwela Books: Pietermaritzburg. Magadla, S and Praeg, L (Ed.). (2014). Ubuntu: Curating the Archive, University of KwaZuluNatal Press: Pietermaritzburg. Memmi, A. 1991. The Coloniser and the Colonised, Beacon Press. Ngubane, JK. 1963 An African Explains Apartheid, Greenwood publishers: New York. Nzegwu, N. 1999. “Colonial Racism: Sweeping Out His Father’s House with Mother Europe’s Broom” in Racism and Philosophy, Babbit S. and Campbell S. (eds), pp124-156, Cornell University Press: Ithaca. Okere, T. 2005. African philosophy: A Hermeneutical inquiry into the Conditions of its Possibility Keynote Address at UNESCO Philosophy Day, University of South Africa: Pretoria. Oruka, H. O. 2002. “Four trends in current African philosophy”. In Coetzee, Peter & Roux (Ed.), [Philosophy from Africa: a text with readings, in P Coetzee and APJ Roux (eds) pp. 120-124. Oxford University Press: Cape Town. Pheko, M. 1990. South Africa: Betrayal of a Colonised People: Issues of International Human Rights Law, Skotaville: Pretoria. Paperback Praeg, L. A Report on Ubuntu, 2014. University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Pietermaritzburg. Praeg, L. 2014. “From Ubuntu to Ubuntu: Four Historic a Prioris”, Ubuntu: Curating the Archive, Praeg, L & Magadla, S. Ed. pp. 96-120, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Pietermaritzburg. Ramose, M.B. 1999. African Philosophy Through Ubuntu, Mond Books: Harare. RAMOSE, Mogobe B. 2002. “The Ethics of Ubuntu”. Philosophy from Africa: A Text with Readings, P. Coetzee and A.P.J. Roux Ed. pp. 324-330, Oxford University Press: Cape Town.

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Ramose, M.B. 2002 “The struggle for reason in Africa”. In P. Coetzee and Roux (Ed.), Philosophy from Africa A Text With Readings. pp. 1-8,. Oxford University Press: Cape Town. Ramose, M.B. 2006. “Alexis Kagame on the Bantu philosophy of being, Aristotle's Categoriae and De Interpretatione”, [Re-ethnicising the minds? Cultural revival in contemporary thought T Bortz-Bornstein and J Hengelbrock Ed.], pp. 53-62. Rodopi: Amsterdam. Ramose, M B. 2014. “Ubuntu: Affirming a Right and Seeking Remedies in South Africa”. Ubuntu: Curating the Archive in Praeg, L & Magadla, S (Eds)., pp. 121-136. University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Pietermaritzburg. Ramose, M.B. 2015. “On the contested meaning of 'philosophy'”. South African Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 34(no. 4), pp. 551-558. https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2015.1124509 Serequeberhan, T 1988. “African Freedom: A Philosophical Exploration” Doctoral Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the PhD in philosophy at the University of Boston. Paperback Serequeberhan, T. 1994. The Hermeneutics of African philosophy. Routlege. Serequeberhan, T. 2002. “A Critique of Eurocentrism and the practice of African philosopy”. [Philosophy from Africa: A Text with Readings, Peter Coetzee and A.P.J. Roux Ed.], pp. 64-78. Oxford University Press: Cape Town. Serequeberhan, T. 2007. Contested Memory: The Icons of the Occidental Tradition. African World Press: Asmara. Serequeberhan, T. 2009. “African philosophy and The Practice of Resistance”. [Journal of Philosophy: A Cross Disciplinary Inquiry], pp 44-52. Vol 4. No.9. Web. Shutte, A. Ubuntu: An Ethic for a New South Africa, 2001. University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor. Paperback Sobukwe, M.& Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania. 1978. Speeches of Mangaliso Sobukwe from 1949-1959 and other documents of the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, The PAC of Azania Office of the Chief Representative to the United States and the Caribbean New York. Soske, Jon. 2017, Unfinished Debates: Settler Liberalism, East Africa and the Origins of NonRacialism.

Johannesburg.

URL:

https://wiser.wits.ac.za/content/unfinished-

debates-settler-liberalism-east-africa-and-origins-non-racialism-11042 Quinion, Michael, 2005. Ologies and Isms: Dictionary of Word Beginnings and Endings, Oxford University Press, London

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III. THE RACISM OF HISTORY IN SOUTH AFRICA When we speak of history who is speaking? It is someone of a given period, class and society- in short someone who is himself a historical being. And this very fact, which founds the possibility of historical knowledge (for only a historical being can have an experience of history and can talk about it) prevents this knowledge from ever acquiring the status of complete and transparent knowledge- since it is itself, in its essence, an historical phenomenon which demands to be apprehended and interpreted as such. The discourse on history is included within history (Castoriadis, 1975:21). HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY The central basis of our objection to the analytic conception of racism is its ahistorical nature. Our central argument in this book involves the extent to which what we have called an analytic conception of racism explicitly relies on the deliberate exclusion of history in its conceptualisation of racism. Our purpose in this chapter is to historicise racism, to place it within the context of the history of its own unfoldment. It is also to situate it within the context of the interests that brought it into existence and the life conditions that its existence has created. We will pursue these purposes through a philosophical analysis of key historical moments in the evolution and calcification of systemic racism in South Africa since the conquest of the indigenous people in the unjust wars of colonisation beginning in 1652. Before we proceed, however, it is necessary to enter into a brief discussion about the meaning and nature of the enterprise of history since ours is a philosophical-historical exposition rather than a historical essay. We will then describe different versions of the history of South Africa on the basis of different ideologies. Our assessment of them will unfold on the basis of the experience of the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. It is important to note from the onset that it is our understanding that history and theory are intimately interrelated. WHAT IS HISTORY? “History” is an ambiguous word since it covers both ‘(1) the totality of past human actions and (2) the narrative account we construct of them now”.1 Historians are not “content with the simple discovery of past facts: they aspire, at least, not only to say what happened but also to show why it happened”.2 The Oxford Shorter English Dictionary defines a fact as “a datum of experience as distinct from conclusions.” It is the case that the enterprise of historical writing consists in far more than the discovery of facts but also the coterminous

1 2

Walsh (1967:16). Ibid,18.

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exercise of their arrangement and interpretation. Of course, even what the historian considers “facts” at all, which facts are worthy of recording and becoming historical facts is already an act of interpretation. In view of these considerations, history may be construed as the subjective selection by the historian of “facts” from the past and an interpretation of those “facts” according to the conventions of history as a scientific discipline. WHAT ARE HISTORICAL FACTS? Although the term “historical fact” appears to be clear and straightforward, either describing ordinary facts occurring in the past or alternatively facts about the technical discipline of history, this straightforwardness is quite misleading. Historical facts are not just any amongst the infinite number of ascertainable facts about events that have passed in time. Rather they describe that special class of facts about the past that are considered, on the basis of history as a science, to be historically significant. Although under the influence of Ranke, historians used to claim that “facts speak for themselves” it is in fact rather so that “facts speak when they are called by the historian who decides which facts to disclose, in what context and order”.3 To demonstrate just how it is that facts become historical facts Carr uses Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon as an example, he writes: “it is a historian who decided that Caesar’s crossing of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history whereas the crossing of the Rubicon by millions of other people before or since, interests nobody at all”.4 He goes on to suggest and, here we will use our own example: that we swam in a pond in Pretoria an hour ago is just as much a fact about the past as Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon. It will, however, be very likely ignored by historians. Carr writes about the actual process of the graduation of facts about the past into historical facts suggesting, for example, that the consideration by a respected scholar of history at some prestigious university of an event which was not before considered historically significant may cause other historians to develop interest in that fact and through its study and recording convert its status from an ordinary fact about the past into a historical fact.5 Elaborating on the point about the contingency of historical facts and its force in the enterprise of history Carr goes on to write: “Our picture of Greece in the fifth century BC is defective not primarily because so several bits have been accidentally lost, but because it is, by and large, the picture formed by a tiny group of people in the tiny city of Athens. We know a lot about what 3 4 5

Carr (1961:8). Ibid,9. Ibid.

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fifth century Greece looked like to an Athenian citizen but hardly anything about what it looked like to a Spartan, a Corinthian or Theban not to mention a Persian or a slave or other non-citizen resident in Athens. Our picture has been preselected and predetermined for us by people who were consciously or unconsciously imbued with a particular view and thought the facts which supported this view worth preserving”.6 The point of the foregoing discussion is simply that accounts of the past, histories and the facts of those histories gain their status as a result of several “unscientific” factors, some of which are purely accidental but many of which involve political and institutional power, identity and politics. We now turn to elaborate this point before illustrating its historical record through a discussion of the competing interpretations of South African history. THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY AND LIBERATION The African proverb which states “until the lion tells the tale, stories of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter” is apposite for the present discussion. In the instance of a conquered and colonised people the lion is a metaphor for the indigenous conquered people and the hunter the conqueror. The problem is however, greater than the knowledge and telling of the story of the hunt. Colonisation understood as the transformation of territory itself and its cultural and intellectual practices into “fundamentally European constructs” 7 has meant that the very discipline of history, including the determination of what counts as history reflects the prejudices and interests of the hunter. Magubane examining precisely this relationship between power and “official history” writes: “Forces that emerged victorious in the struggles between the coloniser and the colonised created South African history, as written by recognised historians. If one looks at the history of higher education in South Africa, there is no question that the forces that endowed its institutions were the major beneficiaries of African helotry”.8 Not only were the “political” writings of the indigenous conquered people banned during crucial periods of South African history, African history too in South Africa was marginalised. A study of history reveals that the historical enterprise is neither objective nor value free. Instead, history always reflects and is affected by power relations and interests of people. The historian is not exempt. As a result, the history of South African history reveals in itself interpretive trends which correspond closely with the political interests of the communities of historians who were involved in its production. Such historians belong not simply to historical societies and communities but also to so-called “national groups” (see Sobukwe’s

6 7 8

Carr (1961:13). Mudimbe (1988:1). Magubane (2007:252).

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conception thereof in Chapter 5.4.1). This affects various things including the institutions where they are trained and what they are taught there. In one of only two book-length surveys of South Africa published in English hitherto, 9 historiographer Ken Smith goes to some length to make the point that there are no Black historians in South Africa. It is important to note that Smith in the same volume does, however, include numerous works by so-called amateur historians of the Settler, British, Afrikaner and Marxist schools. It is without doubt that there are more than a handful of works written by Africans from an African point of view which give systematic account of the past. Works such as Jordan Ngubane’s An African Explains Apartheid or even historicalsociological texts like Bernard Magubane’s, A Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa or his The Making of a Racist State: British Imperialism and the Union of South Africa 1875–1910 testify to this. The exclusion of these texts under a description of African history (for example by Ken Smith 10 ) in South Africa is the result of an ideologically suspicious arbitration that the author never discloses. Why is it that the travelogues of amateur European travel writers are taken as early the beginnings of history in South Africa? In the end his neglect of this literature serves to strengthen his dubious point about the disinterest in history of Africans and silencing the considerable number of voices that call this belief into question. In the course of the pursuit of liberation, the necessity of the study and reinterpretation of the past by Africans according to their own experience is a point which is well recorded by several African philosophers of liberation such as Lembede, Sobukwe and Biko. We will so then in what follows read the history of history in South Africa from an African philosophical point of view. That is, we will read it from the point of view of the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. This means that historical trends in South Africa will be assessed in relation to their position especially the dubious right of conquest and racism. SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY Our purpose in this section is not at all to provide an exhaustive survey of historiographical trends in South Africa. Our much narrower task is to describe some of the main characteristics that differentiate the various historiographical approaches that have emerged over time, paying special attention to the population group that produced the particular trend as well as its political interests in relation to the kind of history it produced. Since the purpose of our exercise is to study the development of racism, we will restrict our study to the history

9 10

Smith (1988). Smith (1988:220) writes: “An informed African perspective is long overdue”, elsewhere Smith(1988:4) he explains the aversion of Blacks to history: “Having been severed from their indigenous roots, the past is not seen as something they can look back on with satisfaction - it represents only more of the same kind of struggle they experience in the present”.

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beginning with the first wars of colonisation wherein the indigenous people were conquered and disseized of their lands. It is the generally established view amongst academic historians and historiographers that there was no history produced in South Africa before the 1820s. As Banks writes to justify this view: “The travel narratives of the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, so extensively mined by latter-day historians, document specific, subjective and personal encounters with the African landscape and people”.11 While this assumption will be useful in the establishing of a finite scope for our discussion of South African historiography, it cannot be taken for granted. The reason it cannot be taken for granted is that there is a long-standing assumption that Africans did not possess any history at all. Magubane has recently argued that despite the claims of various trends in South African historical writing to be portraying the historical contribution of Africans at various times, what we have in reality in what passes for African history are the collective experiences of the European conquerors in South Africa. In part the discussion that follows hereunder, under the various subsections is an examination of the validity of precisely this claim. It must be understood that we take it for granted that Africans have always had a history before their conquest by Europeans. Hereunder we discuss the broad historiographical schools of South African history, the imperialist school, the settler school and the Afrikaner nationalist school which are more recently discussed together as “Conservative Historiography”.12 Then we discuss the liberal school, the conservative school and some examples of what might be called the African Nationalist or liberatory school. THE BRITISH IMPERIALIST SCHOOL According to Smith, the British school emerged around the mid-19th century. It consisted of the writers prior to George McCall Theal who were apologists for the British takeover of the Cape”.13 One of the characteristics of this school was that their perspective tended towards seeing the British colonies as part of the empire rather than as independent entities. The Cape Colony was no different in this regard. The authors focused on events after the first British Occupation of the Cape. They focused on important British administrators and politicians and the settlers and “their struggle against the Xhosa on the eastern frontier and the fate of the British settlers in Natal”.14 The British school tended to think of imperialism as a positive force that had brought South Africa into world civilisation. Smith writes that, the British “had an anti-Afrikaner bias in the same way as much historical writing in Dutch

11 12 13 14

Banks. Magubane (2007) and Alexander (2002). Smith (1988:19). Ibid.

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and Afrikaans had an anti-English bias, both English and Afrikaans writers shared an antiBlack image of the past”. 15 “They saw the frontier from a white point of view and were uncomplimentary about the Xhosa”. 16 The Imperialist school were also defined by their defence of slave owners against charges which were made by early liberals like The Rev. Dr John Phillip about the mistreatment of the slaves. Some of the writers in the imperialist school were in fact anglicised Afrikaners such as Henry Cloete who typical of the imperialist school was “sceptical about the prospects of the Voortrekkers cut off as they were from the protection of the “civilising” influence and other advantages of British rule”.17 One point which clearly marks the nature of the imperialist interpretation of Cloete is, for example, his writing about the Slagternek (the name given to a failed attempt by Afrikaner rebels at mutiny against the British crown which led to the hanging of five of them and became an important pillar of Afrikaner nationalist historiography). Cloete described the Slagternek as “ the most insane attempt ever made by a set of men to wage war against their sovereign… it originated entirely in the unruly passions of a few clans of persons who could not suffer themselves to be brought under the authority of the law”.18 The historical work of the imperialist school ultimately tended to be unified by its either active justification of the imperial mission in South Africa or its taking it for granted. It was the history of civilisers, of men struggling to bring civilisation to a dark and wild terrain triumphing against various odds from the indigenous “savages” and the unruly Boers. It was “at its height at the time of the Anglo-Boer war and in the aftermath of the war when all the states in South Africa were British colonies and it seemed as if South Africa had been won as a permanent part of the British Empire”.19 THE SETTLER SCHOOL Amongst the settler school and all white history thereafter, Theal’s name warrants some mention. It is a widely held opinion of various historians that “No other historian has stamped his authority on the study of South African history to the same extent as [him]”20. Merle Lipton wrote of his status thus “Theal’s continuing importance and influence are illustrated by the fact that not only are school textbooks (the only history that most people read) largely based on him, but there are still historians today who consult him”.21 It must be noted that Theal was not a trained academic historian or in any academic discipline for that matter (his two Doctorates, an LLD from the Queen’s University, Ontario Canada and a D. Litt from the

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Smith (1988:9). Ibid. ibid,20. Cloete (1899:99) quoted in Smith (1988:21). Smith (1988:29). Ibid,31 Lipton (1962) quoted in Smith(1988:31).

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UCT) were conferred honoris causa. He was, in fact, a Canadian born adventurer who lived in various parts of the world including the USA and Sierra Leone before emigrating to and then settling in South Africa. In South Africa he tried his hand at various jobs including teaching as well as journalism.22 Theal is considered a pioneer in South African history because of his setting up of an archive. He collected volumes of primary documents or historical sources which he systematically documented and published them numerously as Basotoland Records, the Records of the Cape Colony and the Records of South-Eastern Africa.23 He is important in the history of South African history because he was also much loved by Afrikaner nationalist historians. His work was translated into Dutch and used by schools in the Boer republics. Afrikaners regarded Theal’s history as the history of South Africa24. He was even by white standards considered to be thoroughly “pro-white and in particular pro-Boer, anti-missionary and anti-Black”.25 in his standpoint. His reputation stands in conservative circles upon his being understood as “the first English historian to comprehend the striving and struggles of the republican Afrikaners”.26 Theal identified strongly with the “colonial nationalist” attitude according to Smith. He also in his writings explored and justified the idea of White Supremacy in South Africa for the first time in historical writing. He “extended the idea of the Cape alliance between the English and Afrikaner northwards across the Orange and Vaal Rivers, developing the theme of the formation of a new white South African society ruled by whites of both AngloSaxon and Dutch heritage”.27 His historical work typically portrayed Blacks or “the coloured races of South Africa” 28 as “fickle barbarians prone to robbery and unscrupulous in the shedding of blood fit only for the supply of labour”. In Theal’s interpretation of South African history “Blacks did not play a major role in the history of South Africa […]. [It] was the history of whites and their efforts to open up South Africa and bring civilisation and Christianity to a wild untamed country”.29 It can be argued that he established in some sense the most important school of history for whites in South Africa. In some sense all the white histories that follow from his are really variations of settler history. All, for example, without exception take for granted the “right to settle” which arises from the prior and dubious “right to conquest”. Although he is considered the most important figure of settler-nationalist historiography he was followed in this school by other figures like George Cory and Frank Cana who challenged various aspects of his work on largely technical rather than ideological grounds.30 Subsequent debates in approaches

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Smith (1988:31). Ibid. Smith (1998:36). Ibid. ibid,37. ibid,36. Ibid. ibid, 38. ibid, 40.

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that followed the settler school tended to be about a fairer representation of Blacks or whites but all of them took for granted the fact of settlement itself and implicitly the right of conquest which was its foundation. The settler school of historiography unapologetically took the white settlers and their interests as its vantage point in the interpretation of events. The white settler was understood as engaged in a struggle to develop civilisation where there was none. His work, unlike some that followed it, did not even attempt to make justifications for colonial conquest. It was assumed to not only be natural but even ethically necessary. Theal for example writes: “The settlement of the Europeans in the country was disastrous to the aborigines. Bushmen were still numerous along the interior mountain range, but in other parts of the colony there were hardly any left. One may feel pity for the savages such as these, destroyed in their native wilds, though there is little for regretting their disappearance. They were of no benefit to any other section of the human family, they were incapable of improvement and it was impossible for civilised men to live on the same soil with them, it was for the world’s good that they should make room for a higher race”.31 Although the traditions that were to follow the Settler and Afrikaner nationalist schools presented themselves both as ethical and technical improvements of this work, an examination of the underlying epistemological paradigms reveals instead that they share considerable philosophical affinity and ideological resemblance. Theal’s great ideological significance and its foundational status for subsequent history lies in its status as a history of settlement, a history of conquest and ownership of South Africa, thereafter represented as a white man’s country with Black either to be excluded - in conservative approaches - or included in the so-called liberal and radical approaches. AFRIKANER NATIONALIST According to Smith, South Africa’s first writers of history whether they wrote in English, Dutch or Afrikaans were not professional or academically trained historians: “with a few notable exceptions, the academic or professional historian was a strictly post-world war I phenomenon”.32 From the onset it would appear that one of the primary goals of history written by Afrikaners was “to mobilise Afrikaner nationalist sentiment and see this employed in achieving the Afrikaner’s political aims”.33 The Afrikaner interpreted history as a bitter struggle for survival in the face of various adversities which included a physically hostile territory populated by “dangerous savages”.34

31 32 33 34

Smith (1998:36). Smith (1988:57). ibid,58. Ibid.

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The second British Occupation of the Cape in 1806 signalled the beginning of a relationship of antagonism between the British and Afrikaners that to some degree continues till this day35. In the course of their struggle for self-determination both political and cultural, the Afrikaners developed an Anglophobia which was to be a central interpretive base in their historical writing.36 The British were understood as oppressors, enemies and sympathisers with the savage Blacks. In a truly ironic fashion the Afrikaner’s “historically oriented nationalism” was peppered with a “virulent anti-colonial and anti-imperial vision of the past”.37 There are some general features, pillars one might call them, which are shared by the works which fall within this school. We discuss these below. Die Groot Trek (The Great Trek) The Groot Trek is generally a founding event in the history of the Afrikaner nation and took place during the 1830s. It was represented as an odyssey for justice, of God’s chosen people escaping British injustice. The understanding was that after the outlawing of slavery, the British liberal political administration attempted to create a false equality between Blacks and Afrikaners which was, according to the reasoning of the Afrikaners, unjust. They then set out into the interior to find habitable territory where they could build a “just society” which meant the establishment of “proper relations between master and servant”.38 The Voortrekkers secured Natal, according to their history, after making a “covenant” with their God who helped them to defeat King Dingane and his army in 1838. When the British pursued them and conquered Natal in 1843 thereby establishing Natal as a British Colony most Afrikaners moved again. They were for several years left to their own devices in the Orange Free State and Transvaal. The discovery of minerals would change this situation, first with diamonds being discovered in the Free State in 1867. This drew the British to the area and by 1868 they had taken all the Basotho people under their protection, they annexed the diamond fields in 1871 and annexed the Transvaal in 1877 in an attempt to bring the entire territory of South Africa under the British flag.39 The Afrikaners took up arms against the British in 1880. This is conflict is referred to either as the “war of independence” or “the first Anglo-Boer war”. The first Anglo-Boer war together with the Groot Trek became the two poles of Afrikaner historiography.40 The central symbols of these poles became “Dingane’s day” later renamed “the day of the covenant” and then later “the day of the vow” and more recently “the Day of Reconciliation”. This renaming attests to

35 36 37 38 39 40

Ibid. ibid, 59. Ibid. Smith (1988:59). Ibid. Ibid.

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the point that the historian is involved in history to the extent that its construction and interpretation cannot be totally free from the historian’s subjective idiosyncrasies. According to Smith “the growth of the Afrikaner’s awareness of himself as an Afrikaner dates from the period 1868-1881 and did not always manifest itself in historical writing”.41 It was, in fact, much of the time captured in explicitly political pamphlets and speeches. Die Groot Trek had been a source of grievance against the British. It subsided temporarily when the Boers enjoyed a high degree of independence in the 1850s. It, however, returned to the centre of Boer thought “with the assertion of the imperial factor between the years 1868-1881; a strong consciousness of belonging together and sharing a common past was felt by the Afrikaners”.42 The result of this was the extended search into history for the sources of their grievance. Van Jaarsveld acknowledges this thus: “New grievances resulted in the discovery of old ones. Grudges that had been latent at the time of the Great Trek were activated and given their place in a new version of history that comprised little more than a tabulation of national grievances”.43 (Bloedrivier) The Battle of Blood River According to most of the doyens of the Afrikaner nationalist school, the Boer leader Piet Retief and his party consisting of men, women and children was killed at the instruction of the Zulu King, inkosi uDingane. As the story goes it was February 6th, 1838 two days after the conclusion of a negotiated land settlement between the Zulus and Boers. Inkosi uDingane is said to have invited Piet Retief together with his party of soldiers to a beer-drinking farewell. The soldiers were asked to leave their weapons outside and did so and once they were comfortable Dingane apparently without provocation commanded his soldiers to brutally murder them all. The soldiers carried out the order. After this the King is reported to have sent regiments at night to a close by encampment consisting of more than 500 men, women and children. Most of those found in the encampment were killed. This was called the uMgungundlovu massacre. After the massacre, help is said to have arrived from the Cape Colony to defend the remaining settlers. A request was made for the Boer general Andries Pretorius. Before the actual battle of vengeance began, it is reported by the Afrikaner nationalist historians that the Boers made a covenant with God promising that if he delivered them in the battle against the amaZulu they would build a commemorative church for him. They also undertook to forever observe the day as a Sabbath of sorts in which they would remember what God had done for them.

41 42 43

Smith (1988:59). Ibid. Van Jaarsveld (1964:64).

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According to the Afrikaner historians, less than 500 Boers then proceeded to defeat more than 15000 Zulu soldiers and only suffering the loss of three soldiers themselves. These ideas were to make up the central mythological basis of the Afrikaner nationalist political ideology. The defeat of the Zulus was interpreted as indisputable proof that the Afrikaners were, like the Jews in the bible, “the chosen people” of God. Thus, this historical interpretation was elevated to the status of a religious belief. It formed the core of Afrikaner theology in its justification of Apartheid. The belief is clearly and directly stated in the preamble of the 1961 republican constitution of South Africa Act No. 32 of 1961. The Anglo-Boer war At the end of their Groot Trek the Afrikaner settlers set-up two different states, the Boer Republic of the Orange Free State established in 1854 annexed in 1902 by the British and the Republic of Transvaal or Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) established in 1856 and annexed in 1902 by the British. In these republics they believed they had attained their promised land from which they would be free from British rule and enjoy unencumbered sovereignty.44 In 1886 there was the discovery of a substantial goldfield 60km South of Pretoria in the area currently known as the Witwatersrand. The result of this was the development of Gold rush which brought several settlers from the British Colonies of Natal and Cape to the Witwatersrand area. More settlers from other parts of the world swelled the area. Owing to numerous tensions in economic and political interests between the Boers of the Transvaal and the new settlers, a failure to resolve the disputes diplomatically led to the beginning of a war. The first major agitation happened through the Jameson raid in which the mining bosses and investors including Cecil John Rhodes plotted to seize Johannesburg. They were defeated by the Boers and handed back to the British but were very lightly punished and even considered imperial heroes. Jameson was for his trouble later rewarded with the Prime Ministry of the Cape Colony (1904-1908) and became one of the founding leaders of the Union of South Africa. The effect of the Jameson raid was the consolidation of nationalist sentiment and anti-British Imperialism amongst Afrikaners. It had the effect of rallying support behind the Prime Minister of the Transvaal, Paul Krüger and also alienated the Cape Colony Afrikaners from the British. It also brought closer the Afrikaners of the Orange Free State and Transvaal Colonies. In 1897 a military pact was concluded between both republics). Subsequent to some failed negotiations for peace in view of the competition for resources, a long and bloody war broke out between the Boers and the British from 11th October 1889 until the 31st of May 1902. It ended in a victory for the British and the annexation of both Boer republics. This

44

Mnguni (1952:120).

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ultimately led to the establishment of the Union of South Africa in which the Colonies and the Boer republics all fell under the dominion of Britain.45 The defeat by the British and their conquest was a point of bitterness which was to sustain the Afrikaner political will and imagination. It was also to make up a central narrative of the Afrikaner nationalist historiography in which God’s chosen people were tried under the evil hand of the Pharaonic British Empire. They continued to seek their promised land. ENGLISH LIBERAL-PLURALIST SCHOOL According to Alexander, the disaster of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism and of the holocaust “marked a turning point in the history of racism and in the historiography of all racist societies”.46 This is because of the various declarations of the United Nations in which the theory and practice of racism were condemned and exposed as having no basis in human biology47. The other reason, according to Alexander, is that: “the social division of labour necessitated by both technological developments and by the exigencies of war had begun to do away with the iron barriers that had kept most ‘non-white’ people out of the modern industrial sector of the South African economy above the level of unskilled labour”.48 According to Alexander, the salience of race as a factor in the development and implementation of the policy of segregation under the governments of Smuts and Hertzog, who were “responding to the gradual development of a secondary (manufacturing) industry in South Africa and the concomitant demand for semi-skilled and skilled Black labour”49 led to the development of liberal historiography. It led to professionals, specifically liberal historians, reinterpreting South African history in terms of “race relations” and later “a pluralsociety paradigm”.50 It seems agreed amongst historiographers that the most important amongst the liberal historians were Eric Walker, W.M. MacMillan and C.W. de Kiewiet. Alexander’s criticism of both McMillan and de Kiewiet is that despite the extent to which they went to introduce class into their analyses, they perpetuated the view that racism was inimical to capitalist development. They held that the “rational, colour-blind logic of the market would, even if only in the longer term, lead to the disappearance of race as a factor in South Africa”.51 In their uncritical subscription to these assumptions, Alexander suggests, they were followed by a generation of historians as well as other social scientists who “consolidated this liberalpluralist orthodoxy of the period between approximately the 1920s and the 1970s”. Amongst

45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Krüger (1969:10)). Alexander (2002:13). Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Alexander (2002:13).

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those he counts Edgar Brookes, Leonard Thomson, Leo Marquard, Monica Wilson and Rodney Davenport. Alexander’s observation is that such scholarship could be considered “a continuation of the Anglo-Boer war by historiographical means”.52 Many of the political and ethical implications of this work even before the beginning of the infamous Apartheid, was that the Boers were to blame for the racial problems of South Africa. One of the resilient dogmas of their work was the theory of the “frontier tradition” which, Alexander argues was some kind of South African Wild West. In terms of this idea, it was as a result of the Boers leaving the taming and civilising effects of British Liberalism in the Cape Colony and venturing into the frontier that led to their brutality and power politics.53 The other great credit which is given to liberal historiography is its supposed “bringing African people on to the stage of ‘History’. Alexander writes that both the great liberals McMillan and de Kiewiet mentioned African groups and individuals in their writings. However, “in the final analysis, the indigenous African people were even for them an undifferentiated, relatively passive mass who had not yet become historical actors”.54 Alexander argues that it was only with the publication of the first volume of the Oxford History of South Africa (Wilson and Thompson 1969) that it became possible to speak of “African agency becoming manifest in mainstream South African historiography”.55 This text, however, did not deviate from one of the central liberal-pluralist historiographical dogmas, namely “what the authors considered to be the deleterious economic and social effects of segregationist and Apartheid policies”.56 Magubane’s assessment of the Oxford history is much more critical. He questions the multidisciplinary duo of the editors suggesting that the inclusion of an anthropologist (in the person of Wilson) was precisely in keeping with the racist dogma of ahistorical Africans.57 Our charge which will explore in section 3 is that liberal historiography did not mark a departure from the paradigm of the dubious “right of conquest”. Magubane’s bleak assessment of both the liberals and the radicals who we discuss next was that both “[t]he liberal and radical paradigms were attempts by beneficiaries of colonial usurpation to transcend that legacy. Both the liberal and radical paradigms feed on memories of historical betrayal. Their transcendence does not really involve accepting the reality of a new nation in which Africans, by virtue of the demographic reality are the majority”.58

52 53 54 55 56 57 58

Ibid. Magubane (2007:261); Guelke (1985: 419-448). Alexander (2002:17). Ibid. Ibid. Magubane (2007:274). Ibid, 277.

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NEO-MARXIST – RADICAL SCHOOL Smith writes that despite the radical academic historical tradition emerging in the 1970s, it owed much of its impetus to the shortcomings of the Oxford history discussed above. 59 Smith’s idea of its shortcomings, however, differs substantially from those of Magubane’s. Before discussing these shortcomings, it is important to point out that long before the 1970s the Non-European Unity Movement scholars and activists Dora Taylor and Hosea Jaffe had in 1952 produced an early instance of often unacknowledged Marxist historical analysis. Jaffe, writing as Mnguni, produced a text entitled Three Hundred Years. It countered the celebratory mood of the early Apartheid government’s planned celebration for the tercentenary of the conquest of the indigenous people. Taylor, writing as Nosipho Majeke, authored The Role of the Missionary During Conquest. These texts for the first time attempted the interpretation of history from the point of view of the indigenous conquered people. At that stage they were already calling into question dogmas of South African history such as the claim of contemporaneous arrival in South Africa of the Dutch settlers 60 and Bantuspeaking people or the innocence of Piet Retief when King Dingane ordered that he be killed61.Although these authors were not academic historians, these works anticipated and even exceeded some of the critical work that was to be done by the radical historians in the 1970s. The works which do comprise what is conventionally classified as radical historiography were written by what Alexander calls “white draft-dodgers studying mostly in Great Britain” 62 in the 1970s. Alexander writes that the radical historians were “men and women [who] studied in the milieu produced by the 1968 revolts on European campuses and the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, under the influence of extremely stimulating and creative historiographical works of the left-wing socialist, communist and ex-communist generation of post-war scholars”.63 He writes that all these scholars developed their original thesis in critique of the Oxford history. One of the most important features of their critique was their criticism of the liberal assumption that Apartheid was anti-capitalist. They argued that the liberal view that the development of capitalism in South Africa would destroy Apartheid in several ways, for example, through growth and the demand of skilled labour at a rate that the racist policies of Apartheid could not afford was theoretically unsustainable. The radicals instead showed that Apartheid was precisely thriving, resulting capitalism and the two systems were highly compatible with racial capitalism. Another criticism of the radical school was that the liberals’

59 60 61 62 63

Smith (1988:155). Mnguni (1952:10). ibid,95. Alexander (2002:20). Ibid.

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suggestion that racism was the result of the Boers’ in the famous frontier tradition thesis was incorrect. They instead argued that British Imperialism was the origin of racism. Some of the work of radical scholarship 64 ironically demonstrated that it was the founders of the liberal paradigm in South Africa who helped Smuts and Hertzog create the systematic institutionalisation of racial discrimination in South African life. 65 The radicals held that Apartheid would eventually be overthrown by revolution rather than the thesis of natural dissolution from the development of capitalism. Now that we have briefly discussed the various paradigms of white history in South Africa, we in the next section turn towards what might be considered the key aspects of an Africanist historiography before providing an Africanist interpretation of some key aspects of South African history crucial in the development and systemisation of White Supremacy. PROLEGOMENON TO AN AFRICANIST HISTORIOGRAPHY IN SOUTH AFRICA South African colonialism did not differ significantly from its counterparts on the continent with regard to the idea of history. The prevailing orthodoxy at the time in which the enterprise of academic history originated in South Africa is best captured by the words of Oxford Professor of History Hugh Trevor-Roper. He wrote “Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none: there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness…. And darkness is not a subject of history”66. In the same text Roper goes on to write that the types of developments which have taken place in Africa are properly speaking the area of study of the disciplines of sociology and anthropology perhaps but not history which he argues concerns itself primarily with the kind of “purposive movement” presumably alien to the “Dark Continent”. The paradigms of historical interpretation which we discussed in the previous section are quite compatible with Trevor-Roper’s dictum. Many scholars have already shown that African history, even the written sort, is as old as history itself. It is susceptible to and suffused with various historiographical approaches. 67 Our concern here, however, is with South Africa since the conquest of the indigenous people South Africa in the unjust wars of colonisation. The history of Africans became bound and entrapped after their conquest. The conqueror began soon after the conquest to represent even the past in his own image and to systematically silence and delegitimise any images of the past that contended with his own.

64 65 66 67

Saunders (1988), Worden (1994) and O Meara (1996). Alexander (2002:21). Trevor-Roper (1963:871) quoted in Fage (1981:31). Ki-Zerbo(ed) (1981) and Obenga (1981:72-86).

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white supremacy and domination were the leitmotif of the conqueror’s approach to the history of South Africa. It was, for example, throughout various periods during colonisation near impossible to write and teach African history, that is, the history of Africans from the point of view of their own experience. Instead, schools and universities have predominantly been the playground of the colonisers and history itself was one of their playthings. Magubane investigating the relationship between power and academic history writes: “If one looks at the history of higher education in South Africa, there is no question that the forces that endowed its institutions were the major beneficiaries of African helotry. Major buildings in all South African universities tell the story more eloquently than I can. They celebrate the “generosity” of those who endowed some of these institutions, from what Rhodes said were funds derived, as he put it from “starving Kafirs.” No doubt, these endowments were not altruistic but were to buy silence on certain of their activities. In short, can one really understand South African history without understanding the role of those who were the beneficiaries of African exploitation and dehumanisation”.68 In view of the colonial conquerors’ will to assert white supremacy and dominate in the epistemological and practical spheres, an Africanist historiography is the historiography of a conquered people. It is by necessity the historiography of resistance and liberation. It must unbind itself, free its own memory from the bonds of the conqueror and dare to tell its own story according to its own terms. Liberatory historiography, much like the philosophy of liberation, ought to consist in both the history of liberation and the liberation of history itself as an academic discipline. Describing the experience of an earlier generation of African history’s liberators, Fage writes: “In 1947, the Société Africaine de Culture and its journal Présence Africaine began to promote the idea of a decolonised African history. At the same time, a generation of African intellectuals, having mastered the European techniques of historical investigation, started to work out its own approach to the past of Africa and to seek it in the sources of a cultural identity which colonialism had refused to recognise. These intellectuals also took the opportunity to refine and extend the techniques of historical methodology and rid it of several subjective myths and prejudices”.69 In South Africa in particular a similar exercise has yet to take place within the academe in which the indigenous conquered people remain marginalised, both in terms of the

68 69

Magubane (2007:252). Fage (1981:40).

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epistemological paradigms and curricula that reign and in the composition of academic personnel. Similar points about the necessity of the history of liberation and the liberation of history have, however, been made by some of the African philosophers of liberation at different points in our political history. These intellectuals also realised that African history, understood as the history of African people from the point of view of their own experience was a necessary part of the journey towards liberation. Biko also in his time made the point about the liberation of history. He, for example wrote, drawing the insight from another (unnamed) author that “to impose their imperialism with unnerving totality the colonialists were not satisfied merely with holding a people in their grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content, they turned to the past of the oppressed people and distorted, disfigured and destroyed it”.70 He concludes the discussion by insisting that the reinterpretation of African history is a necessary step in the struggle towards liberation.71 Brizuela-Garcia traces the trajectory of the UCT Department of History until the postApartheid South Africa.72 She notes that there were difficulties to recognise the necessity to have African history despite the triumph of African nationalism leading to political independence in several countries to the North of South Africa.73 The climax was reached when the Department of History proposed the acceptance of a new course called “Introduction to Africa”. “Mahmood Mamdani, then chairman of the Centre for African Studies, was called to collaborate in the design of the course. Mamdani found serious problems in the way it portrayed Africa’s experience. Mamdani’s most important criticism was the lack of a ‘historical sociology’. 74 Disagreements about the quality of the proposed course and budgetary constraints ultimately led the UCT to submit the course to external review. The review committee commended the quality of the course but questioned its parochiality, especially the virtually exclusive focus on the Western Cape. This underlined the committee’s concern that “the department does not have a wider research and teaching expertise – notably relating to the African continent”.75 “In a climate of financial stringency these challenges produced great anxiety among historians at UCT. This was mixed with a sense of liberation and excitement at the opportunity to explore common grounds and bring South Africa back into African history”.76 UCT, like most institutions of higher learning in South Africa, cannot make significant inroads in meeting the challenge to “bring South

70 71 72 73 74 75 76

Biko (2004:31). ibid,32. Brizuela-Garcia Brizuela-Garcia Brizuela-Garcia Brizuela-Garcia Ibid.

(2006). (2006:138 and 142). (2006:153). (2006:154).

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Africa back into African history” unless Africanist scholars in general and Africanist historiographers in particular are given an equal “opportunity” to share in the “liberation and excitement” of reinterpreting the history of South Africa in particular and that of Africa in general. In this regard the UCT is yet to demonstrate the will to recognise Africanist agency in the historiography of South Africa. CONCLUSION In the beginning of this chapter we advanced an argument to the effect that the discipline and even the very idea of history is not free of ideology or power relations. In the second section we examined the different approaches to the interpretation of South African history, each of which was attached to a different political ideology and sets of interests. We argued that all the interpretative approaches discussed were reflective of the pursuit of the interests of the conqueror and his posterity and not the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. We then proceeded to discuss the necessity and the possibility conditions of a liberatory Africanist history recognising African agency in the historiography of South Africa and, affirming African agency in the historiography of Africa since the triumph of African nationalism leading to political independence. The Department of History in the UCT was taken as a case in point to illustrate this. We have shown that White Supremacy continues because of its resilience in the course of limited qualitative change under the control of the posterity of the colonial conqueror.

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Curtain, P. (1981). Recent Trends in African Historiography and their Contribution to History in General. In J. Ki-Zerbo (Ed.), General History of Africa: Methodology and Prehistory (pp. 54-71). Berekeley: University of California Press. Davenport, R. (1986). The Cape Liberal Tradition to 1910. In J. Butler, R. Elphick, & D. Welsh (Eds.), Democratic Liberalism in South Africa, Its History and Prospects (pp. 21-34). Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Day, D. (2008). Conquest: How Societies Overwhelm Others. New York: Oxford University Press. DeKiewit, C. W. (1957). A History of South Africa. Oxford University Press. du Toit, A., & Giliomee, H. (1983). Afrikaner political thought: Analysis & documents, 17801850. Cape Town: David Phillip. Fage, J. (1981). The Develoment of African Historiography. In J. Ki-Zerbo (Ed.), General History of Africa: Methodology and African Prehistory (Vol. I, pp. 15-42). Bereley: University of California Press. Feinstein, C. (2005). An Economic History of South Africa. Cambridge university Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139165457 Gerhart, G. (1978). Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology. University of California Press. Gerhart, G. (1978). Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Giliomee, H. (2003). The Afrikaners: Biography of A People. Tafelberg Publishers LTD. J Leatt, T. K. (1986). Contending Ideologies in South Africa. Cape Town: David Phillip. J.H.P. (1979). Brotherhood of Power: An Exposé of the Secret Afrikaner Broederbond. London: Rex Collings Limited. Jaarsveld, F. v. (1964). The Afrikaner's Interpretation of South African History. Cape Town. Jaffe, H. (1990). South African Neo-Liberal Historiography. London: Self Published. Keegan, T. (1996). Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order. Cape Town: David Phillip Publishers. Kiewiet, C. D. (1957). A history of South Africa: Social and Economic. London: Oxford University Press. Ki-Zerbo, J. (Ed.). (1981). General History of Africa: Methodology and African Prehistory. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ki-Zerbo, J., & Hama, B. (1981). The Place of History in African Society. In J. Ki-Zerbo (Ed.), General History of Africa: Methodology and Prehistory (pp. 43-53). Berkeley: University of California Press. Krüger, D. (1969). The Making of a Nation: A History of the Union of South Africa 1910-1964. Johannesburg: MacMillan. Lalu, P. (2008). When was South African history ever postcolonial? Kronos (34), 267-281.

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Lembede, A. (2015). Freedom in Our Lifetime: The Collected Writings of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede. (R. E. kaMsumza, Ed.) Pietermaritzburg: Kwela Books. Lembede, A. M. (1996). Freedom in our Life Time; The Collected Writings of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede. (R. E. L, Ed.) Ohio University Press. Lewsen, P. (1987). Liberals in Politics and Administration, 1936-1948. In J. Butler, R. Elphick, & D. Welsh (Eds.), Democratic Liberalism in South Africa, Its History and Prospects (pp. 98-115). Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Lipton, M. (2007). Liberals, Marxists and Nationalists; Competing Interpretations of South African History. Johannesburg: Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1349-60270-4 Macaulay, E. B. (1958). Civil Liberty in South Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Mager, A. K., Nasson, B., & Ross, R. (Eds.). (2012). Cambridge History of South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Magubane, B. (1970). The political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa. New Press Review. Magubane, B. (2007). Whose memory- whose history? The illusion of the radical and liberal debates. In H. Stolten (Ed.), History Making and Present Day Politics: The Meaning of Collective Memory in South Africa (pp. 251-279). Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstittet. Maloka, E. (2014). Friends Of the Natives: An Inconvenient History of South African Liberalism. Durban: 3MS Publishing. Mkandawire, T. (Ed.). (2005). African Intellectuals. New York: Zed Books. Moodie, T. (1975). The Rise Afrikanerdom: Power Apartheid and the Afrikaner Civil Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mostert, N. (1992). Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa's Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People. London: PIMLICO. Mudimbe, V. (1988.). The Invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Muller, C. (1969). 500 Years: A History of South Africa. Academica. Mumdani, M. (2004). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Kampala: Fountain publishers. Ngubane, J. (1963). An African Explains Apartheid. Greenwood publishers. Njoku, C. (2005). The Missionary Factor in African Christianity, 1884-1914. In O. Kalu (Ed.), African Christianity, An African Story (pp. 218-257). Pretoria: University of Pretoria Press. O'meara, D. (1983). Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism. Johannesburg: Ravan Press. Race, Power and Ideology in South Africa. (1986). In J. Leatt, T. Kneifel, & K. Nürnberger (Eds.), Contending Ideologies in South Africa (pp. 49-136). Cape Town: David Phillip Publishers. Ramose, M. (1999). African Philosophy Through Ubuntu. Harare: Mond Books.

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Ramose, M. (2002). I conquer, therefore I am sovereign: reflections upon sovereignty, constitutionalism and democracy in Zimbabwe and South Africa. In Philosophy from Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Robinson, C. J. (1983). Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. London: Zed Books. Ross, R. (1993). Beyond the Pale: Essays on the History of Colonial South Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Sartre, J.-P. (1988). "What Is Literature?" And Other Essays. (J. MacCombie, Trans.) Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Seloane, M., & Mokoena, B. (2015). Reflections on the Freedom Charter. Pretoria: EARS. Smith, K. (1988). The Changing Past: Trends in South African Historical Writing. Cape Town: Southern Book Publishers. South African Institute of Race Relations. (1949). Handbook on Race Relations in South Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. South African Institute of Race Relations. (1978). Laws Affecting Race Relations In South Africa 1948-1976. (M. Horrell, Ed.) Johannesburg: The Natal Witness (PTY) LTD. Stolten, H. (Ed.). (2007). History Making and Present Day Politics: The Meaning of Collective Memory in South Africa. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstittet. Strydom, I. W. (2012). The Super-Afrikaners: Inside the Afrikaner Broederbond. Jeppestown: Jonathan Ball Publishers. Study Project on Christianity In Apartheid Society. (1973). South Africa's Political Alternatives. Johannesburg: Ravan Press. Suzman, H. (1972). The Progressive Party's Programme for a multi-racial South Africa. In N. Rhoodie (Ed.), South African Dialogue: Contrasts in South African Thinking on Basic Race Issues (pp. 227-244). Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill Book Company. Terreblanche, S. (2002). A History of Inequality in South Africa, 1652-2002. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press. Thompson, L. (1990). A History of South Africa. Yale University Press. Toit, A. D. (2010). The Owl of Minerva and the Ironic Fate of Radical Historiography in PostApartheid South Africa. History and Theory(49), 226-280. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2303.2010.00542.x Troup, F. (1975). South Africa. Hammondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd. Vigne,

R.

(1997).

Liberals Against Apartheid; A History of the Liberal Party of

South Africa,1953-68., New York: MacMillan Press LTD. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230374737 Walsh, W. (1967). An Introduction to Philosophy of History. London: Hutchinson and Co. LTD. Wilmot, A. (1894). the Story of the Expansion of Southern Africa. JC Juta and Co.

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IV. A CRITIQUE OF THE ANALYTIC CONCEPTION OF RACE INTRODUCTION In this chapter we will concern ourselves with a critique of the analytic conception of race. Before our critique unfolds, however, we wish to establish the conceptual affinity (or perhaps even consanguinity) between analytic philosophy and liberalism. Our understanding which arises out of the assessment of the analytic philosophers themselves is that the doctrine which identifies itself as empiricism appears to express itself as liberalism. We wish to show simply that analytic philosophy is the methodological descendant of empiricism. As such our objects of critique will be divided between both the ontological and epistemological (what is race and racism and how do we know them?) formulations of race. These formulations have the practical (ethical and political) side known as racism. Thus, it is race and racism that are the subject of discussion in this chapter. Ours is a philosophical critique of the ethical as well as the political writings produced by proponents of liberalism in South Africa. The reason for our approach is that what at the ontological and epistemological levels is presented through the facility of analytic philosophy is the manifestation of race, that is, what race is and how we know it – is presented through the medium of analytic philosophy in South Africa. The hermeneutic dimension of our critique extends to what we call the analytic conceptions of race and racism whereas the ethical and political critique is directed at more general liberal formulations. Our standpoint is African philosophical hermeneutics. It will make particular use of the critical work on liberalism done by the Africanist and BCM activists, writers and scholars in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Liberalism as a moral and political philosophy was the primary focus of criticism by these activists, writers and scholars. After dealing with some of the preliminary problems which prevail in analytic conceptions of race, we will turn to their criticisms in the next chapter. ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS Some general characteristics of Analytic Philosophy We already discussed quite extensively in chapter one how analytic philosophy was the tradition practised within the English-speaking philosophy departments in South Africa (Chapter 1. 2.1.2.3). We there discussed it without characterising it broadly as we will do here.

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Analytic philosophy can broadly be described as a “philosophical trend” arising in the twentieth century which understands analysis as the proper method for the solution of problems that fall under the scope of philosophy.1 It is an approach undergirded by at least one of two assumptions: “that the problems of philosophy arise from conceptual confusion capable of being dispelled by analysis and that analysis consists in carefully discerning and exhibiting the simple constituents of more complex notions”.2 The objects of philosophical analysis were initially said to be concepts or propositions but by the 1930s there was a socalled “linguistic turn” in terms of which language itself became understood as the fundamental object of analysis. Analytic philosophy is predominantly practised in Anglophone and Nordic countries. According to Mautner “the use of the label ‘analytic philosophy’ seems to have taken on after the publication of Authur Pap’s. The Elements of Analytic Philosophy [which was published in 1959]” 3 though the object of description predates the book by at least three decades. One of the features of early analytic philosophy (in the form of logical atomism and positivism) was its identification with empiricism and its self-conception as a discipline comparable to the physical sciences. Russell in his The History of Western Philosophy, for example, wrote “[modern analysis aims] to combine empiricism with an interest in the deductive parts of human knowledge. The aims of this school are less spectacular than those of most philosophers in the past, but some of its achievements are as solid as those of the men of science”.4 Ayer, for example, prefaced one of the best-selling works in Analytic philosophy Language, Truth and Logic (1936) thus: “[t]he views which are put forward in this treatise derive from the doctrine of Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein which are themselves the logical outcome of the empiricism of Berkeley and Hume”. 5 Stuart Hampshire characterising the new approach (analytic philosophy) also refers to it as “contemporary empiricism” with a touch of mathematics, he writes: “[C]ontemporary empiricism derives from two traditions which converge and meet in the work of Bertrand Russell. The first is the epistemological tradition descending from Berkeley and Hume; the second is inspired by the formal and exact use of symbols in modern logic, mathematics and physical science. This new formal method is a contribution to the traditional empiricism”.6 Russell himself endorsed this view of course writing in the final part of his History of Western Philosophy where he describes the tradition to which he belongs that “Modern analytic empiricism, of which I have been giving an outline, differs from that of Locke, Berkeley and

1 2 3 4 5 6

Mautner (2005:22). Ibid. ibid, p23. quoted in Akerhurst (2010:94). Ibid,62. Ibid,63.

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Hume by its incorporation of mathematics and its development of a powerful logical technique. It is thus able, in regard to certain problems, to achieve definite answers, which have the quality of science rather than of philosophy”.7 Its practitioners also typically ascribe clarity as one of its virtues distinguishing it from its continental counterpart.8 Amongst other things, are its typically ahistorical nature which tends to understand the history of philosophy, for instance, as a completely separate discipline from philosophy whose proper work is analysis. It is important to pay special and elaborate attention to this characteristic of analytic philosophy because it is precisely one of the charges of this study that its particular approach to the study of race is philosophically vulnerable because it is ahistorical. Analytic Philosophy and History Thomas Akerhurst in the introductory parts of his study on the history of analytic philosophy accuses it of being highly resistant to the study of history and of proceeding along rather ignorantly of its own history. His suggestion at a reason for this is that “There is also an entirely legitimate fear that philosophy will be ‘reduced’ to culture – so that questions that appeared to be philosophical can be explained away as products of a particular time or circumstance. This kind of history apparently manifests a real threat to philosophy as a discipline – explaining away philosophical claims, rather than respecting them enough to examine their argumentative merits”.9 This kind of fear is peculiar to analytic philosophy’s own self-identification and its understanding of the scope of philosophy. If philosophy is understood as precisely that which ponders the non-philosophical rather than simply texts10 then the study of philosophy’s own history and conditions of possibility becomes a hermeneutic necessity, a requirement for the deepening of both philosophy’s own selfunderstanding as well as its ability to interpret and understand experience “reality”.11 John McCumber12 criticises this deliberate ignorance of history and the non-philosophical as self-contradictory. He argues that “Even those who are wholly resolute in their ahistorical view of their discipline– those many who, in the words of Peter Hylton, see analytical philosophy as taking place within a “single timeless moment– can’t escape this [the impact of culture]. For in the eyes of such people, political and cultural circumstances are failings and defects that at the very least need to be weeded out. You can’t weed them if you don’t see them and you can’t see them if you won’t look for them”. This is to be counter-posed to our approach of African philosophical hermeneutics,13 in which all philosophy is understood as

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Ibid. Overgaard S et al (2013:128). Akerhurst (2010:8). as with philosophy of liberation see Serequeberhan (1994) Dussel (2002) and (Ramose:2014)). Dussel, 2002:3). quoted in Akerhurst (2010:7). see chapter 2.

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exactly arising out of culture and expressing a particular culture. Another point which is made in Akerhurst’s study is the way in which this increasing self-narrowing development of analytic philosophy, also translated into a pedagogical convention which led to considerable lessened scope of knowledge offered in philosophy departments since the rise of analytic philosophy in the early twentieth century in England (this extends to South African departments as well). This ignorance is not limited to the strictly “non-philosophical” or even “non-Western philosophy” but even to the history and scope of the Western tradition itself. For example, according to the biographer of Isiah Berlin, he (Berlin) “did not encounter German philosophy studying either Greats or PPE in the 1930s. The history of philosophy paper had been removed from PPE after World War I, making philosophical breadth on the course all the more unlikely”.14 Akerhurst suggests that the result of these conventions was that most analytic philosophers were not well grounded in the history of their subject by the time they graduated, he writes 15 that according to Strawson “for some, this historical ignorance became something of a badge of honour.” According to Jonathan Rée in his English Philosophy in the Fifties, “the concept of British Empiricism was called on to do a task which was of considerable importance to the Oxford philosophers. It enabled them to define themselves in contrast with a hated rival, which came to be known, in the course of the decade, by the title of ‘continental philosophy’. Continental philosophy, to the Oxfordians, was [characterised by] excessive interest in the history of philosophy […]”.16 Akerhurst goes on to make the point that the analysts’ aversion to history and the “non-philosophical” prevented them from, for example, examining the relationship between themselves and their philosophy and British Imperialism. He writes that while authors like Harry Bracken raised these questions in the 1970s, they were overwhelmingly ignored. Furthermore, he expresses his suspicion that it is because treating such a line of enquiry seriously might call into question the presumed links between “Britishness, logic and liberty that remain fundamental to British analytic philosophy”.17 Akerhurst concludes that the aversion to history of analytic philosophy threatens its own ‘philosophicality’ and turns it into an uncritical ideology or sophistry when he writes “dislike of history as a contextual subject, which characterised the analytic philosophers in the twentieth century, has for a long time rendered the discipline blind to its own biases […] a continuing refusal to engage seriously in the practice of history, will see analytic philosophy in Britain continue unconsciously to be moulded by the very political and cultural assumptions it seeks to ignore”.18

14 15 16 17 18

Akerhurst (2010:60). Ibid,61. quoted in Akerhurst (2010:88-89). Akerhurst (2010:168). Ibid,169

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Warnock considering analytic philosophers in Britain writes that: “[it]was common ground that the two kinds of meaning, evaluative and factual were totally distinct. The consequence of this dichotomy was that while disputes about matters of fact could be settled, at least in principle, by observation, disputes about matters of morality could not. Therefore there was ultimately no arguing about morals or politics. […] Not unnaturally moral philosophy came to seem both rather empty and rather easy”.19 In fact, this characteristic of analytic philosophy led to some commentators suggesting that it killed political philosophy altogether. Akerhurst, quotes Peter Laslett, who in his Philosophy, Politics and Society famously declared that the analysts had killed political philosophy: “[t]he Logical Positivists did it. It was Russell and Wittgenstein, Ayer and Ryle who convinced the philosophers that they must withdraw into themselves for a time and reexamine their logical and linguistic apparatus”.20 In the case of South Africa, we already discussed in Chapter 1, how, according to More and Aronson, the practitioners of analytic philosophy avoided dealing with history. In particular, they avoided dealing with the history of the injustice of colonialism, racism and Apartheid. Their ethically indefensible subterfuge was that: “[philosophy] is a second-order activity concerned mainly with the logical analysis of concepts, the task of the philosopher is therefore the clarification of the logic of concepts and their meaning”. Social and political issues are not accordingly the task of the philosopher qua philosopher but qua active citizen”.21 It should be mentioned, parenthetically that even the traditionally Afrikaans universities in South Africa avoided this particular history of injustice except only to justify the injustice itself. It follows then that the history of philosophy in South Africa is yet to raise and deal with fundamental ethical questions arising from the injustice of colonialism, racism and Apartheid. This is an urgent ethical demand justified by the transition to the “new” South Africa since 27 April 1994. There is a historical and a philosophical relationship between analytic philosophy and liberalism. In the light of this, liberalism has played a significant role in the transition to the “new” South Africa.

19 20 21

Warnock quoted in Ankerhurst (2010:128). Akerhurst (2010:129). More (2004:154).

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It is therefore necessary to conduct a critical examination of the relationship between analytic philosophy and liberalism with particular reference to South Africa. This is the subject matter of the next section. ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND LIBERALISM I think there is some connection, both historically and psychologically, between Empiricism and Liberalism: I mean Liberalism in that large and non-party sense in which we say that the English-speaking countries have a liberal tradition - Hume's Theory of the External World (H. H. Price 1940). Despite analytic philosophy’s famous apolitical reputation, an examination of the lives of the philosophers themselves and the history of their opinions suggests that analytic philosophy enjoys a close relationship with liberalism. This is hardly surprising when one considers firstly, the relations between analytic philosophy and empiricism and, secondly, that the great British empiricists such as Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Mill could broadly be characterised as liberals. In the present section we briefly consider some of the thoughts of the early analytic philosophers in relation to liberalism. I will largely rely for my argument, on Thomas Akerhurst’s study, The Cultural Politics of Analytic Philosophy: Britishness and the Spectre of Europe. In a section of the book titled The Liberality of Analytic Philosophers,22 Akerhurst suggests two ways in which the analysts advanced their liberality. The first way was through contrasting their own philosophy to continental philosophy. One of the points of contrast that served as the basis for the aversion to continental philosophy was the view continental philosophy of was in a large part responsible for the disasters of the Second World War (especially the rise of fascism and the holocaust in Germany). Here “metaphysics” and “theory” (counter-posed to the empiricalsceptical approach of the analysts) were identified as the main culprit-features of continental philosophy. It was largely held by the analysts that in contrast, their anti-metaphysics and anti-theory philosophical perspective would give rise to anti-fascism. The second type of argument is based on a more explicit and positive connection between empiricism and liberalism.23 We explore these two arguments below. Metaphysics and Theory The analysts were, according to Akerhurst, around the mid-1940s rather certain that they had diagnosed the philosophical causes of totalitarianism. He suggests that “one of the ways they could assert their liberalism was to abjure the philosophical methods that lay behind 22 23

Akerhurst (2010:130). Akerhurst (2010:130-131).

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totalitarianism”. 24 It appears from an examination of the writings of the analysts that differences of method were more often represented or understood as differences of politics. Ayer, for instance, after discussing the tendency of German thinking at the time towards “theory” and “metaphysics” writes that “logical positivism was against the German tradition both intellectually and politically”.25 Ayer also seemed convinced that the German fascists were somehow threatened analytic philosophy. The basis for this conviction was the fate of members of the Vienna Circle during the German occupation of Austria. He writes that “[the] German occupation of Austria dispersed the Circle… the radical spirit of the group and its rational outlook made it unacceptable to the Nazis”.26 Akerhurst has argued that the political distrust of metaphysics was part of a wider political distrust of theory. He suggests that the analysts saw “theory” as dangerous and having a propensity for leading to authoritarianism. Although Akerhurst does not discuss what is meant either by himself or the analysts by “theory”. It appears that ‘’theory’’ consists of those accounts of reality, experience or ideals which exceed the strictly empirical and small-scale conceptual-analytical approach of the analysts. “Theory” added much more than could be accepted as empirical knowledge. It claimed that the addition had the status of knowledge. The analysts denied and rejected this claim. Furthermore, “theory’’ was understood as what is reflected in the much more historicised and anthropologically grounded approaches of the phenomenologists, existentialists and hermeneuticians. These latter, in Germany and France were the contemporaries of the analysts. Heidegger, because of his Nazism, was at the time an easy straw-man for the drawing of overgeneralised causal necessity between so-called theory and totalitarianism. It is yet the case that those camped methodologically with Heidegger as ‘’theorists’’ such as Jean-Paul Sartre used the same theory in the critique of colonialism and totalitarianism. Another contemporary “theorist” of Heidegger’s, Karl Jaspers was to employ theory in one of the most thorough ethical critiques of Nazism itself. Others too such as the famous student of Heidegger, Hannah Arendt and French existentialists Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Simone de Beauvoir variously used the approaches condemned under the banner of ‘’theory’’ for the pursuit of social and political justice. These examples challenge and neutralise the evidently exaggerated claim of the analysts. The problem, it seems, is not theory as such but ideology. It is also the analysts’ uncritical promotion of their own ahistorical approach as non-ideological and non-theoretical. Ayer, for example, characterises the British approach to politics as “political empiricism” as though empiricism itself were not a metaphysical theory embedded in history and social and political

24 25 26

Ibid,131. Quoted in Akerhurst (2010:131). Ibid.

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partisanship. He writes “For a long time it seems to me, theoretical principles have played a very small part in English politics… There is often a coating of theory but the arguments in which it is deployed are mostly ad hoc: they have not stemmed from different theoretical systems”.27 He goes on to write: “the result of this prevalent empiricism- and here I am using the word ‘empiricism’ not in the philosophical but political sense, in which an empirical is contrasted with a theoretical approach- is that political science is reduced to a combination of economics and psephology”.28 It was another British philosopher Iris Murdoch who argued that the so-called “antitheoretical” approach of the analysts really turned out to be deeply political and had a moral dimension to it. It was thus the ideological dimension of British nationalist moral identification and differentiation from the Germans.29 This differentiation is not as deep as it seems, philosophically, because the dogmatism of the ideology of Britishness is, conceptually, indistinguishable from that of Nazism, for example. This erasure of difference is best illustrated by reference to the analysts’ view that there is a necessary connection (causal relationship) between empiricism and liberalism. Ayer advances this view in these terms: “it has certainly been true that in the last century or so there has been a close association between empiricism and radicalism that it couldn’t entirely be an accident. But I think it’s a matter of a certain habit of mind, a certain critical temper in the examination of the political and social as well as philosophical questions. That is responsible rather than some deductions from first principles”.30 Expanding on this idea he writes “if you do philosophy the sort of way that […] I do it, it would on the whole tend […] to have the effect of making you a liberal radical in social and political questions. This would be more than a historical accident”.31 Empiricism and Liberalism A study of the writings of the analysts suggests that they widely subscribed to the idea of a causal relationship between empiricism and liberalism. In the epigraph opening this section

27 28 29 30 31

quoted in Akerhurst (2010:134). Ibid. Ibid. quoted in Akerhurst (2010:138). Ibid.

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quoted from Price in 1940, he asserts this connection between empiricism, liberalism and Britishness/Englishness thus: “I think there is a connection between Empiricism and Liberalism: I mean Liberalism in that large and non-party sense in which we say that the English-speaking countries have a liberal tradition”32. He affirms the causal relationship later in the same text when he writes that: “If Empiricist philosophy is strong today, perhaps we may hope to see a revival of Liberalism the day after to-morrow”.33 Price is hardly the only example. Russell’s Philosophy and Politics (1950) is another. He writes: “the scientific outlook, accordingly is, the intellectual counterpart of what is in the practical sphere, the outlook of Liberalism”.34 Writing of John Locke whom he considered to be the ideal example of this relationship between empiricism and liberalism, he states that: “Both in intellectual and practical matters he stood for order without authority; this might be taken as the motto of science and of Liberalism. It depends clearly on consent or assent. In the intellectual world it involves standards of evidence which, after adequate discussion, will lead to a measure of agreement among experts. In the practical world it involves submission to the majority after all parties have an opportunity to state their case”.35 One is really brought to wonder where Locke’s respect of democracy was when he was drafting the slaveconstitution of the state of Virginia?36 Indeed, Locke’s involvement British politics insofar as this was concerned with the relationship between British colonies and Britain – leave no doubt that here was an ideologically motivated British nationalist. In this regard he did not differ from the continental philosophers who were purportedly driven by “theory” and “metaphysics” in their tendency towards and support for totalitarianism. In view of this, Russell’s appraisal of Locke must be construed as referring exclusively to the British. Akerhurst, in his discussion of Isiah Berlin and other empiricists, suggests that they believed that empiricism’s special access to reality would prevent one from going wayward in social and political matters. Berlin, for example, refers to empiricism as “the only sure guarantee against ideological intoxication”. 37 Similarly, Russell writes of analysis as leading to “lessening fanaticism and increasing the capacity of sympathy and mutual understanding”.38 In an even more mischievous attempt to promote the links between empiricism and liberalism, Russell writes: “in every important war since 1700 the more democratic side has been victorious.

32 33 34 35 36 37 38

ibid,137. Ibid. ibid,138. ibid Mills (2008:1382). quoted in Akerhurst (2010:139). quoted in Akerhurst (2010:141).

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This partly because democracy and empiricism (which are intimately connected) do not demand a distortion of facts in the interests of theory”.39 It is a wonder what, according to Russell, constitutes an “important war”? Considering that analytical philosophy may legitimately be described as a mask for an ideology and British nationalism, it is pertinent to pose the question whether or not Russell realises the extent to which empiricism is dependent on an acute distortion of facts. As we have already argued in connection with Locke, this “ideological intoxication” against which empiricism was to guarantee resistance did not extend to British Imperialism. It was unable to prevent uncritical philosophical blindness and immoral silence about the ethically unjustified colonial conquests and the racism that went together with them. British Imperialism exceeded, in genocidal proportion, the morally despicable work of the Nazi’s. Yet, the empiricists, inebriated with liberalism, sought to differentiate British Imperialism from Nazism. Such differentiation is philosophically empty and historically blind. In the next section we turn to the analytic conception of racism as manifested in cases in philosophy in South Africa. A CRITIQUE OF ANALYTIC CONCEPTIONS – THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA We already mentioned that South African academic philosophy has been thoroughly ignorant until very recently of the problem of race and racism. This is despite the centrality of race, racism and racist philosophy in the very construction of the idea of South Africa and in the unfoldment of the history of the people within its territories over the past four centuries. There have, however, been a few exceptions. Our interest here is with writings that fall under the auspices of the analytic tradition conventionally associated with English (British) philosophy and liberalism. As we discussed in the previous chapter, the Afrikaner tradition in politics and philosophy has been historically much more forthright about race and is classifiable as racist or white supremacist. The English-speaking tradition has, however, since its arrival in South Africa, been much more controversial when it comes to race.40 The analytic approach that has dealt with race in South African academic philosophy is typically distinguished by two characteristics. The first is its a-historicity. The second is a kind of conceptual atomism which is obsessed with the analysis of concepts and the construction of abstract definitions void of the historical experience which has given rise to them. In what follows hereunder we will treat two cases of analytic philosophers in South Africa who have treated the subject of race. One within the category of a popular writing and, 39 40

Ibid. Maloka (2014).

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another in the South African Journal of Philosophy. Both essays have their basis in categories and in the approach adopted by Anthony Appiah in a popular essay of his called Racisms. Eusebius McKaiser’s “Heard the One About Blacks Who Can’t Be Racist?” In an essay entitled “Heard the one about Blacks who can’t be racist?” in his best-selling collection of social and political writings A Bantu In My Bathroom, Rhodes University trained analytic philosopher Eusebius McKaiser attempts to refute an argument arising from Critical Race Theory, which can be expressed as Blacks Can’t Be Racist (BCBR). Before offering a fair restatement and defence of the argument we will first present a recapitulation of McKaiser’s appraisal of the argument and his criticisms of it. In the section which follows we will subject both his appraisal of the argument and his criticisms to our own critique. McKaiser’s Appraisal and Criticism of the Argument McKaiser, after an ad hominem caricature of supposedly typical proponents of the BCBR argument, sets out to capture its general content and structure. He writes that according to the argument: Premise 1: “[One] can only be racist if they have enough social, economic and political power to successfully mistreat other groups”41 Premise 2: “[B]lacks have for centuries been disempowered. They have not really improved their lot in life despite democracy’s dawn”42 Conclusion: “Therefore [B]lacks can’t be racist”

43

McKaiser concludes his recapitulation of the argument by stating that the proponents of this argument often anticipate responses to the effect that Blacks are now free and enjoy political power. Their retort he says is that: “[D]espite democracy’s birth and Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. Being able to vote in regular elections does not mean you have political power. And even if you do have political power, you might not have sufficient economic and political power to be racist”.44 McKaiser correctly interprets that the argument which he has poorly represented has its basis in the insistence that “racism must be understood- defined even- in relation to its history”.45

41 42 43 44 45

McKaiser (2013:63). Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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It is at this point that he indicates that the argument is riddled with problems which he then sets out to address. I will label the problems as “criticisms” and summarise them in numerical sequence below. Criticism 1 “The argument fails by its own standard” According to McKaiser, the BCBR argument is not one that Blacks can never be racist or are psychologically incapable of being so. Rather the argument is that Blacks lack the social, political or economic power to be so. He concludes that this means that the argument is that “Blacks can’t be racist yet”. That is to say the argument is temporally conditional. He writes that it is a misleading argument since there are, according to him, Blacks who enjoy a considerable amount of social, economic and political power. Using the example of the child of multimillionaire businessman and politician, Tokyo Sexwale, as a hypothetical racist, McKaiser concludes that no one could fairly suggest that such a person lacked the power required by his version of the BCBR argument. McKaiser, proceeding along the lines of the same logic, suggests that there are a considerable amount of middle class Blacks in South Africa who fall into a socio-political and economic category that exceeds the ideal Black of the BCBR argument. As such then the argument in order to be true must rather be rephrased as “Some Blacks Can’t Be Racist” (hereinafter SBCBR). He adds that there are also in the new South Africa a considerable number of whites who lack social, political and economic power. That being so, if the proponents of the argument apply it consistently, they must also concede that the real version of their argument SBCBR must also apply to some whites. He concludes by expressing the suspicion that he does not believe the proponents of this argument would make this concession. This is because “they are not interested in being consistent and principled in their moral reasoning”.46 Criticism 2 “The argument is an insult to Blacks rather than a complement” McKaiser47 writes that “apart from robbing white people of their entitlement to be victims of anti-white racism”, the implication of this argument is insulting to Black people. It is in his explanation of this claim that his conception of racism as a socially atomic, interpersonal and psychological phenomenon emerges. He writes “It is dehumanising [the BCBR argument] […] Being able to do wrong is part of what it means to be human. If someone can’t do wrong, they are less human than the rest of us”.48

46 47 48

McKaiser (2013:66). ibid,67. McKaiser (2013:67).

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His argument concludes that the moral achievement of non-racism lies in choosing not to do harm to others when one had the opportunity to do so. Since the component “can’t” of the BCBR argument effectively reduces Blacks to capacity lacking automatons, it reduces their human agency. Not only does it reduce the moral value of Black non-racism but it also effectively reduces the human capacity of Blacks. Criticism 3 “The definition of racism was wrong all along” McKaiser’s central argument here is that a definition of racism that is historically conceived is somehow defective. He writes that: “[It] does not seem to me that we should say therefore that the historical trajectory of racism is the core of the definition of racism. The history of racism and the definition of racism is not the same thing. And I think people who want to define racism only in historic terms are not thinking clearly”.49 In order to justify this opinion McKaiser turns to the strategy of argument by parity using what he conceives as the parallel case of sexism. After concluding that men can be the victims of sexism and women its perpetrators against men, he transposes this conclusion to the case of race. It is apparent that for McKaiser, “sexism” must, by its very definition, bear the same meaning for women and men regardless of their respective historical perspectives. The erasure of history renders McKaiser’s claim here seductively attractive but it is certainly illogical and empirically implausible. His conclusion which appears to stem from his uncritical assumption of the methodological approach favoured by his analytic training is that “We must divorce a clear and philosophically attractive account of racism from an account of the history of racism”.50 This approach leads him to the production of an explicitly ahistorical 51 definition of racism as “prejudicial behaviour against another person on the basis of colour”.52 It is worthwhile to note the liberal basis of this argument, particularly its assumption of an individualist social ontology. Our Appraisal of the BCBR Argument and Critique of McKaiser’s Account Perhaps staying true to his tradition’s aversion to history, McKaiser does not identify the origin of his argument except by stating that he heard it from a slow-speaking, older dread-

49 50 51 52

McKaiser (2013:68). Ibid,69. McKaiser (2013:68-69) writes “So I would prefer a simple and, yes, ahistorical, definition of racism as….”. Ibid,69.

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locked student during his time at Rhodes University and then later amongst like-minded proponents in Johannesburg.53 In discursive terms the argument is associated broadly with Critical Race Theory, but it originates historically from the struggle of Blacks against racism. In South Africa the argument has been explicated famously by none other than Steve Biko himself, who More54 suggests was “echoing Fanon and Stokley Carmichael (Kwame Toure)” when he defined racism as “discrimination by a group against another for the purpose of subjugation or maintaining subjugation”.

55

Of course, Biko wrote famously during

“Apartheid” and writers such as McKaiser, using a very narrow notion of power, argue that Blacks now enjoy social, economic and political power which suggests that at least since 1994, Blacks now have the power to subjugate whites. Such a line of argument can only succeed through a failure to understand racism as at least a historico-political phenomenon. Racism firstly has basis in an express ontological doubt concerning the humanity of Blacks. This doubt of course has both in the distant and recent past been justified with the use of powerful institutions such as the academe (consider the “Great” racist philosophers of the Western tradition for instance), or universities including Oxford and Stellenbosch that endorsed scientific racism at some point during their history. This doubt has secondly served a justificatory purpose in the conquest and subjugation of the “non-white” people of the world. This subjugation has continued undisturbed over a period of as long as five centuries in some countries. The result of this is that whites have not just materially but also, culturally and symbolically elevated themselves into the position of superiors. Concretely, this white superiority in South Africa is manifest in excessively disproportionate economic power in the hands of whites and their use of this power to influence politics for retaining such power. It would be naive to ignore the international dimension in this context. A discussion of the international dimension in this particular respect is, however, outside the scope of this study. Whiteness is deemed, by the conqueror as well as the conquered who have accepted this myth, to be the standard not simply for (ways of) life and the expression of the actuality of humanness but also the standard for values, beauty, morality, achievement, order and spirituality. This we refer to as historical power. It is power that one has over history itself. It comes through the manipulation of the history of experience so that it becomes a validation of oneself or one’s own group. It is power over the enterprise and discipline of history-writing itself. In short, it is epistemic power in the service of upholding the prevailing social injustice with deep roots in the history of South Africa since colonisation. When one considers the value and actuality of the historical power enjoyed by whites it should become clear that the

53 54 55

McKaiser (2013:63). More (2008:50). Ibid.

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attainment of political rights by Blacks and the acquisition of relatively weak economic power does not answer to the ethical exigency of qualitative change necessary and sufficient to establish and uphold epistemic and social justice in South Africa. To illustrate the meaning and effect of what we have called historical power, we will use here two familiar examples of statements which are conventional manifestations of interpersonal racism when uttered by whites against Blacks. These statements are chosen arbitrarily from a countless possible set. Following McKaiser, we use Tokyo Sexwale’s child, a hypothetically wealthy, socially and politically well-connected subject to illustrate the untenability of the charge of Black racism even in McKaiser’s ideal case. Statement 1: “whites are ugly” From a historical point of view, it can be shown that although the evil effects of White Supremacy extend to the very phenomenon of life itself, leading to the unnecessary and preventable death of its victims, Racism’s primary procedures militate against the bodies of the indigenous conquered people who then become “non-white” or Black (the philosophical significance of this will be discussed in the following Chapter (5)) bodies. White supremacy targets not only their skins (where its metaphors of colour originate) but has historically and even to date included their whole bodies. Everything from their noses, hair, eyes, skin and anatomy has been scrutinised by racist reason in pursuit of negative political aims. In accordance with this reasoning against the body, it has often been said that the physiological and physiognomic features of the conquered people were much more comparable to those of animals rather than human beings. To date many popular racist jokes, rest on the comparison between Blacks and animals. The irony about this comparison is that it fails to appreciate its benefits in medical experiments whose successes the conqueror appropriates and enjoys much more than the conquered. The existence of the cosmetics and fashion industries is a testament to the continuity of White Supremacy. Millions of African, Asian and Latin American people invest in skin lightening and bleaching products, hair straighteners, hair extensions and cosmetic surgeries variously known as “nose jobs”, “eye jobs” in attempts to pursue the standard of beauty set by their conquerors over the centuries. The worlds of marketing and advertising and entertainment also continue overwhelmingly to promote the Eurocentric standard of beauty. It is against the context of the foregoing historical account and the structural realities in the industries of cosmetics and fashion and the professions that the assertion by a white person that “Blacks are Ugly” derives its racist character. Such a statement is a reflection and affirmation of unjust power relations established over centuries of violence.

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Such a claim rests upon the very structure of the modern world: it has basis in several centuries of history reinforced by thousands of books in libraries throughout the world and is virtually a reflection of “world culture”. Such an assertion has its basis in the already wellestablished systemic doubt that the world continues to exercise against the humanity and value of life of the indigenous conquered people. It is a political statement, an expression of power which the white subject can make as a white subject regardless of economic or social position. The connectedness of a particular white subject with this claim and the history which sustains it is historico-political. It is a reflection of both the historical and continual subjugation of Black people. If Tokyo Sexwale’s Black daughter advanced such a claim as “whites are ugly”, regardless of her social, economic and political connections. She would still belong historically to the group about whom ugliness was a historico-political “fact”. She would not be able to vote or buy history’s revision with any of her resources. As such her historical powerlessness would reduce her utterance to a mere opinion with no corresponding historical record to substantiate it. In fact, what she would find is that the well-established dogmas of history, the media and fashion industry would consider her claim to be false. The claim may well be subjected to moral examination at the level of interpersonal etiquette. It cannot, however, acquire much above the status of common rudeness. Thus “Blacks can’t be racist” is not an ontological analytic axiom exclusively amenable to analytic philosophical examination as McKaiser wrongly supposes. On the contrary, it is an ethical claim based on the history of epistemic and social injustice meted out by whites against Blacks in South Africa. This condition has not changed even in the South Africa of 2016. It can’t be ameliorated or brought to an end by ahistorical analytic philosophical examination with ambivalent commitment to ethics. Statement 2: “Whites are Stupid” The history of the negation and doubt against the intelligence of Blacks are comparable to that concerning beauty. It has been the subject of “science”, especially “scientific racism”.56 It produced several learnt papers,57 school syllabi and the destruction of human life. In a similar way as with Statement 1, Tokyo’s daughter could not hope to revise history with her father’s millions and political connections. Instead she would find that her opinion was contradicted by most media, entertainment, scientific publishing, public opinion and just about every other conceivable medium. Her statement could not enjoy the status of racist utterances until Black people had conquered Europe and subjugated its people and disfigured history itself to support that subjugation. This mode of interpretation can be extended to an endless class of conventionally racist statements with the same effect. As such McKaiser’s criticism is tenable only on the basis of an idealised liberal social ontology of 56 57

Gould (1981:39-42). Popkin (1974:128-129) and Bracken (1978-79:243-244).

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ahistorical individual subjects. In the actually existing world however, we would have to concur with the dread-locked fellow caricatured by McKaiser that in fact “Blacks Can’t Be Racist.” The “can’t” in this proposition is not an ontological but an ethical claim. Tom Martin’s Own-Race-Absent Racism In an unusual event in South African academic philosophy, another Rhodes University analytic philosopher, Tom Martin’s article, Own-Race-Absent Racism was published in 2009. The article very ideally demonstrates the patent vices of the analytic approach in the attempt to deal with race. We will begin with a summary review of Martin’s argument before setting out our critique of it. Martin’s Argument Martin sets himself the task of drawing a distinction between what, according to him, are “two fundamental kinds of racism”. 58 One he describes as “own race present racism” (supposed by him to be the more common kind of racism) and another as “own-race-absent racism”. 59 According to Martin, the difference between the two is that in the case of the former, the racist’s own race “figures as a term in his racist thinking” whereas in the case of the latter it does not. He promises that this distinction is truly useful and describes something experientially real. Furthermore, he claims that his exposition will provide both theoretical and practical benefits. He begins his task with a summary of the argument of Appiah’s60 paper Racisms, focusing particularly on Appiah’s distinctions between racialism, intrinsic and extrinsic racism. According to Appiah a.

Racialism is: “the view that “there are heritable characteristics, possessed by members of our species, that allow us to divide them into a small set of races, in such a way that all members of these races share certain traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with members of any other race. These traits and tendencies characteristic of a race constitute, on the racialist view, a sort of racial essence; and it is part of the content of racialism that the essential heritable characteristics account for more than the visible morphological characteristics -skin colour, hair type, facial features – based on which we make our informal classifications” 61. Racialism for Appiah is technically or scientifically incorrect. Nevertheless, he argues, it is not inherently racist or ethically reprehensible. This is because according to him, the belief in the existence of races as

58 59 60 61

Martin (2009:25). Ibid. Appiah(1990). Appiah (1990) quoted in Martin(2009:26).

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such, does not mean the attachment of differential human (e.g. ethical or aesthetic) value upon them. The attachment of value is, in fact, what constitutes racists proper. These can be divided into two categories, namely, “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. b.

Extrinsic Racist: is the expression Appiah uses to describe those who “make moral distinctions between members of different races because they believe that the racial essence entails certain morally relevant qualities. The basis for the extrinsic racists’ discrimination between people is their belief that members of different races differ in respects that warrant the differential treatment, respects - such as honesty or courage or intelligence - that are controversially held (at least in most contemporary cultures) to be acceptable as a basis for treating people differently.” 62

c.

Intrinsic Racists according to Appiah “differentiate morally between members of different races because they believe that each race has a different moral status, quite independent of the moral characteristics entailed by its racial essence. Just as, for example, several people assume that the fact that they are biologically related to another person … gives them a moral interest in that person, so an intrinsic racist hold that the bare fact of being of the same race is a reason for preferring one person to another”.63

Martin then approvingly recites Appiah’s stating that, while the doctrine of extrinsic and intrinsic racism is false, the strategies to be employed in the refutation of either are different. According to Appiah, extrinsic racism should be open to empirical counterclaims and evidence since it involves claims about the nature of the world. Intrinsic racism on the other hand, as a “group loyalty”, is not open to counter-evidence according to Appiah. It is instead “a moral doctrine about the legitimate distribution of rights and respect, rather than a claim about the world. Thus […] It can only be through moral argument that one could hope to dissuade an intrinsic racist”.64 Martin agrees with Appiah’s analysis entirely but proceeds to exceed Appiah’s categories, in a subsection of his analysis entitled Racialism, Racism and Another Distinction65 After briefly discussing his approval of Appiah’s claim that all racism is predicated on some racialism he, following Blum (2002), argues that it is surely not the case that all actions or beliefs which have their basis in some belief of the existence of races can be classified as racism. He writes that the question he wishes to address “concerns the scope of the racialism that can be at

62 63 64 65

Appiah (1990) quoted in Martin, 2009:26). Ibid. Ibid,27 ibid,27-29.

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play in racism. In particular, I ask, must racialism be a doctrine which holds that all people are raced?”66 Proceeding to make his particular contribution, Martin writes that “Racism, however else one may define it, turns on the perceived race of the other and so requires some belief about the other’s race status (that is, some kind of racialism) that allows the necessary targeting for race-based differential treatment. But what of the race of the racist? How must his race, as perceived by himself, figure in his racist doctrine?”67 Elsewhere he expresses the question by asking whether a racist must hold a belief in a universal racialism. Is it necessary that the racist believes all people (including himself) be raced in order to be racist? He replies that this is so, both conventionally and in the examples employed by Appiah in his work. That, the racist is white and the other is Black and in this way the racist’s own race is operative in her judgment. This conventional sort of racist phenomenon, Martin classifies as Own Race Present Racism (ORP). Martin suggests, however, that there is at least another kind of phenomenon in which the race of the racist is not operative in the racist’s racism. He describes it thus: “it is at least possible that sometimes racism may turn precisely on a racist’s not viewing himself as raced, or at least not being raced in the way specified by his own doctrine of racialism. In such a case, we could claim that a partial racialism (in which some, but not all¸ people are raced) is at work and that the racism at hand would be best seen not as a clash between two or more races (as in Appiah’s account), but as a clash between the racial and the non-racial”.68 This he calls Own-Race-Absent (ORA) Racism. Martin then sets out to show the ways in which the race of the racist could be absent from operativity. He opines that showing this could be plausible first in theory and, second in practice. 1.

The operativity of ORA in theory

According to Martin, an ORA racist may firstly hold the belief that he is not raced “either because it has never occurred to him or because he holds the belief that he is not raced”.

69

Alternatively, such a racist “could at times be attributed with the belief that he is raced but, in the context of the racist judgment of others under investigation, this belief is not operative”.70

66 67 68 69 70

Martin (2009:27). Martin (2009:28). Ibid. Martin (2009:29). Ibid.

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His conclusion is that the ORA qua ORA would not hold a universal racialism in which all human beings are race attributable. The ORA could, however, hold a “partial racialism”: “a view that some humans (though, I would imagine most typically, not the racist and his kind) are to be classified in terms of race”.71 Before turning to the examination of practical examples of this distinction, he claims that there is certainly “conceptual room for this distinction”.72 We will revert to this claim. 2.

The Operativity of ORA in Practice

Martin repeats that the existence and prevalence of ORP racism is undeniable. He writes that included under the auspices of ORP are for example “Any racism that can be cast in terms of a racial hierarchy of which the racist sees herself as a part.”73 “This will include any kind of racism characterised by a commitment to racial supremacy” adding Apartheid as a paradigmatic example of ORP. Writing about Apartheid he concludes: “[t]here was no doubt that one was white and that was why one was privileged in the racial hierarchy – that was more or less what the signs on the park benches said, after all.”74 To make the case for ORA he turns to a personal anecdote. It is a story about some time he spent staying in London where he worked in a bar for an ORA racist (“The pub boss”). We will limit our rehearsal of the story to its argumentative content: Premise 1: The pub boss would often draw attention to the race of racial others, usually in A negative way. Premise 2: He (the pub boss) spoke of an accident once and said “some coloured chaps did it” in a context where Martin judged the detail to be irrelevant. Premise 3: He told Martin to “keep an eye on those Black fellows” referring to ordinary customers who happened to be Black. Premise 4: Martin then adopted the practice of pre-fixing racial identification in reference to white people which he claims caused the pub boss to question why the race of these people had any relevance. Conclusion On the basis of this he concludes that the pub boss was an example of ORA racist. He writes: “The racial membership of non-white people was clearly significant in his approach to them, his expectations and judgements of them. We would call him a racist.

71 72 73 74

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Martin (2009:29).

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However, he seemed to be a racist for whom his own race did not play a significant role in his calculations about race”75. Martin then admits his suspicion that the pub boss knew to tick the “white box” on population classification forms. The point of his assessment, he states, is that the race of his ORA racist did not figure explicitly in his racist worldview. He quite absurdly thereafter quotes from two studies based on a historicised understanding of racism. The studies make the point that whiteness is precisely invisibilised in racist societies. Whereas we would have assumed that taking these studies seriously would have prevented him from writing his own unnecessary paper by demonstrating its fallacy and futility, he appears to have reached an alternative conclusion. He concludes by setting out the value of his invention that an ORA would not be universally but only partially racialist. According to him, this invention is a theoretical novelty assisting us conceptually to understand racism. It is also practically beneficial in the ethical fight against racism. Our own judgment is that the paper fails on both counts. We now turn to a critique of his paper. Critique 1.

Issues Related to Historicity and Method

Faithful to the critical discussion we had earlier on the typically a historical nature of the analytic approach to philosophising, Martin’s account is thoroughly a-historical. It relies quite uncritically on categories drawn from Appiah’s equally ahistorical work which generated a great deal and controversy amongst Black philosophers76 in the USA at the time of its publication. The point of greatest contention is the fact that Appiah in the course of his essay, for instance, argues that Black Nationalism is an example of intrinsic racism. He indeed holds that the utility of his distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic racism is that it identifies and separates “the discourse of racial solidarity [which] is usually expressed through the language of intrinsic racism”77 from that of the sort of the South African Nationalist party of Apartheid fame “who have used race as the basis for the oppression and hatred and have appealed to extrinsic racist ideas”. 78 Appiah, attempting to justify his choice to characterise Black nationalism as racism writes, “The Black nationalists like the Zionists, responded to the experience of race discrimination by accepting the idea of racialism it presupposed”.79 In the justification of this assumption Appiah cites an earlier paper of his The Uncompleted Argument: Dubois and the Illusion of Race in which he cites his approval of Sartre’s

75 76 77 78 79

Martin (2009:29). see Gordon (1995), Outlaw(1996); Taylor (1997). Appiah (1990:10). ibid,10-11. ibid,11.

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characterisation of Negritude as an anti-racist racism. He makes the point that he does not share Sartre’s optimism that such nationalism was any advance on European racism. In his attempts to introduce his version of a moral differentiation between European racism and Black Nationalism he finally writes “Although race is indeed at the heart of Black Nationalism, however it seems it is a fact of shared race, not the fact of a shared racial character, that provides the basis for solidarity”.80 Although Martin focuses on racism in South Africa and, understands himself as a “philosopher of racism”,81 he appears to have ignored all the work in the philosophy of racism produced in South Africa before him. It is noteworthy, for instance, that Sobukwe (who would no doubt fall into the category of Appiah’s Back Nationalist camp), was a famous theoretician of a doctrine called non-racialism (see the next chapter), which famously repudiated both the biological and social-ontological postulations of race. Yet, Martin appears to have found Sobukwe irrelevant to understanding racism in South Africa. Black Consciousness with close philosophical affinity to the position espoused by Sobukwe, critically appropriated some tenets of Negritude and continued the liberatory-non-racialist tradition. Even this appears to have been of no importance to Martin compared to his personal experience of working in a London bar. What is curious is Martin’s wholesale silence about academic philosophical work done by Percy More. More has gone to great lengths in the representation of the Black Consciousness tradition and its critical rejection of both Appiah’s and Sartre’s formulations. Prior to More, Ramose provided a philosophico-historical critique of racism showing why and how it was used in the subjugation and enslavement of the indigenous people of South Africa conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. 82 The history critiqued philosophically by Ramose refers to the situation long before the birth of Appiah’s fragile distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic racism. Martin’s silence about More’s work and his apparent indifference to Ramose suggests that neither the silence nor the indifference is accidental. This undermines, academically, his description of himself as a “philosopher of racism”. Academic philosophical curiosity on any subject, especially race in South Africa, begins at home. 2.

Triviality

In typical analytic philosophy style Martin’s paper keeps breaking down concepts into more concepts approaching their metaphoric atomic level and, in the course, moving further and further from the historical reality of racism. In the end though the effect is that his analytic “conceptions” of racism are far removed from the experience and reality of the indigenous

80 81

82

Appiah (1990:11). He writes for instance “if as philosophers of racism we want an account of racism and the forms it can take” Martin (2009:31). Ramose (1999:13-35).

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conquered people who have been its victims in South Africa for almost four centuries. The effect of racism upon the groups of people who are its victims in history is precisely that it operates as a negation of their individuality. Only the white man can be an individual distinguishable from the rest of whites by his name, his achievements, intelligence, history and biography. The other, the Black, the indigenous, the conquered is at once all Blacks, all others, all indigenous. All ugly (as in previous section), all stupid, all thieves. The focus on the psychic and interpersonal manifestations of racism typified by analytic approaches comes at the expense of the recognition of the politico-historical and structural nature of racism. The analytic approach ultimately serves as an obfuscation of the very nature of racism itself. The Black philosopher, the Black doctor, the Black beauty, the Black president are all reflective of this negation where the prefix “Black” is a contradiction of what follows it. What follows it, the status of individual subjectivity and historicity is over-determined. It is the only essential fact about the subject in terms of racism. As such, Blacks are oppressed as Blacks rather than as individuals. Underlying this oppression is the ethically questionable and scientifically unsustainable belief that Blacks are less than human ontologically despite their appearance as human beings. In the light of this, the basic argument against racism derives from ethics and not ontology. Martin draws a quotation from Goldberg’s Racist Culture. Here Goldberg, writing on the invisibility of whiteness, states that “racially invisible – the ghosts of modernity, whites could assume power as the norm of humanity, as the naturally given. Unseen racially, that is, unseen as racially marked – or seen precisely as racially unmarked – whites could be everywhere”.83 Goldberg is clearly pointing to the normativity of whiteness which is a common characteristic of White Supremacist societies. The white is precisely characterised as the universal notion of human existence; white beauty, white morality, white fears, white philosophy. This is not an anomaly requiring the division of a special variant of racism. It is, instead, the very result of the politico-historical process of White Supremacy. Just as feminists writing from the perspective of women as a powerless group have shown the normativity of maleness in the worlds of knowledge, morality and philosophy so too Blacks have historically, in their struggle against White Supremacy reported the same phenomenon. If one considers this one realises that the variation of ORA vs ORP is really trivial. It is probably the result of succumbing to contemporary academic work’s demand for originality and prolificacy. From the viewpoint of the indigenous conquered people, is theoretically empty and serves as no guide for practice. Conclusion We argued in this chapter that there is a causal relationship between analytical philosophy and liberalism. We have shown this relationship by reference to South Africa giving examples

83

Goldberg (1997:83).

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in the popular and academic spheres. This was preceded by an extended exposition of the weakness of analytical philosophy with regard to its over-emphasis on linguistic analysis without due regard for history. The exposition showed that despite its emphasis on linguistic analysis and aversion to history, analytical philosophy’s position is undermined by its explicit as well as implicit subservience to ideology and British nationalism. Our critique of the examples discussed was predicated on this exposition. The point of our critique then is that philosophy without anthropological and historical grounding is a precarious undertaking as it is more than likely to undermine the ethical dimension. This is no trivial matter as ethics is an integral part of philosophy. The next chapter is an extended elucidation of this point.

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REFERENCES Akerhurst, T., 2010. The Cultural Politics of Analytic Philosophy. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Appiah, K.A. 1990. ‘Racisms’ in Goldberg, D.T. (ed). Anatomy of Racism. University of Minnesota Press Biko, S., 1978. I Write What I Like. London: Bowerdean. Bracken,

H.

M.,

1978-79.

Philosophy

and

racism,

in

Philosophia,

Vol.

8.

https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02379242 Dussel, E., 2002. The Philosophy of Liberation. Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers. Esonwanne, U., 1992. "Race" and Hermeneutics: Paradigm Shift - From Scientific to Hermeneutic Understanding of Race. African American Review, vol.26 (no.4). https://doi.org/10.2307/3041871 Garcia, J., 1999. Philosophical analysis and the moral concept of racism. Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol 25(no 5), pp. 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453799025005001 Goldberg T.D., 1993. Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning, Oxford: Blackwell Goldberg, D.T. 1997. Racial Subjects: Writing on Race in America. New York: Routledge. Gould, S. J., 1981. The mismeasure of man. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd. Gordon, L.R., 1995 Bad Faith and Anti-Black Racism, Atlantic Highlands NJ: Humanities International Press Hoernlé, R., 1945. Race and Reason. Johannesburg: University of Witwatersrand. Hoernlé, R., 1945. South African Native Policy and the Liberal Spirit. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand. Ikuenobe, P., 2010. Conceptualising Racism and Its Subtle Forms. Journal for the Theory of Social

Behaviour,

Volume

2,

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161-181.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-

5914.2010.00453.x Macaulay, E. B., 158. Civil Liberty in South Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Magubane, B., 1970. The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa. New York:Monthly Press Review. Mautner, T., 2005. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy. London: Penguin Books. McKaiser, E., 2013. There's a Bantu In My Bathroom, Debating Race, Sex and Other uncomfortable South African Topics. Johannesburg: Bookstorm. Mercer, K., 1987. Black Hair/Style Politics. New Formations, WINTER, Issue NUMBER 3, pp. 33-54.

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Mills, C., 2003. "Heart" Attack: A Critique of Jeorge Garcia's Volitional Conception of Racism. Journal of Ethics, Volume 7, pp. 29-62. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022874712554 Mills, C., 2008. Racial Liberalism.: Proceedings Modern Language Association of America. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2008.123.5.1380 More, P., 2002. Complicity, Neutrality or Advocacy, Philosophy in South Africa, Ronald Aronson's Stay Out of Politics: A Review Essay. African Journal of Philosophy, vol.7(no.2). More, P., 2008. Biko: Africana Existentialist Philosopher. In: A. A. a. N. G. A Mngxitama, ed. Biko Lives! Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko. New York: Palgrave McMillian, pp. 45-68. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230613379_3 Outlaw, L. Jr., 1996. On Race and philosophy, New York: Routledge Overgaard S., Gilbert P. and Burwood S., 2013. Analytic and Continental Philosophy. In: An Introduction to Metaphilosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 105-135. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139018043.006 Popkin, R. H., 1974. The philosophical bases of modern racism, in Walton, C and Anton, J. P., (ed.) Philosophy and the civilizing arts. Athens: Ohio University Press Ramose, M. B., 1999. African philosophy through Ubuntu. Harare: Mond Books Publishers Shock, M. and Bullock., 1956. The Liberal Tradition: From Fox to Keynes. Edinburgh: R&R. Clark Limited. Wang, H., 1988. Beyond Analytic Philosophy: Doing Justice to What We Know. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

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V.

AN AFRICAN PHILOSOPHICAL CRITIQUE OF THE LIBERAL CONCEPTION OF NON-RACIALISM Liberalism and racism have been intertwined for hundreds of years, for the same developments of modernity that brought liberalism into existence as a supposedly general set of political norms also brought race into existence as a set of restrictions and entitlements governing the application of those norms[…] [The] dismantling of [racial liberalism] cannot be achieved through a colour blindness that is really a blindness to the historical and enduring whiteness of liberalism” Charles Mills, Racial Liberalism, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association (2008, 1394).

INTRODUCTION In the previous chapter which we focused on the metaphysical, epistemological and methodological dimensions of the problem of racism, specifically as treated by South African analytic philosophy. Our approach was a negative critique which set out from the basis of African philosophical hermeneutics to examine the shortcomings of the analytic approach. Whereas the previous chapter fulfilled the hermeneutic leg of our critique, in this chapter our critique will focus on the ethical and political dimensions of the empiricist or analytic approach. Perhaps because of the practical ends of ethics and politics as dealing not simply with the nature of moral reality but also with prescriptions on how to live better, how to live ethically and best organise society towards that end – ethical and political writings of liberals have been presented as non-racialism. Our purpose in this chapter is on the one hand to appraise the nature and content of what we will call liberal non-racialism and to offer the Africanist interpretation of liberal ethical and political practice with regard to race on the other. The critique will culminate in the expression of the Africanists’ own conception of non-racialism which we shall call liberatory non-racialism. SOME AFRICANIST NOTES ON WHITE LIBERALISM Although the conception of non-racialism which we will focus our attention upon has arisen out of the self-identified liberal tradition and its various representatives in South Africa such as the Non-Racial Franchise, the South African Institute of Race Relations, the Liberal Party, (1953) the Progressive Party, (1959), the Progressive Reform Party, (1975) the Progressive Federal Party, (1977) and the Democratic Alliance, (currently the official opposition party in South Africa), the purpose of this section is to provide some historical-conceptual context. The historical-conceptual context will show that “Liberalism” describes a wider range of political activity and activism with regard to race, non-racialism and classical liberalism. Even

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some segments of the indigenous conquered people of South Africa (Blacks) could appositely be described as liberal insofar as they were formal members or, even supporters of, for example, the Liberal Party and the Progressive Party. The Prohibition of Political Interference Act No. 51 of 1968, otherwise also known as Prohibition of Improper Interference Act, for example, ensured the termination of formal membership of Blacks to political organisations such as the Progressive Party. This, however, did not by necessity eliminate the convictional commitment of Blacks to liberalism. Hence the re-emergence of Black members in the Democratic Alliance. In a recent study, “Friends of the Natives: An Inconvenient Past of South African Liberalism”, Eddy Maloka1 made the point that although there is a widely available wealth of information, theory and documented history of South African Liberalism, most of the history and theory has been produced by the liberals themselves. Here we present another sample of liberal – mainly South Africans - writing about liberalism in South Africa with particular reference to the concept of non-racialism. Soske2 has argued that despite the popular tendency assuming that the concept of the “nonracial” originated from within the ranks of the liberal tradition, specifically around the qualified franchise in the Cape, it is, in fact, surprisingly the case that “non-racial” was used first in South Africa in the beginning of the 20th century to describe “inter-group” relations between the English and Afrikaner people without regard to ethnicity. This early use originated from the Afrikaner Bond. In its early use, it came to indicate pro-imperial whiteunity in South Africa.3 It did not as such from its beginnings in South African discourse emerge in the supposed opposition to racism but rather marked an explicit evolution of racism; of better cooperation by the conqueror in pursuit of the subjugation of the indigenous conquered people. Non-racialism, in fact, began to appear and gain use within the liberal discourse after the 1929 establishment of the Non-Racial Franchise Association. The term in this instance simply indicated the idea “without regard to race”. The narrow conceptual limitation of race, in this instance, to the fundamental differentiation of human beings in quality at the level of biology, meant ignorance of the significance of the socio-ontological nature race. The liberal conception of non-racialism also in this narrow sense was founded upon completely unchecked ethnocentric assumptions about the universality or superiority of Western civilisation having its basis in a racist philosophy of history and theory of culture and society. Early liberal theorists like Witwatersrand University philosophy professor and R.F.A. Hoernlé – founder of the South African Institute of Race Relations– thought from the paradigm of

1 2 3

Soske (2014:3). Soske (2014:2). Soske (2014:2).

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multi-racialism and detracted on the basis of racial terms from so-called classical liberal thinking. This is because while classical liberal thought had its basis on individual subjects and liberties they (South African liberals) set South African Liberalism on a course of groupthinking. It is worth mentioning that ANC leader and Intellectual ZK Matthews so favoured Hoernlé’s treatise on multi-racialism “South African Native Policy and the Liberal Spirit”, that he prescribed it in a course he taught at the university of Fort Hare.4 It is worth considering whether this was a factor informing the largely multi-racial politics of the ANC which the Africanists who would leave to form PAC would later criticise. Famed liberal historian Leonard Thomson was also later to develop Hoernlé’s work stripping it of its biological understanding of race and instead focusing on what he called “civilisational difference” in line with postWorld War II rejection of racial science. 5 As Soske points out, “By identifying White Supremacy with a biological theory of human difference, Thompson and other liberal thinkers could insulate the core values and institutions of Western culture from the (now externalised) idea of racism”.6 Thompson nevertheless “advanced a federalist model of democracy (akin to Hoernlé’s parallelism) and separate racial franchises based on a qualified suffrage”.7 One of the advantages of electoral politics complemented by a growing Western education system was, according to Thompson, that it would “train increasingly large sections of the colonised populations in the norms of modern life”. What was most important to Thompson however, according to Soske, was that “Far from undermining “White Supremacy,” Thompson insisted, this gradual process would insure European leadership and the spread of Western culture in Africa”.8 It is why the liberal conception of race and non-racialism can be characterised by and large as what Goldberg describes as a racism without races. This conception of race effectively differs from the conservative (Afrikaner Nationalist) variant which simply holds that Blacks are of different species-being (not human). The racism without races theory holds that Blacks can become human and gain all the rights due to human beings progressively if they should acquire Western (human) civilisation. It is in the end this attitudinal ‘’generosity’’, the willingness to extend humanity to Blacks despite their Blackness, that is the bedrock of liberal non-racialism. The first thing to be noted is that liberals refer to individuals and organisations who were adherents to the conventional political, social and economic ideology and philosophy of liberalism, which emphasised electoral democracy, individual rights and ownership of a specified quantity of private property as a qualification for the right to vote.

4 5 6 7 8

Soske (2014: 5). Soske (2014:6). Soske (2014: 7). Ibid. Ibid.

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Liberal also meant different political approaches variously referred to as ‘progressivism’ so widely construed to include even ‘Marxism’ and ‘radicalism’. It is far more useful to consult a dictionary of current English for the meaning of liberalism within the Black liberation movement rather than a dictionary of political science. Before describing its specified meaning in the context of political theory, under entry number 4, The Oxford Dictionary of Concise English describes ‘’Liberal’’ under the first entry as an adjective or noun which describes one who is “directed to general broadening of mind”. Liberals are commonsensically understood as those who are open-minded, willing to entertain new ideas or views or practices so long as they are in accordance with reason. They are typically counter-posed to conservatives who are “traditional” and “closed off” and resistant to what is new, foreign, contemporary or different in favour of maintaining the prevailing order. In the context of Apartheid South Africa, Steve Biko most usefully described liberals as “that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names- liberals, leftists etc. These are people who argue they are not responsible for white racism and the country’s inhumanity towards the Black man”9. A few passages later Biko, still referring to these non-conformist do-gooders, simply describes them as “white liberals”. He continues to point out that this group has been involved in every dimension of South African politics telling the oppressed Blacks what to do. He points out that it was only from the “end of the 1950s that Blacks began to demand being their own guardians”- Biko was of course here referring to the PAC of Sobukwe which left the ANC to avoid precisely the continuing white domination under the guise of the Congress of Democrats - a “white ally” organisation founded by self-described communists).10 There have in recent political philosophy been specified critiques of liberalism from within the Black radical tradition.11 The critiques have focused on liberalism’s inherently racialised and racist character. Mills’ Racial Contract (1997) was an attempt on his part to expose the invisibilised racial character central to what liberal social and political philosophy has represented for a long time as simply “social contractarianism”. He suggests that his work was attempting to expose what more really turns out to be “an intra-White agreement that through European expansionism, colonialism, White settlement, Apartheid and Jim Crowshapes the modern world”12. He continues to write that what happens really in liberal “social contracts” is that “Whites contract to regard one another as moral equals who are superior to non-Whites and who create accordingly, governments, legal systems and economic structures that privilege them at the expense of people of colour…. the contract is an exclusionary

one

rather

“Domination Contract”.

9 10 11 12 13

Biko (2004:21). Ibid. Mills (1997; 2003, 2015). Mills (2008:1386). Ibid.

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than

an

inclusive

one”

13

what

he

calls

elsewhere

a

Writing of the American situation in particular but deeming it comparable to South Africa, Mills suggests that that part of the inadequacy of the liberal idealism of social contractarianism, that is, liberalism’s idea of itself as non-racial and egalitarian is its systemic obfuscation of history. He writes, “Far from being neutral, the law and the state were part of the racial polity’s apparatus of sub-ordination, codifying Whiteness and enforcing racial privilege”.14 The root of the problem of race and its inextricability from the DNA of liberal /racial polities is their foundation in the dubious right to conquest. Mills, quoting from Robertson, writes: “Native peoples were expropriated through “conquest by law”.15 He continues to quote from the 1823 American Supreme Court decision Johnson v M’Intosh: “Discovery converted the indigenous owners of discovered lands into tenants on those lands… Throughout the United States, the American political descendants of these [European] discovering sovereigns overnight became owners of land that had previously belonged to Native Americans”.16 In the end the most convincing argument to support the central contention of Mills’ work is that the social contract is really a racial contract between Whites for their common welfare at the expense of “non-Whites”. That liberalism is really racial or White liberalism, that far from being an anomaly racism is, in fact, the cornerstone of liberalism and liberal societies is the condition of life that so-called “non-White” people experience in liberal societies. “NonWhites” in all such societies consistently suffer lower life expectancies, vulnerability to disease, poverty, hunger, police brutality and high incarceration rates. Forty-nine years before the Johnson case Mills refers to, there was the Campbell v Hall case. (1774) This arguably served as a precedent to the Johnson case because the legal paradigm of the British colonial conqueror in the Americas was imposed upon the conquered by the socalled right of conquest. The reasoning in the Campbell case was applied in South Africa long before the Johnson case. From this point of view, the conquest of the indigenous Americans is the same as that of the conquered people of South Africa because the so-called right of conquest applied to them and, from historically the same conqueror. In his discussion of this so-called right of conquest with particular reference to South Africa and Zimbabwe, Ramose advances the robust argument that ultimately, the so-called right of conquest – ethically and juridically questionable – rests of the Western legal maxim which rejects truth as the basis of law and instead posits: auctoritas non veritas facit legem “the threat or the actual use of physical force is true foundation of law”.17 The transmutation of this physical force into liberal democracy flavoured with benign racism is what sustains both South Africa and the United

14 15 16 17

Mills (2008:1386). ibid. ibid. Ramose (2003:548).

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States, not forgetting other former British colonies, such as Australia, parts of Canada and New Zealand. In the South African context, the Azanian school critique of liberalism mainly rests on its interpretation of Colonial-Apartheid. According to this understanding, South Africa’s primary political problem is the unjustified forcible seizure of land from its original rightful owners, the indigenous people of the country from time immemorial. White Supremacy is historically linked to this insofar as it was and continues to act in the service of ensuring the irreversibility of the benefits acquired through the questionable right of conquest. This “right of conquest” has been questioned since the earliest days of the colonisation of South Africa – a geographic indicator serving as a means to identify the indigenous conquered people who were in the country long, long before the colonial invasion. According to Ramose, this questioning rests on three pyramids, namely, the ethical, political and juridical.18 He emphasises this by reference to the liberal historian, Troup, (1975) who presented the dispute over grazing land between the Khoikhoi and Van Riebeeck. “The Khoikhoi sued for peace and tried to regain rights to their pastures, ‘standing upon it that we (the Dutch) had gradually been taking more and more of their land which had been theirs since the beginning of time. … Asking also whether if they came to Holland, they would be permitted to do the like’. The Commander argued that if their land were restored there would not be enough grazing for both nations. The Khoikhoi replied ‘Have we then no cause to prevent you from getting more cattle? The more you have the more land you will occupy. And to say the land is not big enough for both, who should give way, the rightful owner or the invader?’ Van Riebeeck made it clear ‘that they had now lost the land in war and therefore could only expect to be henceforth deprived of it. … The country had thus fallen to our lot, being justly won in defensive war and … it was our intention to retain it” 19. This dispute underlines the primacy of “the land question” as the Azania school calls it. It should also lay to rest any doubt that historically, the primary question has been and, still is “the land question” despite the political dispensation inaugurated since 27 April 1994. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the course of this history the PAC adopted “Izwe lethu” (It is our land) as its slogan. Understanding the spread and meaning of the colonisation of most of Africa, the PAC also used the slogan: “Mayibuye, iAfrika!” (Let Africa be returned). Indeed, the liberation song: Thina sizwe esimyama Sikhalela! Sikhalela Izwe lethu

18 19

Ramose (2003:548-551). quoted in Ramose (2003:581).

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Elathathwa ngabamhlophe. Mabawuyeke! Mabawuyeke umhlaba wethu! (Translation) [We the Black children of the soil are crying. We are crying for our land, taken by force by Whites. Let them return the land! It is ours!] is a living reminder of the primacy of the land question. Was Alan Paton, the South African liberal, being sardonically satirical when he wrote his novel, Cry the beloved country? Did President Jacob Zuma of South Africa reaffirm subconsciously the unfinished business of the liberation struggle when he spontaneously sang – joined by some of the audience – “Thina sizwe izimyama” during the commemoration service of former President Nelson Mandela at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, December 2013? It is a matter of conjecture to consider what President Zuma’s spontaneous outburst meant, especially to those who understood the meaning of the song in a setting designed to remember Nelson Mandela, the President of “forgive and forget”; the icon of “reconciliation” in South Africa. What is certain, however, is that the land question is yet to be answered. The above shows that Apartheid was simply an aggravating addition to an already existing problem of “the land question” on the one hand and racism or its supposed opposite, nonracialism on the other. Apartheid was by law and custom enjoyed by all Whites regardless of their personal feelings or ethical or political beliefs. Apartheid was the ugly political sister of liberalism born of the same womb of White Supremacy. In view of this, the Azania school correctly identifies a post-conquest South Africa as the aim of liberation: liberation that shall answer the questionable right of conquest by annulling it and reversing its consequences starting with the restoration of sovereign title to territory to the indigenous conquered people. According to the Azania school, it is undeniable that whatever the opinions or beliefs of any individual White person, they continued to be beneficiaries of White Supremacy so long as it remained entrenched in South Africa. Until this was resolved the participation of Whites in the struggle for liberation within the ranks of Blacks was understood as a contradiction in terms. Those Whites who claimed to understand the point were urged to engage their fellow Whites (parents, friends, siblings, colleagues) who were responsible for sustaining the problem rather than to band together with Blacks who were the victims of this problem. Their participation on the side of Blacks was viewed with suspicion as capable only of stifling Blacks’ attempts at pursuing liberation. The South African political history at the time thitherto was used as an effective demonstration of this reality. The reality was that involving Whites in the struggle for liberation had borne no tangible fruit at all. Instead, it prevented the very planting of the tree of liberation. This was a point well made in the 1940s by the

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ANCYL, the PAC in the 1950s, the BCM in the 1960s and 1970s, AZAPO in the 1980s and today by the #RhodesMustFall Movement and the Black Student Movement amongst others. We take cognisance of this knowledge resource of liberalism and will draw from it critically. We will, however, focus in the following sections on the provision of a basic and brief account of what has been understood by “racism” within the liberation movement of South Africa. For this we will rely on the writings and experience of the tendency that is sometimes referred to as the Azania school which is comprised of the Africanist and Black Consciousness 20 approaches. SOBUKWE’S AFRICANIST CONCEPTION OF RACISM A study of Sobukwe’s writings and speeches on race reveals that he understands racism precisely as White Supremacy. He construes the European as a foreign (non-African) minority of conquerors and oppressors who enjoy “exclusive control of political, economic, social and military power”. The Europeans are “the dominant group […] the exploiting group, responsible for the pernicious doctrine of White Supremacy which has resulted in the humiliation and degradation of the indigenous African people. It is this group which has dispossessed the African people of their land and with arrogant conceit has set itself up as the "guardians", the "trustees" of the Africans”.21 In South Africa in particular (before Apartheid, under it and even after it) the doctrine of White Supremacy had a complicated structure of racial stratification in which the Supreme Whites were followed on the fictitious ontological hierarchy by the Indians, the so-called Coloured and the African at the bottom of being’s chain. Each of these stratums in the hierarchy was accompanied also by differentially better life chances - that is, a corresponding hierarchy of access to and quality of education, healthcare, housing and safety. At the cultural and intellectual levels also, White Supremacy expressed itself as Eurocentrism, according greater value and respect to the cultures of the groups who were the links on being’s vertically hanging chain in proportion to their proximity to Whiteness. There existed in terms of Apartheid ideology a biological basis for the degree of inferiority or superiority possessed by a particular race.

20

21

The descriptor Azania school is one which has gained some currency in social media and public discussion where this tendency is also referred to as BCPA (Black Consciousness Pan Africanism). Although it is not the intention of this note to give an exhaustive discussion, some common factors which unite the organisations which are characterised as belonging to this school are the emphasis on African culture as the basis of liberation politics. Also included is the incredulity held by the adherents to the “liberatory” nature of the ’94 “negotiated settlement”. Organisations and individuals belonging to this school are also critical of the use of “South Africa” to describe the territories belonging to the indigenous conquered people variously referred to as “Africans” or “Blacks” in whom title to territory is vested. The adherents prefer instead the use of the word Azania in the description of the said territories. Such organisations have also at various times attempted or at least expressed interest in uniting together under one banner. The school has also been claimed as inspiration for various recent political developments such as the rise of the Economic Freedom Fighters party, the #RhodesMustFall movement and the Black First Land First movement, all in the past 3 years. Sobukwe (1978:18).

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Racism is for Sobukwe is a false dogma developed and asserted with the purpose of justifying the conquest and dispossession of Africans by Europeans.22 Sobukwe argues that race as such, applied in the plural form with regard to human beings serves this purpose of the differential recognition of humanness on the basis of a scientifically untenable “bio-logic”.23 It relies, according to him, on the fallacious elevation of superficial physical differences to the status of being – or kinds of being. He therefore recognises White Supremacy as having its basis in a politically entrenched social ontology which pretends to biology. He instead conceives of difference in national terms recognising three socio-historical groups in South Africa the differences between which “are the result of a number of factors, chief amongst which has been geographical isolation” as well as “shared historical experience”.24 He classifies these groups not according to some ontological hierarchy but in terms of the question of their title to the territory of South Africa and their right to sovereignty over it. These populations are: firstly, the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation, these are the Africans who have occupied Africa since time immemorial. Africanism is precisely their philosophy and ideology for continued resistance and ultimately decolonisation and the restoration of sovereignty. The second population Sobukwe describes as the “Indian foreign minority group”. He makes the point that whereas this group did not come to this country as imperialists or colonialists, but as indentured labourers and are themselves an oppressed group, there are nevertheless two main classes within the Indian population, namely, the indentured labourers and the merchant class. The latter group Sobukwe25 writes “[has] become tainted with the virus of cultural supremacy and national arrogance and [...] identifies itself by and large, with the oppressor”. In an interview with Gail Gerhart, Sobukwe26 makes the point that although he was amongst those in a group within the PAC who wanted admission opened to Indians: a fellow racially oppressed group, the PAC members from the then province of Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) were seriously opposed to this. A distinction was however made between the merchant class Indian population and the “down-trodden”, “poor”, "stinking coolies" of Natal who, alone, “resulting the pressure of material conditions, can identify themselves with the indigenous African majority in the struggle to overthrow White supremacy”. Though it was considered that this class had not yet produced its own leadership, it was hoped that that would take place soon.

22 23

24 25 26

Sobukwe (1978:18). Oyewumi (1997:ix) explaining the concept of bio-logic writes “The cultural logic of Western social categories is based on an ideology of biological determinism: the conception that biology provides the rationale for the organisation of the social world. Thus, this cultural logic is actually a bio-logic”. Sobukwe(1978:18). Ibid,19. Gerhart G and Sobkwe M (1970:11).

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The resistance on the part of the delegates from Natal can be understood in light of the fact that the African population in Natal was and continues to be in closest proximity to the largest portion of the Indian community. This was more likely (as a simple matter of statistical probability) to have been subjected to Anti-African-Indian oppression as labourers. Furthermore, some of the Africans were subsequently moved from their land to accommodate Indians by the Apartheid regime under the Group Areas Act of 41 of 1950. When one adds to this also considerations of African-Indian political history, such as Mahatma Ghandi’s own Anti-African thought and writing or his offering the Indian help to the British to suppress the Bambatha revolts in 1905 the sentiments of the Natal delegates become even more understandable. 27 Significantly, even after the 1994 dispensation, the Zulu playwright, Mbongeni Ngema, produced a play named Ama’ndia (the Indians). Objections were raised on the ground that the play fuelled anti-ethnic – (why not anti-racial?) –sentiments. It did not therefore become part of the display of life as some KwaZulu-Natal inhabitants experienced it. What we are also able to see in Sobukwe’s view is his anticipation of the later Black Consciousness approach of solidarity amongst all Blacks against White Supremacy despite the unpopularity of this perspective in his organisation at the time. The conception of racism proper as White Supremacy involves the understanding that intra-group antagonisms amongst all “non-Europeans” ultimately serve only the interests of the true oppressor who is the European or White. CRITIQUE: AGAINST LIBERAL NON-RACIALISM- MULTI-RACIALISM AS THE NEW WHITE SUPREMACY But White civilisation in this land, with its diversity of races and its preponderance of colour, will be best maintained and in the end can only be maintained, by admitting every race to our polity, so far as it is civilised.” - James Rose-Innes, Address to the first meeting of the Non-Racial Franchise Association, 1929. In terms of the liberal conception of Non-Racialism as exemplified in the epigraph above, “non” is a technical referent describing a social or political procedure in which race is not to be considered. So, for instance, the non-racial franchise comes to mean that people can vote without consideration to their race. This is, however, considerably different from Sobukwe’s Africanist conception which is directed towards a negation of the reality of race itself. As I hope the point was made above, the repudiation of the reality of race was not a naïve denial of racism which involves for Sobukwe precisely the elevation of a biological fiction into a sociological and political reality.

27

Ibid.

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On the contrary, non-racialism in Sobukwe’s approach shows up the ethical untenability of racism and the ethical necessity of anti-racist struggle. It is worth considering as we did in Chapter 2 that the Bantu languages which are the basis of the philosophy of Ubuntu do not contain any equivalent concept for race – conceived either as a social or biological category. It is possible in terms of the expressions content in these languages for example in isiZulu to say a. “uRobert ungumuntu” or b. “akusi umuntu uRobert”. That is to say either a. “Robert is a person” or b. “Robert is not a person”. Rather than having its basis in some systemised qualitative ontological classification of human beings, the expressions reflect a judgment pertaining to the humaneness of a given person regardless of ethnic origin. It is on the basis of the lived example of people’s lives and the character they demonstrate over time that the assessment is made. Ngubane (1963) and Pheko (1990) write about several groups of European settlers in the 19th century who accepting the title to territory of the African people and wanting to live amongst them as equals were admitted as members of those African communities. It is the case that the liberal doctrine of non-racialism is not incompatible with White Supremacy but in fact supports its existence. Rose-Innes for example writes “admitting every race to our polity”. This is to say that he does not at all question the justice of the White man’s title to territory which has its basis in the questionable and racist so-called “right to conquest”. As if this racist assumption were not enough Rose-Innes goes on to set the condition “so far as it [that is the race being admitted to the White man’s polity] is civilised”. Of course, what civilisation is, is taken for granted as is the right and competency to determine and measure its contents and conditions. Finally, Whiteness/Westernness and civilisation are themselves synonymised so that it is only “they”, those who are not already part of “our” (white) polity who must be examined for this civilisation. As recently as 2007, liberal historian and historiographer Merle Lipton in a text titled Liberals, Marxists and Nationalists which was written for, amongst other reasons, the defence against the charge of racism levelled at liberal historians, reveals that liberal non-racialism has not come very far since the early 20th century. The author argues that liberal politician WP Schreiner’s statement “We [Whites] shall, if we deserve it remain dominant. But it must be dominance in a free country where career is open to talent and to civilised men with no discrimination or distinction upon such grounds as colour or race” 28 reveals arrogance, meritocracy and sexism but can certainly not be said to be racist.29 Lipton reaches her rash conclusion without problematising “arrogance”, that is by asking “arrogance in terms of which identity?”, arrogance always after all belongs to someone and is exercised in terms of some aspect of identity.

28 29

Lipton (2007:24) quoted from McCracken(167:102). Ibid.

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It is possible as such to speak of the arrogance of men or the arrogance of intellectuals. This is because it would be meaningless, for instance, to be arrogant simply as a human being unless this arrogance was directed at animals. Arrogance always revolves around a sense of superiority based on some self-perceived identity and difference one believes oneself to possess concern towards those to which this arrogance is directed. In this case it appears unnecessary to guess since Schreiner discloses that he speaks as white (“we whites) and as a man in the quotation in question. Given that even Lipton admits the sexual dimension of his arrogance as sexist, it is difficult to determine why she absolves the racial dimension of it as racist. Meritocracy is the other value she seems to take for granted, the hermeneutic and ethical questions must arise “merit according to which culture or cultural standard?” and also “why that particular standard in a country belonging to people (who were an overwhelming majority even then) who hold a different culture and cultural standards?”. While the hermeneutic question is raised hermeneutically to provide context to the ethical question which follows it, the answer to the second question appears to be nothing but racism. It is only when the racist dubious “right to conquest” is taken for granted that these questions can be ignored. It is also an additional feature, perhaps the most fundamental feature of liberal nonracialism, that it is predicated on a fairly conventional acceptance the existence of race itself which it charitably excuses the “non-White” races who it finds to possess the merits of “White civilisation”. This is so because those who are tested for civilisation are always the “nonWhites”. Civilisation and Whiteness in this discourse appear to enjoy synonymy. The qualifications on political participation and the correspondent tests thereto are the preserve of Blacks. The effect of this is that “non-racial” means “Blacks can participate” at least certain “special Blacks” who against convention transcend their nature or renounce their own civilisation. The adoption of the liberal conception of non-racialism (sometimes called more correctly multi-racialism) in the struggle against racial oppression turned out to reproduce the same problems that emerge from our analysis of Rose-Innes’ conception. Sobukwe, like Lembede before him, is critical of the tenability of inter-racial solidarity and camaraderie in the struggle for African freedom against European domination. He writes “We have made our stand clear on this point. Our contention is that the Africans are the only people who, because of their material position, can be interested in the complete overhaul of the present structure of society. We have admitted that there are Europeans who are intellectual converts to the African's cause, but because they benefit materially from the present set-up, they cannot completely identify themselves with that cause”.30 Once he turns

30

Sobukwe (1978:23).

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to the actual historical experience of white cooperation the abstract case immediately concretises. Sobukwe writes “South African history so ably illustrates, that whenever Europeans "co-operate" with African movements, they keep on demanding checks and counter-checks, guarantees and the like, with the result that they stultify and retard the movement of the Africans and the reason is, of course, that they are consciously or unconsciously protecting their sectional interests”. 31 With regard to the psychologically liberatory dimension of self-reliance Sobukwe writes: “We want to make the African people conscious of the fact that they have to win their own liberation, rely on themselves to carry on a relentless and determined struggle instead of relying on court cases and negotiations on their behalf by "sympathetic" whites”.32 Speaking at the inaugural convention of the Africanists in 1959 about Multi-Racialism Sobukwe writes “multi-racialism is in fact a pandering to European bigotry and arrogance. It is a method of-safeguarding White interests irrespective of population figures. In that sense it is a complete negation of democracy. To us the term "multi-racialism" implies that there are such basic inseparable differences between the various national groups here that the best course is to keep them permanently distinctive in a kind of democratic Apartheid. That to us is racialism multiplied, which probably is what the term 'truly connotes”.33 Another Africanist intellectual Jordan Ngubane, writing four years later almost as if to demonstrate

the

PAC’s

insight

in

relation

to

racist

result

Congress

Alliance’s

composition wrote: “The new alliance called the Congress movement was made up of five organisations, The ANC, The South African-Indian Congress and the Congress of Democrats (White), The Coloured people’s organisation and the Congress of Trade unions. […] On this body, the ANC was the largest organisation and the one representing the largest section of the nation [It had a paid membership of more than 10 000], had the same vote as the COD, supported by no more than 500 people in the White community. Although the ANC spoke for the majority in the nation, it was demoted to the status of a minority organisation […]. The Youth League critics [Africanists] who had feared collaboration with other groups pointed out that their fears had been vindicated. Multi-racialism in

31 32 33

Sobukwe(1978:23). Ibid Ibid,20.

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practice meant that the minority groups could gang up in the policy-making body against the majority”.34 SOBUKWE’S NON-RACIALISM AS AN ANTI-RACISM AND A BASIS FOR TODAY’S STRUGGLE Here is a tree rooted in African soil, nourished with waters from the rivers of Africa. Come and sit under its shade and become, with us, leaves of the same branch and branches of the same tree.” --Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe; address to the inaugural conference of the Pan-Africanist Congress, 1959. For Sobukwe, the struggle for liberation is not merely a struggle against Apartheid which is understood properly as a contingent but aggravating expression of White domination but it is against the complete phenomenon of White Supremacy itself in all its manifestations. It is only after the defeat of White Supremacy that non-racialism can exist as a principle and theory repudiating the tenability of race as a philosophical basis of racialism. As one can see in the epigraph above, Sobukwe’s conception of Africanity is conditionally permeable, the condition is the end of White Supremacy bringing about a psychological metanoia by which whites recognise and accept to themselves that they are truly African just like their compatriots whom they had subjugated and oppressed for more than three centuries thus far. It is thus possible for him to maintain, for instance, that: “Politically we stand for government of the Africans, for the Africans, by the Africans, with everybody who owes his loyalty only to Africa and accepts the democratic rule of an African majority, being regarded as an African. We guarantee no minority rights because we are fighting precisely that group exclusiveness-which those who plead for minority rights would like to perpetuate. It is our view that if we have guaranteed individual liberties, we have given the highest guarantee necessary and possible”35. Yet, Sobukwe can at the same time maintain that “I have said before and [still say so now], that I see no reason why, in a free democratic Africa, a predominantly Black electorate should not return a White man to Parliament, for colour will count for nothing in a free Africa”.36 In a discussion about the Africanists’ definition of an African as one who “owes his loyalty only to Africa and accepts the democratic rule of an African majority”,37 Soske writes

34 35 36 37

Ngubane (1963:100). Sobukwe (1978:24-25). Ibid,25. ibid,20.

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“In the PAC’s analysis, this definition of the African only had purchase after the dismantling of the White population’s economic and political control. […] In other words, Sobukwe distinguished between the racialised subject of anti-colonial nationalism and the individual subject of post-colonial politics”.38 Sobukwe’s conception of non-racialism is wholly anti-racist since it rejects the justice of the dubious right of conquest upon which liberal non-racialism/multi-racialism is founded. For Sobukwe a condition of the exercise of freedom is the restoration of South Africa’s status as an African country. In their critique of the ANC’s own multi-racialism (as expressed through the Congress Movement’s Freedom Charter) the Africanists for example write: “These leaders consider South Africa and its wealth to belong to all who live in it, the alien dispossessors and the indigenous dispossessed, the alien robbers and their indigenous victims. They regard as equals the foreign master and his indigenous slave, the white exploiter and the African exploited, the foreign oppressor and the indigenous oppressed. They regard as brothers the subject Africans and their European overlords. They are too incredibly naive and too fantastically unrealistic to see that the interests of the subject peoples who are criminally oppressed, ruthlessly exploited and inhumanly degraded, are in sharp conflict and in pointed contradiction with those of the white ruling class” 39 . Sobukwe continues describing the situation of White domination in the ANC by writing “the essentials of white domination is retained, even though its frills and trappings may be ripped off. This attitude has been labelled MULTIRACIALISM by their white masters. They have even boldly suggested that being a multiracialist is a virtue!”.40 Both Ngubane (1963) and Soske41 argue that the ANC at some stage very openly called its position multi-racialist and gradually changed the name of their doctrine to non-racialism after heavy Africanist critique but having not changed the content of its approach to race. For Sobukwe and the Pan-Africanists, freedom for the conquered people of South Africa is insignificant and incomplete if it turns a blind eye to the African dimension of colonial

38 39 40 41

Soske (2014:31). Sobukwe (1978:42). Sobukwe (1978:43). Soske (2014:32) writes “The pairing of non-racial democracy and multi-racial society captured the two contradictory strands of the Freedom Charter’s ideology quite aptly. The ANC’s broad nationalism envisioned a diverse, African country in which the law would be applied without regard to race, gender, or belief. If anything, the expression of “non-racial democracy” narrowed the complexity of this vision by privileging race over gender and religion. The terminological shift within the Congress Alliance was uneven and chaotic. In late 1960, New Age and Fighting Talk were still releasing statements that called for a “multiracial democracy.” The Congress Alliance appears to have adopted the language of “non-racial democracy” reactively and without a thorough discussion of its implications. The ANC simply replaced one word with another”.

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conquest and its enduring consequences. This is why, he for example, writes: “the question is: After freedom, then what? The ready answer of white ruling minorities is: chaos and a reversion to barbarism and savagery. The ready answer of all Pan-Africanists and this includes all genuine nationalist organisations on the continent – is, the creation of a United States of Africa and the advent of a new era of freedom, creative production and abundance” 42. With this Sobukwe aligns the PAC with the ethical political imperative for the unification of Africa championed beyond doubt by Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and the Senegalese savant, Cheikh Anta Diop. The discussion over the quest for African unity is beyond the scope of this study. Suffice it to state, however, that African unity is an ethical and political imperative that is long overdue in terms of its actual and practical realisation. It is so then that non-racialism as a social and political reality for Sobukwe is an ideal of a time to come when all became part of the African tree. To put it in more literal terms, he writes: “We aim, politically, at government of the Africans by the Africans for Africans, with everybody who owes his only loyalty to Africa and who is prepared to accept the democratic rule of an African majority being regarded as an African. We guarantee no minority rights, because we think concerning individuals, not groups”.43 It is interesting that Act 108 of 1996 establishing the Republic of South Africa does make provision for group rights. In reality the provision is an endorsement of “the right to be different”; a euphemism for keeping the “uncivilised” outside the laager of “civilisation”. This underlines the ethical and political imperative to continue to struggle towards a postconquest South Africa. THE AFRICAN CARPENTER - SOBUKWE’S TREE BECOMES A TABLE: BIKO’S BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS CRITIQUE OF NON-RACIALISM We knew he had no right no right to be there; we wanted to remove him from our table, strip the table of all the trappings put on by him decorate it in true African style, settle down and then ask him to join us if he liked. Steve Bantu Biko, White Racism and Black Consciousness (2004: 75). Introduction We already discussed in Chapter 3 that the PAC along with other political organisations was banned very soon after its birth. It is known also that Sobukwe was extraordinarily imprisoned and banned. Although very little of his own words survive either in the form of

42 43

Sobukwe (1978:26). Sobukwe (1978:20).

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writing or recorded speech, the Africanist cause did not die with either his banning or that of the PAC. In the 1970s there came to rise the BCM. It developed and furthered the Africanist cause under different political conditions. Our identification of the BCM with Africanism will become clear in the following discussion. Amongst the prominent reasons in support of this judgment, discussed above under the title, “the Azanian school” is the insistence by the PAC and the BCM on the restoration of sovereign title to South Africa (which they both called Azania) to the indigenous conquered people (the Africans in the case of the PAC & the Blacks in the case of the BCM). In this section we will attempt to present a brief reconstruction of the Black Consciousness criticism of liberal nonracialism by treating the writings of one of its important theoreticians, namely, Steve Bantu Biko. Biko’s Conception of Racism Biko understood racism as a fundamentally structural rather than interpersonal phenomenon, in which oppressors (who belong to this class by virtue of the privilege of race, identified inter alia by White skin colour) are endowed with power over of the lives of the oppressed (who also belong to this class by virtue of the burden of race, identified inter alia by Black skin colour). He writes: “those who know define racism as discrimination by a group against another group for the purposes of subjugation or maintaining subjugation. […] one cannot be racist unless one has the power to subjugate.44 With regard to this understanding More observes that Biko shared this view with numerous other anti-racists including Stokley Carmichael, Manning Marable and Ambalavaner Sivanandan.45 We now turn our attention to the relationship between Black Consciousness and nonracialism. Some understand Black Consciousness because of its anti-racist orientation to be incompatible even antithetical to non-racialism. It is, however, the argument of the following sections of this chapter that this view has its basis in the conflation of Africanist or liberatory non-racialism with liberal non-racialism. Black Consciousness: Anti-Racist Racialism or Non-Racial Anti-Racism? As long as the Black man is amongst his own, he will have no occasion except through minor internal conflicts to experience his being through others […] For not only must the Black man be Black, he must be Black concerning the White man – Frantz Fanon, The Fact of Blackness, (1967: 82).

44 45

Biko (2004:27). More (2008:51).

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In the attempt to give a concise definition of Black Consciousness, More turns to the Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka who defines it thus: (1) a Black man’s (sic) awareness that the world is infested with an anti Black social reality, (2) the Black man’s recognition of himself as Black, as a negro and to be proud of the fact, (3) the Black man’s urge to explain away or annihilate this social reality and (4) move towards the creation of a new reality, a fair social reality as a condition for universal humanism.46 It is the case with Fanon (see epigraph above) that the Black is brought into being as itself through its encounter and relation with the White man. That is to say, if there were no White people, there would be no Black people – the descriptor itself is a nominal contingent of the racial relationship that comes about as result of White Supremacy. For Biko too Black Consciousness comes into being resulting a world structured by or infested with anti-Black or White racist reality. The White supremacist reality is in fact the systematic erection of a fictitious ontological hierarchy in which Whites are at the zenith of human Being and “nonWhite” people at the nadir. In terms of Apartheid’s specific ordering the White man was followed on this chain of being by the Indian and so-called Coloured respectively with the African at the very bottom. Black Consciousness understood the stratification of the “nonWhites” as a strategy designed to divide these differentially inferiorised Blacks to better dominate them. This speaks to the psychological dimension of Black Consciousness as identification which leads Biko to argue in The Definition of Black Consciousness that “being Black is not a matter of pigmentation (that is darkness as in colour Black), being Black is a reflection of mental attitude”.47 Merely by describing oneself as Black, he argues, one has already begun the fight against all forces that seek to stamp one as a subservient being. By so doing, one is already along the journey towards emancipation. This is because by the logic of White Supremacy the metaphoric identity of Blackness is supposed to embody the lowest form of human-being, a negative of human value: the lack of moral value, civilisation, beauty and intelligence. We suggest that Black is metaphoric because the great majority of people described as such by the White power structure was really in colour terms much closer to brown in the same way that Whiteness itself operated as a metaphor describing those who are empirically speaking much closer to pink in terms of colour. In any case, provided that the descriptor Black was supposed to describe the worst possible implications of the fictitious ontological hierarchy, the oppressed people would be expected resulting their oppression (and indeed this was often the case) to deny their Blackness and vindicate some relation to the Whiteness, either in the invocation of White heritage or through the brandishing of some or

46 47

Henry Odera Oruka in More, (2008:51). Biko (2004:22).

134

other quality or skill associated with Whiteness. If this is understood, the result is that the identification of oneself as Black is a wholesale rejection of this pigmentocracy; it is a refusal to play the game of ontological gradation through the embracing of the identity of “the worst that one could possibly be” and appropriating this with an altogether new significance, as a marker of human value and freedom from racial bondage He argues that there exists a conceptual distinction between “non-whites” and Blacks, that it is insufficient merely to not be White to be Black. “If one’s aspiration is to be White”48 but their pigmentation prevents one from being White, such a person is a non-White. This describes those who continue to indulge and therefore remain subjected by the fallacious logic of pigmentocracy. To be Black then is an affirmation that does not come automatically but through the gaining of consciousness about the evil game of White Supremacy and overcoming and rejecting it thereby claiming one’s own liberation from it. Although Blackness itself and the Black Consciousness that comes about and is possible only because of White Supremacy – Biko49 writes that “Black Consciousness would be irrelevant in an egalitarian and non-exploitative society”. Black Consciousness is necessary for the resistance of and destruction of White Supremacy. To this end Biko writes: “For liberals the thesis is Apartheid, the antithesis is non-racialism, but the synthesis is very feebly defined. They want to tell Blacks that they see integration as the ideal solution. Black Consciousness defines the situation differently. The thesis is a strong White racism and therefore the anti-thesis must, ipso facto be a strong solidarity amongst Blacks on whom this White racism seeks to prey”50. He concludes: “Out of these two situations we can hope to reach some kind of balance- a true humanity where power politics will have no place”.51 French Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre his writing concerning Negritude, a philosophical predecessor of BC from which it drew great inspiration describes it as antiracist racism.52 He does so to try to communicate its use of race as an organising principle in order to bring about the end of racism. More argues, however, (following Appiah’s conceptualisation) that a more suitable description for Sartre’s analysis would be anti-racist racialism since while recognising race as an organising principle in the resistance of racism, BC never itself aspired towards the power to subjugate anyone but precisely to bring the world into harmony with the truth that all human beings are equal in their humanity. To this Sartre himself concedes:

48 49 50 51 52

Biko (2004:22). Ibid,7. Ibid,99. Ibid. Sartre(1988:326).

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“[The Negro] wishes in no way to dominate the world: he desires the abolition of all kinds of ethnic privileges; he asserts his solidarity with the oppressed of every colour”.53 It is precisely in Black Consciousness’ end to bring about an egalitarian society without respect to racial power politics that it can be considered to be non-racialist. Black Consciousness is non-racialist then in at least two senses: a. In the first sense, in that it is not-racialist and is anti-pigmentocratic. Within the context of Apartheid South Africa during the time when Biko wrote, The Population Registration Act No 30 of 1950 which converted race from an ontological fiction to a juridical fact provided that there were four Races in South Africa, namely “Native, Coloured, Indian and White”. Black Consciousness then in its strategic assembly of Blackness as a political construct against the ontological-hierarchical fiction juridicised by Apartheid, was non-racial in its unification of “Africans”, “Coloureds” and Indians into a single political entity. In terms of Black Consciousness, White racism was the basic problem which itself strategically stratified the oppressed into sub-categories in order to better oppress and dominate them and protect itself. It is in order to resist White Supremacy, BC deliberately and self-determinately transcended and invalidated the categories of race as constructed by White Supremacy. b.

In the second sense, Black Consciousness was a Utopian non-racialism. Its ultimate objective was a non-racial egalitarian society. In reply to a European interviewer asking whether Biko saw a society in which White and Black could live amicably and on equal terms, Biko responded that “[…] we don’t believe, for instance, in the so-called guarantees for minority rights, because guaranteeing minority rights implies recognition of portions of the community on a race basis. We believe that in our country there shall be no minority and there shall be no majority, just the people. And those people will have the same political rights before the law. So, in a sense it shall be a completely non-racial egalitarian society”.54

The clue to Biko’s critique of liberal non-racialism lies in precisely the Utopian nature of his own version, in the sense that non-racialism for Biko like Sobukwe describes a time to come, after the destruction of White Supremacy. The liberal conception instead describes not only something which is already possible (through organisations with racially “mixed” populations, for example. The liberals considered non-racialism even a supposed method of bringing that time about, as a method of resistance since Apartheid forebode “mixed” organisations. The liberal version then turns out, upon careful examination, to be a pretension to non-racialism.

53 54

Sartre (1988:326). Biko (2004:170).

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In terms of the Black Consciousness and Africanist approaches this is not possible whilst White Supremacy prevails. Black Consciousness as Anti-“non-racialist” Anti-Racism There is a sense in Biko’s writing in terms of which non-racialism and integration are, while not synonymous, nevertheless deeply interrelated and implicative of each other. This is so perhaps because the “non-racialism” of the “liberals” assumes as one of its procedures or strategies racially integrated political organisation. We use inverted commas to describe non-racialism in relation to liberals following Biko’s differential employment of this convention in the famous essay in which he provides his most extensive and sustained critique on White liberals Black Souls White Masks. We now turn to examine some of Biko’s thought in the form quotations from his writing and interviews related to liberals and “non-racialism”. The quotations are emboldened for differentiating them from their interpretation and discussion. A. The basic problem in South Africa has been analysed by the liberal whites as being Apartheid […] For liberals the thesis is Apartheid, the antithesis non-racialism but the synthesis very feebly defined. They want to tell Blacks that they see integration as the ideal solution… Black Consciousness defines the situation differently. The thesis is in fact a strong white racism and therefore, the anti-thesis to this must ipso facto, be a strong solidarity amongst Blacks on whom this white racism seeks to prey (Biko, 2004:99). One of the characteristics that distinguish Black Consciousness’ Utopian or liberatory nonracialism from liberal non-racialism is precisely that Black Consciousness recognises white racism, White Supremacy rather than simply Apartheid as its problem. This is to say that White Supremacy has a broader reach, history and scope than Apartheid. Biko’s insight in the above quote is precisely that while liberal non-racialism may very well be able to end Apartheid or defy its bizarre rules, it does not necessarily also end White Supremacy or even contribute towards such an end. One has got to look no further for evidence than inside socalled integrated political organisations for a glimpse of this.55

55

This point is relevant historically when one looks at the ideological and policy record of the ANC which claims the so-called Freedom Charter (Mokoena and Seloane 2015) and the takes pride in helping bring about South Africa’s White Supremacist “post-apartheid” constitution. One can also see the recent events in South Africa’s self-professed custodian of liberalism the Democratic Alliance in which an MP in 2015 wrote nostalgically on social media about the days of PW Botha’s reign (she was suspended and reinstated). In 2016 a member of the same party described South African Blacks as monkeys bringing dirt to the otherwise pristine beaches which whites know to stay away from during holidays on the count of the monkeys (disciplinary process is currently underway in relation to that matter).

137

A more pertinent example of the prophetic nature of this critique is present day South Africa which while it is “post-Apartheid”, is far from “post-racial”, post-White Supremacist or post-conquest. B. Nowhere is the arrogance of liberal ideology demonstrated so well as in their insistence that the problems of the country can only be solved by a bi-lateral approach involving both Black and white. This has, by and large come in all seriousness to be taken as the modus operandi in South Africa by all those who would like to change the status quo. Hence

the

multi-racial

political

organisations

and

the

‘non-racial’

student

organisations, all of which insist on integration not only as an end but as a means (Biko, 2004: 22). Biko’s use of inverted commas around non-racial suggests two things: Firstly, it communicates a doubt concerning the authenticity of the non-racialism concerned. This in turn secondly suggests that Biko does not reject non-racialism in toto but merely the liberal (mis)appropriation of it. This is confirmed by the quote from the interview above where he confirms a Utopian hope of egalitarian non-racialism (as an end) very different from the liberal version of non-racialism (as a means). The fact that Biko earlier uses multi-racialism in reference to political organisations with no inversion suggests that he does not problematise this use but seemingly recognises it as an accurate description of the phenomenon. The clue for Biko’s criticism of liberal “non-racialism” lies in his critique of integration which cannot be in the interest of the indigenous conquered people unless and until White Supremacy has been destroyed. Integration in a White Supremacist world is for Biko really no more than the prevention of true, Utopian or liberatory non-racialism itself; a precondition to integration. The liberal approach and the liberatory (Africanist/Black Consciousness) approach are further distinguished by the different versions of integration they produce. Biko discusses this in an interview. Concerning liberal integration, he submits that: “If by integration you understand a breakthrough into white society by Blacks, an assimilation and acceptance into an already established set of norms and code of behaviour set-up and maintained by Whites, then YES I am against it. I am against the superior-inferior White-Black stratification that makes the White a perpetual teacher and the Black a perpetual pupil (and a poor one at that). I am against the intellectual arrogance of White people that makes them believe that White leadership is a sine qua non in this country and that Whites are divinely appointed pace-setters in progress. I

138

am against the fact that a settler minority should impose a system of values on an indigenous people”.56 Biko is against “integration” as the outcome of “assimilation” into the world based on values imposed by “a settler minority” on “an indigenous people”. For him this kind of “integration” is literally, epistemicide. It is an injustice that ought to be challenged. He distinguishes the liberatory (Black Consciousness) or utopian non-racialism when he states that:

If on the other hand, by integration you mean there shall be free participation by all members of a society, catering for the full expression of self in a freely changing society as determined by the will of the people, then I am with you. For one cannot escape that the culture shared by the majority group in any given society must ultimately determine the broad direction taken by the joint culture of that society. This need not cramp the style of those who feel differently but on the whole, a country in Africa in which the majority of people are African must inevitably exhibit African values and be truly African in style.57 This is precisely what distinguishes the liberatory conception of Non-Racialism from the liberal approach. It does not produce amorphous, anonymous values but African ones. Here it appears Biko echoes Sobukwe quite directly. Here also the idea that Biko is, in fact, an Africanist. Like the Africanists before him, he stands for ‘justice against epistemicide’, to borrow from the title of Boaventura’s book. Black consciousness operates at the level of resistance against White Supremacy and its negation, at the level of what we referred to earlier as “the de-structive”. When it comes to the re-constructive dimension of Biko’s thought, of imagining what kind of society will come after the destruction of White Supremacy, his answer is undoubtedly a polity which has the basis of its values in African culture and that will be reunited with the rest of the continent from which it has been unduly dislocated. This society will also, in terms of his thought, as with Lembede and Sobukwe before him have its basis in African culture.58 Whereas David Everatt in his 2009 Study of non-racialism distinguishes non-racialism from multi-racialism by suggesting that multi-racialism existed in the Congress movement where racially separated political bodies cooperated from within the auspices of their separate bodies, “non-racialism” on the other hand, he reserves for the description of parties such as the Liberal Party and SACP who admitted membership “regardless of race”. What the Africanist conception of non-racialism shows us is that “non-racialism” is not possible to

56 57 58

Biko (2004: 26). Biko(2004: 26). Soske (2014:24).

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practice in a White Supremacist society. Those who hold the ideal are required to first bring an end to White Supremacy. The achievement of this goal is the possibility condition for nonracialism. It nevertheless appears that the liberal approach won the day in South Africa as can be seen in the supposedly non-racial constitutional order. CONCLUSION We have provided the historical context in which the trend of liberalism in South Africa has been, right from the beginning, in contrast and contention with the Africanist perspective regarding: (1) the primary ethical political problem in South Africa; (2) “non-racialism” conceived as an already living reality and a mean means to an end; (3) integration as an assimilative strategy to endorse and perpetuate epistemicide; (4) the continental dimension of the Africanist vision of freedom embracing African unity as an ethical-political imperative. Numbers (1), (2) and (3) involved appeal to various figures on both sides of the divide, for example, Sobukwe, Ngubane and Biko, as well as Hoernlé, Lipton and Everett. The enduring point in the discussion is that the ethical imperative to annul the so-called right of conquest and reverse all its adverse consequences is yet to become a reality. It is the living challenge of contemporary South Africa.

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INDEX

A Africa 2, 3, 11, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 125, 131, 132, 134, 137, 138, 140, 149, 150, 151, 154, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 182, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203 African American 86, 153, 191 African people 4, 67, 68, 69, 81, 82, 84, 106, 111, 166, 170, 173 African Philosophy 26, 31, 32, 36, 40, 56, 57, 61, 62, 63, 66, 73, 83, 86, 87, 88, 116, 192, 193, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 203 Africanism 3, 82, 83, 84, 85, 166, 167, 177 Africanist 3, 6, 23, 24, 72, 82, 83, 84, 88, 109, 111, 113, 119, 156, 166, 169, 174, 176, 177, 178, 183, 185, 186, 187, 201 Africans 3, 20, 31, 34, 35, 37, 48, 49, 58, 93, 94, 95, 107, 110, 158, 166, 167, 168, 172, 174, 175, 177, 178, 182, 190 Afrikaner 19, 25, 29, 39, 40, 41, 43, 49, 62, 64, 93, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 114, 116, 117, 132, 158, 159, 190, 193, 196, 197, 202 Alexander 95, 105, 106, 108, 109, 192, 196 Analytic philosophy 12, 30, 120 ANC 47, 159, 161, 173, 175, 176, 184 Anti-racialism 28 Apartheid 25, 38, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 62, 68, 86, 93, 112, 116, 117, 125, 137, 146, 148, 160, 163, 165, 182, 189, 191, 196, 197, 202, 203 Appiah 1, 31, 132, 142, 143, 144, 145, 148, 149, 153, 181, 189 Azania 72, 81, 88, 164, 165, 166, 178, 201 Azanian 72, 163, 178 B Bantu 3, 7, 25, 49, 71, 73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 85, 87, 108, 132, 154, 170, 178, 196, 199 BCM 6, 48, 165, 177 Being 65, 133, 135, 179, 193 Biko 3, 4, 7, 18, 20, 24, 25, 55, 83, 85, 94, 112, 137, 153, 154, 160, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 190, 196

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Black Consciousness 6, 72, 83, 149, 166, 169, 178, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 201 Blackness 62, 179, 196 Blacks 27, 48, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 150, 151, 166, 169, 178 Boers 97, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108 Book 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 12, 22, 33, 42, 56, 89, 93, 120, 126, 186 British 23, 33, 39, 44, 55, 93, 95, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 123, 126, 128, 130, 131, 132, 151, 162, 168 C Charles Mills 31 Christian 41 Christianity 98, 116, 117, 197, 202 Civilisation 172 Colonialism 116, 197 Colonisation 92 Coloured 60, 146, 166, 173, 179 Congress 6, 72, 81, 82, 88, 161, 173, 174, 175, 176, 187, 201 Conquest 107, 114, 190 Constitution 86, 193, 194, 198, 199 Culture 61, 62, 111, 150, 153, 189, 192, 198 D Democracy 190 E English 12, 20, 29, 33, 36, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 54, 62, 63, 69, 75, 76, 77, 85, 90, 93, 96, 98, 100, 120, 123, 126, 128, 129, 132, 158, 160 Enlightenment 32, 51, 53, 61 Enrique Dussel 15 Equality 12, 14, 19, 28, 42, 100 Ethical 85, 86, 190 Ethics 31, 36, 55, 87, 154, 196, 199 F Fanon 18, 137, 179, 191 G Gadamer 15, 16, 25, 53, 191, 192 Gordon 30, 61, 148, 153, 192 H Hegel 30 Heidegger 15, 16, 68, 128, 193 Hermeneutic 153, 191

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Hermeneutics 14, 15, 16, 23, 60, 66, 67, 68, 119, 123, 156 Hermeneutics 25, 26, 54, 63, 88, 153, 191, 192, 198, 200 Historicity 148 History 1, 11, 25, 26, 33, 38, 62, 90, 106, 109, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 121, 122, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 200, 201, 202, 203 Humanity 18, 19, 20, 22, 37, 60, 77, 78, 80, 81, 83, 137, 140, 150, 160, 181 Humble 4 Hume 30, 44, 121, 126 I Indian 60, 69, 168, 173, 179, 182 Indigenous 2, 3, 4, 11, 16, 18, 19, 23, 28, 29, 34, 35, 39, 48, 54, 55, 57, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 79, 81, 82, 85, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 97, 106, 107, 110, 111, 113, 139, 140, 149, 150, 151, 157, 158, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 175, 178, 185, 186 Indigenous 33, 36, 201 Isaac La Peyre 19 J Justice 33, 41, 155, 203 K Kant 30, 43 Ki-Zerbo 62, 110, 114, 115, 190, 191, 194 L Law 87, 193 Legal 61 Liberal 45, 62, 114, 115, 117, 154, 155, 157, 159, 160, 190, 193, 194, 200, 203 Liberalism 19, 29, 45, 47, 62, 88, 106, 114, 115, 116, 120, 126, 129, 130, 154, 156, 157, 190, 193, 194, 195, 196, 200, 201, 203 Liberation 25, 61, 72, 80, 86, 153, 191 M Mafeje 36 Magubane 20, 25, 36, 92, 93, 95, 106, 107, 110, 115, 116, 154, 195 Mill 126 Mills 30, 31, 32, 62, 130, 154, 161, 162, 196 Mogobe 2, 5, 74, 87 Moodie 19, 25, 42, 62, 116, 196 More 18, 29, 31, 32, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 49, 62, 69, 79, 103, 125, 137, 149, 154, 178, 179, 181, 196, 197 Mudimbe 36, 38, 63, 92, 116, 197 Multi-Racialism 173 N

154

Nation 115, 194 Native 45, 48, 62, 81, 154, 159, 162, 193 Ngubane 25, 80, 86, 93, 116, 170, 173, 176, 187, 197 Nkrumah 15, 26, 84, 176, 197 Non-Racialism 3, 88, 169, 186, 191, 201 O Odera Oruka 83, 179 Okere 26, 66, 84, 86, 197 Outlaw 148, 155, 198 Ownership 4, 99, 160 Oyewumi 36, 167 P PAC 6, 88, 159, 161, 165, 168, 175, 176, 177 Philosophy 7, 15, 25, 26, 30, 31, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 49, 52, 55, 56, 61, 62, 63, 67, 73, 74, 86, 87, 88, 116, 117, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 130, 132, 153, 154, 155, 189, 190, 191, 192, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203 Political 32, 55, 62, 81, 93, 117, 154, 157, 189, 195, 202 Politics 25, 32, 46, 61, 115, 116, 117, 124, 126, 130, 153, 154, 189, 191, 194, 195, 196, 197, 202 Problem 2, 20, 22, 28, 31, 49, 50, 52, 54, 55, 92, 128, 132, 156, 161, 163, 165, 182, 184, 187 Progressive Federal Party 157 Progressive Party 48, 117, 157, 202 Purpose 1, 2, 4, 12, 13, 18, 21, 22, 34, 38, 72, 74, 89, 94, 137, 138, 156, 157, 167 R Race 1, 25, 30, 32, 51, 61, 62, 77, 93, 115, 116, 117, 133, 137, 141, 144, 145, 148, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 189, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 198, 199, 201, 202 Racialism 142, 144, 179 Racism 1, 11, 12, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 37, 44, 48, 49, 50, 55, 69, 79, 80, 81, 85, 89, 94, 105, 108, 113, 119, 125, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 172, 178, 181, 182, 184, 192, 198 Racism 18, 25, 30, 31, 49, 61, 86, 137, 139, 141, 144, 145, 153, 154, 167, 178, 179, 183, 189, 190, 191, 193, 195, 196 Racist 93, 133, 134, 141, 143, 150, 153, 179, 192 Radical 116, 117, 200, 202 Ramose 2, 3, 5, 14, 15, 19, 26, 30, 33, 34, 44, 56, 63, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 84, 87, 116, 122, 149, 155, 162, 163, 164, 199, 200 Resistance 12, 14, 16, 18, 46, 68, 72, 73, 81, 82, 83, 85, 111, 131, 167, 168, 181, 183, 186

155

S Sefako Makgatho 2 Serequeberhan 16, 26, 30, 31, 35, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 73, 84, 87, 88, 122, 200 Settlement 4, 27, 58, 99, 102, 161, 166 Shaka Zulu 81 Sobukwe 1, 3, 7, 20, 24, 83, 84, 85, 88, 93, 94, 149, 161, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 183, 186, 187, 201 Social 45, 115, 125, 153, 154, 191, 192, 193, 194 South Africa 2, 8, 9, 27, 33, 89, 131 South African 3, 11, 12, 18, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 39, 40, 44, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 55, 56, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 69, 71, 74, 81, 82, 86, 87, 92, 93, 95, 97, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 123, 132, 141, 148, 154, 156, 157, 158, 160, 163, 164, 165, 172, 173, 184, 190, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 201, 202 Stratification 203 Supremacy 11, 12, 22, 27, 32, 139, 151, 159, 163, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 174, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187 System 63 T Teaching 20, 31, 33, 36, 40, 41, 50, 51, 52, 97, 112 Theory 41, 117, 127, 133, 154, 193, 202, 203 Thomas Hardy 2 Tradition 3, 15, 19, 23, 29, 30, 40, 44, 47, 52, 53, 57, 69, 106, 107, 108, 120, 121, 123, 126, 127, 129, 132, 137, 149, 157, 158, 161 Transformation 62, 194 Treeness 2, 3 Truth 2, 18, 22, 29, 50, 52, 53, 66, 68, 69, 75, 81, 162, 181, 199 U Ubuntu 23, 26, 60, 61, 63, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 88, 116, 155, 170, 194, 195, 199, 200 W War 28, 43, 44, 59, 96, 97, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 131, 163 West 16, 36, 66, 106 Western 11, 27, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 52, 53, 56, 58, 63, 65, 66, 68, 84, 112, 121, 123, 137, 158, 159, 160, 162, 167, 192, 198 White 11, 12, 22, 27, 32, 35, 48, 51, 54, 58, 71, 79, 80, 83, 98, 109, 110, 111, 113, 135, 138, 139, 140, 144, 146, 147, 150, 151, 159, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 174, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 191, 196 Whiteness 22, 31, 49, 138, 147, 150, 167

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Whites 139, 140, 141, 161, 166, 171 Wiredu 62, 196 Z Zimbabwe 74, 116, 162, 199 Zulu 72, 73, 102, 103, 169

157