The Fabric of Dissent: Public Intellectuals in South Africa 9781928246619

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
Acronyms and abbreviations
1 Intellectual liberation: Public intellectuals in South Africa
Part 1: Political Public Intellectuals
Introduction
2 Charlotte Maxeke: Mother of black freedom in South Africa
3 Pixley ka Isaka Seme: African unity against racism
4 Albert Luthuli: The prototypical leader
5 Dora Tamana: ‘We have opened the way for you’
6 Bram Fischer: A defiant Afrikaner
7 Govan Mbeki: What role for the peasants?
8 Walter Sisulu: Isitwalandwe/Seaparankoe
9 Oliver Tambo: The glue that holds us together
10 Ruth First: Iconic political journalist
11 Nelson Mandela: ‘The Troublemaker’
12 Joe Slovo: Public enemy number one
13 George Bizos: A passion for justice
14 Ben Turok: An exiled democrat
15 Phyllis Naidoo: Yearning for justice
16 Ahmed Kathrada: A life committed to the struggle
17 Arthur Chaskalson: Leading the way
18 Albie Sachs: A constitutional revolutionary
19 A.P. Mda: The Africanist giant
20 Robert Sobukwe: Founding president
21 Cissie Gool: The Joan of Arc of District Six
22 Monty Naicker: Passive resister
23 Bishop Trevor Huddleston: Naught for your comfort
24 Beyers Naudé: The compassionate dissident Afrikaner
25 Helen Suzman: A lone voice for liberty
Part 2: Cultural Public Intellectuals
Introduction
26 Olive Schreiner: The story of an African giant
27 Alan Paton: Weeping for the beloved country
28 Es’kia Mphahlele: ‘Afrikan humanness and Afrikan becoming’
29 Nadine Gordimer: Writer with a conscience
30 André Brink: Controversial author
31 Eugène Marais: Author and naturalist
32 N.P. van Wyk Louw: Poet and intellectual
33 James Matthews: ‘Black voices shout!’
34 Mazisi Kunene: Africa’s Poet Laureate
35 Ingrid Jonker: A bohemian figure
36 Keorapetse Kgositsile: Revolutionary Poet Laureate
37 Breyten Breytenbach: Word nomad and revolutionary spirit
38 Athol Fugard: Prophet not without honour
39 John Kani: Titan of South African theatre
40 Miriam Makeba: Giving voice to the voiceless
41 Hugh Masekela: Still grazing our hearts
42 Lady Skollie: ‘Confronting society’s ills’
43 Pieter-Dirk Uys: ‘Biting critique’
44 Daniel Friedman: ‘Evoking white fragility’
45 Loyiso Gola: ‘Question everything’
46 Trevor Noah: Breaking down boundaries
Part 3: Academic Public Intellectuals
Introduction
47 Bernard Magubane: ‘Analysing the colonial situation’
48 Archie Mafeje: An Afrocentric social science?
49 David Webster: A life cut short
50 Raymond Suttner: Analysing the liberation struggle
51 Johan Degenaar: The Socrates of Stellenbosch
52 Phillip Tobias: ‘Humanity’s past and future’
53 Fatima Meer: Promoting justice through non-violence
54 Rick Turner: ‘Through the eye of the needle’
55 Eddie Webster: Advancing democracy through labour activism
56 Harold Wolpe: The revisionist Marxist
57 Jakes Gerwel: A university of the left
58 Olive Shisana: Change through science
59 Malegapuru Makgoba: An agent of transformation
60 Naledi Pandor: A life of continuous learning
Part 4: Organic Public Intellectuals
Introduction
61 Solomon Plaatje: Confronting native life in South Africa
62 Benjamin Pogrund: White witness of township life
63 Nat Nakasa: A courageous journalist
64 Percy Qoboza: Armed with a pen
65 Zapiro: The sword of satire
66 Johan Heyns: Prophet of critical solidarity
67 Richard Goldstone: Fine balancer of the scales
68 Yvonne Mokgoro: A woman of substance
69 Sandile Ngcobo: Empowering the people
70 Neville Alexander: Champion of multilingualism
71 Pallo Jordan: ‘Unapologetic moral guardian’
72 Jeremy Cronin: Tales of struggle
73 Jabulani ‘Mzala’ Nxumalo: Revolutionary intellectual
74 Joel Netshitenzhe : An economic policy colossus
75 Elinor Sisulu: Feminist and activist
76 Zackie Achmat: Social movements activist
77 Kumi Naidoo: The global activist
References
Picture credits
Contributors
Index

Citation preview



THE FABRIC OF DISSENT Public intellectuals in South Africa

Edited by Vasu Reddy, Narnia Bohler-Muller, Gregory Houston, Maxi Schoeman and Heather Thuynsma

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public Intellectuals in South Africa

Published by BestRed, an imprint of HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa www.bestred.co.za First published 2020 ISBN (soft cover) 978-1-928246-40-4 © 2020 Human Sciences Research Council The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Human Sciences Research Council (the Council) or indicate that the Council endorses the views of the authors. In quoting from this publication, readers are advised to attribute the source of the information to the individual author concerned and not to the Council. The publishers have no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this book and do not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Copy-edited by Inga Norenius Typeset by Firelight Studio Cover design by Lauren Gormley Cover photo credits, see pp. 463 and 464 in bold Printed by [name of printer, city, country] Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver Tel: +27 (021) 701 4477; Fax Local: (021) 701 7302; Fax International: 0927865242139 www.blueweaver.co.za Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by Eurospan Distribution Services (EDS) Tel: +44 (0) 17 6760 4972; Fax: +44 (0) 17 6760 1640 www.eurospanbookstore.com Distributed in North America by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Tel: +1 303-444-6684; Fax: 303-444-0824; Email: [email protected] www.rienner.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from the copyright owner. To copy any part of this publication, you may contact DALRO for information and copyright clearance. Tel: 086 12 DALRO (or 086 12 3256 from within South Africa); +27 (0)11 712-8000 Fax: +27 (0)11 403-9094 Postal Address: P O Box 31627, Braamfontein, 2017, South Africa www.dalro.co.za Any unauthorised copying could lead to civil liability and/or criminal sanctions. Suggested citation: Reddy, Bohler-Muller, Houston et al. (Eds) (2020) The fabric of dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa. Cape Town: BestRed

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Contents Acknowledgements

vii

Acronyms and abbreviations

viii

1

Intellectual liberation: Public intellectuals in South Africa  Vasu Reddy, Maxi Schoeman, Heather Thuynsma, Narnia Bohler-Muller and Gregory Houston

1

Part 1: Political Public Intellectuals Introduction  Gregory Houston

19

2

Charlotte Maxeke: Mother of black freedom in South Africa  Narnia Bohler-Muller

23

3

Pixley ka Isaka Seme: African unity against racism  Gregory Houston

28

4

Albert Luthuli: The prototypical leader  Ngqapheli Mchunu

33

5

Dora Tamana: ‘We have opened the way for you’  Gregory Houston

38

6

Bram Fischer: A defiant Afrikaner  Joleen Steyn Kotze

43

7

Govan Mbeki: What role for the peasants?  Gregory Houston

49

8

Walter Sisulu: Isitwalandwe/Seaparankoe  Gregory Houston

54

9

Oliver Tambo: The glue that holds us together  Gregory Houston

59

10 Ruth First: Iconic political journalist  Gavaza Maluleke

67

11 Nelson Mandela: ‘The Troublemaker’  Narnia Bohler-Muller

71

12 Joe Slovo: Public enemy number one  Gregory Houston

76

13 George Bizos: A passion for justice  Gary Pienaar

83

14 Ben Turok: An exiled democrat  Narnia Bohler-Muller

89

15 Phyllis Naidoo: Yearning for justice  Gregory Houston

95

16 Ahmed Kathrada: A life committed to the struggle  Gregory Houston

100

17 Arthur Chaskalson: Leading the way  Narnia Bohler-Muller

105

18 Albie Sachs: A constitutional revolutionary  Narnia Bohler-Muller

109

19 A.P. Mda: The Africanist giant  Gregory Houston

114

20 Robert Sobukwe: Founding president  Gregory Houston

119

21 Cissie Gool: The Joan of Arc of District Six  Gregory Houston

126

22 Monty Naicker: Passive resister  Gregory Houston

130

23 Bishop Trevor Huddleston: Naught for your comfort  Gary Pienaar

135

24 Beyers Naudé: The compassionate dissident Afrikaner  Gregory Houston

142

25 Helen Suzman: A lone voice for liberty  Gary Pienaar

147

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public Intellectuals in South Africa

Part 2: Cultural Public Intellectuals Introduction  Maxi Schoeman, Heather Thuynsma and Vasu Reddy

155

26 Olive Schreiner: The story of an African giant  Michael Cosser

158

27 Alan Paton: Weeping for the beloved country  Gary Pienaar

163

28 Es’kia Mphahlele: ‘Afrikan humanness and Afrikan becoming’  Gavaza Maluleke

169

29 Nadine Gordimer: Writer with a conscience  Joleen Steyn Kotze

173

30 André Brink: Controversial author  Hester du Plessis

178

31 Eugène Marais: Author and naturalist  Hester du Plessis

182

32 N.P. van Wyk Louw: Poet and intellectual  Marie Wentzel

186

33 James Matthews: ‘Black voices shout!’  Gregory Houston

191

34 Mazisi Kunene: Africa’s Poet Laureate  Gregory Houston

195

35 Ingrid Jonker: A bohemian figure  Hester du Plessis

201

36 Keorapetse Kgositsile: Revolutionary Poet Laureate  Gregory Houston

206

37 Breyten Breytenbach: Word nomad and revolutionary spirit  Hester du Plessis

211

38 Athol Fugard: Prophet not without honour  Michael Cosser

215

39 John Kani: Titan of South African theatre  Gerard Hagg

219

40 Miriam Makeba: Giving voice to the voiceless  Samela Mtyingizane

224

41 Hugh Masekela: Still grazing our hearts  Namhla Ngqwala

230

42 Lady Skollie: ‘Confronting society’s ills’  Chris Broodryk

233

43 Pieter-Dirk Uys: ‘Biting critique’  Marié-Heleen Coetzee

236

44 Daniel Friedman: ‘Evoking white fragility’  Marié-Heleen Coetzee

242

45 Loyiso Gola: ‘Question everything’  Chris Broodryk

245

46 Trevor Noah: Breaking down boundaries  Samela Mtyingizane

248

Part 3: Academic Public Intellectuals Introduction  Gregory Houston

255

47 Bernard Magubane: ‘Analysing the colonial situation’  Gregory Houston

259

48 Archie Mafeje: An Afrocentric social science?  Gregory Houston

263

49 David Webster: A life cut short  Gregory Houston

267

50 Raymond Suttner: Analysing the liberation struggle  Gregory Houston

271

51 Johan Degenaar: The Socrates of Stellenbosch  Gerard Hagg

276

52 Phillip Tobias: ‘Humanity’s past and future’  Francois Gilles de Pelichy

281

53 Fatima Meer: Promoting justice through non-violence  Gregory Houston

286

54 Rick Turner: ‘Through the eye of the needle’  Gregory Houston

291

55 Eddie Webster: Advancing democracy through labour activism  Gregory Houston

296

56 Harold Wolpe: The revisionist Marxist  Gregory Houston

300

57 Jakes Gerwel: A university of the left  Gregory Houston

305

58 Olive Shisana: Change through science  Narnia Bohler-Muller

308

59 Malegapuru Makgoba: An agent of transformation  Francois Gilles de Pelichy

313

60 Naledi Pandor: A life of continuous learning  Thobekile Zikhali

318

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Part 4: Organic Public Intellectuals Introduction  Vasu Reddy

325

61 Solomon Plaatje: Confronting native life in South Africa  Gavaza Maluleke

328

62 Benjamin Pogrund: White witness of township life  Gregory Houston

334

63 Nat Nakasa: A courageous journalist  Gavaza Maluleke

338

64 Percy Qoboza: Armed with a pen  Austin Pinkerton

342

65 Zapiro: The sword of satire  Joleen Steyn Kotze

347

66 Johan Heyns: Prophet of critical solidarity  Gerard Hagg

352

67 Richard Goldstone: Fine balancer of the scales  Michael Cosser

357

68 Yvonne Mokgoro: A woman of substance  Narnia Bohler-Muller

363

69 Sandile Ngcobo: Empowering the people  Michael Cosser

367

70 Neville Alexander: Champion of multilingualism  Gregory Houston

373

71 Pallo Jordan: ‘Unapologetic moral guardian’  Gregory Houston

379

72 Jeremy Cronin: Tales of struggle  Gregory Houston

385

73 Jabulani ‘Mzala’ Nxumalo: Revolutionary intellectual  Gregory Houston

391

74 Joel Netshitenzhe : An economic policy colossus  Ngqapheli Mchunu

396

75 Elinor Sisulu: Feminist and activist  Thobekile Zikhali

400

76 Zackie Achmat: Social movements activist  Gregory Houston

404

77 Kumi Naidoo: The global activist  Gregory Houston

409

References

414

Picture credits

463

Contributors

465

Index

467

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Acknowledgements We thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (New York) for a generous grant titled The Public Intellectual in Times of Wicked Problems (Grant Number: G-31700710) that in part informs the work of this project. We owe a great debt of gratitude to Dr Saleem Badat, former programme director of International Higher Education and Strategic Projects at the Andrew W.  Mellon Foundation, for his intellectual and personal support. The task of producing this volume was a collaborative effort between the Faculty of Humanities, University of Pretoria and the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research programme at the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. We are indebted as editors to all our contributors and readers (including peer reviewers) who have helped to shape what has been an incredible journey in producing this volume. We also extend our appreciation to Dylan Coleman for his copy-editing of an earlier version of this manuscript.

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Acronyms and abbreviations AAC AAM ANC ANCYL Apdusa APO AU BBC BC BCM CI COD Codesa Codesria COPE Cosas Cosatu CPSA CR DA DPSC DRC EPU Fosa GCB GEAR HSRC IBR ICU IIE JC LPSA LRC

All-African Convention Anti-Apartheid Movement African National Congress ANC Youth League African Peoples Demoractic Union of South Africa African Peoples Organisation African Union British Broadcasting Corporation Black Consciousness Black Consciousness Movement Christian Institute Congress of Democrats Convention for a Democratic South Africa Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa Congress of the People Congress of South African Students Congress of South African Trade Unions Communist Party of South Africa Community of the Resurrection Democratic Alliance Detainees’ Parents’ Support Committee Dutch Reformed Church Education Policy Unit Friends of the Sick Association General Council of the Bar of South Africa Growth, Employment and Redistribution programme Human Sciences Research Council Institute of Black Research Industrial and Commercial Workers Union Institute of Industrial Education Junior Certificate Liberal Party of South Africa Legal Resources Centre

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LSE MK MP NEC Nepad NEUF NEUM NGK NIA NIC NLC NLF NLL NP NRC NRF Nusas PAC PFP PMC PP SACC SACP SACPC Sactu SADC Sadet SADF SAIC SANNC Saso SOYA SRC Swop TAC Tata TIC UCLA UCT UDF UN Unesco UP UWC Wits

London School of Economics Umkhonto weSizwe member of Parliament National Executive Committee New Partnership for Africa’s Development Non-European United Front New-European Unity Movement Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk Natal Indian Association Natal Indian Congress National Literacy Cooperation National Liberation Front National Liberation League Nationalist Party Native Representative Council National Research Foundation National Union of South African Students Pan Africanist Congress of Azania Progressive Federal Party Politico-Military Committee Progressive Party South African Council of Churches South African Communist Party South African Coloured People’s Congress South African Congress of Trade Unions Southern African Development Community South African Democracy Education Trust South African Defence Force South African Indian Congress South African Native National Congress South African Students Organisation Society of Young Africa Student Representative Council Society, Work and Development Institute Treatment Action Campaign Transvaal African Teachers Association Transvaal Indian Congress University of California, Los Angeles University of Cape Town United Democratic Front United Nations United Nation’s Education, Science and Culture Organisation United Party University of the Western Cape University of the Witwatersrand

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public Intellectuals in South Africa

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Intellectual liberation: Public intellectuals in South Africa

Intellectual liberation: Public intellectuals in South Africa Vasu Reddy, Maxi Schoeman, Heather Thuynsma, Narnia Bohler-Muller and Gregory Houston

Who is an intellectual? More importantly, who and what constitutes a public intellectual? And are such distinctions necessary given South Africa’s context and our international relationships? What constitutes the public good, and is the public intellectual a force for good?1 Most people incorrectly assume that intellectuals, as free-roving pursuers of knowledge, are developed only in universities and research councils. Such myths need to be debunked and a wider conception of the ‘public intellectual’ introduced; one that encompasses multiple meanings and includes those who work on behalf of the public and for the public good – because, as we hope to show in this volume, such ‘intellectuals’ pursue political freedom and social justice. ‘Intellectual liberation’ is a contested concept and is open to reflection. At its core, intellectual liberation is a type of freedom that allows people to think about or study whatever their curiosity leads them to. It is about clarifying, analysing and interpreting a social world and its often wicked problems. But we would argue that this is not where it ends. Intellectual liberation is also concerned with what we know and how this knowledge relates to human liberation. It urges us to rethink liberation as part of a new seeking, a striving at the level of both self and society: how do we relate to society and how does this help us better understand the world we make? Human liberation means being freed from the oppressive structures of society and their urge to control how we question and what we find. Intellectual freedom is thus conceptual, but it is also material, visceral and embodied. There is a multidimensional link between knowledge, human interest and human liberation that anchors intellectual liberation. It is about a form of questioning that asks both ‘what is out there?’ (being and what exists) and ‘how do  I know?’ (how we come to have knowledge about things). We may go even further and ask ‘why should  I know?’, which is a question of ethics.

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa

This chapter proposes some parameters and ideas to help the reader navigate the architecture of the argument in the book and suggestions we make about South African public intellectuals. Defining the public intellectual The idea of the ‘public intellectual’ is tendentious. It is inherently fraught, notoriously contested and perhaps highly overdetermined as a concept. Yet its very slipperiness as a term seems to direct its power, urging us to pin its meaning. We are not offering, in this volume, a pre-given and predetermined definition. Instead, we attempt to extrapolate some uses of the term and indicate attributes and potentials that create a sense of the concept and explain why we have assembled a volume that packages such a wide range of individuals under this umbrella term. The term was coined by C. Wright Mills in his 1958 The Causes of World War Three, where he challenged his peers ‘to act as political intellectuals…as public intellectuals’.2 In other words, the distinction between ‘intellectual’ and ‘public intellectual’ is not always clear-cut and at some level any intellectual activity implies an engagement with a public.3 The public intellectual, however, not only engages a public, but also lives ‘for rather than off ideas’,4 remains dissatisfied ‘with things as they are’,5 and ‘rise(s) above the partial preoccupation of one’s own profession or artistic genre and engages the global issues of truth, judgement and taste of the time’,6 in a bid to ‘create, distribute, and apply culture’.7 The intellectual is what Paul Berman describes as a ‘collision point’ since diverse audiences are able to read their own interpretations into the intellectual.8 Posner9 defines the term ‘public intellectual’ as ‘a person who, drawing on his intellectual resources, addresses a broad though educated public on issues with a political or ideological dimension’.10 This intellectual writes for the general public, or at least for a broader than merely academic or specialist audience, on ‘public affairs’ – on political matters in the broadest sense of that word.11 Jacoby does not provide a direct definition but generalises intellectuals as ‘those who cherish thinking and ideas’ and public intellectuals as ‘those who contribute to open discussions’.12 This then begs the question of what constitutes an ‘open discussion’. We will return to this question in our discussion of the shifting publics of the contemporary public intellectual. How the public intellectual is conceived in this volume builds on the founding perspectives of Gramsci13 and Edward Said.14 For us, the public intellectual is a figure who unmasks domination in the performance of a social role while displaying an intellectual allegiance to the service of a democratic humanism. In Gramscian terms, the concept of organic intellectuals establishes links to class and stresses their continuity with previous intellectual groups (see the introduction to Part 4). For Gramsci, the distinction between organic and traditional intellectuals should always be considered alongside the organic one. Gramsci15 sees the intellectual not as someone who is detached from the very thin fabric of public life, but rather as someone who strengthens the dimension of knowledge within it, and is the appropriate link between intellectual critique and those sections of the public that have not detached themselves from the consciousness boundaries of prevailing philosophies in society.16 Said,17 on the other hand, attempts to reconceptualise the word ‘intellectual’ to encompass something other than the more commonly

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Intellectual liberation: Public intellectuals in South Africa

used terms such as ‘expert’, ‘academic’, ‘professional’, ‘critic’; terms that have fallen into considerable disrepute. For Said, the intellectual is an individual with a specific public role in society that cannot be reduced simply to being a faceless professional, a competent member of a class just going about her/his business. The central fact for me is, I think, that the intellectual is an individual endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public. And this role has an edge to it, and cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments and cooperation, and whose raison d’être is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug. The intellectual does so on the basis of universal principles: that all human beings are entitled to expect decent standards of behaviour concerning freedom and justice from worldly powers or nations, and that deliberate or inadvertent violations of these standards need to be testified and fought against courageously.18 In other words, the intellectual is not someone dedicated purely to the life of the mind, or simply to the production of knowledge for ‘knowledge’s sake’, but rather to the service of broader social questions. For Said, three positions for public intellectuals are central – as an outsider/exile/marginal, as an ‘amateur’, and as a disturber of the status quo who speaks ‘truth to power’ and who displays a self-conscious siding with those who are underrepresented and disadvantaged.19 As Foucault expressed it several decades ago when he wrote about the intellectual against the backdrop of the 1968 student uprisings in France,20 the intellectual can be understood as someone who speaks ‘in the name of those who were forbidden to speak the truth’, while the universal intellectual ‘spoke the truth to those who had yet to see it’. 21 Furthermore, for Said, ‘the intellectual who feels pulled by the demands of loyalty and patriotism’ represents an ongoing tension.22 Said believes that the intellectual should not relent, indicating that the intellectual should ‘never [offer] solidarity before criticism’, arguing that it is the intellectual’s task to show how the nation ‘is not a natural or God-given entity but is a constructed, manufactured, even in some cases invented object, with a history of struggle and conquest behind it’.23 More specifically, the additional task of the intellectual is to resist the pull of patriotism in times of emergencies and crises, for the task is to ‘universalize the crisis, to give greater human scope to what a particular race or nation suffered, to associate that experience with the sufferings of others’ (emphasis added).24

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In sum, the approach in this volume recognises diverse theoretical, disciplinary and methodological strands (and approaches) to the notion of the public intellectual, informed in part by the idea of contrapuntality. This method, proposed by Said, offers opportunities to show a historical awareness of the complex interdependence and entanglement through which our social world is constituted: the massively knotted and complex histories of special but nevertheless overlapping and interconnected experiences – of women, of Westerners, of Blacks, of national states and cultures – there is no particular intellectual reason for granting each and all of them an ideal and essentially separate status… we must be able to think through and interpret together experiences that are discrepant, each with its particular agenda and pace of development, its own internal formations, its internal coherence and system of external relationships, all of them co-existing and interacting with others.25 Said argues that a ‘post-imperial intellectual attitude’ requires looking at different experiences contrapuntally, ‘as making up a set of…intertwined and overlapping histories’.26 In this volume we have prioritised the historico-biographical in relation to the people who are featured, demonstrating the inextricable link between context, ideas, experience and insights they bring to bear in a range of epistemic (knowledge and its related validation) domains. In the context of ongoing calls for a decentring of Western models of thought in favour of localised and situated knowledge, Said’s conception resonates with this volume. Innovative humanities work that enables the study of simultaneous and mutually constitutive (of East and West, North and South) histories against linear, developmentalist and uniform perspectives on the public intellectual must be encouraged. Reconceiving the public intellectual This volume (concomitant with a second volume that is under construction) introduces a series that intends to provoke an ‘intellectual’ response rather than provide definitive answers to the questions surrounding the notion of public intellectuals. But there is a clear and very important defining characteristic that we wish to assert at the outset. For us, public intellectuals are not simply thought leaders. Whereas the former are more noticeable as ‘critics’, the latter as ‘creators’,27 we believe that the leitmotiv running throughout this volume is that the intellectual is a knower whose knowledge and insights engage salient issues that define, shape and help transform thought and action. A picture emerges, tangential yet in several ways not unrelated to the history of the struggle for liberty, equality and justice in South Africa, that attempts what we claim to be a speaking of truth to justice. In our view, such individuals could be described as committed, engaged; people who make a difference and who ‘take a stand’. It is the latter which distinguishes the ‘intellectual’ who is ‘public’ from the ‘public intellectual’. While the former may be visible publicly in their words and actions, the latter’s words and actions are directed towards making a difference in the interests of a defined ‘public’.

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Some may dismiss this series as an elitist glorification of pre-selected individuals. However, we believe that this series offers a reading of the public intellectual and, as we acknowledge in our conclusion, further readings are necessary. Editorial intervention, ours included, is by no means an innocent task, and is shaped by our ideas, ideologies and perspectives. Indeed, the choices made in this volume are deliberate, intentional and, in part, informed by our varied locations as editors in diverse intellectual hubs, each of whose intellectual insights may be considered as historically evolved expressions of how we have, over time, interpreted the worlds in which we live and how such worlds have, in turn, shaped our experience, ideas and impact. We reiterate that this volume was conceived to recognise and generate debate, dissent, discussion and critique. What we have framed are our choices in the respective categories, and how we have placed the public intellectual and its meanings within the spatial and temporal aspects of the South (African) context. And this, too, is open to debate, which we hope our readers will actively engage. Who we have framed and how we have framed them has much to do with our reading and interpretation about their influence, impact and contributions to a range of domains. In our view, raising the concept of the public intellectual in the African context is overdue; it has been either overlooked or glibly addressed, especially within the attempts by South African public humanities to engage diverse publics representing heritage, traditions and history within the conditions and context of cultural and civic relations. In his provocative essay ‘The Contribution of Public Intellectuals in Defining Public Interest in South Africa’ delivered at a Harold Wolpe Seminar in February 2005, then higher education minister and now minister of higher education, science and technology, Dr Blade Nzimande made the following important remarks: Clarifying what we mean by ‘intellectuals’, ‘public’ and ‘public interest’ is a very important dimension of this debate. The necessity to clarify these concepts is informed by the fact that, we would argue, South African society seeks to address these deeply interrelated contradictions. These are the national (whose main interest is race), class and gender contradictions, which cannot be addressed in isolation from each other. The current struggles, including ideological struggles and intellectual debates in our country, reflect the contradictory articulation and disarticulation of these three contradictions, both in terms of the paradigms we use, and our approach to the content of the issues.28 Whether there is a decline of the public intellectual, or what constitutes the public intellectual and the conditions of possibility for such a category, continues to matter in South Africa. At a time of competing demands – political, social, economic and cultural – it matters what contributions, legacies and insights have been brought by the people featured in this volume. A rich body of work in Northern contexts (particularly in the United States and Europe) has directed attention to the meaning, place and practice of the intellectual.29 Universities in

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particular (beyond their immediate and current challenges) and some media and civil society formations are becoming sites where independent thinking and critique is directed towards the public good, which is why most perceive them to be agents that influence public agendas.30 What constitutes the public good and whether the public intellectual is a force for good also matters in this volume. Far from fixed, universities, science councils and other societal formations, typically considered to be the only entities to produce intellectuals, are increasingly becoming spaces for public intellectual engagements, but, as we suggest, these spaces are not exclusive. Our context, location, position, and relationship to the world have direct bearing on our intellectual labour and freedom. Performing intellectual labour depends on our entanglement with the local and global ‘wicked problems’ of our time – the ones that are particularly difficult to resolve. This volume is deeply attentive to South Africa’s historical past of colonialism and apartheid, post-apartheid and the current wicked problems that shape global relations. The term ‘wicked problems’, originally framed in social planning discourse, was introduced by C.  West Churchman in his discussion of the moral responsibility of operations research to ‘inform the manager in what respect our “solutions” have failed to tame his wicked problems’.31 These problems are understood to be largely economic, environmental and political, and can be broken down into more descriptive components. Indeed, millennials list the biggest problems in the world today as deficits of political freedom and economic opportunities, food and water security, education, safety, security and well-being, government accountability and transparency, and a surplus of political instability, corruption, poverty, religious conflict, war, climate change and the destruction of natural resources.32 These issues affect public intellectuals and have implications for scientific knowledge production as well as a public understanding of social and human issues. The political, cultural, academic and organic (including media) categories we have assembled in this volume highlight the contributions of groupings of individuals as they grapple with the wicked problems of their day. Developments around wicked problems often become public struggles requiring intellectual engagement. Intellectual engagement in the public sphere is a realm of contested concerns, ideas and opinions. Notions of the public (implying heterogeneity) and publicness (a normative value) are therefore not fixed and are rooted in discursive chains that produce synergies, divergences and contestations about the meaning of the public good.33 Beyond the idea that it is about the state’s responsibilities and obligations that have bearing on citizenship rights, a public good has much to do with the benefit and well-being of society.34 The ‘public’ is, as Michael Warner has observed, part of a social imaginary because the idea about thinking ‘of oneself as belonging to a public is to be a certain kind of process, to inhabit a social world’, ‘to be motivated by a certain normative horizon, and to speak with a certain language ideology’.35 The intellectual located in such a world is engaged in translating and mediating ideas, problems and actions that help to reimagine the world.36 This assumes that persistent problems and public questions are mediated by a variety of powerful forces (political, social, economic, cultural, mass media and religion, for example) that

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require an engaged public to foster responses that speak truth to power.37 ‘Speaking truth to power’ is a phrase that has its origins in the pamphlet titled Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence.38 In Classical Greece ‘speaking truth to power’ was known as parrhesia and in more modern times it is similar to the Gandhian concept of satyagraha. A more contemporary voice on the matter is the quintessential scholar-activist Noam Chomsky, who has an alternative view. According to Eagleton, for Chomsky, ‘power knows the truth already and is busy concealing it’. Whether public intellectuals do indeed speak truth to power is an equally valid concern. Following Chomsky, one might argue that there are also those who ‘profess publicly’ in order to support and strengthen a particular regime, supporting ‘the power’ to conceal the truth – recall the role of some intellectuals under apartheid. This volume appreciates such concerns.39 Central to the motivation of this volume is developing new understandings across disciplines within the humanities.40 Exploring the role and purpose of the public intellectual in wicked times creates opportunities for questioning our historical context and consciousness, for reflexive self-understanding, for seeking ethical imperatives and an understanding of the complex and murky public challenges that face us. This pursuit compels us to interrogate how we may humanistically remain engaged with some of the grand challenges of our time and how we are able to assist in ‘building just and durable democracies’. This volume names and frames noteworthy South Africans who have engaged with precisely that question. Cultivating South (African) insights The intellectual and political urgency to recover, recuperate and reposition figures, voices and exemplars of the public intellectual in a South African context is a central motivation for this book. Our choice of words in the previous sentence does not imply that those we have assembled here are lost from the circumstances of history. We are simply reclaiming such figures in the structure we have labelled ‘public intellectuals’. Our purpose in doing so speaks to the broader decolonial imperative that is epistemological, ontological and political: we draw into the fray the contributions of thinkers who constitute a tribune for our world through their efforts to construct a world where justice and equality remain central. We recognise that the selection we present here is no means exhaustive or definitive; there are several South scholars – Houston and Ngculu,41 Hassim,42 Mangcu,43 Mokoena,44 Musila,45 Ndletyana,46 Nyoka,47 Pityana, Ramphele, Mpumlwana and Wilson,48 Pillay,49 Pinnock50 and Zeilig,51 for example – who have provided focused seminal pieces on black intellectual contributions aligned to their historical, social and political biographies. Our perspective includes the more dominant voices that have featured over time in the South African context. A recent important South African contribution focuses on a kaleidoscope of intellectual traditions (with a heavy weighting towards religion) but minimises the specific individuals who shape such traditions in visible and palpable ways.52 The formidable texts by Adem and Masilela53 use the frame of Ali Mazrui’s life (the late Kenyan-born political scientist whose work straddles  political philosophy, identity politics and political thought) to explain the historical impact of black public intellectuals such as Julius K. Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba and

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Barack Obama.54 While there is extensive international research (some cited earlier and others listed in the references), much of it is produced in Westernised and especially Euro-American settings,55 and therefore does not fully capture important context-specific issues, including the meaning of the public intellectual (who, what, where) and their role in humanistic enquiry. Knowledge produced by descriptive and analytic studies on the public intellectual generates rich and in-depth perspectives that allow for contextual nuances – and is invaluable for understanding, for example, geopolitical perspectives such as other Southern views in countries such as Australia,56 Iran,57 New Zealand,58 Latin America59 and India,60 and in particular fields of study (such as public sociology,61 gender,62 education,63 global context,64 public spheres,65 journalism and media,66 politics and international relations,67 philosophy,68 public understanding of science,69 and literature and art70). Nuanced work on the public intellectual lies at the heart of humanism and critical responsibility. There are many who bemoan the paucity of public intellectuals in South Africa today, especially in a context where wicked problems persist, and where trust in public officials and politicians to resolve such problems is virtually non-existent, or at best completely eroded. Turning to public intellectuals as crucial agents of change who champion, in the words of Edward Said, the ideas of ‘secular humanism’ and ‘intellectual responsibility’ in today’s world, and who help facilitate fresh perspectives on the human community is an important intervention.71 The ability to stand outside the boundaries of ideological and economic dependency (even though intellectual specialists such as academics may be professionally associated with public institutions such as universities, and several others who occupy spaces elsewhere) and to function as an outsider remains at the core of what constitutes public intellectual labour. However, given the textured nature of the label, it may be simultaneously necessary to consider – as part of the project – the idea of public intellectuals as ‘insiders’ and assess what this may entail. Purpose, method, organisation and delimitations In this volume we employ genealogy as a method to explain the emergence of concepts and values such as knowledge, truthfulness, or testimonial justice that align with each other in the service of the intellectual, social, political, organic and cultural.72 These categories are not discrete but show great flexibility and synergy rather than genealogical non-correspondence. Genealogy  is not a search for origins and it is not the construction of a linear development. Instead, genealogy serves a critical method to uncover received notions, to question entrenched practices, and trace ideas that are developing, in flux and always under construction. In this sense, our conception of the public intellectual and their contributions confirm, genealogically speaking, that their work matters. Our insights draw from the development of Foucault’s critical theory and method between The Archaeology of Knowledge73 and Discipline and Punish74 which is marked by the transition from ‘archaeology’ to ‘genealogy’. The former provides a structuralist explanation of ‘discourse’

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(a set of statements) in ‘discursive formations’ (the statements that make particular meanings possible) to uncover representations and their rules of organisation. Genealogy, on the other hand, draws attention to the apparatus of power which produces different historical discourses. ‘Genealogy,’ as Foucault explains, ‘…is gray, meticulous, patiently documentary. It operates on a field of entangled and confused parchments, on documents that have been scratched over and recopied many times.’ 75 The genealogist as interpreter recognises that the meaning he/she gives to history is doubtful (hence ‘gray’), which shows that ‘power produces knowledge…that power and knowledge directly imply one another’.76 Our interpretation in conceiving public intellectuals underlines what Foucault’s genealogical histories show – that the formation of ‘individuals’ has been synchronous with the formation of the ‘social’ or ‘society’. Kendall and Wickham, for their part, define genealogy as statements that emphasise and introduce ‘power through a “history of the present”, concerned with “disreputable origins and unpalatable functions”, making the older guests at the dinner table of intellectual analysis feel decidedly uncomfortable by pointing out things about their origins and functions that they would rather remain hidden’. Genealogy also ‘describes statements as an ongoing process, rather than as a snapshot of the web of discourse’ and, finally, it ‘concentrates on the strategic use of archaeology to answer problems about the present.’77 The main aim of this volume is to reconceptualise the public intellectual formed by South African perspectives, which uncovers a rich analysis from a variety of lenses. Our volume is designed not as a set of prescriptions as to what constitutes public intellectuals, but rather as an invitation to consider what we have suggested might be their roles, responsibilities, tensions, ideological conditions and indeed status through the way we have assembled the people in this text. We are inviting our readers to consider the conditions of possibility for what a public intellectual in South Africa might be, with full recognition that the ‘intellectual’ and the ‘public’ are unstable, complex and multiple notions. If we invert the description of ‘public intellectual’ we could say that such individuals are also members of the intellectual public (as a consequence of their life’s work) rather than someone who is simply a specialist in a field who provides a systematic analysis as a professional critic. This volume provides the stirrings of a developing body of knowledge intended to grow a deep, contextualised understanding about the character, meanings and features of the public intellectual – how they are shaped, and what they can teach us. The timing and location of this volume lends credence to and builds on earlier scholarly engagements.78 The academy is one of the few and increasingly precarious spaces for democratic deliberation in which Said motivated the necessity for public intellectuals to be immured from the seductions of power to seriously rethink the role and place of intellectual labour in the democratic process. For this reason, our readers will note that we have featured a range of people other than those simply located in university spaces. The scope of this volume (and anticipated future volumes) covers the following broad objectives: (1) an understanding of the place, location and identity of the public intellectual in multiple disciplinary domains, and of the tension between intellectual orientation as opposed to simplistic identitarian claims to knowledge; (2) the meaning,

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relevance and consequence of seriously studying the idea of the public intellectual; and (3) the meaning, location, construction and constriction of a democratic public sphere (in relation to its empirical features) and its relationship to speaking truth to power. The chapters are arranged in a four-step logic (political, cultural, academic and organic). We are aware that these are contested and multifaceted categories that are contingent on an audience and how they are received. However, seen collectively, the contributions of the featured intellectuals (whom we view as pivotal agents) reflect the need for further ongoing cross-disciplinary engagement of their position, role, ideas and thinking in the civic and public sphere. The volume provides an interpretative understanding of their ideas, interventions and work as inscribed through their life and contributions. They are characterised as people who are dissenting, as deep thinkers, as people who speak truth to power, as professional experts on a subject, as knowledge specialists and as supposed ‘experts’ (a term we think is elitist and exclusionary even though it may have some value in the context in which it is used).79 We are not simultaneously saying that everyone is therefore a public intellectual. It is a matter of interpretation and these descriptors are inevitably constrained by time, space and indeed history as to how they are viewed and analysed by various publics. We understand that readers will question our choices and our framing and interrogate why some are included and others not (see the introductions to each of the four parts for a brief motivation to open up further discussion about the groupings and selections). We invite readers to dip in and out of parts as the volume is not meant to be read sequentially. We are also aware that the people we have included may not necessarily be comfortable with the way we have described or characterised and categorised them in this volume. This book does motivate how the individuals featured have come to assume the title we assign; but it does not engage how they have been received by various publics. Instead, it describes, analyses and interrogates their accomplishments through a description of their intellectual labour. Broad in scope and stylistically diverse, the essays are shaped by critical historically focused biographies that account for their public role and public exposition in the fields of politics, academia, culture and in the category we have termed as organic intellectuals. Conclusion How are intellectuals constituted? How have intellectuals engaged with and influenced their various publics? What is the role of the public intellectual in social, political, academic and cultural contexts and the uncertainties, challenges, propositions and/or conundrums that such contexts induce? What challenges intellectuals and those speaking from particular positions? These are some of the questions we have grappled with in shaping the contents of The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa. Designed with a broad appeal focused on the role of the intellectual in South Africa, with particular interest for specialists such as sociologists, literary scholars, political theorists and historians of ideas, we believe that non-specialist readers will also find great interest in this subject. Our intention is to expose our diverse readers to a range of formidable and exceptional figures – thoughtful, knowledgeable and prominent in their time

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and thinking. Some are alive and many have passed on. Our assemblage is an eccentric and eclectic compilation of perspectives. The figures that are grouped here are but a sampling of those who could have appeared. Our planned second volume will provide an even broader mix of individuals. This inaugural book intends to stimulate, develop and promote contributions by South Africans who, through their ideas or, better still, their intellectual activism, have shaped South African discourse in diverse ways. We wish to emphasise the conviction of these thinkers and how their insights reimagine an inclusive society in the theatre of ideas. Those assembled here are, in our view, people who, beyond their own formulations of their identity, ultimately leave deep imprints on what it means to be human in a very complex and divided society. We invite our readers to consider, engage, discuss and debate the contributions of these formidable South Africans with whom we have experimented as part of the public intellectual rubric. We recognise that this is the beginning of an incomplete task. Notes 1 Aspects of this introduction also draw on some preliminary views expressed in V. Reddy,

‘Intellectual Liberation: Linking Knowledge, Human Interest and Liberation’, HSRC Review, June, 17:2 (2019), pp. 33–34. 2 C. Wright Mills, The Causes of World War Three (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958)

p. 124. 3 S. Collini, Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 4 L. Coser, Men of Ideas: A Sociologist’s View (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), p. viii;

R. Eyerman, Between Culture and Politics: Intellectuals in Modern Society (Cambridge: Polity, 1994), p. 13. 5 Coser, Men of Ideas, p. viii. 6 Z. Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters (London: Polity, 1987), p. 2. 7 S.M. Lipset, Political Man (London: Mercury Books, 1960), p. 311. 8 P. Berman, Flight of the Intellectuals (New York: Meville House Books, 2010). 9 R.A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 2003), p. 23. 10 Posner, Public Intellectuals, p. 173. 11 Posner, Public Intellectuals, p. 23. 12 R. Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (New York: Basic

Books, 1989), p. 221. 13 A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Q. Hoare and

G.N. Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971). 14 E. Said, Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures (New York: Vintage, 1996). 15 Gramsci, Selections. 16 Gramsci, Selections, pp. 5–23. 17 Said, Representations. 18 Said, Representations, pp. 8–9.

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19 Said, Representations. 20 See A. Touraine, The May Movement: Revolt and Reform (New York: Random House, 1971). 21 M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by A. Sheridan

(New York: Vintage Books, 1977), p. 207. 22 Said, Representations, pp. 32–33. 23 Said, Representations, pp. 32–33. 24 Said, Representations, p. 44. 25 E. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993), p. 32. 26 Said, Culture and Imperialism, p. 18. 27 See D.W. Drezner, The Ideas Industry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 28 B. Nzimande, The Contribution of Public Intellectuals in Defining Public Interest in

South Africa, Paper delivered at a Harold Wolpe Seminar, 16 February 2005. 29 See, for example, A. Bowditch (ed.), Public Intellectuals: An Endangered Species? (New York:

Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); P. Brooks (ed.), The Humanities and Public Life (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014); M.C. Desch (ed.), Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena: Professors or Pundits (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016); J.R. Di Leo and P. Hitchcock (eds), The New Public Intellectual: Politics, Theory, and the Public Sphere (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); S. Eliaeson and R. Kalleberg (eds), Academics as Public Intellectuals (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008); R. Eyerman, Between Culture and Politics: Intellectuals in Modern Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994); J. Faflak and J. Haslam, The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2013); R. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); H. Small (ed.), The Public Intellectual (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). 30 Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters; D. Bok, Universities in the Marketplace (Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); C. Calhoun, ‘The University and the Public Good’, Thesis Eleven 84 (2006), pp. 7–43; Collini S, What Are Universities For? (London: Penguin, 2012); S. Dallyn, M. Marinetto and C. Cederström, ‘The Academic as Public Intellectual: Examining Public Engagement in the Professional Academy’, Sociology 49:6 (2015), pp. 1031–1046; A. Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); M.D. Kennedy, Globalizing Knowledge: Intellectuals, Universities, and the Publics in Transformation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014); C. Kerr, The Uses of the University, 5th edn. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002 [1963]); B. Misztal, Intellectuals and the Public Good: Creativity and Civil Courage (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 31 C.W. Churchman, ‘Wicked Problems’, Management Studies 14:4 (1967), doi:10.1287/

mnsc.14.4.B141. 32 http://www.businessinsider.com. 33 See Calhoun, ‘The University and the Public Good’; J. Dewey, The Public and its Problems

(Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1985). 34 See, for example, S. Barrett, Why Cooperate? The Incentive to Provide Global Public Goods

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Misztal, Intellectuals and the Public Good;

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D.L. Swartz, Symbolic Power, Politics, and Intellectuals: The Political Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). 35 M.Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002), p. 10. 36 See also C. Fleck, A. Hess and E.S. Lyon (eds), Intellectuals and their Publics: Perspectives

from the Social Sciences (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009); P. Thijssen, W. Weyns, C. Timmerman and S. Mels (eds), New Public Spheres: Recontextualising the Intellectual (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). 37 P. Kitcher, Science, Truth, and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 38 American Friends Service Committee, Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an

Alternative to Violence (Philadelphia, PA, American Friends Service Committee, 1955). 39 See, for example, S. Fuller, ‘The Critique of Intellectuals in a Time of Pragmatist

Captivity’, History of the Human Sciences 16:4 (2003), pp. 19–38; C. Kurzman and L. Owens, ‘The Sociology of Intellectuals’, Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002), pp. 63–91; M. Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics (New York: New York Review Press, 2001); P.D. Marshall and C. Atherton, ‘Situating the Public Intellectuals’, Media International Australia 156 (2015), pp. 69–78; Gramsci, Selections; Said, Representations. 40 See M.C. Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 2010). 41 G. Houston and J. Ngculu, Voices of Liberation: Chris Hani (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2014). 42 S. Hassim, Voices of Liberation: Fatima Meer (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2019). 43 X. Mangcu (ed.), The Meaning of Mandela: A Literary and Intellectual Celebration

(Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2006). 44 H. Mokoena, Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual (Pietermaritzburg:

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2011). 45 G. Musila, Voices of Liberation: Wangari Maathai’s Registers of Freedom (Cape Town: HSRC

Press, 2019). 46 M. Ndletyana (ed.), African Intellectuals in the 19th and Early 20th Century South Africa

(Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2008). 47 B. Nyoka, Voices of Liberation: Archie Mafeje (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2019). 48 N.B. Pityana, M. Ramphele, M. Mpumlwana and L. Wilson (eds), The Bounds of Possibility:

The Legacy of Steve Biko and Black Consciousness (Cape Town: David Philip, 1991). 49 G.J. Pillay, Voices of Liberation: Albert Luthuli (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 1993). 50 D. Pinnock, Voices of Liberation: Ruth First (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2012). 51 Z. Zeilig, Voices of Liberation: Frantz Fanon (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2014). 52 See P. Vale, L. Hamilton and E.H. Prinsloo (eds), Intellectual Traditions in South Africa: Ideas,

Individuals and Institutions (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2014). 53 S. Adem (ed.), Public Intellectuals and the Politics of Global Africa: Comparative and

Biographical Essays in Honour of Ali A.Mazrui (London: Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd, 2010); N. Masilela, An Outline of the New African Movement in South Africa (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2013). 54 See also P.H. Collins, ‘Black Public Intellectuals: From Du Bois to the Present’, Contexts

4:4 (2005), pp. 22–27; S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Ali A Mazrui on the Invention of Africa and

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Postcolonial Predicaments: “My Life is One Long Debate”’, Third World Quarterly 36:2 (2015), pp. 205–222. 55 See, for example, N. Wiseman (ed.) The Public Intellectual in Canada (Toronto: University of

Toronto Press, 2013). 56 M. Pusey, ‘The Struggles of Public Intellectuals in Australia: What Do They Tell Us about

Contemporary Australia and the Australian “Political Public Sphere”’, Thesis Eleven 101 (2010), pp. 81–88. 57 M. Mohebi, The Formation of Civil Society in Modern Iran: Public Intellectuals and the State

(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 58 L. Simmons (ed.), Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand

(Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2007). 59 D.A.Castillo and S.A. Day (eds), Mexican Public Intellectuals (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,

2014); J. Rappaport, Intercultural Utopias: Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation and Ethnic Pluralism in Colombia (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2005). 60 R. Thapar, The Public Intellectual in India (New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2015). 61 B. Agger, Public Sociology: From Social Facts to Literary Acts (Lanham, MD: Rowman and

Littlefield, 2000); J. Blau J and K.E.L. Smith (eds), Public Sociologies Reader (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); M. Burawoy, ‘For Public Sociology’, American Sociological Review 70 (2005), pp. 4–28; M. Burawoy, ‘Public Sociologies: Contradictions, Dilemmas, and Possibilities’, Social Forces 82:4 (2004), pp. 1603–1618; M. Hashemi, ‘A Post-Secular Reading of Public Sociology’, Social Compass 63:4 (2016), pp. 461–477; V. Horák, ‘Public Sociology and Hermeneutics’, Critical Sociology 43:2 (2017), pp. 309–325; R. Kalleberg, ‘Sociologists as Public Intellectuals and Experts’, Journal of Applied Social Science 6:1 (2012), pp. 43–52; D.W. Light, ‘Contributing to Scholarship and Theory through Public Sociology’, Social Forces 83:4 (2005), pp. 1647–1654; E.S. Lyon, ‘Sociology and Its Publics: Fresh Perspectives from the History of Sociology’ International Sociology Review 30:5 (2015), pp. 457–466; F. Nielsen, ‘The Vacant “We”: Remarks on Public Sociology’, Social Forces 82:4 (2004), pp. 1619–1627; S.A. Dos Santos, ‘The Metamorphosis of Black Movement Activists into Black Organic Intellectuals’, Latin American Perspectives 38:3 (2011), pp. 124–135; M.H. Tamdgidi, ‘Public Sociology and the Sociological Imagination: Revisiting Burawoy’s Sociology Types’, Humanity and Society 32 (2008), pp. 131–143; Z.R. Williams, In Search of the Talented Tenth: Howard University Public Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Race, 1926–1970 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2009). 62 M. Evans, ‘Can women be intellectuals?’ in C. Fleck, A. Hess and E. Stina Lyon (eds),

Intellectuals and Their Publics (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). 63 C. Gersti-Pepin and C. Reyes (eds), Reimagining the Public Intellectual in Education: Making

Scholarship Matter (New York: Peter Lang, 2015). 64 M.D. Kennedy, Globalizing Knowledge: Intellectuals, Universities, and the Publics in

Transformation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). 65 N. Fraser, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually

Existing Democracy’ in C. Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989); Warner, Publics and Counterpublics.

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66 H.R. Candiani, ‘Journalists and Intellectuals in the Origins of the Brazilian Press

(1808–1822)’, Journalism 10:1 (2009), pp. 29–44; S. Papson, ‘Scholars, Intellectuals, Bricoleurs’, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 13:4 (2013), pp. 377–394. 67 R. English and M. Kenny, ‘Public Intellectuals and the Question of British Decline’, British

Journal of Politics and International Relations 3:3 (2001), pp. 259–283. 68 A. Melzer, J. Weinberger and M.R. Zinman (eds), The Public Intellectual: Between Philosophy

and Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). 69 W.E. Bijker, ‘The Need for Public Intellectuals: A Space for STS’, Science, Technology

and Human Values 28:4 (2003), pp. 443–450; S.M. Stevens ‘Speaking Out: Toward an Institutional Agenda for Refashioning STS Scholars as Public Intellectuals’, Science, Technology and Human Values 33:6 (2008), pp. 730–753. 70 O. Heynders, Writers as Public Intellectuals: Literature, Celebrity, Democracy (New York:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); C. Lemert, ‘Poetry and Public Life’, Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies 2:3 (2002), pp. 371–393. 71 Said, Representations. 72 E. Craig, Knowledge and the State of Nature: An Essay in Conceptual Synthesis (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1990); B. Williams, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); M. Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 73 M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith (London:

Tavistock, 1972). 74 Foucault, Discipline and Punish. 75 M. Foucault, Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca,

NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 139. 76 Foucault, Language, Counter-memory, Practice, p. 27. 77 G. Kendall and G. Wickham, Using Foucault’s Methods (London: Sage, 1999), p. 34. 78 Notably that of Said, Representations. 79 See, for example, Tom Nichols’s The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established

Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). The text makes a case for a deeprooted anti-intellectualism evident in the current United States context that he claims is focused on undermining the views of ‘experts’ (notably scientists and professors). Note his observations here (p. ix): ‘ “The death of expertise” is one of those phrases that grandly announces its own self-importance. It’s a title that risks alienating a lot of people before they even open the book, almost daring the reader to find a mistake in it somewhere just to take the author down a peg. I understand that reaction, because I feel much the same way about such sweeping pronouncements. Our cultural and literary life is full of premature burials of everything: shame, common sense, manliness, femininity, childhood, good taste, literacy, the Oxford comma, and so on. While expertise isn’t dead, however, it’s in trouble. The last thing we all need is one more encomium for something we know isn’t quite dead. Something is going terribly wrong. The United States is now a country obsessed with the worship of its own ignorance.’

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PART11 PART

Political PoliticalPublic PublicIntellectuals Intellectuals

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa

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Political public intellectuals: Introduction

Political public intellectuals:

Introduction

Gregory Houston

The first category of public intellectuals in this volume are political public intellectuals. These are individuals whose engagement in politics has had major political impact, involving the discovery and advocacy of significant political and social ideas, irrespective of their individual academic backgrounds. They have played a ‘crucial role in the social and political agenda’ of the country,1 and can be included in Shakhar Rahav’s definition of political intellectuals as those public intellectuals who, as Antonio Gramsci might have it, specialized in dealing with society’s superstructures – those who maintained these superstructures or tried to dismantle them, in order to change society’s underlying infrastructure…[They] envision a new social order, including fundamental social relations (such as gender and family), culture, education, economics, and political institutions – and a path to realizing it.2 This is in contrast to the way that the term ‘political intellectual’ is often associated with people from an academic background who become prominent politicians.3 This also contrasts with notions of the political intellectual as an academic or researcher who plays a political role by providing diagnoses of and solutions to political problems, providing ideas that are consistent with the ideological traditions and political goals of political actors, and providing them with detailed policy proposals or data for the development of policy.4 The political public intellectuals included here share the following characteristics: • They spend most of their lives occupied with the key ‘wicked problems’ or political issues of their time. • Their public engagement on these issues takes several different forms, and they play a wide variety of political roles. • The political impact of their actions and/or ideas is significant. Firstly, the issues that shape their lives, and the ‘wicked problems’ they deal with and that occupy them for most of their lives, span the key political issues confronting South Africans over more than a hundred years. These were issues prevalent during the segregation period that followed the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the apartheid era that followed

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the Nationalist Party (NP) election victory in 1948, and the post-apartheid era that followed the first democratic elections in 1994. But the issues differed for black and white, men and women, old and young, and in different political contexts. During the segregation period, black South Africans – and some white South Africans – were politically shaped by having to deal with issues such as the denial of political rights to black people after Union, the denial of access to land and the pass laws, and by experiencing their effects, such as lack of opportunity and widespread poverty. The apartheid era exacerbated the situation with the introduction of new challenges, such as having to deal with state repression, and thus working clandestinely in banned political organisations or joining the armed struggle. During the post-apartheid era, many of these issues fell away, but many of the effects of the apartheid era continued to occupy some public intellectuals, while new issues to be dealt with, such as corruption and increasing inequality, emerged. Secondly, these public intellectuals have contributed in several different ways, and have played multiple roles as ‘active participants in the great dramas of their time’.5 Some of the main political roles they have played include establishing and leading major political organisations; initiating and leading political campaigns; playing central roles in key areas of political and social activism; and providing intellectual direction to organisations and campaigns. Invariably, these roles have largely been in opposition to the white-minority regimes in South Africa, and their actions and ideas were directed at improving or radically altering the political system to bring benefits to those who were denied them. These roles have also often been accompanied by considerable hardship, ranging from rejection and scorn by members of their community, harassment by members of the security forces, banishment to remote parts of the country, detention and torture, long periods of imprisonment, exile and even the loss of life. Most have been leaders of the major political organisations that have emerged in the country during the past century. Included here ‘were the men who imagined the new national image, and laid the intellectual and expressly often political dynamics of the national liberation movements’.6 These public intellectuals are known for their social activism in multiple arenas, such as opposition to apartheid; the struggle for women’s, worker’s and human rights; and resistance to forced removals. Several of those included in this volume initiated and/or led campaigns such as the campaign against the Native Land Bill in the 1910s, the campaign against the Hertzog Bills in the 1930s, the Defiance Campaign in the 1950s, and the armed struggle between 1961 and 1994. They are also known for their significant intellectual contributions to the political life of the country7 in the form of speeches, lectures, newspaper articles, journal articles and books.8 Several are credited as authors of key political documents, such as the Freedom Charter and the

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Political public intellectuals: Introduction

Manifesto of the Azanian People; some are credited as the genesis or major advocates of the central political ideas that have shaped South African politics over the past 110 years. Finally, the public intellectuals included here achieved significant ‘public political influence’ during their lifetimes.9 Many inspired others to join them in their political activities, and are acknowledged leaders who broadened the base of the organisations they led. Several became presidents, Cabinet ministers, and high-ranking government officials whose political projects have largely been accomplished.10 Today, the names of many are invoked repeatedly to illustrate exemplary contributions to the politics of the country, thus serving as inspiration for others. During the course of their lives, their ideas were both authoritative and influential because the positions they occupied in society gave them ‘sufficient authority and respect to be heard’ by large numbers of people.11 These positions often meant that they spoke on behalf of others that they represented, and articulated ideas that were in the interests of specific groups. Their ideas endure in key documents, such as the Freedom Charter, which remain as relevant today for guiding action as they were during the period of struggle. Their ideas therefore continue to influence the current generation of political and social activists, and influence political action long after their deaths. The men and women included in this part all had political agendas. Some political goal motivated their actions and ideas, which thus had political consequences, including, among many others, the formation of political organisations, mass political action and involvement, placing restraints on government excess, the adoption of key ideas by significant sectors of society, the introduction of democracy in South Africa in 1994, and the influence of their ideas on government policy and action. Theirs has largely been an emancipatory role: above all else, what these public intellectuals have in common is the significant role they played in contributing to the struggle for social justice in South Africa. Most of them have achieved prominence because of both their actions in the political arena and their political ideas, with only a few because of one or the other. But even in the case of the latter, it is the significant political influence they have achieved in these distinct areas that makes them worthy of acknowledgement as political public intellectuals. The political public intellectuals included here have been grouped together in four distinct subcategories: the first are leading members of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP); the second include leading members of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC – A.P. Mda and Robert Sobukwe); the third include public intellectuals who played leading roles in multiple organisations (Cissie Gool and Monty Naicker) or were unaffiliated to any political organisation but played a significant role (Bishop Trevor Huddleston and Beyers Naudé); and the last is the only member of a liberal political party during the apartheid era included in the volume (Helen Suzman).

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Notes 1 J.R. Di Leo and P. Hitchcock, ‘Introduction: Before the Beginning, After the End’ in

J.R. Di Leo and P. Hitchcock (eds), The New Public Intellectual: Politics, Theory and the Public Sphere (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. xii. 2 S. Rahav, The Rise of Political Intellectuals in Modern China: May Fourth Societies and the Roots

of Mass-Party Politics (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 4. 3 For an example of a study of such intellectuals who dominated the political sphere refer

to A. Mungiu-Pippidi, ‘Romanian Political Intellectuals Before and After the Revolution’ in A. Bozóki (ed.), Intellectuals and Politics in Central Europe (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999). 4 See, for instance, E. Goes, The Political Role of Intellectuals: In Defence of Hampstead

Socialists. Blog dated 21 March 2015. Accessed March 2020, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ impactofsocialsciences/2015/03/21/the-political-role-of-intellectuals/. 5 D.W. Drezner, ‘Public Intellectuals 2.1’, Society 46:1 (2009), p. 51. 6 I. Edwards, ‘The Role of Intellectuals in the State–Society Nexus’, South African Journal of

Science 111:5/6 (2015), p. 1. 7 R. Collins, ‘Who Has Been a Successful Public Intellectual?’, European Journal of Social

Theory 14:4 (2011), p. 438. 8 P. Baert and J. Booth, ‘Tensions within the Public Intellectual: Political Interventions from

Dreyfus to the New Social Media’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 25 (2012), p. 112. 9 Collins, ‘Who Has Been a Successful Public Intellectual?’, p. 438. 10 Mungiu-Pippidi, ‘Romanian Political Intellectuals’, p. 75. 11 Baert and Booth, ‘Tensions within the Public Intellectual’, p. 113.

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Charlotte Maxeke: Mother of black freedom in South Africa

Charlotte Maxeke: Mother of black freedom in South Africa Narnia Bohler-Muller

1874–1939

This work is not for yourselves – kill that spirit of self, and do not live above your people but live with them. If you can rise, bring someone with you. Charlotte Maxeke, ‘Social Conditions among Bantu Women and Girls’ Until the 2016 publication of Zubeida Jaffer’s biography, Beauty of the Heart,1 most people associated the name Charlotte Maxeke with a hospital, a submarine, or streets in towns and cities across the country. But few people knew who she was, and what she had achieved. Dubbed the ‘Mother of Black Freedom in South Africa’,2 this formidable woman was an academic, an outspoken activist against social injustice and women’s inequality, and one of the first female members of the ANC. Charlotte Makgomo Manye grew up in the Eastern Cape (then part of the Cape Colony) in the late nineteenth century. She was educated by missionaries at Edwards Memorial School and, in 1885, moved to Kimberley with her family, where she became a teacher.3 In 1890 the MacAdoo Jubilee Singers, from the United States, arrived in South Africa for a two-year tour. When the choir performed in Kimberley, they inspired a local Christian group to form the African Jubilee Choir, with the idea of touring England to raise funds for a technical school.4 Charlotte and her sister Katie joined the choir in 1891. Their tour was not an unqualified success,5 but it did open the young singers’ eyes to the wider world. It is likely that Charlotte – and perhaps other choir members – attended suffragette meetings. Charlotte went on a second tour with the choir in 1894, this time to the United States.6 When the tour organiser absconded with all the funds and travel tickets, the story of the stranded African singers appeared in US newspapers. Bishop Daniel A. Payne, who had been a missionary in the Cape Colony, recognised Charlotte Manye’s name in the newspaper. He  offered her a

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church scholarship to Wilberforce University, which was affiliated to his church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC), in Ohio. At Wilberforce, Charlotte met Marshall Maxeke, another South African student who had been inspired by the MacAdoo Jubilee Singers to travel to America in order to study music.7Amongst others, Charlotte was taught by the well-known pan-Africanist, W.E.B Du Bois. She graduated with a BSc degree, making her one of South Africa’s first female graduates, and probably the first with a science degree. On their return to South Africa in 1901, Charlotte and Marshall became engaged and then married in 1903. The couple had lost a child prior to their marriage, and did not have any children thereafter.8 After spending some time in Pietersburg (now Polokwane), Marshall and Charlotte established Maxeke Secondary School at Evaton – a township in what is today Gauteng – which is still in existence today.9 They went on to teach and evangelise in other places, including Thembuland in the then Transkei under King Sabata Dalindyebo. It was here that Charlotte participated in the king’s court, a privilege unheard of for a woman. The Maxekes finally settled in Johannesburg, where they became involved in political activism.10 Maxeke attended the historic launch of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC, later the ANC) in Bloemfontein in 1912. She was an early and very active member of the ANC, and one of the first female members. She authored most of its earliest literature, and was an outspoken supporter of human rights and dignity. Her uplifting speeches in the cause of African liberty were described as ‘electrifying, passionate and fiery, yet not inflammatory. Charlotte spoke from her soul with great feeling for all, and everyone listened. It can be said of her, that she cared deeply for all mankind.’11 During this time Maxeke wrote in Xhosa on the social and political situation of women, and in the newspaper Umteteli wa Bantu she addressed the ‘woman question’.12 Bev Orton describes her as not only ‘one of the great modernisers but also one of the founders of feminism in South Africa. Her work, both in political and social areas, provides an insight into the intersecting oppression in the subjugation and control of African women.’13 As an early opponent of passes for African women, Maxeke helped organise the first anti-pass movement in Bloemfontein in 1913. She founded the Bantu Women’s League of the SANNC – a forerunner to the ANC Women’s League – in 1918. As leader of this organisation, she led a delegation to Prime Minister Louis Botha to discuss the issue of passes for women. Their argument fell on deaf ears, and the visit was followed by a protest the following year. She was also involved in protests about low wages on the Witwatersrand, and was instrumental in the formation of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) in 1920.14 In 1928 she played a leading role in the establishment of the National Council of African Women (NCAW).15 In the early 1930s she became concerned about the plight of black youth, particularly those in trouble and those without jobs. She duly became the first black woman probation officer for juvenile delinquents, and was later head of the city’s first employment agency to be owned by an African.16

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Charlotte Maxeke: Mother of black freedom in South Africa

After a period of mourning her husband’s death in 1928, Charlotte responded to a call by the South African Ministry of Education to testify before several government commissions in Johannesburg on matters concerning African education, another ‘first’ for an African woman.17 In an address Maxeke delivered at the University of Fort Hare in 1930, titled ‘Social Conditions among Bantu Women and Girls’, she stated the following about racial and gender oppression in South Africa: Many of the Bantu feel, and rightly too, that the laws of the land are not made for black and white alike. Take the question of permits for the right to look for work. To look for work, mark you! If you definitely and earnestly set out to lift women and children up in social life of the Bantu, you will find the men will benefit, and thus the whole community both white and black. Johannesburg is to my knowledge a great example of endeavour for the uplift of the Bantu woman, but we must pull all our energies into this task if we would succeed. What we want is more co-operation and friendship between the two races and more definite display of real Christianity to help us in solving of these riddles. Let us try to make our Christianity practical.18 At the annual Charlotte Maxeke Memorial Lecture ‘Equal Opportunities and Progress’ held at the University of the Free State in 2010, basic education minister Angie Motshekga honoured Maxeke by stating: Uppermost in the collective consciousness of those who stand for the broader emancipation and empowerment of women is the shared view that she gave her entire life to the service of her people, women in particular. Thus, this university has correctly suggested that ‘her most profound legacy is her enormous contribution to women’s empowerment in the home and in society at large’. This is a view I also identify with given the common experiences we share with her in the arena of the women’s struggle for equality. I speak with reverence for her because she was instrumental in the founding of the Bantu Women’s League, the forerunner of the ANC Women’s League. She[,] like us who now carry the baton[,] led a progressive women’s movement for many years.19 Charlotte Maxeke died on 16 October 1939 at the age of 65. Her funeral was held at Kliptown, the location where the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1956. She is commemorated by a statue in Pretoria’s Garden of Remembrance, and the former Johannesburg Hospital in Parktown was renamed after her, as was a South African Navy submarine, the SAS Charlotte Maxeke. The ANC hosts an annual Charlotte Maxeke Memorial Lecture, and a number of streets in South African cities have been renamed after her. However, for the ‘Mother of Black Freedom in South Africa’ these tributes seem rather paltry.

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In explaining the import of Maxeke’s intellectual contribution to thinking about gender differently, Thozama April notes: Charlotte Maxeke articulated gender difference in South Africa during the transition from traditional African ways of life to the modern age. She did not only express the need to consider the ways in which gender difference was being perceived in the public sphere of politics, but she drew the private domestic sphere closer to major debates about the Africans and their place in the politics of the Union of South Africa. Charlotte Maxeke did not embrace essentialist notions of race, class, nationality and gender, but tried to foster ethical relations in understanding complex social relations. She understood that women by virtue of their positions in society were not considered as full citizens.20 In 2019 Mandla Makhanya, principal and vice-chancellor of the University of South Africa, introduced the Charlotte Mannya-Maxeke Memorial Lecture at Unisa, ending with a plea: In the era of rampant consumptionism and selfishness, all direct results of greed that is associated with capitalism, as a people who have seen our country being in the clutches of corruption, these words by Mme Maxeke are a poignant reminder for us to return to the vocation of a dedicated public service. We must therefore concern ourselves with the study of the life and ideas of Mme Maxeke, in order to learn and be inspired by her life.21 Notes 1 Z. Jaffer, Beauty of the Heart: The Life and Times of Charlotte Manya Maxeke (Cape Town:

ZJ Books, 2016). 2 J. Wilson, J. Jaki and P. Sandner, ‘Charlotte Maxeke, “Mother of Black Freedom”’,

DW Akademie 11 April 2018. Accessed April 2020, https://www.dw.com/en/charlottemaxeke-mother-of-black-freedom/a-43347997. 3 D. Moloantoa, ‘The Remarkable Life of Charlotte Maxeke’, The Heritage Portal 9 August

2016. Accessed June 2019, http://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/remarkable-lifecharlotte-maxeke. 4 Moloantoa, ‘Remarkable Life of Charlotte Maxeke’. 5 J. Collins, ‘“Umuntu, Ngumuntu, Ngabantu”: The Story of the African Choir’, Studies in

Theatre and Performance 27:2 (2007). Accessed 26 June 2020, https://www.sahistory.org.za/ sites/default/files/archive-files/jane_collins_africa_choir_2007.pdf. 6 Some sources state this date as 1896, and some as an extension of the English tour. 7  The Journalist, ‘The People’s Advocate: Marshall Maxeke’, 7 October 2014. Accessed

26 June 2020, https://www.thejournalist.org.za/pioneers/peoples-advocate-marshallmaxeke. 8 R. West, ‘Charlotte Maxeke (Manye) (1874–1939)’, BlackPast 4 August 2018. Accessed

April 2020, https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/maxeke-manyecharlotte-1874-1939/.

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9 R.S. Kumalo, ‘The Legacy of Charlotte Makgomo Maxeke’, UKZNDABA 8:5 (2011), pp. 6–7. 10 Moloantoa, ‘Remarkable Life of Charlotte Maxeke’. 11 African Feminist Forum, ‘Charlotte Maxeke – South Africa’ (2016). Accessed April 2020,

http://www.africanfeministforum.com/charlotte-maxeke-south-africa/. 12 For the Wits University archives of this newspaper see http://www.historicalpapers.wits.

ac.za/inventories /inv_pdfo/AD1715/AD1715-5-2-3-5-010-jpeg.pdf. 13 B. Orton, Women, Activism and Apartheid in South Africa: Using Play Texts to Document the

Herstory of South Africa (Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing, 2018). 14 Moloantoa, ‘Remarkable Life of Charlotte Maxeke’. 15 V. Bickford-Smith, ‘South African Cities, Gender and Inventions of Tradition in the Late

Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’ in D. Simonton (ed.), The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience (New York: Routledge, 2017), p. 468. 16 Wilson, Jaki and Sandner, ‘Charlotte Maxeke, “Mother of Black Freedom”’. 17 Kumalo, ‘Legacy of Charlotte Makgomo Maxeke’. 18 Zubeida Jaffer. ‘Address by Charlotte Maxeke at the Conference of European and Bantu

Christian Students Association’ (18 January 2017). Accessed May 2019, http://www. zubeidajaffer.co.za/address-charlotte-maxeke-conference-european-bantu-christianstudents-association/. 19 A. Motshekga, ‘Equal Opportunities and Progress’. Charlotte Maxeke Memorial Lecture,

University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, 4 August 2010. Accessed April 2019, https:// www.gov.za/charlotte-maxeke-memorial-lecture-equal-opportunities-and-progress-msangie-motshekga-president-anc. 20 T. April, ‘Theorising Women: The Intellectual Contributions of Charlotte Maxeke to the

Struggle for Liberation in South Africa’, PhD thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2012. Accessed April 2019, http://etd.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/11394/1627: 11. 21 M.S. Makhanya, Charlotte Mannya-Maxeke Memorial Lecture, 2019. Accessed June 2019,

https://www.unisa.ac.za/static/corporate_web/Content/About/Executive%20management/ Unisa%20Principal%20and%20Vice-Chancellor/documents/VC%20Speech%20 Charlotte%20Maxeke%20Memorial%20Lecture%207%20 April%202019.pdf.

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Pixley ka Isaka Seme: African unity against racism Gregory Houston

1881–1951

An architect of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) – later the African National Congress – and an advocate of non-tribal, non-nationalist unity amongst Africans, Pixley ka Isaka Seme worked tirelessly to protect the right of Africans to their lands. He advised the leaders of the neighbouring British protectorates, Swaziland (Eswatini), Basutoland (Lesotho) and Bechuanaland (Botswana), on how to protect their sovereignty while negotiating independence from Britain.1 In 1912 he was voted the founding treasurer general of the SANNC and, in the same year, he founded the national newspaper Abantu-Batho,2 which functioned as the congress voice for several years. Seme was born at the Inanda mission station of the American Zulu Mission in the then Natal Colony. His father, Isaka Sissonka Kuwana, who also went by the name Marsh Isaac, was a transport rider who became a missionary worker and interpreter, and his mother, Sarah, was a devoted woman of the church. Seme was named after the Reverend S.C. Pixley, the American Congregational missionary at Inanda who later became Seme’s guardian when his parents died. Seme later Africanised his name by changing it from Isaac to Isaka. When he was 14 years old he left Inanda for the Adams Training School for Boys in Amanzimtoti on the south coast of Durban. Reverend Pixley then arranged for him to go to the Mount Hermon School in the United States when he was 16 years old, where he joined fellow countryman John Langalibalele Dube.3 During the eight years Seme spent in the United States, he graduated from Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts and then moved to Harlem, where he lived while studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree at Columbia University in New York. During this time, too, he came across the groundbreaking work of Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which profoundly influenced him. Seme then spent four years in the United Kingdom, where he studied at Jesus College, Oxford University, and established an African students’ union at

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Pixley ka Isaka Seme: African unity against racism

Oxford. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in London just before he returned to South Africa immediately prior to the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.4 Returning to the country at a time when the British had reached a strategic compromise with the Afrikaner community to create a union that denied political and other rights to the black majority, Seme was soon drawn into the leading political currents sweeping through the black community. After moving to Johannesburg in 1911, he began practising as a lawyer in an office he shared with Alfred Mangena. Along with Mangena and other young African scholars – like Richard Msimang and George Montsioa – who had studied abroad, Seme worked towards the formation of a national organisation that would aim at unifying various African groups from the different southern African colonies.5 He was also involved in the establishment of a national newspaper ‘that would help Africans move away from their ethnic and local identities and see themselves as Africans first and foremost and would promote unity among them’.6 Seme is most widely known for his role in the formation of the SANNC. In 1911, he initiated the establishment of the Native Farmers’ Association of Africa Limited in order to encourage black farm workers to gain a measure of personal independence by buying land in the Daggakraal area. This led the Union government to introduce the Natives Land Bill with the intention of barring African people from owning land in most of South Africa.7 Seme responded by making a call for all provincial native congresses and other organisations formed in reaction to the negotiations for the Act of Union to meet and form a national natives’ union: The greatest success shall come when man shall have learned to cooperate, not only with his own kith and kin but with all peoples and with all life…The demon of racialism, the aberrations of the Xosa-Fingo feud, the animosity that exists between the Zulus and the Tongaas, between the Basutos and every other Native must be buried and forgotten; it has shed among us sufficient blood! We are one people. These divisions, these jealousies, are the cause of all our woes and of all our backwardness and ignorance today.8 It was at this seminal moment in South Africa’s history that Seme became involved in conceptualising the form and structure of the SANNC, and facilitating its formation. On 8  January 1912, he delivered the keynote address at the SANNC’s inaugural congress in Bloemfontein, appealing for ‘symbolic and material support’ for the new political organisation. When the time came to vote for the position of president general of the SANNC, Seme proposed John Langalibalele Dube for the position, while he was elected the SANNC’s first treasurergeneral.9 The first issue of Abantu-Batho was published in October 1912 in English as well as all the main African languages.10 The newspaper captured the experiences of South Africa’s African population while propagating the ideals and traditions of the SANNC,11 functioning as a congress organ for several years.

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa

Seme was to play a significant role in several similar publications from then on, including contributing articles to various newspapers that targeted the African community. However, constantly faced with personal financial difficulties and a string of failed enterprises, his star was on the wane by 1920. During the next decade, Seme served as an advisor to the leaders of Basutoland (now Lesotho) and Swaziland (now Eswatini), which were British protectorates at the time, assisting them in their negotiations on ‘their concessions, the return of their land from white settlers and, finally, in gaining their independence’. For instance, Seme helped the Basuto king, Nathaniel Griffith Lerotholi, with the drafting of documents aimed at securing power over his people and undermining the British high commissioner who administered the protectorate on behalf of the British. He was also the legal advisor to King Sobhuza of Swaziland, and his predecessors, assisting the king with the drafting of petitions sent to the British. Seme was a member of the Swazi delegation that travelled to England to seek independence for that country. He was also employed by King Sekgoma Khama and then regent Tshekedi Khama of Bechuanaland and represented them in their efforts to gain independence, and to constitute their own governing structures.12 In 1930, Seme was elected president of the ANC, a position he held until 1937, by which time the congress was virtually bankrupt, had no clear membership and had become moribund.13 He was largely blamed for this situation, resulting in his failure to win re-election. His two terms have been described by critics as ‘culpable inertia’. Seme was unable to work cooperatively, and resorted to authoritarianism at a time when the ANC was organisationally fractured and inefficient because of internal divisions. Seme proposed constitutional change to give him powers to dismiss national executive committee (NEC) members,14 while his changes to the ANC also led to restructuring at the regional level, with the four provincial congresses being replaced by 11 regional congresses. However, this led to further divisions in the ANC, particularly in the powerful Transvaal Congress.15 During this period, Seme also faced personal humiliation when he was struck off the roll of attorneys in 1932 for allegedly defrauding clients, but he was reinstated as a lawyer in 1942.16 He then turned his attention again to assisting the people of Swaziland and Lesotho in their efforts to obtain independence from Britain and running his law firm, which represented mainly black clients who were being exploited by white farmers and employers, and oppressed by the police.17 In terms of his intellectual contribution, Seme is recognised for his 1906 speech at Columbia University titled ‘Regeneration of Africa’, which won him the George William Curtis Medal, the university’s highest oratorical honour. In this speech he called for the renaissance of Africa, beginning with the rousing statement: ‘I am an African, and I set my pride in my race over against a hostile public opinion.’18 Distributed widely, the speech later inspired postindependence African leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, who opined that Africa could not be free until all colonial outposts like South Africa became free. Seme’s speech is also seen as the genesis of his idea for a national organisation that would unite Africans. In 1928,

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Pixley ka Isaka Seme: African unity against racism

Seme’s alma mater, Columbia University, awarded him an honorary doctorate of law (LLD).19 The following extract from the speech conveys Seme’s oratorical style: In these later days when Earth’s noble ones are named, she has a roll of honor too, of whom she is not ashamed. The giant is awakening! From the four corners of the earth Africa’s sons, who have been proved through fire and sword, are marching to the future’s golden door bearing the records of deeds of valor done.20 On Seme’s death, at the age of 69, Jordan K. Ngubane, editor of Inkundla ya Bantu, stated that he would go down in history as ‘the greatest African of the first fifty years of the twentieth century, if not the century as a whole’.21 This prediction – while justifiable – proved to be inaccurate. While Pixley ka Isaka Seme achieved great things and left an inspirational legacy, he has not been widely celebrated. With the exception of a street named after him in eThekwini, there is no institution, building or significant national monument that honours him. And the Order of Luthuli in Gold, which was awarded to him posthumously in 2006 on the centenary of his memorable speech at Columbia, is the only national award given to him, and the sole recognition of this brilliant – but fallible – man. Notes 1 B. Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC: A Biography of Pixley ka Isaka Seme

(Cape Town: Penguin, 2017); R. Rive and T. Couzens, Seme: Founder of the ANC (Johannesburg: Skotaville Publishers, 1991), pp. 12–14; R.S. Kumalo, ‘Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi! Pixley ka Isaka Seme, the African Renaissance and the Empire in Contemporary South Africa’, Alternation 14: Special Edition (2015), p. 195. 2 T. Mokoatse, ‘Pixley ka Isaka Seme’, The Journalist, 17 March 2015. Accessed November

2018, http://www.thejournalist.org.za/pioneers/pixley-ka-isaka-seme; Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC. 3 Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC; Rive and Couzens, Seme, pp. 12–14; Kumalo,

Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi!, p. 195. 4 Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC; Mokoatse, ‘Pixley ka Isaka Seme’. 5 Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC. 6 Mokoatse, ‘Pixley ka Isaka Seme’. 7 Kumalo, ‘Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi!’, p. 197; Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the

ANC. 8 P. Seme, ‘“Native Union”, Imvo Zabantsundu 24 October 1911’, in T. Karis and G.M. Carter

(eds), From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882–1964, Volume 1: Protest and Hope, 1882–1934 (Stanford: Hoover Press, 1972). 9 Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC. 10 Mokoatse, ‘Pixley ka Isaka Seme’; Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC. 11 Kumalo, ‘Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi!’, p. 197. 12 Kumalo, ‘Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi!’, p. 205; Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the

ANC.

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13 Kumalo, ‘Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi!’, p. 197; Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the

ANC. 14  From the Thornveld, ‘Book Review: The Man Who Founded the ANC: A Biography

of Pixley ka Isaka Seme’, 24 July 2017. Accessed November 2018, http://www. fromthethornveld.co.za/the-man-who-founded-the-anc-a-biography-of-pixley-ka-isakaseme/. 15 Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC. 16  From the Thornveld, ‘Book Review’. 17 Kumalo, ‘Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi!’, p. 197. 18 Cited in Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC. 19 Kumalo, ‘Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi!’, p. 197; C. Dunton, ‘Pixley ka Isaka Seme and the

African Renaissance Debate’, African Affairs 102 (2003), pp. 560ff. 20 P. Seme, ‘Regeneration of Africa’. Speech by Pixley Seme, Columbia University, 5 April

1906. Accessed 27 June 2020, https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/regeneration-africaspeech-pixley-seme-5-april-1906. 21 Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC.

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Albert Luthuli: The prototypical leader

Albert Luthuli: The prototypical leader Ngqapheli Mchunu

1898–1967

Albert Luthuli relentlessly pursued non-violence in the struggle against apartheid.1 For this, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961. He was the first black African to receive the award, which was a strong validation of his stance on non-racialism and non-violence.2 In his acceptance speech in Oslo, on 10 December 1961, he stated: This award could not be for me alone, nor for just South Africa, but for Africa as a whole. Africa presently is most deeply torn with strife and most bitterly stricken with racial conflict. How strange then it is that a man of Africa should be here to receive an award given for service to the cause of peace and brotherhood between men. There has been little peace in Africa in our time. From the northernmost end of our continent, where war has raged for seven years, to the centre and to the south there are battles being fought out, some with arms, some without.3 Albert John Luthuli was born at the Solusi mission station near Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), in 1898. His father died when he was six months old, and the family moved to Groutville, in then Natal, where they lived with an uncle who was a chief. Luthuli attended Groutville School until Standard Four, and then spent two terms at Ohlange Preparatory, which was founded by John Langalibelele Dube, who was the principal at the time. After school, he trained as a teacher. His first teaching job was as principal of an intermediate school in Blaauwbosch in the Natal Midlands, where he spent two years before leaving in 1920 for further training at Adams College. Here he met Z.K. Matthews, who was the head of Adams College at the time. Although Luthuli was offered a bursary to continue his studies at the University of Fort Hare, he turned it down, opting to teach at Adams College instead.4 The college was considered one of the best schools in central and southern Africa at the time. Here, he taught isiZulu, music and later on a subject called school organisation.5 It was at Adams College that Luthuli

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met three people who were to have a strong impact on his life: John L. Dube and Z.K. Matthews, who almost certainly influenced his political thinking, and his wife, Nokukhanya Bhengu. The granddaughter of Zulu chief Dhlokolo Bhengu, a polygamist who had several wives, Nokukhanya was a member of a royal family, while Luthuli was a commoner. Luthuli was Nokukhanya’s isiZulu and school organisation teacher. After Nokukhanya had completed her training she remained at the College, working at the Adams Hostel for girls. She married Luthuli in 1927 and settled at their home in Groutville, while Luthuli continued teaching at Adams College. They had seven children.6 A year later, in 1928, Luthuli was elected secretary of the African Teachers Association. He was responsible for negotiations around better teaching conditions, including remuneration, curriculum development and other matters concerning the running of an education facility. It was during his time at Adams College that Luthuli began to develop his political thinking and continued to hone his leadership skills, whilst also being instrumental in the formation of the Tribal Council.7 In 1933 he was elected president of the organisation. It was while he held this position that he established the Zulu Language and Cultural Society. His vision was to create an authentic, all-encompassing South African culture and he believed that African teachers had a role to play in developing and growing this.8 After spending almost 17 years at Adams College, Luthuli heeded the call of the tribal elders of eMakholweni traditional community in Groutville who had requested him to serve as their chief.9 In 1936 he was officially appointed to this new position,10 which effectively gave him the same powers as a judge over both civil and criminal matters.11 Luthuli joined the ANC in 1945, a few years before the apartheid regime came to power in 1948. At the time, there was a leadership vacuum in the Natal ANC due to the ill health of John L.  Dube. So Luthuli became more politically involved, defeating Selby Msimang in the latter’s bid to become an ANC representative on the Native Representative Council.12 In 1951, Luthuli became the Natal president of the ANC after defeating Allison George Champion in the elections for the position, and the following year he succeeded James Moroka as national president of the ANC. This was a seminal period for the movement, as it was embarking on the 1952 Defiance Campaign.13 Unhappy with his public support of the campaign, the government asked Luthuli to step down from his ANC position. He refused, so he was dismissed as chief of Groutville.14 In response, he delivered a speech titled ‘The Road to Freedom is Via the Cross’ in which he said: ‘It is inconceivable how chiefs could effectively serve the wider and common interest of their own tribe without co-operating with other leaders of the people, both the natural leaders (chiefs) and leaders elected democratically by the people themselves.’15 After Luthuli had relinquished his position as chief of Groutville, and had thereby demonstrated unquestionable loyalty to the ANC, he gained a high level of popularity amongst fellow members

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Albert Luthuli: The prototypical leader

of the organisation. However, several bans were imposed on him that affected his ability to lead the ANC in the best way possible.16 Despite these restrictions, he continued to advocate for non-racialism and non-violence, which afforded him great stature amongst South Africans of various races. He was re-elected as president in 1955, and again in 1958, making him the second-longest-sitting president in the history of the ANC, after Oliver Tambo. Despite being president of the ANC, Luthuli was unable to attend the Congress of the People in 1955 due to bans enforced by the apartheid government.17 In 1956 he was arrested with 155 other leaders, charged with treason, and kept in custody for a year. He was released in December 1957, and the charges against him and 64 others were dropped.18 Banned once again in 1959, he was restricted to Groutville. It was two years later, in 1961, that Luthuli won the Nobel Peace Prize and – ironically – less than a week thereafter that the ANC launched its armed struggle with a series of explosions on 16 December, carried out by members of its newly formed armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK). Luthuli is generally reputed to have opposed violence, but there is widespread disagreement about his support for the armed struggle.19 His most recent biography20 states that, while he publicly affirmed his non-violent preferences, he privately supported MK’s initial sabotage campaign as an additional strategy to end apartheid. This was probably largely in response to the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, which demonstrated that the apartheid regime responded to non-violent campaigns with violence. It is in this context that Luthuli accepted the separate formation of MK and its strategies of armed self-defence and sabotage, while insisting that the ANC would maintain its non-violent policies.21 This is evident in the comments he made after the verdict was handed down in the Rivonia Trial of Nelson Mandela and others in 1964: The African National Congress never abandoned its method of a militant, nonviolent struggle, and of creating in the process a spirit of militancy in the people. However, in the face of uncompromising white refusal to abandon a policy which denies the African and other oppressed South Africans their rightful heritage – freedom – no-one can blame brave just men for seeking justice by the use of violent methods; nor could they be blamed if they tried to create an organised force in order to ultimately establish peace and racial harmony.22 Luthuli was banned in 1962, and again in 1964, effectively preventing him from carrying out his duties as president general of the ANC. Nevertheless, he continued to meet secretly with ANC leaders. During this period he also maintained contact with Martin Luther King Jr, the leading figure in the US Civil Rights Movement. His international stature became evident when the US senator Robert Kennedy visited him in Groutville in 1965.23 Albert Luthuli died in 1967, allegedly after being hit by a train while walking on a railway bridge. However, people who knew him well challenged the inquest finding that his death was an accident, as he walked the route daily, and knew the train schedule.24

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Luthuli is credited with transforming the ANC into a mass movement, with the organisation’s membership reaching 100  000 by the end of the 1950s. The period of his leadership was one that embraced increasingly militant popular struggles, including the campaign against Bantu Education and the rural revolts in Zeerust and Sekhukhuniland. And it was also during his term as president that the organisation was pushed towards armed struggle. As one commentator stated, ‘The ANC was never as unified, as large, or as successful as it was during Luthuli’s tenure as president-general.’25 To honour the legacy of Chief Albert Luthuli, several landmarks are named after him, including the Inkosi Chief Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre (ICC) in Durban, KwaZuluNatal Chief Albert Luthuli Street in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal; Chief Albert Luthuli Street in Stanger, KwaZulu-Natal; Umfolozi TVET College, Chief Albert Luthuli Campus in KwaDukuza, KwaZulu-Natal; Chief Albert Luthuli Skills Centre in Stanger, KwaZulu-Natal; Chief Luthuli Clinic, in Benoni, Gauteng; Chief Albert Luthuli Primary School No.2 in Benoni, Gauteng; and Luthuli House, headquarters of the ANC in Johannesburg, Gauteng. Notes 1 S.E. Couper, ‘“Bound by Faith”: A Biographic and Ecclesiastic Examination (1898–1967)

of Chief Albert Luthuli’s Stance on Violence as a Strategy to Liberate South Africa’, PhD thesis, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2008, p. 179. 2 S.M. Ndlovu, ‘On Nkosi Albert Luthuli: Nobel Peace Prize Speech’, Présence Africaine 1

(2012), pp. 121–129. 3 BlackPast, ‘(1961) Albert Luthuli, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech’, (17 April 2009).

Accessed April 2019, https://www.blackpast.org/major_speeches/1961-albert-luthuli-nobelpeace-prize-acceptance-speech/. 4 A. Luthuli, Let My People Go: The Autobiography of Albert Luthuli Nobel Peace Prize Winner

(Cape Town: Tafelberg Publishers, 2006), p. 4; L. Naidoo, In the Shadow of Chief Albert Luthuli: Reflections of Goolam Suleman (Groutville: Luthuli Museum, 2010), p. xiv; Couper, ‘“Bound by Faith”’; R.T. Vinson, Albert Luthuli (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2018); M. Benson, Chief Albert Lutuli of South Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1963); G.J. Pillay, Voices of Liberation: Albert Luthuli (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 1993). 5 J. Sithole and S. Mkhize, ‘Truth or Lies? Selective Memories, Imagings, and

Representations of Chief Albert John Luthuli in Recent Political Discourses’, History and Theory 39:4 (2000), pp. 69–85. 6 Naidoo, In the Shadow of Chief Albert Luthuli, p. 13. 7 S.E. Couper, ‘Chief Albert Luthuli and the Bantustan Question’, Journal of Natal and Zulu

History 25:1 (2007), pp. 240–267. 8 Luthuli Museum, ‘To Conserve, Uphold, Promote and Propagate the Life, Values,

Philosophies and Legacy of Chief Albert Luthuli (1898–1967)’. Accessed April 2019, http://luthulimuseum.org.za/achievementsnobel-peace-price-1960/. 9 S.E. Couper, ‘“An Embarrassment to the Congresses?” The Silencing of Chief Albert

Luthuli and the Production of ANC History’, Journal of Southern African Studies 35:2 (2009), pp. 331–348.

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10 Luthuli, Let My People Go. 11 Vinson, Albert Luthuli. 12 Naidoo, In the Shadow of Chief Albert Luthuli, pp. 15–16. 13 P.S. Landau, ‘The ANC, MK, and “The Turn to Violence” (1960–1962)’, South African

Historical Journal 64:3 (2012), pp. 538–563. 14 S.E. Couper, ‘Chief Albert Luthuli’s Conceptualisation of Civilisation’, African Studies 70:1

(2011), pp. 46–66. 15 United Nations Unit on Apartheid, Department of Political and Security Council Affairs,

‘Notes and Documents, Chief Albert Luthuli: Statements and Addresses, No. 22 (1969) (n.d.). Accessed April 2019, http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdfo/ A3337/A3337-B4-01-jpeg.pdf. 16 R. Suttner, ‘The Road to Freedom Is Via the Cross: “Just Means” in Chief Albert Luthuli’s

Life’, South African Historical Journal 62:4 (2010), pp. 693–715. 17 M. Halengwa, C. Flinterman and E.V.O. Dankwa, (eds), The International Law of Human

Rights in Africa: Basic Documents and Annotated Bibliography ( New York: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1988). 18 C. Saunders, ‘Albert Luthuli: The Black Moses’ in A. Adebajo (ed.), Africa’s Peacemakers:

Nobel Peace Laureates of African Descent (New York: Zed Books, 2014). 19 See, for instance, Couper, ‘“Bound by Faith”’; Couper, ‘“An Embarrassment to the

Congresses?”’; Suttner, ‘The Road to Freedom Is Via the Cross’. 20 Vinson, Albert Luthuli. 21 K.N. Blain, ‘Albert Luthuli: A New Book on Africa’s First Nobel Peace Prize Winner’,

Black Perspectives 17 December 2018. Accessed April 2019, https://www.aaihs.org/albertluthuli-a-new-book-on-africas-first-nobel-peace-prize-winner/. 22 A. Luthuli, ‘On The Rivonia Trial. Statement read before the United Nations Security

Council, 12 June 1964’, cited in D.C. Woodson, ‘Albert Luthuli and the African National Congress: A Bio-Bibliography’, History in Africa 13 (1986), p. 354. 23 Saunders, ‘Albert Luthuli: The Black Moses’. 24  IOL, ‘Family Seek Probe into Albert Luthuli’s Death’, 23 March 2005. Accessed 27 June

2020. https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/family-seek-probe-into-albert-luthulisdeath-237099. 25 Woodson, ‘Albert Luthuli and the African National Congress: A Bio-Bibliography’, History

in Africa 13 (1986), p. 355.

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Dora Tamana: ‘We have opened the way for you’ Gregory Houston

1901–1983

Dora Tamana grew up working hard to survive, and left school in Standard Four, but she never thought of herself or her family as poor. She did not read newspapers, and was unaware of momentous events like the Union of South Africa, the 1913 Land Act and World War I.1 But when she experienced forcible removal from her informal dwelling on the Cape Flats, she responded with a determination that became the hallmark of her long and dedicated commitment to the freedom struggle. She was a grassroots activist who had an innate understanding of social and gender issues, an inspirational leader, a poet, and an advocate for tolerance and equity long before the words gained the significance they now hold. Dora Ntloko was born in Gqamakwe in the Hlobo district in the Transkei on 11  November 1901. She was the eldest of seven children of a peasant farmer and migrant worker. Her father worked a small allotment on which she and her four sisters worked before and after school on school days and on weekends. Brought up in an austere and isolated environment, Tamana and her four sisters cultivated potatoes, pumpkins, peas, cabbages, and chillies, and tended some livestock.2 Every Saturday the girls would travel on foot for three to four hours to Idutywa, the nearest town, where they would sell their produce. There were no buses, and the roads in the village were extremely rough. There were no medical facilities of any sort in her village, and the only school, a two-roomed mission school, taught up to Standard Six. The nearest water for the family was a spring about a kilometre from the homestead. Tamana and her sisters would make several trips a day to the spring, and many more during summer when the vegetables needed watering. Her father would walk from the village to Kimberley to seek work. Because of the range of duties she had to perform, and the austere conditions under which her family lived, Tamana ended her schooling in Standard Four. Although she describes her family as having been poor, she recalls that there were other families in the village who had no fields.3

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Dora Tamana: ‘We have opened the way for you’

Tamana’s grandfather was a Methodist preacher, but when she was in her teens her family converted to the Israelite denomination. She was 20 years old when her father and two of her uncles were among the 163 members of the Israelite sect shot dead by the police in the 1921 Bulhoek massacre. After her father’s death, Dora moved to Queenstown, where she married another Bulhoek survivor, John Tamana. Here she tried to eke out a living by collecting thatching grass in the surrounding hills to sell in the location.4 One bundle, which took most of the day to gather and sell, would fetch about one shilling and sixpence. During this time, three of her four children died in infancy of starvation, tuberculosis and meningitis respectively.5 The combination of these tragic events was behind the couple’s decision to move to Cape Town in search of a better life. However, Cape Town turned out to be not what they expected, although they were able to survive because Tamana sold blankets in Langa, where they lived, to subsidise her income. Her husband could not stay in a job for long, and earned very little. At the time Tamana was supporting six children, including some of her sister’s children.6 Her husband drank, philandered, squandered money and eventually left the family for another woman in 1938.7 A year later, Tamana moved to Blaauwvlei on the Cape Flats, where she was one of the first to build a shack in the settlement.8 She had not been exposed to any politics while growing up – as she stated, there were ‘no politics’ at that time. Tamana’s involvement in politics began when the government decided to remove the squatters living in Blaauwvlei, the informal settlement where she now lived. She became involved with the Cape Flats Distress Association, which was focused on improving the living conditions of the shack dwellers.9 Tamana’s involvement in her local community’s struggles eventually brought her into contact with Ray Alexander, who was then the secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA).10 Alexander recruited her into the party in 1942. She was a very different recruit from the whites who had been recruited into the party, being rural, poor and working class, and her recruitment demonstrated that the party was broadening its base among women. The CPSA provided Tamana with the gateway into deeper involvement in political campaigns in Cape Town.11 Not long after joining the party she became involved in her community’s resistance to removal from Blaauwvlei.12 Tamana joined the ANC in 1943, leading to a significant increase in her political work. A part of this was her involvement in the Women’s Food Committee during and after World War II, in an effort to alleviate the severe food shortages caused by the war.13 Tamana took part in the ANC’s 1952 Defiance Campaign, and the 1953 protests about rising bread prices. In July 1953, a threatened increase in the bread price provoked food protests on similar lines to those of the 1940s, and gave rise to the formation of a national women’s organisation. Led by Ray Alexander, a deputation of women protesting against the rise in the bread price marched to the office of the minister of finance. By 1954, the leading members in this group, including Tamana, were being depicted as the ‘Women’s Committee’ in Ray Alexander’s correspondence.14

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa

After the passage of the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act of 1952, which extended passes to women, Tamana took a leadership role in the anti-pass movement in 1953. In a speech she made at a rally during the campaign she stated: We women will never carry these passes. This is something that touches my heart. I appeal to you young Africans to come forward and fight. These passes make the road even narrower for us. We have seen unemployment, lack of accommodation and families broken because of passes. We have seen it with our men. Who will look after our children when we go to jail for a small technical offence – not having a pass?15 By this time, Tamana had been thrust into leadership in her community and in political organisations. She was a leading member of the ANC Women’s League, and in 1954 was elected national secretary of the newly established Federation of South African Women. In mid-1955, Tamana and Lilian Ngoyi were invited by the Women’s International Democratic Federation to attend an International Congress of Mothers in Lausanne, Switzerland. The two women went out of the country illegally to attend the conference, travelling without passports. They were subsequently invited to go on a trip to Germany, China, the Soviet Union and England.16 After her return to South Africa, Tamara was given a five-year banning order for leaving the country under suspicious circumstances. The terms of her banning under the Suppression of Communism Act restricted her from attending political meetings. At one of the Communist Party rallies Tamana attended in Cape Town, she heard a member of the party mention that workers in Russia were provided with childcare facilities. She decided to put this idea into practice in her Blaauwvlei community, and was instrumental in establishing the first crèche for her community.17 She was also interested in introducing self-help programmes such as a food committee and a women’s sewing cooperative in her community. She became involved with the Athlone Committee for Nursery Education that was establishing schools in disadvantaged areas. Tamana and other members of this committee built a nursery school and family health centre in Blaauwvlei in May 1955.18 During a state of emergency declared following the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960, and after banning organisations in April, the apartheid government forcefully moved Tamana from Blaauwvlei to Gugulethu. She was among several people who were arrested while attending protest marches in Paarl.19 In the 1960s, she was detained twice for participating in political activities. Later in the decade, one of her sons was imprisoned and sentenced to death for his participation in the ANC’s 1967 Wankie Campaign to infiltrate guerrillas through (then) Rhodesia into South Africa.20 Tamana visited him often at the Khami jail in Rhodesia, but was told in 1976 that she had to use a Transkei passport to travel to Rhodesia. Her opposition to the homeland system led to her refusal to accept this requirement, and she was therefore unable to visit her son on his release from prison, after Zimbabwe became independent in 1980.21

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Dora Tamana: ‘We have opened the way for you’

Tamana was actively involved in women’s protests in the 1970s and 1980s. The United Women’s Organisation, which drew together young and old women of all race groups, was launched in the Western Cape in April 1981. Tamana chaired the opening session of the launch and read out a poem titled ‘We Have Opened the Way for You’ – a call on the women of South Africa to unite and act together for change. You who have no work, Speak. You who have no homes, Speak. You who have no schools, Speak. You who have to run like chickens from the vulture, Speak. Let us share our problems so that we can solve them together. We must free ourselves. Men and Women must share housework. Men and Women must work together in the home and out in the world. There are no crèches and nursery schools for our children. There are no homes for the aged. There is no one to care for the sick. Women must unite to fight for these rights. I opened the road for you, You must go forward.22 The role played by Dora Tamana in the liberation struggle set an example for future generations, and ‘opened a door’ for the involvement of many young women in the struggle during the 1980s. Tamana died on 23 July 1983 at the age of 82, a month before the launch of the United Democratic Front in Cape  Town – a movement that would bring together 600 organisations with hundreds of thousands of members in one organisation to fight for change. Notes 1 C.J. Walker, ‘Women in Twentieth Century South African Politics: The Federation of

South African Women, its Roots, Growth and Decline’, MA dissertation, University of Cape Town, 1978, p. 15. 2 J. Rosenthal, Dora Tamana, They Fought for Freedom Series (Cape Town: Maskew Miller

Longman, 1995). 3 Walker, Women in Twentieth Century South African Politics, pp. 14–15. 4 B.E. Nzimande, ‘Forward to a People’s Co-operative Bank!’, Umsebenzi 2:18 (2003).

Accessed July 2019, https://sarpn.org/documents/d0000501/P468_SACP.pdf. 5 Walker, ‘Women in Twentieth Century South African Politics’, p. 32. 6 Rosenthal, Dora Tamana. 7  Mail & Guardian, ‘60 Iconic Women – The People Behind the 1956 Women’s March to

Pretoria (11–20)’, 25 August 2016. Accessed 28 June 2020, https://mg.co.za/article/2016-0825-60-iconic-women-the-people-behind-the-1956-womens-march-to-pretoria-11-20/. 8 Rosenthal, Dora Tamana. 9 Rosenthal, Dora Tamana.

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10 Rosenthal, Dora Tamana. 11 Walker, Women in Twentieth Century South African Politics, p. 123. 12 Rosenthal, Dora Tamana. 13 Walker, Women in Twentieth Century South African Politics, pp. 150–155. 14 Walker, Women in Twentieth Century South African Politics, p. 155. 15 Cited in Department of Education, Amandla! The People Have Spoken (Pretoria: Department

of Education, 2008), p. 5. 16 Walker, ‘Women in Twentieth Century South African Politics’, p. 207n. 17 Rosenthal, Dora Tamana. 18 Rosenthal, Dora Tamana. 19 Rosenthal, Dora Tamana. 20 Rosenthal, Dora Tamana. 21 Nzimande, ‘Forward to a People’s Co-operative Bank!’. 22 G. Fester, ‘Women’s Organisations in the Western Cape: Vehicles for Gender Struggle or

Instruments of Subordination?’, Agenda 13:34 (1997), p. 5.

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Bram Fischer: A defiant Afrikaner

Bram Fischer: A defiant Afrikaner Joleen Steyn Kotze

1908–1975

Abram Louis ‘Bram’ Fischer, is the first South African to be posthumously reinstated to the advocates’ roll. He was struck off the advocates’ roll in 1965, and reinstated in 2003, 28 years after his death. Delivering the first Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture, Nelson Mandela said of him: Bram was a courageous man who followed the most difficult course any person could choose to follow. He challenged his own people because he felt that what they were doing was morally wrong. As an Afrikaner whose conscience forced him to reject his own heritage and be ostracised by his own people, he showed a level of courage and sacrifice that was in a class by itself. [He] fought only against injustices, not against [his] own people.1 Fischer set the course of South Africa’s struggle history through his selfless act of standing up against the injustices of apartheid, and fighting for the end of racial discrimination. Born into a prominent Afrikaner family,2 he made an unlikely ally in the struggle against the apartheid state. Grandson of Abram Fischer, prime minister of the Orange Free State, and son of Percy Fischer, judge president of the Orange Free State, Bram was born into a family that advanced the Afrikaner nationalist propaganda and its associated political agenda.3 His family had been active in the Afrikaner struggle for independence from British colonial rule, and Fischer, a selfproclaimed Afrikaner nationalist from the age of six, was elected Nationalist prime minister of a student parliament at Grey University College, now the University of the Free State.4 In his Memorial Lecture, Mandela mentioned the costs of the Fischer family’s support for the Afrikaner struggle: Bram also spoke about how members of his family visited General De Wet and other [Afrikaner] rebels in prison. Although he was less than eight years of age

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he was taken along to such visits by his father and mother. His father’s actions cost him and his family dearly. His support for the [Afrikaner] rebel cause offended against prevailing values of the time, and his practice as an advocate suffered. The family was compelled by financial reasons to live away from Bloemfontein on a farm. His mother sold flowers at the station to supplement their income. Like many of our people do now, she had to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning to manage the home and her other responsibilities.5 Indeed, Mandela noted that ‘with a background like that he could not but have become an Afrikaner nationalist, as we became African nationalists 30 years later as a result of our oppression by whites’.6 Yet, Bram followed in the footsteps of his father. But not necessarily as a future prime minister or chief justice of apartheid South Africa, which seemed likely given his success as a lawyer upon his return from Oxford University, where he spent three years as a Rhodes Scholar.7 Rather, Fischer, much like his father, sacrificed for a greater cause, and his values offended against the prevailing values of the apartheid time as he worked for a just, inclusive and multiracial South Africa. Fischer’s wife, Molly, was also from a prominent Afrikaner family – she was Jan Smuts’s niece (on his wife’s side). In 1942 both Bram and Molly joined the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) as this was the only political party open to all races8 – a decision driven by moral consciousness: Though nearly forty years have passed, I can remember vividly the experience which brought home to me exactly what this ‘White’ attitude is and also how artificial and unreal it is. Like many young Afrikaners I grew up on a farm. Between the ages of eight and twelve my daily companions were two young Africans my own age. I can still remember their names. For four years we were, when I was not at school, always in each other’s company. We roamed the farm together, we hunted and played together, we modelled clay oxen and swam. And I can never remember that the colour of their skins affected our fun or our quarrels or our close friendship in any way…I joined the Bloemfontein Council of Europeans and Africans, a body devoted largely to induce various authorities to provide proper (and separate) amenities for Africans. I arrived for my first meeting with other newcomers. I found myself being introduced to leading members of the African community. I found it hard to shake hands with them. This, I found, required an enormous effort of will on my part. Could I really, as a White adult, touch the hand of a Black man in friendship? That night I spent many hours in thought trying to account for my strange revulsion when I remembered that I had never had any such feelings towards my boyhood friends. What became abundantly clear was that it was I, and not the Black man, who had changed, that despite my own growing interest in him, I had developed an antagonism for which I could find no rational basis whatsoever.9

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Fischer and his wife became very active in the structures of the CPSA.  He was part of the Johannesburg district committee, and remained an active member even after the party was banned by the apartheid state in the 1950s, eventually becoming its acting chairperson.10 The couple opened their home in Johannesburg to political meetings and activities, but also social gatherings at which people of different races mingled and swam in their swimming pool. Indeed, Stadler notes that ‘it is hard to convey how exceptional this was. In the desert of racial separation entrenched and developed by apartheid, this house was an oasis of genuine racial equality, friendship and respect’.11 Fischer’s unique outlook that friendship and humanity transcend race shaped the views and beliefs of many, including Nelson Mandela. During his Memorial Lecture at Wits University in 1995, Mandela credited Fischer with changing his own world view: ‘Both of us changed. Both of us rejected the notion that our political rights were to be determined by the colour of our skins. We embraced each other as comrades, as brothers, to fight for the freedom for all in South Africa, to put an end to racism and exploitation.’12 Through his willingness to sacrifice all, Fischer showed that there were white (Afrikaner) people who would fight in the struggle for freedom for all South Africans, and his commitment to do what is right helped sway Nelson Mandela to discard his own nationalist Africanist views in favour of a non-racial and united South Africa.13 This was because Fischer’s actions spoke louder than words, and Mandela paid attention to how the Afrikaner treated his black workers.14 Fischer was active in the struggle for liberation and defended the ANC leadership in numerous cases, ranging from participating in the Defiance Campaign to the renowned Treason Trial from 1956 to 1961, and the Rivonia Trial from 1963 to 1964 in which he was lead defence. He is praised for saving the Rivonia trialists from certain death with his skill, and for being willing to be identified as someone who had actively participated in meetings at Liliesleaf Farm. Along with Vernon Berrange, George Bizos, Arthur Chaskalson and Joel Joffe, Fischer worked to save the lives of the Rivonia trialists by getting them life in prison as opposed to the death penalty. But his actions went beyond those usually expected of a defence lawyer. During this infamous political trial that captured the world’s imagination, Fischer and his wife would smuggle letters, and a radio, to them. He even ‘stole’ a van that was registered to the Rivonia safe house to protect the owners of the house where it was stored.15 Shortly after the Rivonia Trial, Fischer lost his wife in a car accident, but he did not mention his personal tragedy when visiting the Rivonia trialists on Robben Island where they were imprisoned. Reflecting on this, Mandela said: ‘The refusal to talk about Molly and what happened was typical of Bram’s character. He was a stoic, a man who never burdened his friends with his own pain and troubles. He had come to advise us and to express concern for our predicament; he did not want to become the focus of our concern.’16 Fischer was arrested a few weeks after the Rivonia Trial, on charges related to the Suppression of Communism Act, for being a member of the CPSA. He was granted temporary bail to argue a case in London, but was adamant that he would return to stand trial as he had given his word.17

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For Fischer it was important that a white Afrikaner stand against and defy the apartheid state.18 Facing a maximum of five years in prison, Fischer decided to go underground, and after paying his bail guarantors, he vanished in January of 1965, after which he was struck off the advocates’ roll.19 In a letter read to the court, Fischer stressed that he was in no way disrespecting the court, but rather: If in my fight I can encourage even some people to understand and to abandon the policies they so blindly follow, I shall not regret any punishment I may incur. Unless the whole intolerable system is changed radically and rapidly, disaster must follow and appalling bloodshed and civil war become inevitable. As there is oppression of the majority such oppression will be fought with increased hatred. I can no longer serve justice in the way I have attempted to do during the past 30 years. I can do it only in the way I have chosen.20 Known as South Africa’s Scarlet Pimpernel, Fischer’s action was seen as a ‘defiant banner of resistance…[He] made a symbolic stand to show the world that at least one Afrikaner stood shoulder to shoulder with the non-white imprisoned leaders of South Africa’s freedom movement.’21 After less than a year underground, he was captured and stood trial for sabotage in 1966.22 His statement at the trial is considered a historic moment as Fischer, a white man from a prominent Afrikaner nationalist family that had struggled for Afrikaner freedom from the British, demonstrated integrity, morality and, above all, a deep humanism. Indeed, Mandela drew from this speech when he revered Fischer’s commitment to reconciliation and building bridges to bring a nation divided together. He quoted Fischer’s avowal: It was to keep faith with all those dispossessed by apartheid that I broke my undertaking to the Court, that I separated myself from my family, pretended that I was someone else, and accepted the life of a fugitive. I owed it to the political prisoners, to the banished, to the silenced and to those under house arrest not to remain a spectator, but to act. I knew what they expected of me, and I did it. I felt responsible not to those who are indifferent to the suffering of others, but to those who are concerned. I knew that by valuing above all their judgement, I would be condemned by people who are content to see themselves as respectable and loyal citizens. I do not regret any such condemnation that may follow.23 Fischer was sentenced to life in prison and received very harsh treatment because he was seen as a traitor to the Afrikaner nation. He was ‘shown off, like a prize exhibit in a museum, to friends of the warden after drunken dinner parties’.24 He was not allowed to touch family members and was refused leave to attend his son’s funeral in 1971. By 1974, Fischer was terminally ill with cancer and was refused treatment, so it was left to Denis Goldberg, another Rivonia trialist, to nurse him as best he could. He died at his brother Paul’s home in Bloemfontein a short time after being ‘released’, but a condition of his release was that Paul’s home was to be considered prison property, so he was denied visitors. Fischer’s ashes were confiscated by the apartheid

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state shortly after his funeral as the state did not want his grave to become a shrine.25 But, as Mandela very aptly described: ‘They [apartheid leaders] feared Bram and what he stood for; they were afraid to release his body for proper burial, they were afraid to release his ashes to the family. They failed. The contribution of Bram Fischer will live on.’26 Bram Fischer will always be remembered as someone who epitomises integrity and a commitment to do what is right. More importantly, he carries with him a legacy of defying the apartheid state, as his conscience could not process the inhumane treatment of fellow citizens. He embodies a commitment to build bridges and shake hands in friendship with all South Africans for the greater good. In the words of Mandela: I have said on several occasions that the Afrikaner in this country has given us a lot of pain, a lot of suffering. They have been insensitive beyond words…But, as an articled clerk, as a lawyer, as a prisoner, as a politician, I have discovered one solid fact: that when an Afrikaner changes, he changes completely, he becomes a real friend. That has been my experience, even behind bars – we developed strong friendships with warders, Afrikaner warders…And Bram exemplified that type of Afrikaner.27 His act of defiance, it is often said, saved South Africa from a civil war and changed the course of history. His legacy of seeing human beings, and not race, is one that must be treasured for eternity – as must his commitment to do what is right, moral and just, even when everyone else stands against you. Bram Fischer has been idealised in a post-1994 context, and rightly so. He was brought up in a position of privilege, but he used it to defy the injustice of the society that raised him. For this, he paid the ultimate price.28 Notes 1 R.N. Mandela, First Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture, Johannesburg, 9 June 1995. Accessed

June 2019, https://archive.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/lecture. 2 C. Van Wyk, Bram Fischer (Johannesburg, JO: Awareness Publishing Group, 2006). 3 L. Koorts, ‘Mandela’s Lawyer Bram Fischer: A Man Who Paid the Ultimate Price’, The

Conversation 7 May 2019. Accessed April 2020, https://theconversation.com/mandelaslawyer-bram-fischer-a-man-who-paid-the-ultimate-price-116436.T. 4 T. Heiberg, ‘10 Things You Did Not Know about Bram Fischer’, Wits Vuvuzela 28 March

2015. Accessed June 2019, http://witsvuvuzela.com/2015/03/28/10-things-you-didnt-knowabout-bram-fischer/; N. Stadlen, ‘Bram Fischer’s Legacy’, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs 17 (2015), pp. 93–105. 5 Mandela, First Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture. 6 Mandela, First Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture. 7 Stadlen, ‘Bram Fischer’s Legacy’. 8 Wits University, ‘Abram (Bram) Fischer QC, 1908–1975’. Citation by Sir Nicholas Stadlen,

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. (26 March 2015). Accessed June 2019,

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https://www.wits.ac.za/media/wits-university/news-and-events/images/documents/citations/ bram_fischer_ citation_honorary_wits_alumni_9Feb2016.pdf. 9 B. Fischer, ‘I did what was right’. Statement from the dock after the conclusion of the

Rivonia Trial, 28 March 1966. Accessed June 2019, https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/idid-what-was-right-statement-dock-bram-fischer-after-conclusion-rivonia-trial-1966. 10 Stadlen, ‘Bram Fischer’s Legacy’. 11 Stadlen, ‘Bram Fischer’s Legacy’. 12 Mandela, First Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture. 13 Wits University, ‘Abram (Bram) Fischer QC’. 14 Stadlen, ‘Bram Fischer’s Legacy’. 15 Stadlen, ‘Bram Fischer’s Legacy’. 16 Mandela, First Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture. 17 Stadlen, ‘Bram Fischer’s Legacy’. 18 Stadlen, ‘Bram Fischer’s Legacy’; Wits University, ‘Abram (Bram) Fischer QC’. 19 South African Press Association (1997) ‘Fischer Felt Personally Betrayed by Bar:

Daughter Says’, 28 October 1997. Accessed June 2020, https://www.justice.gov.za/Trc/ media/1997/9710/s971028j.htm. 20 B. Fischer, Bram Fischer, QC. A Christian Action Pamphlet. (Wits Historical Papers, 1965).

Accessed June 2019, http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdfo/A2535/ A2535-D1-001-jpeg.pdf. 21 Stadlen, ‘Bram Fischer’s Legacy’. 22 Wits University, ‘Abram (Bram) Fischer QC’; Mandela, First Bram Fischer Memorial

Lecture. 23 Fischer, A Christian Action Pamphlet. 24 Stadlen, ‘Bram Fischer’s Legacy’. 25 Stadlen, ‘Bram Fischer’s Legacy’. 26 Mandela, First Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture. 27 Mandela, First Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture. 28 Koorts, ‘Mandela’s Lawyer Bram Fischer’.

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Govan Mbeki: What role for the peasants?

Govan Mbeki: What role for the peasants? Gregory Houston

1910–2001

Govan Archibald Mvuyelwa (‘Oom Gov’) Mbeki was both a chronicler of the history and aims of the ANC, and an architect of its revolutionary tactics. He was instrumental in the development of the M-plan; he planned and coordinated underground conferences; and he was a member of the national high command of the military wing of the ANC, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK). His numerous publications include one that was written on toilet paper, and smuggled out of Robben Island prison. Govan Mbeki’s father, Chief Sikelewu Mbeki, was a traditional leader and landowner in what is today known as the Transkei region. The family kept cattle, horses, goats and sheep, and the young Mbeki attended primary school at Mpukane Mission. Mbeki was introduced to politics by a cousin, Robert Mbeki, whom he accompanied to meetings of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) in the late 1920s.1 Mbeki’s task was to interpret for his cousin, and in the process he was introduced to trade union politics and the general politics of the time since the ICU had become a leading political organisation.2 But it was the years he spent at university that constituted a formative period in his life, both intellectually and politically. After completing his secondary schooling at Healdtown Institution in Fort Beaufort, he attended Fort Hare university (then called the South African Native College), where he met Eddie Roux, a member of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) who had based himself in Alice, in 1933. Roux provided lessons in communism to Mbeki and other students as part of his effort to recruit young Africans for the CPSA. At Fort Hare, Mbeki also met Dr Max Yergan, an African American representative of the Young Men’s Christian Association who had been converted to communism after visiting the Soviet Union.3 Between 1934 and 1935 Mbeki spent his university vacations in Johannesburg with his sister, Fanny, and got a part-time job working for CNA. Here he was able to gain first-hand knowledge

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about the problems of workers, such as the poor wages earned by black workers and constant confrontations with the police on labour matters. He was fired from this job for organising workers.4 These were the main influences on Mbeki that were to have a sustained impact throughout his life – his concern for the poor, and his belief in the communist ideal. He joined the CPSA and the ANC. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics and psychology and a teaching diploma in 1936,5 he began teaching in Durban in 1937. It was here that he met his future wife, fellow teacher and CPSA member Nomaka Epainette Moerane.6 While he was a committed teacher, Mbeki had trouble balancing his career with his political activities. So, after he was fired from his third teaching post in 1939, he opened up a co-operative store in Idutywa, which he ran for 10 years. During this time he also served as a journalist and the first editor of Inkundla ya Bantu, a newspaper established in 1938 that focused on political news for Africans.7 Mbeki became involved in Transkei politics when he was elected secretary of the Transkei Voters Association in 1941, and went on to become the founding member and general secretary of the Transkei Organised Bodies in 1943.8 He was a strong advocate of the role of peasants in the rural areas in the struggle. He wrote: We need to prepare for a national struggle in this regard. No doubt you are aware that organisation in the Reserves is sluggish and a long softening up process is necessary if we must play our part in the national struggle. We have not tired of struggling to raise funds for the Anti-Pass Campaign. What a joy it is to be alive these days when history is being made all around us.9 Mbeki resigned from the Transkei Organised Bodies in 1948 after New Unity Movement members in the organisation opposed participation in the Native Representative Council. At the time he had finished serving his four-year term as a representative of Idutywa in the Transkei Territorial Authorities General Council, commonly known as the bhunga, to which he had been elected in 1943.10 Mbeki returned to teaching just before the Bantu Education Act of 1953 was passed, but was dismissed from the secondary school he was teaching at in Ladysmith in 1955. Thereafter he relocated to Port Elizabeth, and became regional editor of the New Age newspaper, which dealt with local issues and national political news of interest to black people in general.11 At the time, Ruth First and Brian and Sonya Bunting were on the editorial board. Mbeki became involved in organisational work for the ANC, including the extension of the M-plan of street and zone committees established in the African townships after meetings were banned in Port Elizabeth in 1953. Drawing on his experience as a teacher, Mbeki used the M-plan structures to provide political education to ANC members and people who had volunteered during

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Govan Mbeki: What role for the peasants?

the 1952 Defiance Campaign.12 At the time he had become chairman of the ANC in the Eastern Cape, and was an active underground member of the banned CPSA. His prominence within the ANC was entrenched when he was selected to chair the ANC’s last national conference inside the country, which was held in Durban in December 1959. A year later, after the ANC was banned in the wake of the Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960, Mbeki played a prominent role in the ANC underground. He was a member of MK, when it was formed in 1961, and coordinator of the ANC’s national secretariat, formed in late 1962 to understudy its national executive committee.13 He also chaired the ANC’s first underground conference at Lobatse in Botswana in 1962, which endorsed the leadership’s earlier decision to turn to armed struggle.14 In November 1962, he was elected to the central committee of the SACP at a secret conference in Johannesburg. In July 1963, Mbeki was among the members of the MK high command and other leaders of the liberation movement who were arrested in the raid at Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, and was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island in 1964. He played several leading roles on the island, including serving in the top leadership structure among prisoners, the High Order. Most significant, however, was the role he played in developing educational material for fellow prisoners – material that was used in political education classes for three decades.15 He also continued his own studies, completing an honours degree in economics in 1970.16 He served his sentence with Nelson Mandela and others in the isolation section of the prison where the political leadership of the ANC was confined. On 30  March 1982, when Mandela and other Rivonia trialists imprisoned in the isolation section were transferred to Pollsmoor Prison, Mbeki was not included.17 He served the remainder of his period of imprisonment on the island, until his release on 5 November 1987. He was restricted to the magisterial district of Port Elizabeth until November 1989, a few months before the unbanning of the ANC and other organisations, in February 1990. In the wake of the first democratic elections in 1994, he became deputy president of the Senate and its successor, the National Council of Provinces, a position he held until 1999, when he retired from politics. Mbeki penned several publications of note. He wrote an article for the university magazine in his final year at the University of Fort Hare in which he criticised Edgar Brookes for referring to ‘coloureds’ as ‘the sins of our forefathers’ in a book. Instead, Mbeki argued, South Africa’s problems were best solved by integrating the different race groups. Alexander Kerr, the university’s principal, was outraged by the article, and ordered Mbeki to withdraw it. He refused, so that edition of the magazine was never published.18 Mbeki’s first publication, The Transkei in the Making, published in 1939, was a collection of essays describing conditions in the Transkei at the time. It was subsequently serialised in the magazine The New South African Outlook. In 1957, he wrote an article for the journal Liberation – the longest article published in the journal for the next decade – in which he argued strongly against the rural institution of traditional leaders.19 His second and most influential book, The Peasant’s Revolt, was written in part on toilet paper that was smuggled out of prison while he was awaiting trial under the Explosives Act in 1961.20 The book, published in Britain in 1964 while Mbeki was in prison, focused on the events

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surrounding the 1960 peasants’ revolt in Pondoland. Here, Mbeki reiterated his early stress on the importance of rural action in the liberation struggle, and argued that, prior to the Pondo Revolt, there had been no recognition of the potential of rural struggles.21 He wrote: ‘The leaders realised at last that a struggle based on the reserves had a much greater capacity to absorb the shocks of government repression, and was therefore capable of being sustained for a much longer time than a struggle based on the urban locations.’22 In the book, Mbeki describes the origins of the revolt, the methods of struggle, and the revolt’s links with the broader national struggle.23 Mbeki’s 1992 publication, The Struggle for Liberation in South Africa, included detailed analyses of some of the most significant events in the history of the struggle, including the Defiance Campaign of 1952, which he described as an ‘an opportunity’ for ‘the rank and file of the ANC membership to be involved in a political way in the struggle against oppression’.24 In a book published in 1996, Sunset at Midday, he focuses on the ANC and the mass struggles inside the country during the period when he was on Robben Island in the 1970s and 1980s. The emphasis is on the re-emergence of the ANC inside the country following the decade of ‘paralysis’ after the Rivonia arrests, and on identifying ways in which the ANC played a key role in developments within the country, particularly during the 1980s.25 Mbeki’s awards include an honorary doctorate from the University of Amsterdam in 1978 and the ANC’s Isitwalandwe Award in 1980. He is remembered as a journalist, author, scholar, disciplined cadre, mobiliser, leader and teacher. Throughout his life, he never wavered from his passionate belief in the prime role of peasants in the liberation struggle. Notes 1 C. Bundy, Govan Mbeki (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press 2012), p. 31. 2 R. First, ‘Foreword’ in G. Mbeki, South Africa: The Peasants’ Revolt (London: International

Defence and Aid Fund, 1964); S. Ndlovu, Interview with Govan Mbeki, Port Elizabeth, Sadet Oral History Project, 18 November 2000; T. Mkhwanazi, ‘How a Schoolboy’s Rage Turned Mbeki towards Marxism’, Mail & Guardian 13 November 1987. Accessed October 2018, https://mg.co.za/article/1987-11-13-schoolboys-rage-turned-mbeki-towards-marxism. 3 Bundy, Govan Mbeki, pp. 34–35; First, ‘Foreword’; Ndlovu, Interview with Govan Mbeki;

Mkhwanazi, ‘How a Schoolboy’s Rage Turned Mbeki towards Marxism’. 4 Ndlovu, Interview with Govan Mbeki. 5 First, ‘Foreword’; Ndlovu, Interview with Govan Mbeki; Bundy, Govan Mbeki, pp. 33–43. 6 A. Drew, ‘Govan Mbeki’s Peasants’ Revolt: A Critical Examination’ in T. Kepe and

L. Ntsebeza (eds), Rural Resistance in South Africa: The Mpondo Revolts after Fifty Years (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2011), p. 68; Bundy, Govan Mbeki, p. 47. 7 Bundy, Govan Mbeki, p. 50; Ndlovu, Interview with Govan Mbeki. 8 Bundy, Govan Mbeki, pp. 64–68; First, ‘Foreword’; Ndlovu, Interview with Govan Mbeki;

C. Bundy, ‘Land and Liberation: The South African National Liberation Movements and the Agrarian Question, 1920s–1960s’, Review of African Political Economy 29 (1984), p. 22.

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9 Letter from Mbeki to A.B. Xuma, then president of the ANC, cited in Bundy, ‘Land and

Liberation’, p. 23. 10 Ndlovu, Interview with Govan Mbeki. 11 Bundy, Govan Mbeki, p. 87; First, ‘Foreword’; Ndlovu, Interview with Govan Mbeki. 12 Ndlovu, Interview with Govan Mbeki. 13 G. Houston, ‘The Post-Rivonia ANC and SACP Underground’ in South African

Democracy Education Trust (eds), The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 1, 1960–1970 (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2004). 14 G. Houston and B. Magubane, Interview with Joe Matthews, Pretoria and Cape Town,

Sadet Oral History Project, 5 November 2002. 15 Ndlovu, Interview with Govan Mbeki; Bundy, Govan Mbeki, p. 135. 16 O’Malley Archives, Govan Archibald Mvuyelwa Mbeki. Accessed October 2018, https://

omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02426/05lv02569.htm. 17 J. Carlin, Interview with Govan Mbeki. PBS, Frontline: The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela

Interviews, n.d. Accessed October 2018, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ mandela/interviews/mbeki.html. 18 Mkhwanazi, ‘How a Schoolboy’s Rage Turned Mbeki towards Marxism’. 19 G. Mbeki, ‘The Transkei Tragedy: A Study in the Bantu Authorities Act’, Liberation 21

(1957), pp. 7–11. 20 First, ‘Foreword’; D. Herbstein, ‘Obituary – Govan Mbeki: Veteran of the South

African Struggle against Apartheid, Imprisoned with Nelson Mandela’, The Guardian 31 August 2001. Accessed October 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/aug/31/ guardianobituaries. 21 Bundy, ‘Land and Liberation’, pp. 26–27. 22 Cited in Bundy, ‘Land and Liberation’, p. 27. 23 G. Mbeki, South Africa: The Peasants’ Revolt (London: International Defence and Aid Fund,

1964). 24 G. Mbeki, The Struggle for Liberation in South Africa: A Short History (Bellville: Mayibuye

Short Books Series, 1992). 25 G. Mbeki, Sunset at Midday: Latshonilangemini! (Braamfontein: Nolwazi, 1996).

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Walter Sisulu: Isitwalandwe/ Seaparankoe Gregory Houston

1912–2003

It was while working on the mines in Johannesburg that the young Walter Ulyate Max Sisulu first witnessed the power of collective action. Mine workers organised a strike over the quality of their food, after which it improved. The young Sisulu was impressed, and was inspired to harness the power of the collective to improve the lives of ordinary South Africans.1 Sisulu’s early history is a familiar story. Born to a single mother, he grew up in multiple homes raised by – at different times – his mother, his grandparents and an aunt. However, the person who was most responsible for his upbringing was his uncle, Dyanti Hlakula, his mother’s cousin, the family head, and headman in the village of Qutubeni in the Transkei region. Sisulu started his schooling in 1919 at an Anglican mission school in the village, and then moved to a government school in Manzana for Standards Two and Three. Thereafter he attended the All Saints mission school run by the Anglican Church. He was 15 years old when his uncle died and he had to leave school, travelling to Johannesburg to seek work on the mines so that he could help support his family.2 This was a common practice among young men from his village. Sisulu recalled that: Annually groups of young boys and elderly men went on contract to work on the mines of the Witwatersrand and Reef. Those returning home boasted about the glitter and bright lights of distant cities, and displayed their possessions such as Westernised clothing and watches, etc. I was in awe and admiration of these stories and it aroused a desire to own these prized possessions myself. I wanted to have cash and earn money.3 Intending to take up a job at Rose Deep Mine between Germiston and Primrose, Sisulu spent the first night in a mine compound dormitory with about 60 other men. But he was too young to

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work on the mine, so he got a job at a dairy on the outskirts of Germiston. His job was to wash dishes, cans and bottles, and accompany the cart driver on milk delivery rounds seven days a week. After nine months at the dairy, he left and secured work at the Rose Deep Mine as a stone crusher. It was here that he witnessed the food strike that was to change the course of his life.4 On his return to the Transkei, he attended a meeting in which the white magistrate informed the villagers about the government’s plan to limit their stock because of land erosion. Sisulu was impressed to see, for the first time in his life, one black man stand up to a white man and tell him that a better solution was to remove a local white farmer who had thousands of animals.5 In 1931, Sisulu went to East London, where he obtained work as a domestic servant at a whiteowned garage. He began to attend meetings of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union led by Klements Kadalie at the time. He returned to Qutubeni in 1932, and then returned to Johannesburg in 1933. In the meantime, his mother had also settled in Johannesburg, living in George Goch Location and working as a washerwoman. Sisulu found employment at Premier Biscuits, where he worked until 1935. During this time in Johannesburg, Sisulu completed Standards Five and Six by attending night classes held at the Bantu Men’s Social Centre, and his Junior Certificate (or JC, as it was commonly known) at the Union Correspondence College. In early 1936, he was dismissed from the bakery for organising a strike. By this time, Sisulu, his mother and his mother’s live-in lover had moved to Orlando, Soweto. He got part-time work at the Bantu World newspaper, where he met Selope Thema, editor of the Bantu World and secretary general of the ANC, and R.R. Dhlomo, the assistant editor. Sisulu became active in the Orlando Civic Association.6 After working for several companies, Sisulu opened an estate agency called the Non-European United Estate Agency in 1938. He met Nelson Mandela in his estate agency office, at a time when Mandela was evading the police. He joined the ANC in 1940, at the age of 28, and began writing articles for the Bantu World newspaper. In 1941, he met Albertina Thethiwe, and married her three years later. Sisulu became engaged in activities that led to the formation of the ANC Youth League, including being a member of the provisional committee of the league before its launch at the Bantu Men’s Social Centre in 1944. He was elected treasurer of the first executive committee of the league, with Anton Lembede as president. At the ANC’s national conference in 1949, Sisulu was elected secretary general of the organisation, with Dr James Moroka as president general. As secretary general, Sisulu had to work full-time for the ANC and give up his estate agency.7 During the 1950s, first as secretary general of the ANC, and then as one of the leaders in the national executive committee (NEC), Sisulu played an important role in building a mass base for the organisation, resulting in a membership of 100 000 by the end of the decade.8 Among the first major actions he took as secretary general was to propose, during a meeting of the NEC, a defiance campaign against unjust laws. He deputised for the president general as the chairman of the national action council charged with planning the campaign. Sisulu participated in the campaign by leading a march in Boksburg, where the protesters he led refused to produce their passes and were arrested. He was sentenced to seven days’ imprisonment.

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In the aftermath of the campaign, he was again arrested, and together with 19 other leaders charged under the Suppression of Communism Act. All 20 accused were given a sentence of nine months’ imprisonment with hard labour, suspended for two years. Despite instructions to go underground for fear that the government would take harsher action against ANC leaders, he was banned soon thereafter.9 In July 1953, Sisulu and several other South African delegates attended the first World Youth Festival convened by the World Federation of Democratic Youth in Romania. Thereafter the delegation travelled to Warsaw, Poland, for a conference of the International Union of Students. Sisulu and Duma Nokwe then travelled to the Soviet Union and China. In China, Sisulu discussed the potential for armed struggle in South Africa, and when he asked for Chinese support in this regard was told that ‘revolution is a very serious affair. Don’t play with it. Don’t take a chance unless you are really ready for it.’ It was this five-month trip abroad that led to Sisulu’s decision to join the Communist Party. He started attending underground classes of the banned Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and became a member.10 His membership of the party was one of the significant factors behind the close relationship between the ANC and CPSA at the time.11 Although banned from mid-1954, Sisulu threw himself into the preparations for the Congress of the People, held in Kliptown in June 1955, which, being banned, he of course could not attend. Instead, he watched the events from the rooftop of a nearby building. At the time, Duma Nokwe had replaced him as secretary general of the ANC.12 Sisulu was among the 156 leaders of the Congress Alliance arrested in 1956 and charged with treason. This imprisonment brought together the leadership of the Congress Alliance from virtually every corner of the country. When the leaders were released on bail, most were banned, and could not perform any political functions. However, Sisulu continued operating covertly, as did many other leaders. Charges were dropped for most of the leaders who had been arrested in 1956, but Sisulu and 29 others were tried, and acquitted at the end of the Treason Trial five years later, in 1961.13 Sisulu was among the thousands detained for months in the aftermath of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre. When the ANC was banned in 1960, Sisulu became an underground member of the armed wing of the ANC, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK). He served as political commissar of its first national high command, which included Nelson Mandela as commander-in-chief, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba and Joe Slovo. Sisulu was arrested in 1962, and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for incitement arising from his role in organising a stay-at-home protest in May 1961, and for violation of his banning orders. While out on bail, he went underground for several months, establishing and operating Radio Freedom from his hideout.14 He delivered the following address through Radio Freedom on 26 June 1963: Sons and Daughters of Africa. I speak to you from somewhere in South Africa. I have not left the country. I do not plan to leave. Many of our leaders of the African National Congress have gone underground. This is to keep the organisation in action; to preserve the leadership; to keep the freedom fight

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going…We must intensify the attack on the pass laws. We must fight against the removal of the Africans from the Western Cape. We must reject once and for all times, the Bantustan fraud. No act of government must go unchallenged…Only by united action can we overthrow this Government…We face tremendous odds. We know that. But our unity, our determination, our sacrifice, our organisation are our weapons. We must succeed! We will succeed! Amandla!15 On 11 July 1963, Sisulu was arrested with several other leaders attending a meeting at the MK headquarters on Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia. Charges were brought against them in October 1963, and on 12 June 1964 they were sentenced to life imprisonment for carrying out the activities of a banned organisation and orchestrating acts of sabotage.16 The Rivonia trialists were placed in single cells in the isolation section, Section B, on Robben Island. Here, Sisulu was part of the leadership that created an organisational structure for the ANC prisoners on the island, and served as a member of its high organ. He also served from time to time on a leadership structure, called Ulundi, established for political prisoners of all the liberation movements. He played a central role in providing leadership in a political education programme developed for ANC members, including providing political education on the history of the liberation struggle from colonial times. His lectures on the history of the ANC were later incorporated into a course of study taught on the island and known as ‘Syllabus A’. He also worked with Mandela and Ahmed Kathrada to clandestinely write Mandela’s autobiography.17 In April 1982, Sisulu, together with Mandela, Mhlaba, Andrew Mlangeni and Wilton Mkwayi, was transferred to Cape  Town’s Pollsmoor Prison. On 15  October 1989, after 26 years’ imprisonment, Sisulu, Mhlaba, Mlangeni, Mkwayi, Ahmed Kathrada and Elias Motsoaledi were released, together with ANC veteran Oscar Mpetha and Japhta Masemola, a leader of the Pan Africanist Congress.18 Sisulu arrived home to find a huge ANC flag draped on the outside of the family house. Approximately 100 000 people attended a mass rally that he addressed later in the month, at the FNB stadium near Soweto.19 Soon thereafter, Sisulu travelled to Lusaka to meet with the external leadership of the ANC, and was appointed leader of the interim ANC inside the country.20 After the release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990, he participated in the first meeting with apartheid regime officials at Groote Schuur in Cape  Town in May 1990. The task of continuing discussions with the government was then passed on to others. Sisulu was elected deputy president of the ANC at the 1991 national conference in Durban. A year later, he was awarded Isitwalandwe/Seaparankoe, which was the highest honour granted by the ANC to its members, for his contribution to the liberation struggle in South Africa.21 He participated in the ANC’s election campaign prior to the first democratic elections in April 1994, but rejected a position in government after the elections because he wanted to retire. Nevertheless, he continued to do occasional work for the ANC, including receiving important international visitors, and leading committees to deal with internal party issues.22 In 1998, the Indian government awarded him Padma Vibhushan, the country’s second-highest civilian award.

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Notes 1 E. Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu: In Our Lifetime (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers,

2002), p. 63; G. Houser and H. Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will Go Singing’: Walter Sisulu Speaks of His Life and the Struggle for Freedom (Cape Town: Robben Island Museum, 2001), pp. 39–40. 2 Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu, p. 25ff.; Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will Go

Singing’, pp. 8–22. 3 Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will Go Singing’, p. 29. 4 Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu, p. 63; Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will Go

Singing’, pp. 39–40. 5 Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu, pp. 57–64; Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will Go

Singing’, pp. 30–37. 6 Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu, pp. 65–70; Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will Go

Singing’, pp. 37–43. 7 Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu, pp. 90–118; Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will

Go Singing’, pp. 44–66. 8 Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will Go Singing’, p. 82. 9 Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu, pp. 144–158; Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will

Go Singing’, pp. 71–84. 10 Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu, pp. 163–181; Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will

Go Singing’, pp. 85–93. 11 Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu, p. 18. 12 Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu, pp. 183–184; Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will

Go Singing’, pp. 95–97. 13 Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu, pp. 190–198; Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will

Go Singing’, pp. 104–108. 14 Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), pp. 122–124. 15 Refer to Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), p. 122. 16 Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu, pp. 231–265. 17 Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu, p. 337; Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will Go

Singing’, pp. 136–148. 18 Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, ‘Ahmed Kathrada – A Great and Gentle Revolutionary,

1929–2017’, Awaaz 14:1 (2017). Accessed July 2020, https://www.awaazmagazine. com/volume-14-issue-1/footsteps/item/894-ahmed-kathrada-a-great-and-gentlerevolutionary-1929-2017. 19 R. Kaschula, ‘Mandela Comes Home: The Poets’ Perspective’, Oral Tradition 10:1 (1995),

pp. 91–110. 20 Kaschula, ‘Mandela Comes Home’. 21 J. Onyeakor, Guinea Pigs of the New World Order: Blackman the Endangered Breed

(Bloomington: Xlibris Corporation, 2012), p. 173. 22 Houser and Shore (with Walter Sisulu), ‘I Will Go Singing’, p. 174.

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Oliver Tambo: The glue that holds us together

Oliver Tambo: The glue that holds us together Gregory Houston

1917–1993

Can we say Oliver Tambo is no more, while we walk this solid earth! Oliver lived not because he could breathe. He lived not because blood flowed through his veins. Oliver lived not because he did all the things that all of us as ordinary men and women do. Oliver lived because he had surrendered his very being to the people. He lived because his very being embodied love, an idea, a hope, an aspiration, a vision…Dear brother: You set yourself a task which only the brave would dare. Somewhere in the mystery of your essence, you heard the call that you must devote your life to the creation of a new South African nation. And having heard that call, you did not hesitate to act. It may be that all of us…will never be able to discover what it was in your essence which convinced you that you, and us, could, by our conscious and deliberate actions, so heal our fractured society that out of the terrible heritage, there could be born a nation. Nelson Mandela, speech at the funeral of OR Tambo Oliver Reginald ‘O.R.’ Kaizana Tambo was born in the village of Nkantolo in the Pondoland (eQawukeni) region of what is now the Eastern Cape. His father, Mzimeni Tambo, the son of a farmer, was an assistant salesperson in a local trading store, and had ten children from his four wives. Tambo’s mother, Julia, was his third wife and a devout Christian. Originally a traditionalist, Mzimeni Tambo later converted to Christianity. Tambo was christened Kaizana at birth, getting his name from Germany’s Kaizer Wilhelm, whose army had fought against the British in World War I. His father gave him the name to show his opposition to the 1878 colonisation of Pondoland by the British. Tambo began his formal education at the age of seven at the Ludeke Methodist School in the Bizana district, and completed his primary school education at the Holy Cross Missionary School in Flagstaff. He then went to St Peter’s College in Rosettenville, Johannesburg, where he completed his schooling with a first-class pass and a number of distinctions.1 By this time, he was an extremely devout Christian, having been baptised three times already, first by evangelicals, then by Methodists and finally by Anglicans.2

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Because black people were denied entry into any university where he could study medicine, Tambo registered at the University College of Fort Hare in 1939, and graduated instead with a Bachelor of Science in physics and mathematics in 1941. He did a Diploma in Higher Education the following year. It was at Fort Hare that he met a fellow member of the Students Christian Association with whom he was to establish a lifelong friendship: Nelson Mandela. By this time he had become involved in student politics, and had been elected chairperson of the Students’ Committee at his university residence. In 1942, Tambo was expelled from the university after leading a student protest against the university authorities’ refusal to allow students to use a tennis court they had renovated. He relocated to Johannesburg, where he took up a post as a mathematics and physics teacher at his former school in Rosettenville. It was also in 1942 that Tambo met estate agent Walter Sisulu, whose office in Johannesburg was regularly used by ANC members as a meeting place. Here he reconnected with Mandela, and was introduced to others such as Anton Lembede, Jordan Ngubane and A.P.  Mda. These were the main figures behind the formation of the ANC Youth League in 1944, with Tambo as its first secretary. As a Youth League leader in the 1940s, Tambo was at the forefront of the leadership that rejected communism and took steps to remove communists from power in the League and the ANC as a whole. This position was held by most of the leaders of the Youth League who feared that the communists were opposed to African nationalism.3 Tambo and other leaders of the Youth League were instrumental in getting the ANC to adopt a strong African nationalist and militant programme of action in 1949. In the same year, he was elected onto the national executive committee of the ANC. At the time, he was also studying part-time for a law degree. He left teaching in 1948 to take up articles with the law firm Max Kramer and Tuch. Tambo qualified as an attorney in 1951, after which he and Mandela established the first African legal partnership in South Africa when they set up offices at Chancellor House in Johannesburg in December 1952. After Walter Sisulu was banned in 1952, Tambo was co-opted to take over as national secretary of the ANC in 1953, a position he was elected to at the national conference of the ANC held the following year. Despite being placed under banning orders in 1954, he played a central role in the Freedom Charter Campaign as a member of the national action council that oversaw the campaign to collect the demands of South Africans. Around this time, Tambo, a deeply religious man, applied and was accepted for ordination as a priest of the Anglican Church. However, he was arrested soon thereafter, in 1956, and, along with 155 other political leaders, brought to trial on a charge of treason.4 A year later, he was elected vice-president of the ANC. In 1959, during the course of the Treason Trial, he was served with another banning order for five years. On 21  March 1960, the Sharpeville massacre took place. The ANC swiftly took a decision to send its vice-president abroad to mobilise international opposition to apartheid – in particular an economic boycott – and to seek support for the ANC. Tambo left South Africa on 27 March, travelling through Bechuanaland (now Botswana), Nyasaland (now Malawi), Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Kenya, Tunisia, Denmark, England, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United States before he rejoined his recently relocated family in a small flat in London.5 Following the ANC’s turn

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to armed struggle in 1961, and the formation of the military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), Tambo’s tasks outside the country were dramatically expanded. He now had to lead the process of establishing ANC offices in several countries, setting up the machinery to receive and house members of the ANC and allied organisations fleeing South Africa, and seeking international support for the training and arming of ANC guerrillas. Increasingly, leadership of the struggle shifted to the ‘external mission’ led by Tambo, as layers of leadership were removed through arrests, detention, imprisonment and departures for exile throughout the first half of the 1960s. By the time Tambo was appointed acting president of the ANC after the death of Chief Albert Luthuli in 1967, he was the effective leader of the liberation movement, a position he held until the early 1990s. During his 30 years in exile, and nearly the same number of years as effective leader of the liberation movement, Tambo faced numerous challenges, the first and most obvious of which was the gargantuan task of building a mission-in-exile at a time when the movement had been decimated by the arrests and imprisonment of virtually its entire leadership. There were, of course, many other challenges, both internal and external. In 1962, for example, he had to deal with the collapse of the alliance between the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in the South African United Front,6 and in the mid-1960s there was dissent among guerrillas in the Kongwa military camp in Tanzania.7 He was concerned about the relative lull in political activity inside South Africa in the second half of the 1960s as well as failed attempts to infiltrate guerrillas through then Rhodesia in 1967 and 1968.8 Disgruntled MK and ANC members became critical of the ANC leadership,9 causing internal division, exacerbated by demands from some non-African members of the liberation movement to open up membership of the ANC to all.10 The ANC was expelled from Tanzania in 1969 and in 1975 the ‘Gang of Eight’11 leaders were expelled from the organisation.12 In the wake of the 1976 Soweto uprising, Tambo had to deal with a huge increase of MK recruits and, as the crisis in South Africa deepened, the state’s response: infiltration by scores of enemy agents, as well as the co-option of some coloured and Indian leaders following constitutional reforms. In 1984, he faced mutinies in the ANC camps in Angola as well as the expulsion of members of MK and the ANC from Mozambique in the wake of the 1984 Nkomati Accord. The South African Defence Force increased its military incursions into Angola and neighbouring countries supporting the ANC and within the country, while an unprecedented level of repression led to the deaths of hundreds, the imprisonment for years of many, and the detention of thousands. At the same time, some leaders of countries in the West formed an alliance that supported the apartheid regime and there was conflict – sometimes violent – between pro-ANC and anti-ANC anti-apartheid organisations. Tambo faced challenges such as these head-on, and tirelessly. He led a movement that established a mission-in-exile with offices, personnel, military bases and a presence in many countries of the world, and built up an international solidarity movement that reached almost every country in the world. He provided political education and other forms of support to keep up the morale of thousands inside the country, established a school abroad for young exiles, and, stubbornly, repeatedly infiltrated guerrillas into the country. Under his leadership, more than 10  000 guerrillas were trained and based both inside and outside the country. He

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successfully isolated the apartheid regime politically, economically and socially, and obtained not only humanitarian, financial and political support from a host of Western governments, but also secured the support of several of the Eastern Bloc countries for guerrilla training and the supply of arms and ammunition. From 1976 onwards, he stepped up ANC military campaigns until nearly every city, town and major rural area had experienced some form of guerrilla activity and again, from late 1984, provided guidance to a virtual insurrection inside the country. By this time, he had built up an internal front that had an affiliate membership of several hundred organisations, and individual membership and the support of several million people, and had ensured that its political programme, the Freedom Charter, was adopted by major trade unions and the most significant worker federation in the country, the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Making sure that the world was aware of South Africa, he established diplomatic ties with a significant number of countries, achieved observer status in the United Nations and other international organisations, and acquired membership of a host of international governmental and non-governmental organisations. And finally, he achieved broad international consensus on the conditions for negotiations. Through these collective (and immense) achievements, Tambo played a pivotal role both in keeping the liberation movement together in the face of significant challenges, and in ensuring the breakthrough that led to the unbanning of organisations on 2 February 1990 and the subsequent negotiations. There are several factors behind his success. During his years of exile, Tambo acquired the respect of the bulk of the leadership and rank-and-file of the ANC and its allies. While other liberation movements – for example, the PAC – experienced repeated leadership conflicts and changes in exile, the ANC had only one leader throughout the exile period. Although there were some notable challenges to Tambo’s leadership, he was held in great esteem, in part, because of some of his personal qualities. Tambo was seen to be a very compassionate person to whom ‘ethical and moral principle’ mattered very much,13 probably because of his ‘lifelong, abiding and militant Christianity’. He would always ‘find time to pray, and whenever possible, attend church’.14 This deep devotion to Christianity guided how he related to others, most of whom would describe him as compassionate, respectful, patient, empathetic, modest, selfless, fair-minded, gentle, honest, sincere and fatherly.15 And, as Jansen puts it, ‘these connected qualities of Tambo…gave him the moral authority to lead in those hard years’ (emphasis in the original).16 Tambo was also known to be very inclusive. This was reflected in two important ways. The first was how he dealt with the issues of race and ethnicity that repeatedly surfaced in the ANC in exile, as well as the ANC’s relationship with the Communist Party. Tambo reached a point by the 1970s in which he ‘embraced a wider, more inclusive definition’ of African nationalism ‘while at the same time acknowledging the legitimacy and necessity of black affirmation’.17 This recognition of the important role that non-Africans were playing in the liberation struggle was to guide his approach to these members of the liberation movement. Tambo also dealt with

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ethnicity by carefully balancing ethnic and provincial backgrounds in the appointments he made to positions in the ANC and MK structures.18 He also reached a point where he accepted the ANC’s alliance with the Communist Party, a radical shift from the position he had held in the 1940s. For example, in 1981, on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the SACP, Tambo stated that the alliance was ‘a living organism that has grown out of struggle’.19 Although not a prerequisite for the support the ANC received from the Eastern Bloc countries, the alliance was also important because it led to the establishment of fraternal relations with likeminded liberation movements from neighbouring Mozambique and Angola – the Mozambique Liberation Front and the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola – during the course of their struggle. These were of critical importance to the ANC once these organisations came to power in the mid-1970s. The second was his inclusive approach to decision-making. Tambo was highly respected for his consistent adherence to democratic procedure and promotion of collective decision-making.20 In this regard, decisions were reached on the basis of consensus, where all participants were allowed to air their views, and decisions were taken following agreement. Part of this included a method Tambo developed for meetings, in the ‘African style’, by ‘concurring with what the previous speaker had said before going on to qualify parts of the argument’ in order ‘to fashion a conclusion to which everyone felt they had contributed’. In essence, ‘Tambo saw his role as not taking sides, but to chart a course that would be beneficial to all’.21 All these, together with his remarkable ability to remember faces and names and thereby show personal concern for everyone he met, as well as being a sensitive listener who was able to pick up distress signals in others,22 enabled Tambo to make every decision appear to be the decision of all participants. Above all else, Tambo was known to be dedicated to the liberation struggle and the movement he led. Thabo Mbeki, who worked closely with Tambo for two decades, describes this commitment as follows: ‘Never would he depart from any action that would violate these two principles – that is loyalty to the ANC and its values and commitment to the genuine interests of the people.’23 Tambo would emerge as an ‘impeccable example in both his personal lifestyle and in his dedicated work habits’.24 During the 30 years of exile, Tambo saw very little of his family due to his hectic travelling and ANC commitments. None of this was done for personal gain. As Thomas Karis, a noted historian who spent years studying the ANC, stated: ‘It is difficult to think of any major African leader less interested than Tambo in personal power.’25 Chris Hani said the following about Tambo: We admired people like Tambo because we saw in them a different type of intelligentsia – an intelligentsia which is selfless, which is not just concerned about making money, creating a comfortable situation for themselves, but an intelligentsia which had lots of time for the struggle of the oppressed people of South Africa.26

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Tambo, as leader of the liberation movement, had to make some of the most important decisions that impacted on the liberation struggle as a whole, as well as take a central role in some of the key activities of the movement. Among the most important of these are the following: • He established strong personal relationships that were critical for the diplomatic objective of isolating apartheid South Africa and securing support for the ANC and the liberation struggle in general. Some of these, such as his relationship with Canon Collins and Father Trevor Huddleston, had been developed prior to the exile period. Canon Collins is known to have called Tambo his ‘African son’, while Tambo and Huddleston were close friends for over 50 years.27 Collins and Huddleston were able to facilitate a number of processes in support of the ANC, as well as to introduce Tambo to other powerful individuals. Tambo participated in many diplomatic missions to countries on every continent, and established close relationships with significant individuals such as E.S.  Reddy of the United Nations, as well as Olof Palme of Sweden, whom Tambo met in 1962 and remained friends with until Palme’s assassination in 1986. Tambo was also an important factor in securing the cooperation of numerous African governments in providing training and camp facilities for the ANC.28 By this time, he had made firm friendships with leaders such as Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda and Samora Machel.29 • He was centrally involved in raising funds for the ANC’s many activities, including engaging on many occasions with key funders such as the Soviet Union30 and Sweden and for significant events such as the 1969 Morogoro Conference.31 • He worked ceaselessly throughout his 30 years outside the country to provide for the constant stream of refugees arriving in exile.32 • He rejected the demands of some ANC leaders that ANC and MK members, including Chris Hani, who had criticised the leadership in the wake of the 1969 Wankie Campaign, be incarcerated in dungeons33 and also overruled an MK tribunal by stopping the execution of mutineers in the ANC camps in Angola in 1984.34 • He made the difficult decision to include the possibility of attacks on civilians or ‘soft targets’ in MK guerrilla operations in the wake of a series of cross-border raids that resulted in the death of civilian members of the ANC in mid-1985. • He agreed with Thabo Mbeki’s suggestion that the ANC should engage with various delegations of South Africans to discuss the future of South Africa, beginning with the delegation of Afrikaner businessmen that met with the ANC in Lusaka on 13  September 1985.35 • He gave Nelson Mandela permission to continue discussions with officials of the apartheid government while he was in prison, thus paving the way for the secret negotiations between the ANC and apartheid officials in the late 1980s.36 • He came out in favour of negotiation during the second half of the 1980s and managed to convince sceptics such as Chris Hani that it was essential.37 Tambo, who is the longest-serving president of the ANC, died on 24  April 1993, and was honoured with a state funeral on 2  May 1993. He was awarded the Order of Mapungubwe in Platinum posthumously in 2012 for his ‘exceptional and outstanding leadership skills, in leading a militant struggle for freedom, for spearheading an international campaign to isolate

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apartheid, for being the glue that kept the African National Congress (ANC) together in exile, in the struggle for the creation of a non-racial, non-sexist, free, just and democratic South Africa, which belongs to all who live in it’.38 Notes 1 L. Callinicos, The Great Interpreter: Images of O.R. Tambo. Paper presented at a seminar

of the Wits History Workshop, 13–15 July 1994; The Presidency, ‘Oliver Reginald Kaizana “OR” Tambo: The Order of Mapungubwe in Platinum (Posthumous)’ (2012). Accessed October 2018, http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/oliver-reginaldkaizana-%E2%80%9Cor%E2 %80%9D-tambo-posthumous. 2 J.D. Jansen, ‘A Faith That Does Justice: The Public Testimony of Oliver Tambo’, Journal for

the Study of Religion 31:2 (2018), p. 329. 3 E. Feit, ‘Generational Conflict and African Nationalism in South Africa’, The International

Journal of African Historical Studies 5:2 (1972), p. 185; T.G. Karis, ‘South African Liberation: The Communist Factor’, Foreign Affairs 2 (1986), p. 273. 4 Jansen, ‘A Faith That Does Justice’, p. 233. 5 L. Callinicos, Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains (Cape Town: David Philip

Publishers, 2011), pp. 255–265. 6 Callinicos, Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains, pp. 285–286. 7 Callinicos, Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains, p. 316. 8 R.M. Ralinala, J. Sithole, G. Houston and B. Magubane, ‘The Wankie and Sipolilo

Campaigns’ in South African Democracy Education Trust (eds) The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 1, 1960–1970 (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2004). 9 H. Macmillan, ‘The “Hani Memorandum” – Introduced and Annotated’, Transformation 69

(2009), pp. 106–129. 10 N. Ndebele and N. Nieftagodien, ‘The Morogoro Conference: A Moment of Self-

Reflection’ in South African Democracy Education Trust (eds), The Road to Democracy in South Africa: Volume 1, 1960–1970 (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2004). 11 This is a group of eight leaders of the ANC that began to openly express their

disagreement with the leadership of the ANC under Oliver Tambo from 1975. This nationalistic group – which included significant leaders such as Robert Resha, Tennyson and Ambrose Makiwane, Alfred Kgokong and Pascal Ngakane, had several criticisms of Tambo’s leadership, including the claim that he was being manipulated by the communists who had changed the nature of the struggle from a nationalist into a class one. Things reached crisis proportions at the Morogoro Conference in 1969, where the group openly criticised several decisions taken. Several members of the group were demoted to less senior positions than they had occupied prior to the conference, and when some objected, they were removed from the ANC payroll. At a subsequent conference in Lusaka in 1971, the group indicated its determination to dismantle the structures created at the Morogoro conference, and risked destroying the whole movement in its attempt to achieve this goal. They were summarily expelled from the ANC at the next conference, following a decision taken by the majority of participants. 12 Callinicos, Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains, pp. 339–340.

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13 Jansen, ‘A Faith That Does Justice’, p. 234. 14 Callinicos, Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains, p. 447. 15 Jansen, ‘A Faith That Does Justice’, p. 240. 16 Jansen, ‘A Faith That Does Justice’, p. 246. 17 L. Callinicos, ‘Oliver Tambo and the Politics of Class, Race and Ethnicity in the African

National Congress of South Africa’, African Sociological Review 3:1 (1999), p. 132. 18 Callinicos, ‘Oliver Tambo and the Politics of Class, Race and Ethnicity’, p. 139. 19 Cited in Karis, ‘South African Liberation’, p. 271; Callinicos, ‘Oliver Tambo and the

Politics of Class, Race and Ethnicity’, p. 143. 20 Callinicos, ‘The Great Interpreter’, pp. 15–17; L. Callinicos, ‘Oliver Tambo and the

Dilemma of the Camp Mutinies in Angola in the Eighties’, South African Historical Journal 64:3 (2012), p. 612. 21 Callinicos, ‘Oliver Tambo and the Politics of Class, Race and Ethnicity’, pp. 143–144. 22 Callinicos, ‘Oliver Tambo and the Dilemma of the Camp Mutinies’, p. 606. 23 T. Mbeki, ‘Lecture by the Patron of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation on the Occasion of

the Celebration of the Centenary of the Birth of Oliver Reginald Tambo’. Johannesburg, 27 October 2017. Accessed June 2019, https://www.wits.ac.za/media/wits-university/newsand-events/images/ documents/full%20speech.pdf. 24 Callinicos, ‘The Great Interpreter’, p. 27. 25 Callinicos, ‘The Great Interpreter’, p. 27. 26 Cited in Callinicos, Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains, p. 311. 27 Jansen, ‘A Faith That Does Justice’, p. 235. 28 The Presidency, ‘Oliver Reginald Kaizana “OR” Tambo’. 29 AAM Archives, Oliver Tambo 1917–1993. Accessed November 2018, https://www.

aamarchives.org/images/Education/Tambo%20exhibition.pdf. 30 V. Shubin, ANC: A View from Moscow (Bellville: Mayibuye Books, 2008). 31 Callinicos, ‘Oliver Tambo and the Politics of Class, Race and Ethnicity’, p. 130. 32 Callinicos, ‘The Great Interpreter’, p. 13. 33 Macmillan, ‘The “Hani Memorandum”’, p. 110. 34 Callinicos, ‘Oliver Tambo and the Dilemma of the Camp Mutinies’, p. 600. 35 J.P. Brits, ‘Thabo Mbeki and the Afrikaners, 1986–2004’, Historia 53:2 (2008), p. 36. 36 T. Lodge, Mandela: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 158–160. 37 Brits, ‘Thabo Mbeki and the Afrikaners’, p. 37. 38 The Presidency, ‘Oliver Reginald Kaizana “OR” Tambo’.

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Ruth First: Iconic political journalist

Ruth First: Iconic political journalist Gavaza Maluleke

1925–1982

Every year in August, South Africans celebrate Women’s Month in memory of the women’s march of 1956.1 However, it should also be a month in which the country mourns the loss of one of its most iconic political journalists and renowned leaders of the anti-apartheid struggle, Ruth First. First was assassinated on 17  August 1982, when a letter bomb sent by agents of South Africa’s apartheid government exploded as she was going through her mail in her office in Maputo, Mozambique. She had relocated there in 1977, and had been hired as a lecturer and research director of the Centre for African Studies at the Eduardo Mondlane University.2 Her work at the centre involved training Mozambican cadres in research and policy planning, and her team was described as ‘a group of very good Marxist academics driven by excellent investigative journalism’.3 First had been in exile since 1964, when she left South Africa with her three children to join her husband, Joe Slovo (1926–1995), a fellow communist and activist, in London. During this period, she began writing about her experiences of the liberation movement, and her time spent in detention. First also took part in campaigns for the anti-apartheid movement and the ANC, which included touring Britain, and giving public lectures against apartheid and about detention in South Africa. She also travelled to the new African states – Nigeria, Ghana and Sudan – learning about military coups and the independence struggles of those countries. Subsequently, she was appointed to a research post at Manchester University, where she taught the sociology of rebellion in post-colonial Africa. Soon after, in 1973, she started working as a lecturer in sociology at Durham University, where she taught a course in women’s studies. Her move to Mozambique reunited her with her husband, and also brought her closer to South Africa. Due to the geopolitical climate of the time, and the proximity of the newly liberated Mozambique to South Africa, the apartheid government feared First’s presence and saw her work as posing a potential threat.4

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Raised in a politically aware home in which both her parents were left-wing activists and founding members of the Community Party of South Africa (CPSA), Ruth First was exposed to revolutionary politics at a young age.5 As an undergraduate at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), she met other young people who were involved in political struggles. One of these was a law student, Ismael Meer – a friend of Nelson Mandela and a leading figure in the Transvaal Indian Congress. Together with Meer, First helped found the Federation of Progressive Students, and at the same time became a central member of the Young Communist League.6 After graduating, she worked in the research division of the Johannesburg City Council,7 but left after a short while. She played a supporting role in the 1946 miners’ strike and the Indian Passive Resistance Campaign. In 1949 she married Joe Slovo, with whom she played a leading role in the increasingly radicalised protests of the 1950s, including those against the outlawing of communism.8 First was a fearless investigative journalist. She reported critically on the 1947 visit by the British royal family to South Africa, interviewed political leaders such as Yusuf Dadoo and Anton Lembede, and wrote about conditions in squatter camps, migrant worker compounds and about life in the African townships in general.9 As an activist and journalist, she was noted for her concern with ‘identifying and exposing the various horrors of racist rule’, and ‘with reporting and encouraging the course of the struggle against it’. Her writings on ‘forced labour on the farms, the workings of the pass laws, conditions in the gold mines; demonstrations, boycotts [and] campaigns’ depicted ‘the real suffering of the individual victim; the real complex mood of collective defiance’.10 Her publications in The Guardian that exposed the nature of apartheid were taken up by national and international mainstream newspapers, and galvanised local action. One such notable achievement was the potato boycott at the end of the 1950s, after she exposed the exploitation of imprisoned passlaw offenders on the potato farms in Bethal. In December 1956, both Ruth First and her husband Joe Slovo were arrested and charged with high treason, along with 154 other activists. The trial lasted for four years, after which all 156 accused were acquitted.11 Following the state of emergency declared after the Sharpeville shootings in March 1960, the ANC was banned and thousands of activists were arrested, including Joe Slovo. Ruth First fled to neighbouring Swaziland with her children, returning to Johannesburg only after the emergency was lifted.12 During a secret trip in 1961 to South West Africa (now Namibia), which was a mandated territory given to South Africa after World War I, she collected data and conducted interviews with black Africans about conditions in the country. However, the visit had not gone unnoticed and, when she returned, she was banned and was restricted to Johannesburg.13 The order also made it illegal for her to publish any of the material she had collected, and even to communicate with anyone who was also banned. She ignored parts of the ban, and started compiling the material

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she had from her visit into a book, South West Africa. The manuscript was smuggled out of South Africa and was published by Penguin in 1963. This was a considerable risk on First’s part because she had broken her banning order by exposing the government’s dirty business to the world.14 Ruth First’s many publications serve as a reminder of her contribution to the apartheid struggle, and provide us with much historical context for understanding South Africa and its political climate at the time. In her second book, 117 Days (published in 1965), she describes her experiences in solitary confinement. At the time it was legal for the state to hold people for up to 90 days without being charged. So, after being held and interrogated for 90 days, she was released. But she was immediately re-arrested outside the police station, and remained in detention for another 27 days.15 In The Barrel of a Gun, First examines army interventions in African politics, giving an explanation of why African countries were so vulnerable to military coups. She gives detailed accounts of the coups in Nigeria, the Sudan and Ghana, and describes the role of the army in Algeria and Egypt that led to the situations in which conflict arose. She makes extensive use of interviews, conveying a vivid idea of what a coup means to those involved in it. The attention she gave to coups continued in a study of the 1971 coup in Uganda. For First, military interventions had become an ‘infection’, which she saw mainly as a consequence of Africa’s economic dependence on the former colonisers.16 The theme about African leadership and revolution is also found in The Elusive Revolution, which chronicles the rise of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Despite being banned, being detained, being charged with treason and living in exile for nearly 20 years, Ruth First remained an outspoken critic of the apartheid state, and of injustice wherever she found it. She is well remembered for her political activism, her scholarship and her insightful investigative journalism. After her death, her close friend Ronald Segal described her assassination as ‘the final act of censorship’.17 Notes 1 On 9 August 1965, 20 000 women members of the South African Federation of Women,

the African National Congress, the South African Congress of Trade Unions, the Coloured People’s Congress, the Congress of Democrats and the South African Indian Congress marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria in protest against legislation to extend pass laws restricting the entry of black African people into the ‘white’ urban areas of South Africa to black African women. They stood in silence for 30 minutes in the forecourt of the building, before addressing the then South African prime minister J.G. Strijdom in song: ‘Strijdom, you have tampered with the women, you have struck a rock!’ They then departed peacefully. 2 Wieder A (2015) Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid. New Yorth: Monthly

Review Press: 19; Pinnock, D (2012) Ruth First: Voices of Liberation. Cape Town: HSRC Press; Shain, M. and Pimstone, M. (n.d.), ‘Ruth First (1925–1982)’. Available from: https:// jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/first-ruth.

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3 Dan O’Meara cited Wieder 2015: 221. 4 Wieder 2015: 248. 5 Wieder 2015: 35, 39; Pinnock 2012; Shain and Pimstone n.d. 6 Wieder 2015: 56; Pinnock 2012. 7 Wieder 2015: 55; Pinnock 2012; Shain and Pimstone n.d. 8 See https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ruth-heloise-first. 9 Wieder 2015: 69; Pinnock 2012; Shain and Pimstone n.d. 10 Ronald Segal cited in Wieder 2015: 70–71. 11 Wieder 2015: 89; Pinnock 2012; Shain and Pimstone n.d. 12 Wieder 2015: 114; Pinnock 2012; Shain and Pimstone n.d. 13 Wieder 2015: 128ff.; Pinnock 2012; Shain and Pimstone n.d. 14 Wieder 2015: 129; Pinnock 2012. 15 Wieder 2015: 134; Pinnock 2012; Shain and Pimstone n.d. 16 First, R. (1971), ‘Uganda: The Latest coup d’état in Africa’, The World Today, 27(3): 131–138. 17 See https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ruth-heloise-first.

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Nelson Mandela: ‘The Troublemaker’

Nelson Mandela: ‘The Troublemaker’ Narnia Bohler-Muller

1918–2013

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is remembered equally for his single-minded determination and his commitment to reconciliation – difficult qualities to balance. Throughout his long career as an activist, his incarceration, and his negotiations with the apartheid government, he refused to accept anything other than unqualified majority rule. But, once in power, he displayed a strong sense of fairness, reconciliation and forgiveness. It is this capacity to balance a firm mind with a compassionate heart that is his lasting legacy. Born in a small village in Transkei, Mandela was not expected to become the first president of the democratic Republic of South Africa. His second name, Rolihlahla, means ‘one who pulls the branch of a tree’ in isiXhosa or, more colloquially, ‘troublemaker’.1 Mandela, of the Madiba clan, was born to Nonqaphi Nosekeni and Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa Mandela, a chief and main counsellor of Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo, acting regent of the Thembu people. He attended school in Qunu, where he was given the English name ‘Nelson’ by his teacher because during the colonial period Africans were obligated to have a Western name. After the death of his father in 1930, Chief Dalindyebo became Mandela’s guardian, so he lived in the royal household in Mqhekezweni, the provincial capital of the erstwhile Thembuland.2 Mandela matriculated at Healdtown, after which he enrolled for a BA degree at the University College of Fort Hare, but did not complete his studies as he was expelled from the university for joining a student protest. However, he eventually did graduate from Fort Hare in 1943, after completing the course through correspondence. He subsequently enrolled for a law degree at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), which he did not complete, once again due to his continued involvement in political activities. He reminisced about his time there: ‘Wits opened a new world to me, a world of ideas and political beliefs and debates, a world where people were passionate about politics.’3

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In the early 1940s Mandela moved to Johannesburg, where he briefly worked as a mine policeman before joining Witkin, Eidelman and Sidelsky, a white law firm, as an articled clerk. After qualifying as an attorney in 1952, he and Oliver Tambo opened the first black legal practice in the country, offering affordable and frequently free advice to poor black clients.4 Mandela had joined the ANC in 1944, and assisted with the establishment of the ANC Youth League whilst becoming increasingly involved in political activities. Through most of the 1950s he was periodically arrested, imprisoned and banned as an important political actor in the ANC. Towards the end of 1961 the ANC realised that peaceful resistance would not result in freedom for the oppressed in South Africa, so they decided to move towards an armed struggle and formed a military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), to attack symbols of apartheid. As a lawyer, Mandela utilised the courts to further vocalise his condemnation of growing racial oppression and the deteriorating standard of living of Africans in South Africa. Most notable in this regard are his 1962 ‘black man in a white court’ statement, made during his trial on charges of mobilising persons to strike and encouraging ‘illegal’ travel outside the country, and his 1964 ‘I am prepared to die’ statement, made during the Rivonia Trial on charges of sabotage. Ultimately, Mandela was implicated in MK’s activities and, at the conclusion of the Rivonia Trial (1963–1964), he was found guilty on charges of sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he served mainly at the Robben Island prison off the coast of Cape Town. Towards the middle of the 1980s the ANC, supported by the international anti-apartheid movement, introduced the ‘Release Mandela Campaign’ as a ‘medium of South Africa’s liberation’. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, his wife at the time, indicated that ‘it was the sustained campaign, and a deliberate decision was made, that Mandela would be used as a symbol of resistance, a symbol of the ANC internationally, so that people could focus on the ANC through this particular name’.5 After a series of negotiations, on 2 February 1990, then president F.W. de Klerk announced in Parliament that Mandela would be released from prison. He was released on 11 February 1990 and addressed a large crowd in Cape Town. Following his release, Mandela said: Friends, comrades, and fellow South Africans, I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy, and freedom for all. I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I, therefore, place the remaining years of my life in your hands.6 During a 2000 interview with Larry King, Mandela highlighted that, upon release from prison, revenge against his oppressors was not an issue and that the liberation of his people was of utmost importance. Throughout his career as a political leader and as president, he emphasised the need for consensus in decision-making, but, inspired by the works of Marx and Lenin, he could also be authoritarian and a disciplinarian.7 Mandela arguably existed within an intricate

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and often indiscernible realm of humility, stoicism and authority. He believed that Africa ‘needed discipline and self-control, and he wanted to be a guiding light for Africa in his own self-conduct’.8 While some contestations as to the extent of Mandela’s contribution towards the realisation of human rights may exist, he remains with little doubt one of the most influential world leaders and an icon of human rights. When his presidential term ended, he became involved in advocacy work, and is remembered for his involvement in contemporary issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, HIV/AIDS, women’s empowerment, child protection rights and education, amongst others. He continued to promote tolerance, and saw the need to create a free space where every South African had room to become whatever they desired to be – as long as it ‘respects and enhances the freedom of others’.9 In 1995, South Africa hosted and won the Rugby World Cup. At that time Mandela was criticised for embracing the white-dominated team by wearing a Springbok rugby jersey. This, however, was in line with his goal of prioritising ‘reconciliation, development, peace, freedom and culture’.10 Mandela was actively involved in HIV/AIDS activism, and worked closely with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). Despite being a retired president and not getting support from the then president, Thabo Mbeki – an AIDS denialist – and other senior members of the ANC, Mandela worked hand in hand with the TAC to ensure that there was awareness and access to antiretroviral treatment.11 Through the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, he raised money to cater for child-related projects, particularly for those living in informal settlements. One of the many ways to raise funds was to invite business leaders and encourage them to pledge or contribute to the building of schools in those areas. The products of his work, and the differences witnessed because of his influence, are now referred to as ‘Madiba magic’. It is evident from his charity work that he did not believe in freedom only for the sake of it, but in freedom with a focus on the socioeconomic upliftment and empowerment of the poor and vulnerable.12 Describing Mandela as a system leader, Senge, Hamilton and Kania applaud him for being able to bring together a divided society under a common ideal.13 Mandela also emphasised the need for international relations to be informed by human rights principles. In all his dealings, on the national, regional and international stages, he used human rights as tools for transformation and the building of relationships, and he used his ‘ímage’ as a respected and loved defender of human rights to influence others. Ultimately, Mandela fought the system rather than the individuals: ‘I wanted South Africa to see that I love even my enemies, while I hated the system that turned us against one another.’14

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As a result, he and FW de Klerk shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their role in liberating South Africa from apartheid.15 A study of Mandela’s speeches and writings show that he was aware of many of the shortcomings of the negotiated settlement. For example, in his acceptance speech for an honorary degree awarded by the Taiwanese Soochow University, Mandela echoed that ‘the end of apartheid will not guarantee the beginning of democracy. But until apartheid is totally destroyed, there can be no democracy.’16 Such sentiments reflect an understanding by Mandela that he was not claiming to have achieved true democracy.17 On 18 July 2018 Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela would have turned 100. In paying homage to her late husband at the 16th Annual Mandela Lecture, Graça Machel reminisced about his firm belief that we are ‘inextricably connected to one another as human beings’, and called for the youth to keep the legacy of Mandela alive. In his keynote speech at this celebration, held at the Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg, Barack Obama, former president of the United States of America, paid tribute to ‘the troublemaker’. Obama focused on Mandela’s influence, which extended across the globe long before he became the first democratically elected president of South Africa. Obama acknowledged that Mandela’s struggle was focused on ending apartheid, and ensuring political and socio-economic equality for all, but his message went further. He emphasised that Mandela’s sacrifice, leadership and moral example came ‘to signify something larger’. For Obama, Mandela’s ‘light shone so brightly, even from that narrow Robben Island cell’ that ‘a wave of hope washed through hearts all around the world’.18 The importance of this message is that the work of freedom is never fully done. As Mandela put it: ‘After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.’19 The work of democracy and the protection of human rights did not end in 1994 when Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela became South Africa’s first black president; the persistent work continues and the light of justice must not be allowed to be extinguished. Notes 1 Nelson Mandela Foundation, ‘Names’ (n.d.). Accessed April 2020, https://www.

nelsonmandela.org/content/page/names. 2 R.N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (London: Abacus, 1994), p. 3. 3 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 3. 4 N. Manyathi-Jele, ‘Late President Mandela’s Academic Life and Legal Career’, De Rebus

1 April 2014. Accessed June 2019, https://www.derebus.org.za/late-president-mandelasacademic-life-legal-career/. 5 W. Madikizela-Mandela, cited in P. Russell, ‘Rebellious Leaders: Winnie Madikizela-

Mandela’, Training Journal 20 April 2018. Accessed June 2019, https://www.trainingjournal. com/articles/features/rebellious-leaders-winnie-madikizela-mandela. 6 R.N. Mandela, Nelson Mandela Speeches (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1990). 7 Larry King Live, President Nelson Mandela One-on-One, CNN 16 May 2000. Accessed June

2019, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0005/16/lkl.00.html.

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8 N. Bohler-Muller, ‘Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (1918–2013) Free at Last’ in K. McCall-

Smith, J. Wouters and I.F. Gomez (eds), The Faces of Human Rights (Oxford: Bloomberg Publishing, 2019), p. 151. 9 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom. 10 Bohler-Muller, ‘Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’, p. 152. 11 Bohler-Muller, ‘Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’, p. 152. 12 Bohler-Muller, ‘Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’, p. 152. 13 P. Senge, H. Hamilton and J. Kania, ‘The Dawn of System Leadership’, Standford Social

Innovation Review 13 (2015), pp. 27–33. 14 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 495. 15 Bohler-Muller, ‘Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’, p. 152. 16 R.N. Mandela, ‘South Africa’s Future Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs 72:5 (1993), pp. 86–97. 17 Bohler-Muller, ‘Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’, p. 154. 18 B. Obama, President Obama Speaks on the Death of Nelson Mandela, 06 December 2013.

Washington D.C.: The White House. 19 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 751.

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Joe Slovo: Public enemy number one Gregory Houston

1926–1995

Yossel Mashel ‘Joe’ Slovo was among the most renowned leaders of the struggle against apartheid. A lifelong socialist and internationalist, he is widely credited with being one of the masterminds of South Africa’s national reconciliation. He was described by close friend Nelson Mandela as a ‘Great African Patriot’.1 Woolf and Ann Slovo arrived in South Africa in 1935 with their nine-year-old son, Joe. At the time, a wave of immigrants from Lithuania, Latvia and other Baltic states came to South Africa to escape anti-Semitism.2 Many of these immigrants later played leading roles in the trade union and national liberation movements, in particular its communist component. Slovo attended various schools until 1940, when he completed his Standard Six at the age of 13. He left school at this young age because of the family’s economic circumstances. Slovo, who was a keen debater, was greatly influenced by John O’Meara, a militant teacher from Ireland who taught him at Observatory Junior High School.3 After leaving school Slovo began working as a clerk for a pharmaceutical wholesaler, South African Druggists. Here he became a member of the National Union of Distributive Workers, and soon moved up the ranks in the union until he became a shop steward. He is credited for organising at least one mass action protest at the wholesaler while he held this position in the union.4 In 1942, he became a member of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), and joined the war effort as a volunteer in the South African forces engaged in World War II, after the Soviet Union had been invaded by Germany. During the war, he served in Egypt as a radio operator. He later became active in an organisation established by radical ex-servicemen, known as the Springbok Legion.5 When the war ended, Slovo registered to study for a law degree at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in 1946, and graduated in 1950 with a Bachelor of Law degree (LLB).

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During his time at the university he was very active in politics, which led to his meeting Ruth First, the daughter of a founding member of the SACP and the party treasurer, Julius First.6 They were married in 1949. His circle of political contacts also widened during this period and soon included Nelson Mandela, who was one year ahead of him at Wits, and Walter Sisulu. With his degree behind him, Slovo planned to become an advocate and defence lawyer. However, the newly elected apartheid Parliament passed the Suppression of Communism Act in the year he graduated, leading to the banning of the CPSA.  In 1950, Slovo and his wife were among the 600 people that were the first to be ‘named’ in terms of the Act, which imposed severe restrictions on them, particularly since ‘named’ people were barred from practising as lawyers. Nevertheless, Slovo participated in the campaign of civil disobedience initiated by the ANC and allied organisations during the 1952 Defiance Campaign. A year later, he was part of a group of members of the banned CPSA that established the Congress of Democrats (COD), and was selected COD representative on the national consultative committee of the Congress Alliance that had been created when the call was made for a Congress of the People. In 1953, he also participated in reconstituting the Communist Party underground.7 In the following year, he was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act and prohibited from attending all gatherings. He began to engage covertly in political activities, including contributing to the drafting of the Freedom Charter in 1955.8 However, Slovo could not attend the Congress of the People that was held in Kliptown because of his banning orders. Nevertheless, he used binoculars to watch the proceedings from the rooftop of a nearby building. Slovo was arrested with 155 other leaders of the Congress Alliance and detained for two months during the 1956 Treason Trial. He was on trial with the leaders for almost two years before the charges against him were dropped in 1958. He continued to participate in the Treason Trial as a member of the defence team for the other Treason trialists until all the remaining accused were acquitted in 1961.9 Slovo was detained for six months during the state of emergency that was declared by the apartheid regime after the 1960 Sharpeville massacre. He subsequently became one of the founding leaders of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), the military wing of the ANC, and a member of the first national high command that included Nelson Mandela (who was commander-inchief), Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba. Slovo would feature in every one of the leading structures of the liberation movement that oversaw the armed struggle from this point on. He would also play a key role in drafting strategic documents for the conduct of the armed struggle for the next 30 years. For instance, he was instructed by the MK high command to be one of the two authors of the most important MK strategic document drafted in the early 1960s, the ANC’s ‘Operation Mayibuye’. Operation Mayibuye, written during the second half of 1962, called for four groups of 30 guerrillas each to land by sea or air inside South Africa before splitting up into 12 platoons made up of 10 guerrillas, each charged with establishing base areas inside guerrilla zones. The plan included a number of guerrilla units drawn from 7 000 guerrillas recruited earlier, inside the country, to be in position in four predetermined regions.10 Joe Slovo, together with Arthur Goldreich, finally presented Operation Mayibuye to the MK high command in May 1963.

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At the time, Slovo was also on the executive of the underground SACP, which announced its existence in 1962. The executive comprised Moses Kotane (general secretary), Yusuf Dadoo (chairman), Slovo, Walter Sisulu, Bram Fischer, Rusty Bernstein and Michael Harmel, while the other members of the central committee were Ruth First, J.B. Marks, Brian Bunting, Fred Carneson, Ray Alexander, Dan Tloome, Raymond Mhlaba and M.P. Naicker. Between meetings, a secretariat consisting of three members of the executive – Kotane, Harmel and Sisulu – carried out the practical work of the party. Slovo regularly attended meetings of the MK high command at its headquarters on Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, but in June 1963 was on an ‘external mission’ outside the country. A month later, police raided the farm in Rivonia and captured several key members of the high command, including Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki.11 Slovo was then instructed by the remaining leaders to stay in exile and not return to South Africa. In the meantime, a month after the Rivonia arrests, Ruth First, Slovo’s wife, was detained and held for almost four months. When she was released she immediately left the country, together with her three daughters.12 Slovo joined his family when they got to the United Kingdom, and spent the first period of his exile there. In exile, Slovo played a leading role in maintaining relations between the SACP and the ANC, while raising funds for the movement as a whole. In 1966, he became secretary of the London committee of the SACP, which was chaired by Moses Kotane and included Ronnie Kasrils and Jack Hodgson. They were tasked with dealing with the home front, and they drafted many of the discussion documents for the ANC’s Morogoro Conference in 1969. Slovo and Joe Matthews drafted two of the key conference documents – namely, ‘Strategy and Tactics’ and ‘The Revolutionary Programme’, which was based on the Freedom Charter. Slovo presented the ‘Strategy and Tactics’ document to the conference.13 One of the most significant decisions taken at the conference was to establish a revolutionary council that was charged with guiding the political and military struggle for liberation. Unlike the ANC’s national executive committee, the revolutionary council included white, Indian and coloured members. Oliver Tambo served as the chairperson, Dadoo as the vice-chairperson, and Matthews as the secretary, while Slovo and Reginald September were among the additional members. In 1976, Slovo moved from the United Kingdom to Angola to establish military camps there and to open an ANC office in Luanda. In 1977 he moved to Mozambique to establish an MK operational centre for the ANC.  In October 1978, he accompanied ANC president Oliver Tambo and four other colleagues on a study trip to Vietnam, and wrote the official report on the trip. He was appointed to be part of a politico-military strategy commission, and charged with developing new strategy and tactics based on aspects of the Vietnamese revolutionary strategy that he had identified while in Vietnam. The report of this commission, which became known as ‘The Green Book’ or ‘Theses on Our Strategic Line’, was finalised in March 1979 and gave rise to a new strategic focus that guided the ANC’s military and political strategy throughout the 1980s.14

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Among the first steps taken by the ANC was the establishment of an MK special operations unit that was made responsible for carrying out high-impact attacks on strategic military and economic targets that supported the apartheid regime. The command structure of the unit consisted of Slovo, Montso ‘Obadi’ Mokqabudi and Aboobaker ‘Rashid’ Ismail. In April 1980, the revolutionary council adopted a document drafted by Slovo, titled ‘Our Military Perspective and Some Special Problems’. Slovo identified two forms of armed activity: armed propaganda, and the development of a sustained armed struggle inside South Africa. The former was based on high-impact attacks, while the latter was directed at creating a ‘national liberation army with popularly rooted internal rear bases’. This required the setting up of internal guerrilla bases from where trained MK cadres could recruit and train locals from selected areas and conduct military operations against selected targets.15 Slovo became a leading figure in MK in Maputo, as well as the Mozambique Senior Organ, led by John Nkadimeng, which oversaw both military and political struggle directed from this forward area. He was responsible for the Eastern Front (MK operations launched from Swaziland), and was assisted by Lennox Tshali and Sello Motau (Paul Dikeledi). After the revolutionary council had been disbanded in 1983, Slovo was appointed to the politico-military committee (PMC) that replaced it, being one of three representatives on it from the military headquarters. The Senior Organs in the forward areas were also disbanded, and he was appointed to head the Mozambique regional PMC, which included Jacob Zuma, Siphiwe Nyanda and John Nkadimeng.16 The special operations unit, under Slovo’s command until 1983 when he was appointed MK chief of staff, carried out several of the most spectacular military operations while under his leadership. These include the 1980 attacks on SASOL I, Natref and SASOL II; the 1981 attack on the South African Defence Force military headquarters at Voortrekkerhoogte; the 1981 attack on SASOL; the 1982 attack on the Koeberg power station; and the 1983 attack on the South African Air Force headquarters in Church Street, Pretoria, which resulted in the deaths of 19 people and injury to 217 others.17 By this time, Slovo was South Africa’s ‘Public Enemy Number One’, and South African government agents made several attempts to kill him. In 1982, they succeeded in killing his wife, using a parcel bomb that exploded in her office at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo.18 After the signing of the Nkomati Accord between Mozambique and South Africa in 1984, Slovo was one of the people expelled from that country. A year later, he was the first white person to be elected onto the national executive committee of the ANC, and, in 1986, he was elected general secretary of the Communist Party. When the ANC embarked on its Operation Vula in 1988 to infiltrate senior and middle-ranking political and military leaders of the movement into South Africa, Oliver Tambo and Slovo were placed in direct control, from exile. After the unbanning of organisations in 1990, Slovo participated in the early discussions with the Nationalist Party government to set the conditions for negotiations. He stepped down from his position as general secretary of the SACP in 1991,19 but remained a member of the national executive committee of the ANC. In 1992, he secured a major breakthrough in the negotiations

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by persuading the ANC/SACP leadership to accept the ‘sunset clauses’: a coalition government that would exist for five years after the first democratic elections; guarantees for civil servants, including those working in the homelands and serving in the armed forces; and an amnesty process for participants in the conflict.20 After the elections of 1994, he served as minister of housing in the first democratic government led by Nelson Mandela, until his death in 1995 from bone marrow cancer. Slovo was among the leading theoreticians in both the Communist Party and the ANC.  He was the author of numerous articles for the African Communist, for which he served at one time as editor, and for various organs of the ANC, such as Sechaba and Dawn, and other Marxist journals, in addition to countless pamphlets. He also contributed chapters to several books, such as a chapter titled ‘South Africa – No Middle Road’ in a book edited by Basil Davidson. In the latter publication, Slovo argued that the road to liberation was through the violent overthrow of the state leading to a transfer of power, rather than a middle road of peaceful pressure that would achieve only national liberation. He also argued that national liberation was inseparable from socialist revolution, and was not a middle road between capitalism and socialism.21 This is classical Marxism in the mode of the SACP.  However, it was Slovo’s article published in 1990 titled ‘Has Socialism Failed?’ that sparked intense debate about the future of socialism in South Africa. In essence, he describes the main features of the Soviet Union’s Stalinist past, and the SACP’s role in supporting that past. The central thrust of his critique was that Stalinism was ‘socialism without democracy’, in which there was a rise of ‘unbridled authoritarianism’ and ‘social and economic alienation’. Slovo advocated that South Africa could avoid ‘socialism without democracy’ by implementing a system of multiparty democracy. He stated: In truly democratic conditions, it is perfectly legitimate and desirable for a party claiming to be the political instrument of the working class to attempt to lead its constituency in democratic contest for political power against other parties and groups representing other social forces. And if it wins, it must be constitutionally required, from time to time, to go back to the people for a renewed mandate. The alternative to this is self-perpetuating power with all its implications for corruption and dictatorship.22 This paved the way for the SACP’s adoption of multiparty democracy in 1991. The Joe Slovo Foundation describes Slovo’s contribution this way: Joe Slovo was a key personality in South African revolutionary politics for four decades. He was the most influential white member of the African National Congress, and its chief military strategist. After the unbanning of the ANC in 1990, Slovo returned from enforced exile to play a critical role in South Africa’s democratic transition – it was his sunset clause that paved the way for a peaceful transition to democracy. After the 1994 elections, Slovo won wide respect as Minister of Housing in the government of national unity.23

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The various roles Slovo played in the liberation struggle throughout his adult life justified his designation as the apartheid regime’s most important enemy. Notes 1 Joe Slovo Foundation, ‘About Joe Slovo’ (n.d.). Accessed July 2020, https://www.

joeslovofoundation.org/joe-slovo/. 2 J. Slovo and H. Dolny, Slovo: The Unfinished Autobiography (Johannesburg: Ravan Press,

1995), chapter 1; A. Wieder, Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2015), chapter 1, pp. 31ff.; W. Cobbett, ‘Obituary – Joe Slovo: Mensch’, Review of African Political Economy 22:63 (1995), p. 95; F.H. Adler, ‘South African Jews and Apartheid’, Macalester International 9 (2000), p. 94. 3 Slovo and Dolny, Unfinished Autobiography, chapter 2; Wieder, Ruth First and Joe Slovo,

chapter 1; Cobbett, ‘Obituary’, p. 95; Adler, ‘South African Jews’, p. 94. 4 Slovo and Dolny, Unfinished Autobiography, chapter 2; Wieder, Ruth First and Joe Slovo,

pp. 42–43; Rhodes University, ‘History of Joe Slovo’ (last modified 8 June 2015). Accessed October 2018, https://www.ru.ac.za/lilianngoyi/joeslovo/historyofjoeslovo/. 5 Slovo and Dolny, Unfinished Autobiography, chapter 2; Wieder, Ruth First and Joe Slovo,

pp. 52–53; Rhodes University, ‘History of Joe Slovo’; Independent, ‘Obituary: Joe Slovo’, 7 January 1995. Accessed October 2018, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/ obituary-joe-slovo-1566935.html; Cobbett, ‘Obituary’, p. 95. 6 Slovo and Dolny, Unfinished Autobiography, chapters 4 and 5; A. Boddy-Evans, ‘Biography:

Joe Slovo’, ThoughtCo, 18 June 2018. Accessed October 2018, https://www.thoughtco.com/ biography-joe-slovo-44164. 7 Wieder, Ruth First and Joe Slovo, pp. 79 and 87. 8 Wieder, Ruth First and Joe Slovo, p. 13. 9 Slovo and Dolny, Unfinished Autobiography, chapter 8; O’Malley Archives, Joe Slovo the

Revolutionary, Accessed November 2018, https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index. php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03005/06lv03006/07lv03096/08lv03097.htm. 10 Slovo and Dolny, Unfinished Autobiography, chapter 12. 11 G. Houston, ‘The Post-Rivonia ANC and SACP Underground’ in South African

Democracy Education Trust (eds), The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 1, 1960– 1970 (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2004), pp. 601, 619. 12 Wieder, Ruth First and Joe Slovo, pp. 134–135. 13 N. Ndebele and N. Nieftagodien, ‘The Morogoro Conference: A Moment of Self-

Reflection’ in South African Democracy Education Trust (eds), The Road to Democracy in South Africa: Volume 1, 1960–1970 (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2004), pp. 590ff. 14 G. Houston, ‘The ANC’s Internal Underground Political Work in the 1980s’ in South

African Democracy Education Trust (eds), The Road to Democracy in South Africa: Volume 4, 1980–1990 (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2010), pp. 135–136. 15 G. Houston, ‘The ANC’s Armed Struggle in the 1980s’ in South African Democracy

Education Trust (eds), The Road to Democracy in South Africa: Volume 4, 1980–1990 (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2010), p. 1039. 16 Houston, ‘The ANC’s Armed Struggle’, p. 1041.

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17 Houston, ‘The ANC’s Armed Struggle’, pp. 1042–1044, 1054ff. 18  Independent, ‘Obituary’. 19 Boddy-Evans, Biography. 20 Wieder, Ruth First and Joe Slovo, pp. 324–325. 21 J. Slovo, ‘South Africa: No Middle Road’ in B. Davidson, J. Slovo and A. Wilkinson (eds),

Southern Africa: The New Politics of Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977). 22 J. Slovo, Has Socialism Failed? Discussion Document (1990). Accessed November 2018, http://

www.sacp.org.za/docs/ history/failed.html. 23 Joe Slovo Foundation, ‘About Joe Slovo’.

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George Bizos: A passion for justice

George Bizos: A passion for justice Gary Pienaar

1927–2020

George Bizos leaves a prodigious legacy, but he will probably be most well remembered – and most revered – for three small words. It was at his suggestion that Mandela added the words ‘if needs be’ after his assertion ‘I am prepared to die’ in his unforgettable statement at the Rivonia Trial, where he and other ANC members were being tried for treason. It is widely believed that these three words contributed immensely to the Rivonia trialists’ being sentenced to life imprisonment, rather than being given the death sentence that they realistically expected.1 George Bizos arrived in Durban in 1941 at the age of 13 as a World War II refugee together with his father. They moved to Johannesburg, where they settled with assistance from other members of the Greek community. Young George found himself on African soil with a sparse education and no command of the local language. He worked in a grocery store rather than attend school.2 Cecilia Feinstein, a teacher from Jeppe High School, met Bizos, and was appalled to discover that he had not received any schooling in three years. She had him enrolled at school, and provided extra lessons. He was later able to enrol for a law degree at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).3 Years later, on receiving the first of many honorary doctorates, Bizos asked Feinstein to attend the ceremony. She took up a front-row seat and received a standing ovation for creating opportunity and unlocking the potential of the man.4 In recognition of the importance of education, Bizos led the founding of the SAHETI school in Senderwood, Johannesburg, in 1974. Although based on Hellenic values, its doors were open to all, ‘welcoming widely diverse communities to share in its values-driven, universal education’.5 It was as at Wits that Bizos first emerged as an opponent of injustice. The National Party was on a campaign to restrict ‘open universities’ that accepted black students. The authorities noted that the protests against the campaign were being incited by ‘a bunch of leftists’, in response to

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which Bizos said: ’If wanting my black fellow students to be treated equally makes me a leftist, I am proud to be one.’ The statement made headlines, and prompted the security police to open a docket. Bizos became a marked man. His citizenship was denied in a letter that described him as ‘not fit and proper to become a South African’. The citizenship ban lasted over 30 years, until 1972.6 ‘There comes a time in the life of all people when you either succumb or you fight,’ he said of joining the liberation effort.7 In 1950 he completed his law degree at Wits, and was admitted to the Johannesburg Bar in 1954. He joined a small group of lawyers ‘stepping up to the bench to eloquently chisel away’ at the legislated foundations of oppression. At a time when the simmering discontent was beginning to boil, Bizos stood shoulder to shoulder with this new band of lawyers in the front line of resistance to apartheid’s legalised discrimination and oppression – men like Joel Joffe, Harry Schwartz and Sydney Kentridge.8 During the apartheid years, Bizos dedicated his working life to the fight for fundamental human rights. After 1948, the newly elected National Party government used the law to enforce oppression and suppress opposition. Between 1954 and 1963 Bizos was frequently the ‘goto’ advocate for defendants in political trials. Often working with attorney Oliver Tambo, he represented clients who were breaking banning orders, disobeying the pass laws and committing innumerable other misdemeanours against the segregation laws. He was legal counsel to a wide range of high-profile anti-apartheid struggle activists, including Bishop Trevor Huddleston in his opposition to forced removals of black people from Sophiatown, Johannesburg. He also represented Mac Maharaj, Patrick ‘Terror’ Lekota and Popo Molefe in the Delmas Treason Trial. Bizos later represented the family of trade unionist Dr Neil Aggett, who died in police custody in 1982.9 He represented Mandela’s wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela on many occasions when she was harassed by the apartheid police, and also when she was charged with kidnapping. Bizos’s track record made him an ‘obvious choice’ as a member of the Rivonia Trial defence team led by Bram Fischer. Here, the accused included Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Denis Goldberg, Andrew Mlangeni and Ahmed Kathrada. The accused were clear as to what their defence was going to be – they refused to deny their participation in the political struggle. Bizos explained: They decided to use this trial as a forum to declare what they stood for, what they demanded. This became the defence. Walter Sisulu made it quite clear, ‘Our defence is not going to be one of denial, but of a counter-attack.’ It was decided that Nelson Mandela would make a statement from the dock. Our goal was to use the statement to condemn the action of the apartheid state, turning the accused into the accusers.10 Bizos advised Mandela: ‘I said, you know this last paragraph, the one that declares that you are prepared to die, it may become counterproductive. I don’t think that the occasion is appropriate to say, in an unqualified way, that you are prepared to die. You will be accused of challenging the

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authority, you will be accused of seeking martyrdom.’ Mandela initially resisted Bizos’s advice. He was determined to voice his conviction before the court. Bizos offered an alternative: ‘Add the words “if needs be” after the words “I am prepared to die”.’ Mandela agreed, and from that moment on, the struggle would be led from the cells of Robben Island. In an interview many years later, Bizos, with typical humility, said that ‘I suppose those words are my contribution to the struggle’.11 From about 1988, ‘a broad group of dedicated academics, legal professionals and ANC members began to draft the new bill of rights. The mission was to write a constitution that was representative of the South African people as a whole.’ Bizos made a significant contribution to crafting the country’s democratic constitution.12 He became a member of the ANC’s legal and constitutional committee in 1990. At the Convention for a Democratic South Africa he served as advisor to the negotiating teams, and participated in drawing up the Interim Constitution.13 After the end of apartheid, Bizos turned to ensuring that all South Africans equally enjoy those rights guaranteed by the new democratic Constitution. He sought to popularise and promote the Constitution’s recognition of the rule of law,14 and the need for law and ethics to be mutually consistent15 in terms of the new era of a ‘culture of justification’ rather than apartheid’s rule by the enforcement of unjust laws. He also actively supported efforts to transform the racial and gender profile of the law profession in South Africa,16 and spoke out in support of women’s rights to equality, and against gender-based violence.17 In 2004, Bizos represented Morgan Tsvangirai, president of the main opposition party in Zimbabwe (Movement for Democratic Change), when he was charged with high treason by the country’s government.18 The citation for Bizos’s honorary doctorate received from the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 2004 recalls his early work defending participants in an anti-pass-law march, and defending those involved in exposing the ‘notorious conditions on Bethal potato farms’. It described him as a lawyer with ‘a most subtle mind’, and a ‘singular commitment to the Rule of Law’, who stood ‘firmly for the principles of non-racialism and judicial accountability’. For these reasons, Mandela trusted him to ‘shepherd the country’s new constitution through the courts, and also to ensure that capital punishment was struck from the codes of what is permissible in a civilised society’. UCT was proud to honour Bizos’s ‘long, principled and very courageous life…[during which he] remained unwavering in the never-ending battle for freedom and justice’.19 On 5 November 2004, the General Council of the Bar of South Africa (GCB) presented George Bizos SC with the annual Sydney and Felicia Kentridge Award for Service to Law in Southern Africa. Norman Arendse SC, chair of the GCB, paid tribute to Bizos in the following terms: He continues to stride across the Southern African legal landscape like a colossus in his continued and relentless search for justice and accountability. He continues to inspire, not only lawyers, but also the general public with his passion, commitment, dedication, and empathy for the downtrodden, the disadvantaged, the underprivileged, and the poor.20

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In 2018, the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) awarded its inaugural annual George Bizos Human Rights Award to Bizos himself, as he had served the organisation with distinction for 27 years. The award seeks to recognise those making a remarkable contribution towards protecting, upholding and advancing a culture of human rights in South Africa. The citation recognised that through his life and career, George Bizos SC has played a pivotal role in shaping South Africa’s much-praised constitutional democracy. A stellar human rights defender, he has fought tirelessly, and continues to do so, to ensure that basic human rights are upheld in the country. The late President Nelson Mandela, with whom George enjoyed decades of friendship, was one of George Bizos’s famous clients. Throughout his illustrious legal career, George has stood with those who resisted oppression and impunity, and has taken on many high-profile political cases including the Rivonia and Delmas Treason Trials. At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Advocate Bizos represented a number of families including those of Steve Biko, Chris Hani and the Cradock Four. He also led the LRC’s legal interventions on behalf of the families of those slain at Marikana: initiating the independent forensic work that exposed the horrors of the massacre, and playing a significant role in placing evidence before the Farlam Inquiry into the killings. [‘Uncle’] George was also a witness in the recent 2017 case that led to the High Court’s decision to set aside the fabricated inquest results that the apartheid regime had attempted to use to hide their murder of Ahmed Timol. He continues his tireless pursuit of truth, justice and human rights.21 Despite his strong support for the liberation struggle, because of his unwavering defence of freedom and justice he was not afraid to stand on principle. In 2016, he called for then president Jacob Zuma to step down from office after the Constitutional Court found in the Nkandla judgment that he had failed to defend and uphold the Constitution. He also spoke out in defence of Nelson Mandela when a revisionist faction within the ruling ANC tried to characterise him as a ‘sell-out’ to white interests.22 In 1998 Bizos published his first book – No One to Blame? In Pursuit of Justice in South Africa – which examined the erosion and failure of the justice system in apartheid South Africa. The book is an account of how Bizos acted with distinction in the dark days of apartheid when, as counsel for the families of the deceased, he sought to uncover the state’s role in eliminating its opponents. It is the tale of Steve Biko, Ismail Timol and Neil Aggett, who were arrested and died in detention, and others, like Matthew Goniwe, who were abducted and killed.23 Two further books followed: his autobiography, Odyssey to Freedom (2009); and, most recently, 65 Years of Friendship (2017), which details his strong and long-lasting bond with former president Nelson Mandela, which started when they were both students at Wits. So close was their

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friendship that when Mandela’s daughter Zeni wanted to marry in 1973 while Mandela was still in jail, he asked Bizos to stand in for him and perform his paternal duties of interviewing the would-be groom (Prince Thumbumuzi, son of then king Sobhuza of Swaziland), and assessing his prospects. Bizos’s most recent book was launched in the year of his 90th birthday, when he was also honoured with a gallery at Johannesburg’s Apartheid Museum. At the launch, former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke spoke fondly of Bizos: ‘I’ve had the privilege of living close to him. He is my mentor in [a] million ways.’ Addressing Bizos directly, he added: ‘You are one of our greatest leaders and I’m here to pay my respects, ngiyabonga Baba.’24  Director of the Apartheid Museum, Christopher Till, said the essence of the gallery launch was to celebrate what George Bizos means to South Africans. Till stated: ‘His defence of the defenceless, his defence of people who were victims of the apartheid state is something young people should really know about…The legacy of George Bizos is one which is universal...and I think the humility, the selflessness of George Bizos is something we wanted to celebrate.’25 When Bizos was not in a courtroom he often spent time tending his vegetable gardens. Before her death in 2017, Bizos lived in Johannesburg with his wife Arethe (known as ‘Rita’), with whom he had three sons.26 Notes 1 J. Carlin, Interview with George Bizos. PBS, Frontline: The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela

Interviews, n.d. Accessed July 2019, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ mandela/interviews/bizos.html; 21 Icons, An Advocate: George Bizos. 21 Icons South Africa, A Journey to Democracy, Season 1, 2018. Accessed July 2019, http://21icons.com/georgebizos/. 2 D. Isaacs, ‘How Two Teachers Helped George Bizos Become a Lawyer’, GroundUp

14 November 2017. Accessed July 2019, https://www.groundup.org.za/article/how-twoteachers-helped-george-bizos-become-lawyer/; 21 Icons, An Advocate. 3 D. Isaacs, ‘How Two Teachers Helped’. 4 D. Isaacs, ‘How Two Teachers Helped’; 21 Icons, An Advocate. 5 SAHETI School, Homepage. Accessed July 2019, http://www.saheti.co.za/. 6 D.H., ‘Still Fighting for His Friend: An Interview with George Bizos’, The Economist 21 July

2013. Accessed 25 July 2020, https://www.economist.com/baobab/2013/07/21/still-fightingfor-his-friend. 7 21 Icons, An Advocate. 8 21 Icons, An Advocate. 9 21 Icons, An Advocate. 10 Carlin, Interview with George Bizos. 21 Icons, An Advocate. 11 Carlin, Interview with George Bizos. 21 Icons, An Advocate. 12 21 Icons, An Advocate. 13 G. Bizos, 65 Years of Friendship (Cape Town: Penguin Random House South Africa, 2017).

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14 G. Bizos, ‘The Abrogation and Restoration of the Rule of Law and Judicial Independence

in South Africa’, Revue Québécoise de Droit International 11:2 (1998), pp. 155–162. 15 G. Bizos, ‘Ethics, Politics and Law in Ancient Greece and Contemporary South Africa’,

Phronimon 9:2 (2008), pp. 5–15. 16 G. Bizos, ‘Why the Bar? Let Us Not Change the Essential Fabric of the Bar’, Consultus

December 1999, pp. 23–24. Accessed April 2019, https://www.sabar.co.za/law-journals/1999/ december/1999-december-vol012-no4-contents.html. 17 G. Bizos, ‘Don’t Blame the Constitution’. Address at the University of Johannesburg,

18 March 2013. 18  The Guardian, ‘Tsvangirai Cleared of Treason’, 15 October 2004. Accessed April 2020,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/oct/15/zimbabwe. 19 University of Cape Town, ‘About Honorary Degrees: George Bizos’ (n.d.) Accessed July

2019, https://www.uct.ac.za/downloads/uct.ac.za/about/honours/degrees/George_Bizos.pdf. 20 GCB News, 2004 Sydney and Felicia Kentridge Award, April 2004. Accessed July 2019, https://

www.sabar.co.za/law-journals/2005/april/2005-april-vol018-no1-pp06-08.pdf. 21  LeadSA, ‘The Launch of the George Bizos Human Rights Award’, 14 March 2018. Accessed

July 2019, http://www.leadsa.co.za/articles/295772/the-launch-of-the-george-bizos-humanrights-award. 22 Z. Mvumvu, ‘Mandela Was Not a Sell-Out – George Bizos’, Sowetan 21 August 2018.

Accessed July 2019, https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-08-21-mandelawas-not-a-sellout-george-bizos/. 23 H. Suzman, Memoirs: In No Uncertain Terms (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1993), p. 236. 24 L. Zidepa, ‘“Lion of Our Struggle”: George Bizos Honoured with Gallery at Joburg’s

Apartheid Museum’, News24 27 October 2017. Accessed July 2019, https://m.news24.com/ Video/SouthAfrica/News/watch-george-bizos-talks-being-honoured-mandela-legacy-and2019-elections-20171027. 25 Zidepa, ‘“Lion of Our Struggle”’. 26 21 Icons, An Advocate; T. Head, ‘Anti-Apartheid Hero George Bizos Celebrates his

90th Birthday’, The South African 16 November 2017. Accessed April 2020, https://www. thesouthafrican.com/news/anti-apartheid-hero-george-bizos-birthday-achievementswork/.

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Ben Turok: An exiled democrat

Ben Turok: An exiled democrat Narnia Bohler-Muller

1927–2019

So when I am addressed as a ‘politician’, I often respond by saying, ‘No, no, I don’t like politicians. I am an organic intellectual trapped in Parliament.’ Ben Turok, With My Head above the Parapet Struggle stalwart and self-styled ‘organic intellectual’ Benjamin ‘Ben’ Turok valued ethics above self-interest, and he also valued integrity and morality above blind loyalty. He endured banning, imprisonment and exile for his anti-apartheid activism, and he was not afraid to stand up to his own party as an ANC member of Parliament (MP). He worked hard to successfully avoid the ‘hypocrisy and opportunism’ that he believed were inherent in politics.1 Turok was born into a politically aware home in Latvia in 1927. His father was a member of the secular Jewish socialist party, the General Jewish Labour Bund, also known as simply ‘the Bund’. In 1934, the Turok family migrated to South Africa, then still the Union of South Africa, to escape anti-Semitism.2 Turok’s activism was sparked by an interest in how his parents seemed to naturally adjust to the racial divides in South Africa despite being politically progressive. In 1945, while completing his engineering degree at the University of Cape Town (UCT), he would secretly attend lectures by philosophers who discussed various theories of social order; of particular importance to him was socialism and communism.3 After graduating from UCT, Turok worked as a surveyor in then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and later as a lecturer in the United Kingdom, but returned to South Africa soon thereafter. In 1953, he joined the South African Congress of Democrats (COD) – the ‘white arm’ to the coalition of the ANC and South African Indian Congress (SAIC) – that was established by communists after the banning of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in 1950.4 By 1955 he was the COD secretary for the western region of the Cape, solidifying his role as a full-time labour organiser. His influence was noticeable, especially as

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it was also during this time that he contributed to the Freedom Charter that was adopted at Kliptown, Johannesburg, and which served as a blueprint for South Africa’s first democratic constitution.5 Turok’s activism through the COD was especially pivotal as membership consisted of whites who identified with the aspirations of those who participated in the 1952 Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws, otherwise known as the Defiance Campaign. This historical campaign was considered the largest non-violent resistance to divisive apartheid laws, and it saw the birth of a political coalition between the South African Coloured People’s Congress, the COD, the ANC, the CPSA, the SAIC and other organisations, to form the Congress Alliance.6 Turok was served with a banning order in 1955, but remained politically active. He was arrested for treason in 1956, and stood trial together with 155 other leaders of the Congress Alliance in the Treason Trial, until the charges were withdrawn in 1958. Seemingly unperturbed by the power of the apartheid machinery, Turok assumed the role of national secretary of the COD in 1958, as well as secretary of the consultative committee of the Congress Alliance. In the late 1950s, it was agreed that the COD would consist of whites only, but still form part of the Congress Alliance. It was also at this time that the ANC adopted a non-racialism policy, even though it was felt that the COD would have more impact as the ‘white wing’ of the Congress Alliance. Thus, the COD never became a political party, but remained a small part of the Congress Movement with approximately 700 members. Despite being small, it participated in many campaigns of the Congress Alliance until it was banned in the 1960s.7 During the state of emergency that was declared after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, Turok evaded arrest and went underground to continue his participation in the struggle against oppression. At the end of the state of emergency in August that year, Turok was chosen to head a ‘sabotage’ unit of Umkhonto weSizwe in 1961. In his book With My Head above the Parapet he gives a significant ‘insider account’ of his years in the struggle. One such example includes an intriguing narration about his conviction under the Explosives Act in 1962, in which he relates, almost nonchalantly, that ‘unfortunately I inadvertently left a fingerprint on a bomb and I was arrested and sentenced to three years in Pretoria Central Prison’.8 After his release from prison, Turok was placed under house arrest. Fearing further imprisonment, he fled to Tanzania via Botswana.9 After three years in Tanzania he moved with his family to Britain, where he was editor of Sechaba, an ANC publication, from 1967 until 1972.10 The Turok family remained in exile for 25 years. During his lifetime, Turok obtained a BSc degree (land surveying) from the University of Cape  Town (1951), a BA degree (philosophy and English literature) from the University of South Africa (1966) and an MA degree (political science) from the University of Dar es Salaam (1970). He was a great influence in the drafting of socio-economic rights in the Constitution of South Africa; authored more than 20 books on Africa’s development, economics and politics; presented at various conferences, including some organised by the United Nations; and lectured

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on political economy at various African universities and at the Open University in Britain. He was also a visiting professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.11 Turok was a prolific author, and among the titles of his books are Strategic Problems of South Africa’s Liberation Struggle; South Africa: Inequality as State Policy; The Reality of Independence; Legitimation in Post-Colonial Zambia; Africa: What Can Be Done?; Beyond the Miracle; and Nothing But the Truth: Behind the ANC Struggle Politics. Upon his return to South Africa in the 1990s, his political career with the ANC began in earnest, and he was promoted to the provincial executive committee in Gauteng. Consequently, he became a member of the provincial Cabinet as head of the Reconstruction and Development Programme. As an ANC member he also served as an MP from 1995 to 2014, and was director of the Institute for African Alternatives and editor of the journal New Agenda, which focused on the analysis of social and economic policies in South Africa.12 He describes this part of his life as follows: ‘Thus began my life as a politician, a label  I dislike intensely as it is usually associated with hypocrisy and opportunism.’13 Be that as it may, Turok was very good at what he did. By the time of his official retirement on 6  May 2014 his notable political career included membership of the National Assembly; co-chairing the Joint Committee on Ethics and Members’ Interests; being an alternate member of the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry; an alternate member of the Ethics and Members’ Joint Interest committee; and the constituent contact at the ANC constituency office in Cape Town.14 While serving as an MP, Turok was summoned before the ANC’s disciplinary committee in 2011 for ‘ill-discipline’ and for being ‘counter-revolutionary’ after abstaining – and announcing this to the media – from voting for the unconstitutional Protection of State Information Bill (otherwise known as the Secrecy Bill) despite an explicit directive by the party chief whip for members to vote in favour of the Bill (‘toe the party line’). The disciplinary charges were eventually dropped. However, in an interview Turok states: It read exactly like a police charge sheet that begins with ‘you are accused etc., etc.’ And what I was accused of was ‘counter revolution.’ That was the exact phrase used. Wow I was angry. I was furious. I thought I was acting on principle and they called me a counter-revolutionary? Because I voted against that bloody thing? So, I was fuming as you could imagine.15 Ben Turok died, aged 92, on 9  December 2019. He is survived by his wife and fellow activist Mary (née Butcher) and their three sons, Fred, Ivan and Neil.16 Despite his penchant for ‘truthtelling’, and his critique of the ANC in later years – especially during the ‘Zuma years’ – his death was met with sadness and praise, with accolades heaped on him from all quarters.17 In an appreciation article titled ‘Ben Turok, Rebel, Revolutionary, Thinker, Truth-Teller – One of the

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Last of the Struggle Greats’, Marianne Thamm noted that Turok had become disillusioned with democracy and concerned about the ‘soul’ of the ANC: South Africa, Turok understood, was at a tipping point which required real commitment to transformation and justice in a time of personal political power, deep corruption and greed which have all almost completely corroded the soul of the ANC.18 He is known to have said: ‘There is no room for sentimentality in politics and  I am in no mood to put a rosy gloss on where we are now.’19 He was a staunch believer in the evolution of education, consistently engaging with individuals on various platforms about how education can be utilised to meet the needs of, and transform, society.20 In honour of his legacy and memory, his honesty was praised by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who called Turok a principled freedom fighter, dedicated to nonracialism and the unity of our nation and of our liberation movement. He was a true democrat and servant of our people who stood up to injustice, corruption and the abuse of public office both during our struggle and into the democratic dispensation.21 Reacting to his death, the ANC itself released a statement that encouraged its members to be as independent as Turok: The ANC lowers its revolutionary banner in honour of an outstanding veteran of our struggle and sends its condolences to the Turok family. The ANC and South Africa are much poorer for the loss of this giant of our struggle who, until his very last days, continued to follow the dictates of his conscience, remaining a vocal and faithful member of our movement.22 Whilst he was critical of the ANC, it remained his ideological home until his death. In an excerpt from his book With My Head above the Parapet, Turok poignantly described his most rewarding recollection of Parliament as the time when I persuaded Mandela’s lawyers to include the socioeconomic clauses in the Constitution, even if they found it necessary to insert a limitation clause…And so, if my obituary records my contributions to the Freedom Charter and to the Constitution, I shall sleep content.23 He can and should, indeed, sleep content. For, despite his deep misgivings about South Africa’s future and the future of the ANC, his contributions and sacrifices (both personal and political) were manifold.

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Turok will be remembered for his passion for engaging with critical issues affecting South Africa, his belief in collegiality despite his independence, and his inherent ability to maintain an ethical stance in spite of party politics and/or toeing the party line.24 Notes 1 B. Turok, With My Head above the Parapet: An Insider Account of the ANC in Power

(Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2014), p. 18. 2 Turok, With My Head above the Parapet, pp. 12–13. 3 Turok, With My Head above the Parapet, pp. 13–14. 4 M. Byrnes, (ed.) South Africa: A Country Study (Washington: Library of Congress Publishing,

1996), p. liv. 5 Turok, With My Head above the Parapet, pp. 15–16. 6 D.A. Moffat, ‘From “Conscience Politics” to the Battlefields of Political Activism: The

Liberal Party in Natal, 1953 to 1968’. MA thesis, University of Kwazulu-Natal, 1999, p. 47; Byrnes, South Africa, p. 276. 7 African National Congress, ‘A Brief History of the ANC’ (2019). Accessed January 2020

https://www.anc1912.org.za/brief-history-anc. 8 Turok, With My Head above the Parapet, p. 18. 9 Turok, With My Head above the Parapet, p. 18. 10 M. Thamm, ‘Ben Turok, Rebel, Revolutionary, Thinker, Truth-Teller – One of the Last

of the Struggle Greats’, Daily Maverick 10 December 2019. Accessed January 2020, https:// www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-12-10-ben-turok-rebel-revolutionary-thinker-truthteller-one-of-the-last-of-the-struggle-greats/. 11 N. Joseph, ‘Cape Crusader’, Index on Censorship 43:2 (2014), p. 90. 12 C. Osborne and B. Turok, ‘Democracy and the Left on Post-Apartheid South Africa’,

Africa is a Country 7 May 2019. Accessed January 2020, https://africasacountry.com/2019/07/ democracy-and-the-left-in-post-apartheid-south-africa. 13 Turok, With My Head above the Parapet, p. 18. 14 People’s Assembly, ‘Mr Benjamin Turok’ (n.d.). Accessed January 2020, https://www.pa.org.

za/person/benjamin-turok/. 15 Osborne and Turok, ‘Democracy and the Left’. 16  City Press, ‘Ben Turok: A Political Insider, but Not So Embedded As To Be Defensive’,

11 December 2019. Accessed January 2020, https://city-press.news24.com/Voices/benturok-a-political-insider-but-not-so-embedded-as-to-be-defensive-20191210. 17 C. Osborne and M. Smith, ‘Ben Turok’s Commitment to Liberation, Non-Racialism

and Equality’, Africa is a Country 13 December 2019. Accessed January 2020, https:// africasacountry.com/2019/12/ben-turoks-lifelong-commitment-to-liberation-nonracialism-and-equality. 18 Thamm, ‘Ben Turok, Rebel’. 19 Turok, With My Head above the Parapet. 20 University of Cape Town, ‘Teaching Should Evolve to Meet Changing Student Needs –

Panel’, UCT Newsroom Online 28 August 2013. Accessed January 2020, https://www.news.

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uct.ac.za/article/-2013-08-28-teaching-should-evolve-to-meet-changing-student-needspanel. 21 The Presidency, President Mourns Passing of Prof Ben Turok. Press statement,

9 December 2019. Accessed January 2020, http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/pressstatements/president-mourns-passing-prof-ben-turok; L. Mketane, ‘Ben Turok Was a Principled Freedom Fighter, Says Cyril Ramaphosa’, Business Day Online 9 December 2019. Accessed January 2020, https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2019-12-09-antiapartheid-activist-ben-turok-dies/. 22 African National Congress, ‘A Brief History’. 23 Turok, With My Head above the Parapet, p. 21. 24 O. Tabane, ‘Ben Turok – a Lifetime of Putting His Head above the Parapet’, Daily Maverick

28 June 2012. Accessed January 2020, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2012-0628-ben-turok-a-lifetime-of-putting-his-head-above-the-parapet/.

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Phyllis Naidoo: Yearning for justice

Phyllis Naidoo:Yearning for justice Gregory Houston

1928–2013

Phyllis Naidoo was ten when she became conscious of racism. She had accompanied her father to the Institute of Race Relations, where she was asked to call the ‘boy’ to serve tea. When she asked a very dignified, traditional Zulu woman the whereabouts of the ‘boy’, she was told: ‘The boy you want is my husband.’1 This shocked and embarrassed her, and quite possibly sowed a seed that would flourish only decades later. In 1944, when she was 16, Phyllis was introduced to community service by H.W. Stead, a teacher at Woodlands High School in Pietermaritzburg. He introduced the students to the Friends of the Sick Association (Fosa), a charity organisation that ran a care centre and home for TB patients. He tasked them with making clothes for the children of the patients. Naidoo was also working with a women’s association that was knitting socks for soldiers in contribution to the war effort. After matriculating in 1945, she went to work at Fosa.2 Naidoo was deployed by Fosa to work as a volunteer social worker in the tuberculosis ward at King George’s Hospital in Pietermaritzburg, where she became aware of the conditions in South Africa that exacerbated the disease. She soon realised there was little she could do at the hospital to help those suffering from the disease, because many patients who were sent home died soon thereafter, due to their living conditions.3 A year later, in 1946, her uneasiness about racism and her interest in community service developed into an interest in protest politics, and she became involved in the Indian Passive Resistance campaign. She subsequently joined the Non-European Unity Movement, a Trotskyite left-wing organisation that had a strong following among Indians in Natal.4 By the beginning of the Treason Trial in 1956, she was a committed activist, raising money for and supporting the Congress Alliance leaders who were on trial, and assisting political activists who had been

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banished to remote areas of the country by providing them with food parcels. These activities led to her joining the Natal Indian Congress.5 In the meantime, Naidoo had married just after her twenty-first birthday, but her husband, Willie Joseph, went to the United States and never returned.6 She divorced him, and became a teacher in 1951, continuing in this job until 1963. She studied part-time for her teaching diploma, and later studied at the University of Natal for her first degree, between 1955 and 1958. When Naidoo was forced to leave teaching because of her political activities, she decided to study to become a lawyer. She registered for a law degree at the University of Natal, Non-European Section, which had lectures separately from white students. However, after completing her degree, which she did part-time,7 she was unable to practise law because by this time the apartheid government had imposed banning orders on her. In 1958, she had married M.D. Naidoo, a member of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA). The role she played supporting the Treason trialists and banished persons, as well as her underground activities, were behind her banning in 1966.8 Some of these activities included providing support to families of people detained in the wave of arrests that followed the 1960 Sharpeville massacre and the banning of many anti-apartheid organisations, while carrying out various activities for the now underground ANC. A year later she joined the banned CPSA and, after the formation of the ANC’s military wing Umkhonto weSizwe in 1961, her role in assisting people to leave the country for exile increased dramatically. The leadership of the political organisations she participated in requested her to leave the country, but she declined. By this time, her flat in Durban had become a meeting place for leaders and members of the Congress Alliance.9 She continued working in the underground for the next few years until she was banned in March 1966. A year later, her husband was arrested and imprisoned on Robben Island. (After his release in 1972, the two became estranged, and subsequently divorced.) A year later, she completed her law degree, but was unable to practise. Throughout the period of her banning, Naidoo was unable to work because of the banning order and house arrest, and depended on the support of friends and family.10 This was despite her being highly educated, which she wanted to be, not for self-gratification, but for the upliftment of the wider community and to be better equipped to support the liberation struggle.11 Naidoo was only able to open up her law practice in 1976, when her banning order was lifted. She continued providing support to members of the Congress Alliance, including assisting some to depart illegally from the country, defending political activists in court, and providing employment to ex-political prisoners. She eventually fled the country in July 1977, after members of her underground network had been arrested. She joined the exiled ANC community in Maseru, Lesotho, where she provided support to those escaping apartheid South Africa. In 1979, Naidoo was injured when a parcel bomb sent by the apartheid government exploded.12 She narrowly escaped death in 1982, when South African commandos launched attacks on several houses in Maseru, resulting in the death of 42 people, including 30 ANC members.13 Naidoo fled Lesotho in 1983, when the apartheid government stepped up air strikes against ANC targets in the country and closed all its borders. She had also been informed that she was

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on a death list of the apartheid government. She was then deployed to Zimbabwe, where she stayed for the next seven years carrying out underground tasks for the ANC and lecturing in law at the University of Zimbabwe.14 Naidoo’s persistent participation in support of trialists, banished persons, and detainees and their families, her role in the underground, and the assistance she gave to people fleeing the country – despite the hardships she experienced as a consequence of these activities – served as inspiration to many people she encountered, and those who became aware of what she was doing at the time. Her personal life, though, was filled with loss. Nerson, her son from her first, short-lived marriage to Willie Joseph in 1949, left South Africa at age 10 to be with his father in the USA. Phyllis never saw him again, and he died in the 1980s.15 She had three children from her marriage to M.D. Naidoo, of whom only their daughter, Sukhthi, has survived. Her son Sahdhan was assassinated by an apartheid hit squad at the ANC’s Chongella Farm in Zambia in 1989,16 and her other son, Sha, died in 1995 after complications from surgery soon after returning from exile.17 Naidoo had been prepared to give her all and give up anything – being banned and lonely, going into exile, and moving houses and jobs many times – for the struggle.18 She returned to South Africa from exile in 1990, and immediately began working with political prisoners on death row, and on Robben Island, as an employee of Lawyers for Human Rights. She became a freelance contributor to newspapers, and also began recording the history of the struggle as she had experienced it while she was living in the country and in exile.19 The first of several books that Naidoo authored was published in 1990: Waiting to Die in Pretoria, which is about capital punishment and includes a list of names of people who had been executed for their political activities.20 Another book, published two years later, Le Rona re Batho: An Account of the 1982 Maseru Massacre, describes this incident: ‘At 5 am on the morning of the raid,’ Naidoo writes, ‘hearing a knock on my door and seeing the ANC VW parked close by, I went downstairs. There was impatient knocking accompanied by “Ma is you there”. Seeing me was such obvious relief – they held onto me saying, “Thank God you’re alive, Ma.”’21 Her third book, Footprints on Grey Street, is about prominent Indians who participated in the liberation struggle working side by side with anti-apartheid activists from other race groups.22 The book is ‘both an effort to desegregate the history of South Africa and a way to refigure Grey Street’ in the everyday interactions depicted by Naidoo.23 The book does, however, recognise the ‘frictions between brown and black that were characteristic of the struggle’ in its everyday interactions.24 Naidoo’s last book, Enduring Footprints, provides many little-known insights into numerous personalities and events linked to the South African liberation struggle.25 Included here is a record, in the form of profiles and poems, of the contribution made by many little-known people, such as Professor Ronald Albino and the many others who were academics, trade unionists, End-Conscription Campaigners, priests or nuns, and played various roles in the struggle. The

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book spans events taking place in Naidoo’s life, as well as the many people she met, in many different parts of the world. Underlying the narrative filled with names, places and events is a yearning for the justice that she pursued throughout her life.26 Phyllis Naidoo’s varied career included not only being a lawyer, teacher, lecturer, activist, journalist and author. She also had the unexpected opportunity to experience a stint as an actress. In 1987 she played a small role in A World Apart, the feature film based on the life of Ruth First and written by Ruth’s daughter Shawn Slovo.27 Her other books are 156 Hands that Built South Africa28 and Footprints beyond Grey Street.29 Naidoo was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Durban-Westville and the Durban University of Technology for her contribution to the liberation struggle. The latter was also behind her being awarded the National Order of Luthuli in 2003. Phyllis Naidoo passed away on 13 February 2013. Her legacy lies in the example her life provides of the sacrifices and activism required in the struggle for social justice, and her efforts to give recognition to many stalwarts of the liberation struggle in her writings. Notes 1 M. Zungu, N. Manqele, C. De Vries, T. Molefe and M. Hadebe, ‘HERstory: Writing

Women into South African History’, Agenda 28:1 (2014), p. 15; V. Noble, ‘Ruffled Feathers’: A Study of the Lives and Contributions of Mabel Palmer, Killie Campbell, Sibusisiwe Makanye, Dr. Goonam and Phyllis Naidoo, BA Honours dissertation, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 1997, p. 45. 2 Noble, ‘Ruffled Feathers’, pp. iv, 54–55. 3 Noble, ‘Ruffled Feathers’, p. 55. 4 A. Adedipe, ‘Rembering South Africa’, CEC Journal 4 (n.d.). Accessed December 2019,

https://scalar.usc.edu/works/cec-journal-issue-4/adesoji. 5 Noble, ‘Ruffled Feathers’, pp. 182–183. 6  Mail & Guardian, ‘A Special Place in Phyllis Naidoo’s Heart’, 22 February 2013. Accessed

8 July 2020, https://mg.co.za/article/2013-02-22-00-a-special-place-in-phyllis-naidoosheart/. 7 G. Houston, K. Sausi and S. Dumisa, Interview with Paul David, 30 August 2013,

KwaDukuza. Unsung Heroes and Heroines of the South African Liberation Struggle Project, Human Sciences Research Council 30 August 2013. 8 Noble, ‘Ruffled Feathers’, pp. 55–56. 9 Houston, Sausi and Dumisa, Interview with Paul David. 10 Adedipe, ‘Rembering South Africa’; Houston, Sausi and Dumisa, Interview with

Paul David. 11 Noble, ‘Ruffled Feathers’, p. 140. 12 Adedipe, ‘Rembering South Africa’. 13 Zungu, Manqele, De Vries, Molefe and Hadebe, ‘HERstory’, p. 14. 14 Noble, ‘Ruffled Feathers’, pp. 76–77. 15  Mail & Guardian, ‘A Special Place’.

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16 TRC Final Report (Vol 2, Chapter 2, Subsection 32). See http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/reports/

volume2/chapter2/subsection32.htm. 17 Zungu, Manqele, De Vries, Molefe and Hadebe, ‘HERstory’, p. 14. 18 Noble, ‘Ruffled Feathers’, p. 141. 19 Noble, ‘Ruffled Feathers’, pp. 155–156. 20 P. Naidoo, Waiting to Die in Pretoria (Durban: P. Naidoo, 1990). 21 P. Naidoo, Le Rona re Batho: An Account of the 1982 Maseru Massacre (Durban: P. Naidoo,

1992). 22 P. Naidoo, Footprints on Grey Street (Durban: P. Naidoo, 2002). 23 L. Raimondi, ‘Book Review: Antoinette Burton, Africa in the Indian Imagination: Race and

the Politics of Postcolonial Citation’, African Studies Quarterly 17:2 (2017), pp. 88–89. 24 M. Louro, ‘Book Review: Antoinette Burton, Africa in the Indian Imagination: Race and the

Politics of Postcolonial Citation’, Canadian Journal of History 52:3 (2017), p. 576. 25 P. Naidoo, Enduring Footprints (Durban: P. Naidoo, 2009). 26 KZN Literary Tourism, ‘Enduring Footprints’ by Phyllis Naidoo (n.d.) Accessed October

2018, http://www.literarytourism.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3 13:enduring-footprints-by-phyllis-naidoo&catid=24:reviews&Itemid=100055. 27 Internet Movie Database. Accessed 8 July 2020 https://www.imdb.com/title/

tt0096464/?ref_=tt_urv. 28 P. Naidoo, 156 Hands that Built South Africa (Woodstock: Stephan Phillips (Pty) Ltd, 2006). 29 P. Naidoo, Footprints Beyond Grey Street (Durban: P. Naidoo, 2007).

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Ahmed Kathrada: A life committed to the struggle Gregory Houston

1929–2017

Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada, who was known as Kathy, is one of those singular individuals whose entire life was given to the liberation struggle, from his very first political action at the age of 12 right up to his death on 27 March 2017 after a long illness.1 He personified the principles of steward leadership and, as Kgalema Mothlanthe said at his funeral, he ‘opened [our eyes] forever, and saved us from the blindness of the heart. Along with countless men and women of a higher order of consciousness with whom he cast his lot in pursuance of deep ideals, comrade Kathy helped unleash human possibilities.’2 Of his time on Robben Island, Walter Sisulu wrote: ‘Kathy was a tower of strength and a source of inspiration to many prisoners, both young and old.’3 ‘Comrade Kathy’ was born in the small rural town of Schweizer Reneke in North West province, about 300 kilometres from Johannesburg. He was the fourth of six children. His parents, Mohamed and Hawa Kathrada, immigrated to South Africa from the village of Lachpur in India after their marriage. They ran a small general dealer shop. Mohamed Kathrada served the small Muslim community of Schweizer-Reneke by acting as the imam (congregation leader) during prayer services held behind the family shop or at their home. The town’s white residents were generally very conservative, and had deeply entrenched racist beliefs. David Mtshali, the principal of a local African school, taught Kathrada at home for two years because the town had no schools for Indian children. From the age of eight he attended the Newtown Indian Primary School in Johannesburg. It is here that he came under the influence of people such as Dr Yusuf Dadoo, Ismail ‘IC’ Meer, the Vassen family, Mervy Thandray and the brothers Molvi and Yusuf Cachalia, who were all activists in the liberation struggle.4

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In 1941, at the age of 12, Kathrada joined the Young Communist League. His political tasks comprised activities such as distributing pamphlets, putting up posters, and painting slogans on walls. In 1943, the year his father died, he joined the Transvaal Indian Congress, an affiliate of the South African Indian Congress (SAIC). He also participated in the anti-war campaign of the Non-European United Front at the time. Kathrada left school at 17, without completing his matriculation (now Grade 12) to work full time in the offices of the Transvaal Passive Resistance Council. At the age of 18 he was arrested and jailed for one month for taking part in the SAIC’s 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign. He was a founding member of the Transvaal Indian Youth Volunteer Corps, which had participated in the campaign, and was later elected secretary general of its successor, the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress, subsequently becoming its chair.5 After the signing of the ‘Doctors’ Pact’ that brought closer cooperation between the SAIC and the  ANC in 1947, Kathrada became involved in coordinating the activities of the youth congresses of the two organisations. In 1950, he enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he became a member of the Student Liberal Association. His activities in the association led to his being selected to lead a South African youth delegation to the 1951 Berlin World Youth Festival in East Germany and a Congress of the International Union of Students in Warsaw. This opened up the opportunity for him to work for nine months at the Budapest-based World Federation of Democratic Youth, of which he became an executive member in 1953.6 In 1952, after playing a very active role in organising the Defiance Campaign, Kathrada was arrested under the Suppression of Communism Act, together with Walter Sisulu, J.B.  Marks, Nelson Mandela and Yusuf Dadoo. All 20 who were arrested were found guilty of ‘statutory communism’, and were given a sentence of nine months’ prison with hard labour, suspended for two years. Despite being restricted from political activity as a result of the sentence, Kathrada was active in the 1954 campaign against Bantu Education, the campaign against the removal of Africans from Sophiatown in Johannesburg, and the preparations in 1954 for the 1955 Congress of the People. These activities led to his 1954 banning order, which prohibited him from attending gatherings, and from joining a long list of organisations. Nevertheless, Kathrada was selected onto the committee of the Congress Alliance formed at the 1955 Congress. He was arrested in 1956, together with 155 other leaders of the Alliance, and subsequently tried for treason. The Treason Trial, which lasted from 1957 until March 1961, ended in acquittal for all those charged.7 By this time, however, the ANC was among the organisations that had been banned in April 1960 in the wake of the Sharpeville massacre, and Kathrada was among the several thousand people detained in a countrywide swoop during the state of emergency in that year. Most of the detainees, including Kathrada, were only released in August 1960, after being in detention for five months.8 A year later, the ANC launched its military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), on 16  December with a series of sabotage actions around the country. Kathrada was an early recruit of MK, and also served ‘on the regional command that identified potential targets even

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before the official launch of the armed wing on 16 December 1961’. He joined an MK unit that carried out modest sabotage to assess targets and test the efficacy of their equipment.9 In December 1962, Kathrada was subjected to 12 hours a day ‘house arrest’ for playing a leading role in the launch of a ‘Free Mandela’ campaign.10 He immediately went underground, but continued attending secret meetings at Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, the underground headquarters of the ANC. In July 1963, Kathrada and other leaders of the underground movement attending a meeting at the farm were arrested. He was tried and convicted for sabotage and organising and directing MK, together with Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, Elias Motsoaledi, Denis Goldberg and Andrew Mlangeni. In June 1964, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island. He was just 34 years old. Kathrada was on Robben Island for about 18 years until mid-October 1982, when he was taken to Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison, where he remained for another eight years. During his time on Robben Island, Kathrada completed BA degrees in criminology, history, African politics and library science, and honours degrees in history and African studies. He was released from Pollsmoor when he was 60 years old, on 15 October 1989, after spending 26 years in prison. He was given a hero’s welcome in Soweto on his release, and was able to address a crowd of 5 000 people at a rally organised for the released Rivonia trialists.11 Kathrada’s books are a testimony and record of a life committed entirely to the struggle. Robert (Bobby) Vassen edited Letters from Robben Island (1999), a compilation of letters that Kathy had written during the years of his incarceration. The letters recreate the experiences and lives of those with whom he was imprisoned, as well as the myriad emotions that they experienced.12 The selection of 87 of Kathrada’s letters are divided into three periods: those written during the Rivonia Trial in 1964 and the period up to 1970 on Robben Island; those written between 1971 and 1980 when he was still on Robben Island; and those written between 1981 and 1989, including letters written shortly before his release from Pollsmoor Prison.13 In Memoirs, Kathrada tells South Africa’s story through his own personal experience as an activist, saboteur, and a member of Parliament in post-apartheid South Africa. He tells the story of the connection between diverse political, social and racial groups fighting against a common enemy – the apartheid state – and the sacrifices they made during the course of their participation in the struggle. The book includes an account of the raid on Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia prior to his imprisonment.14 He describes life on Robben Island, and the trials and tribulations of his fellow prisoners. These were repeated in another autobiography published a few years later: No Bread for Mandela (2010).15 Kathrada collaborated with Tim Couzens in compiling  A Simple Freedom: The Strong Mind of Robben Island Prisoner No. 468/64 (2008). The book contains extracts from poetry, novels, songs, sayings and letters that Kathrada secretly transcribed while on Robben Island.16 Triumph of the Human Spirit: Ahmed Kathrada and Robben Island (2015) focuses on the visits he had made to Robben Island since 1994.17 His last book, Conversations with a Gentle Soul, is based on conversations with his long-time friend Sahm Venter on a range of topics arising from Kathrada’s life experiences during the course of the struggle.18 It was published in 2017.

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After the unbanning of political organisations in February 1990, Kathrada was appointed acting head of the ANC’s Department of Information and Publicity, then head of the ANC’s public relations department, and was elected onto the national executive committee of the ANC at its conference in Durban in 1991. He was elected an ANC member of Parliament in South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, and later served as a parliamentary counsellor in the Office of the President before leaving parliamentary politics in June 1999. He also served a term as the chairperson of the Robben Island Museum Council, and chairperson of the ex-political prisoners’ committee, an organisation of cadres of all political organisations who had served prison sentences for political crimes. Above all else, Ahmed Kathrada will be acknowledged as a symbol of Indian–African cooperation in the liberation struggle and as a champion of the struggle for democracy and human rights to which he had dedicated his entire life. He was a political activist from the age of 12 and went to prison (in theory for life) when he was 34, so his personal life took a back seat. After his release in 1989, however – and particularly after leaving politics in 1999 – he actively pursued happiness and simplicity, and married for the first time – to fellow anti-apartheid activist and politician Barbara Hogan.19 As well as honorary doctorates from several South African and American universities, Kathrada received many awards: • the ANC’s Isitwalandwe Award ‘for outstanding service in the name of the liberation movement and the oppressed people of South Africa struggling for their rights’ (1988); • South Africa’s Order for Meritorious Service (1999); • the Indian government’s Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award (2005); • the Chevalier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur from the French government (2015). One of Kathrada’s favourite anecdotes illustrates well what it means to be isolated from the world for more than two decades. On 10  October 1989, he was told by Nelson Mandela that he, along with some of the other Rivonia trialists, was to be released. They were flown to Johannesburg, and on the night of Saturday 14  October were told by a warder that they ‘had received a fax from Pretoria stating they would be released the next day’. Their first question was not about details of the release but, ‘What is a fax?’20 Notes 1 M. Haron, ‘South Africa’s Ahmad Kathrada (1929–2017): A Man of Substance, A Man of

Principles’, Islamic Horizons, May/June (2017), p. 5; Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Ahmed Kathrada, 1929–2017: A Life of Activism (Lenasia: Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, 2017), p. 33; R. Fisher, ‘Ahmed Kathrada: A Life Built on Eradicating Racism and Inequality’, Mail & Guardian 28 March 2017. Accessed November 2018, https://mg.co.za/article/2017-03-28ahmed-kathrada-a-life-built-on-eradicating-racism-and-inequality/.

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2 K. April, ‘Why SA Needs More Steward Leaders Like Ahmed Kathrada’, fin24 19 April

2017. Accessed 9 July 2020, https://www.news24.com/fin24/Opinion/why-sa-needs-moresteward-leaders-like-ahmed-kathrada-20170418. 3 K. Chetty, Ahmed Kathrada: A Biography (Gandhi-Luthuli Document Centre, University of

KZN, n.d.). Accessed July 2020, http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/B/Ks/kathrada/kathy.html. 4 Haron, ‘South Africa’s Ahmad Kathrada’, p. 3; Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Ahmed

Kathrada, 1929–2017, pp. 3–5. See also Kathrada’s two autobiographies: A. Kathrada, Memoirs (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2004); A. Kathrada, No Bread for Mandela: Memoirs of Ahmed Kathrada, Prisoner No. 468/64 (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2010); and one jointly written memoir, A. Kathrada and T. Couzens, A Simple Freedom: The Strong Mind of Robben Island Prisoner, No. 468/64 (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2016). 5 Haron, ‘South Africa’s Ahmad Kathrada’, p. 3; Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Ahmed

Kathrada, 1929–2017, p. 8; Fisher, ‘Ahmed Kathrada’. 6 Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Ahmed Kathrada, 1929–2017, p. 9. 7 Haron, ‘South Africa’s Ahmad Kathrada’, p. 3; Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Ahmed

Kathrada, 1929–2017, p. 10; Fisher, ‘Ahmed Kathrada’. 8 Haron, ‘South Africa’s Ahmad Kathrada’, p. 3; Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Ahmed

Kathrada, 1929–2017, p. 12; Fisher, ‘Ahmed Kathrada’. 9 Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Ahmed Kathrada, 1929–2017, pp. 12–13. 10 Haron, ‘South Africa’s Ahmad Kathrada’, p. 3. 11 Haron, ‘South Africa’s Ahmad Kathrada’, p. 4; Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Ahmed

Kathrada, 1929–2017, pp. 13–23. 12 Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Ahmed Kathrada, 1929–2017, p. 35. 13 M. Wa Muiu, ‘Review: Unsung Heroes and Heroines: The Role of People and

Organisations in South Africa’s Liberation Struggle’, African Studies Review 50:1 (2007), p. 136. 14 Kathrada, Memoirs. Refer to Wa Muiu, ‘Review’, p. 136. 15 Kathrada, No Bread for Mandela. 16 Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Ahmed Kathrada, 1929–2017, p. 35. Refer to Kathrada and

Couzens, A Simple Freedom. 17 Z. Vadi, Triumph of the Human Spirit: Ahmed Kathrada and Robben Island (Cape Town:

Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, 2015). 18 A. Kathrada with S. Venter, Conversations with a Gentle Soul (Johannesburg: Picador Africa,

2017). 19 Haron, ‘South Africa’s Ahmad Kathrada’, p. 5; Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Ahmed

Kathrada, 1929–2017, p. 33; Fisher, ‘Ahmed Kathrada’. 20 R. Munusamy, ‘Ahmed Kathrada: On 25 Years of Freedom, Love and Peace’, Daily Maverick

16 October 2014. Accessed July 2020, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-10-16ahmed-kathrada-on-25-years-of-freedom-love-and-peace/.

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Arthur Chaskalson: Leading the way

Arthur Chaskalson: Leading the way Narnia Bohler-Muller

1931–2012

The first chief justice of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of South Africa (2001–2005), Arthur Chaskalson acted as defence counsel in numerous important political trials during the apartheid era, including the Rivonia Trial of 1963–1964 in which former president Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment. As a founding member of the Legal Resources Centre – an organisation that sought to pursue justice and human rights in South Africa – he challenged the implementation of apartheid laws. Justice Chaskalson was director from its inception in 1978 until 1993.1 In 1952 he graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a BCom, and in 1954 he obtained his LLB cum laude. A keen soccer player, he was selected for the Combined South African Universities soccer team in 1952. Two years later he was admitted to the Johannesburg Bar.2 Chaskalson was a member of the Johannesburg Bar Council from 1967 to 1971 and from 1973 to 1984, the chairperson of the Johannesburg Bar in 1976 and again in 1982, a member and later convenor of the National Bar Examination Board (1979–1991), and the vice-chairperson of the General Council of the Bar of South Africa (1982–1987).3 He has been a member of the Board of the Faculty of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1979–1999), an honorary professor of law at that university from 1981 to 1995, a member of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies Board from 1979 to 1994, and a member of the National Council of Lawyers for Human Rights (1980–1991). Chaskalson was vice-chairperson of the International Legal Aid Division of the International Bar Association (1983–1993), and chairperson of the Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee for South Africa (1988–1993). He was a member of the Judicial Service Commission from 1994 until 2005, and its chairperson from 21 November 2001 until his retirement on 31 May 2005.4

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During the early 1990s, Chaskalson was a consultant to the Namibian Constituent Assembly, a consultant to the ANC at the Multiparty Negotiating Forum, and a member of the Multiparty Negotiating Forum’s technical committee on constitutional issues. In that capacity he participated in drafting the Interim Constitution. In June 1994, he became the first president of South Africa’s new Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa where constitutional matters are concerned. On 22  November 2001 he became the chief justice of South Africa, a position he retained until his retirement on 31 May 2005. On his retirement he was described by President Mbeki as a ‘giant among the architects of our democracy’.5 He was replaced by his former deputy, Justice Pius Langa, who has also since passed away. He received several honorary doctorate degrees: from the University of Natal (1986), the University of the Witwatersrand (1990), Rhodes University (1997), the University of Amsterdam and the University of Port Elizabeth (both in 2002), the University of South Africa (2004), the University of the Western Cape and the University of Pretoria (both in 2006), and Stellenbosch University (2008).6 Chaskalson served in many capacities, including as a member of the South African Academy of Science; a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Science; a trustee of the Legal Resources Trust, the Constitutional Court Trust and the Constitution Hill Trust; and a member of the board of the South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional Law. In December 2002 he received the award of Supreme Counsellor of the Order of the Baobab (Gold), a national honour, for his service to the nation in respect of constitutionalism, human rights and democracy.7 His written works were donated to the University of the Witwatersrand.8 According to eminent South African advocate Jeremy Gauntlett, Chaskalson’s professional life was marked by three stages. First he was the most cerebral of advocates. His manner was formal, even cold – a devastating crossexaminer, clear but soft-spoken in argument. His manner may have dissuaded an easy camaraderie, but he was a natural leader at the Bar. Twice chairman of the Johannesburg Bar, and for five years Vice-Chairman of the General Council of the Bar, he led South Africa’s advocates in innumerable confrontations with the Vorster then Botha governments over legislative and executive measures striking at human rights and an independent administration of justice.9 The former president of the Constitutional Court and chief justice was given a Special Official Funeral upon his passing in 2012 at the age of 81, and national flags were flown at half-mast throughout the country for a week. In addition, the South African government arranged a memorial service for the chief justice. Rebecca Davis wrote on the impact of his death: There are few individuals who have played so significant and honourable a role in South Africa’s legal sphere. The loss of his incisive mind and steady reasoning

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is enormous, and obituaries will inevitably tend towards hagiography – for once, it could be argued, justified.10 His long-time friend and colleague George Bizos said Chaskalson had the ability to unite the judiciary after 1994, saying that is why he was appointed president of the Constitutional Court by former statesman Nelson Mandela. ‘The judiciary was divided and we needed a man of his high intelligence [and] integrity.’11 Another former colleague, Geoff Budlender, said Chaskalson had most recently been deeply concerned about the direction the country was taking.12 These concerns were expressed publicly as he was concerned about persistent poverty and inequality despite the promises, especially those contained in justiciable socio-economic rights, of the Constitution that he assisted to create. In one of his last speeches before his death, the late chief justice said: We live in a society in which there are great disparities in wealth. Millions of people are living in deplorable conditions and in great poverty. There is a high level of unemployment, inadequate social security, and many do not have access to clean water or to adequate health services. These conditions already existed when the Constitution was adopted and a commitment to address them, and to transform our society into one in which there will be human dignity, freedom and equality, lies at the heart of our new constitutional order. For as long as these conditions continue to exist that aspiration will have a hollow ring [emphasis added].13 With regard to the democratic principle of separation of powers, Chaskalson was not keen on raising the ire of the other two branches of government as the Constitutional Court was finding its way in its first five years of existence. He did, however, point out that ‘policy must be consistent with the Constitution, and if it is not, it is the duty of a court to say so and to declare it to be invalid to the extent of its inconsistency’.14 In the years after his retirement, he also became impatient with political attacks on the Constitution, and had this to say on the matter that included the interpretation of the ‘property clause’ (section 25) underpinning the land issue: Do those who blame the Constitution for lack of transformation want a legal order in which human rights are not entrenched, and Parliament is supreme, where as a former South African Chief Justice of those times observed in 1934: ‘Parliament may make any encroachment it chooses upon the life, liberty, or property of any individual subject to its sway…and it is the function of the courts of law to enforce its will.’15 If this is what they want, they should say so, so that a sensible public debate can take place around such issues.16

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Sadly, the sensible debate that he called for has not come to fruition and tensions have escalated around the transformative nature of the Constitution, especially during the time of Jacob Zuma’s presidency. Chaskalson was one of the few white people willing to lead South Africa into a new democracy, where social justice prevailed under a new constitution in the wake of the demise of the apartheid regime. He showed courage by choosing to walk an unknown path, and even to this day judgments given under his leadership are fundamental within the judiciary and in the interpretation of the law. Notes 1 Constitutional Court of South Africa, ‘Justice Arthur Chaskalson (1931–2012)’ (n.d.).

Accessed May 2019, https://www.concourt.org.za/index.php/judges/former-judges/11former-judges/60-justice-arthur-chaskalson-1931-2012. 2 Constitutional Court of South Africa, ‘Justice Arthur Chaskalson’. 3 Constitutional Court of South Africa, ‘Justice Arthur Chaskalson’. 4 Constitutional Court of South Africa, ‘Justice Arthur Chaskalson’. 5 T. Mbeki, Address of the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, at the Ceremony to

Mark the Retirement of Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson and the Assumption of Office of Chief Justice Pius Langa and Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke, Houses of Parliament, Cape Town, 10 June 2005. Accessed June 2019, http://www.dirco.gov.za/docs/ speeches/2005/mbek0610.htm. 6 Constitutional Court of South Africa, ‘Justice Arthur Chaskalson’. 7 The Presidency, ‘Arthur Chaskalson: The Order of the Baobab in Gold’ (2002). Accessed

July 2019, http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/arthur-chaskalson. 8 University of the Witwatersrand Historical Papers Research Archive, Collection Index:

Chaskalson, Arthur, Papers, 1954–2012, Inventory for A3404, (n.d.), Accessed May 2019, http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/?inventory/U/collections&c=A3404/R/9174. 9 J. Gauntlett, ‘Arthur Chaskalson: 24 November 1931–1 December 2012’, Politicsweb

4 December 2012. Accessed April 2020, https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/arthurchaskalson-24-november-1931--1-december-201. 10 R. Davis, ‘Death of a Lion of the Law: Arthur Chaskalson’, Daily Maverick 3 December

2012. Accessed April 2019, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-12-03-death-of-alion-of-the-law-arthur-chaskalson/. 11  Eyewitness News. ‘Bizos: Chaskalson United a Divided Judiciary’, 4 December 2012.

Accessed April 2019, https://ewn.co.za/2012/12/04/Chaskalson-united-a-divided-judiciary. 12 Eyewitness News. ‘Bizos: Chaskalson United a Divided Judiciary’. 13 A. Chaskalson, ‘Without Fear, Favour or Prejudice: The Courts, the Constitution

and Transformation’. Speech delivered at Challenges Facing Administrative Justice Conference, University of Cape Town, 26 January 2012. Accessed January 2019, https:// constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/former-chief-justice-arthur-chaskalson-without-fearfavour-or-prejudice-the-courts-the-constitution-and-transformation/. 14 Chaskalson, ‘Without Fear, Favour or Prejudice’. 15 See Sachs v Minister of Justice 1934 AD 11 at 37. 16 Chaskalson, ‘Without Fear, Favour or Prejudice’.

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Albie Sachs: A constitutional revolutionary

Albie Sachs: A constitutional revolutionary Narnia Bohler-Muller

b. 1935

South Africa is crying out for the spirit of Tambo to become the norm again. Albie Sachs, Oliver Tambo’s Dream Albert ‘Albie’ Louis Sachs is best known as a former justice of the first bench of the Constitutional Court; he is also an activist, writer, teacher, lecturer and international personality – straddling legal, political and scholarly activism.1 He has often been described as a humane person who has a heart for forgiveness.2 His background is rooted in radical politics, and his history and lived experiences have shaped his political convictions and ultimately his contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. He was actively involved in the crafting of South Africa’s constitution, and in the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court during what was called its ‘golden period’ under the leadership of Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson. From the outset of his career as a lawyer at the age of 21, most of the clients Sachs took on were black people from marginalised communities who were oppressed and whose rights were violated by the Nationalist Party government.3 During this time, Sachs experienced solitary confinement without trial twice within a period of two years. He narrates his ordeal in The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs,4 which was later turned into a play that was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company.5 When Mozambique gained independence in 1975, Sachs moved there from England, where he had sought exile after his imprisonment and completed a PhD at Sussex University. He lived in Mozambique for 11 years, where he worked at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo as a law professor while continuing his activism against the apartheid regime. During that period of his life he became friends with Oliver Tambo, and together they drafted the ANC’s Code of Conduct, and the laws guiding the organisation as a liberation movement.6

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In 1988, Sachs survived an assassination attempt when his car exploded in Mozambique.7 He lost his right arm and the sight in one eye in this politically motivated attack orchestrated by apartheid intelligence agents. However, this tragedy did not deter him in his fight for freedom and democracy – a testimony to his resilience. In fact, Sachs advocated forgiveness. He shares this in his work The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter, which illustrates his steadfast belief in reconciliation.8 Surprisingly, instead of angering him, the explosion, the severe injury and consequent disability created a sense of optimism that most would find difficult to understand.9 He has often compared his experience to that of South Africa, saying that surviving the bomb that was meant to kill him could also symbolise the South Africa that survives the evils of apartheid: To wake up without an arm but to feel joyously alive, to learn to do everything – to sit up, to stand, to walk, to run, to write again. Every little detail became a moment of discovery and breakthrough. I had an absolute conviction that as I got better, my country got better.10 Upon his return to South Africa after 24 years in exile, Sachs was one of the members of the committee that was responsible for developing a democratic constitution. Notably, he strongly supported the inclusion of entrenched human rights, and an independent judiciary. He also successfully fought for the inclusion of justiciable socio-economic rights such as access to water, housing, a clean environment, and access to healthcare. Describing the (interim) democratic Constitution of the Republic of South Africa as an example of ‘soft vengeance’, Sachs notes: It totally smites the horror, the division, the hatreds, the separations of apartheid but it does so in a way that is benign and creative and humanising.11 Considering Albie Sachs’s firm lifetime commitment to democratic principles such as human rights, equality, equity and fairness, it was not surprising that former president Mandela appointed him as one of the 11 judges of the Constitutional Court’s first bench. Some of the legal (and political) milestones that, as a judge, he contributed on South Africa’s road to transformation include the abolition of the death penalty in the case of  S v Makwanyane and Another;12 the decriminalisation of homosexuality and, further, the recognition of gay and lesbian couples’ right to marry in cases such as Minister of Home Affairs and Another v Fourie and Another and Lesbian and Gay Equality Project and Others v Minister of Home Affairs and Others,13 which led to the legalisation of same sex marriages in 2006; and the introduction of the concept of ‘meaningful engagement’ in eviction cases with his groundbreaking judgment in the case of Port Elizabeth v Various Occupiers Municipality,14 in which he referred to the need for mediation between the landowners, the occupiers and the municipality so as to prevent the homelessness of already vulnerable people. Sachs’s contribution and dedication to the development of socio-economic rights jurisprudence is evidenced throughout his career on the bench, and is notable in cases such as Government of the Republic of South Africa and Others v Grootboom and Others,15 which deals with the right

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of access to housing and Minister of Health and Others v Treatment Action Campaign and Others (No.  2),16 in which the Constitutional Court upheld the right of access to healthcare, and instructed government to make available antiretroviral drugs to alleviate the scourge of HIV/ AIDS. This was particularly brave considering the AIDS denialism of that time from the highest office of the state. Even after retiring as a judge in 2009, Sachs continues to play a significant public intellectual role both in South Africa and internationally. He served as a member of a magistrates and judges vetting board in Kenya, following the adoption of their new constitution, largely modelled on that of South Africa. Recently, he was awarded the Tang Prize, which in Asia is equivalent to the Nobel Prize. The Tang Prize Foundation honoured Sachs for his contribution to human rights and justice. In honouring Sachs, the committee noted the following: Through his personal story, his constitutional wisdom, and his clear articulation of many complex issues concerning justice and human rights, Albie Sachs stands out as one of the most influential contemporary advocates for the rule of law. His views, backed up by unyielding choices of integration over differences, and inclusiveness while preserving diversity, offer significant inspiration for societies dealing with issues of division, reconciliation, and the rule of law.17 Not one to rest in the recognition of his immense contributions to legal, political and social transformation, Sachs regularly engages on issues related to the Constitution. Acknowledging the challenges that South Africans still face 25 years after the attainment of democracy, he encourages the need to ‘reclaim’ the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, as a transformative and living text. To illustrate this, in his Oliver Tambo Centenary Lecture he asked the audience, ‘What good thing came out of apartheid?’ To cheers, he stated that apartheid created ‘anti-apartheid’.18 As a scholar, Albie Sachs has written several books, including Justice in South Africa;19 The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs (1990); The Free Diary of Albie Sachs;20 The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law;21 and We the People: Insights of an Activist Judge.22 His latest book deals with his friendship with Oliver Tambo, and the lessons that can be learnt from his leadership.23 Despite his immense intellect, his books are accessible and have been read widely, not gathering dust on a shelf. In each of these publications he stays true to his love of justice and his belief in forgiveness. As a protector of the Constitution and a believer in ubuntu, Sachs is of the opinion that the Constitution as it stands is a powerful instrument that can be used to bring about true transformation. He is of the view that the problem has been one of implementation rather than of impediments created by the Constitution: If you are waiting for the beautiful people, or even a beautiful leader in South Africa, it won’t happen. It’s always got to be us and the people like us and our neighbours and our parents and our children and grandchildren. And it’s us

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with all our limitations and ambitions and pettiness and greed and impatience, and all our perfectibility and corruptibility. The same us who brought about the downfall of apartheid. It’s that same us, and maybe the children of us, and even the grandchildren of us, who now have to create that more beautiful society that we long for and still have to achieve.24 Sachs is no doubt one of the most remarkable figures involved in the South African constitutionmaking process, an ongoing endeavour. From his role in the struggle, to defending black people oppressed by the apartheid government, to imprisonment, writing, teaching and judging, to almost losing his life and forgiving those responsible for the car explosion that disabled him, the life of Albie Sachs illustrates that caring and courage are complementary and intelligence can encompass emotion without becoming irrational. Notes 1 Part of the information in this chapter has been accessed from N. Bohler-Muller,

M. Cosser and G. Pienaar (eds), Making the Road by Walking: The Evolution of the South African Constitution (Pretoria: Pretoria University Law Press, 2018). 2 P. Trewhela, ‘The Dilemma of Albie Sachs: ANC Constitutionalism and the Death of

Thami Zulu’, Searchlight South Africa 3:3 (1993), pp. 34–52. Accessed June 2019, https://disa. ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/sloct93.6.pdf. 3 A. Sachs, The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter (California: University of California

Press, 2000), p. 18ff. 4 A. Sachs, The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). 5 D. Edgar, The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs (London: Collings, 1978). 6 Trewhela, ‘The Dilemma of Albie Sachs’. 7 Sachs, Soft Vengeance, p. vii. 8 Sachs, Soft Vengeance, p. 226. 9 M. Jaggi, ‘Justice of the Peace’, The Guardian 26 August 2006. Accessed May 2019,

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/aug/26/politics. 10 A. Sachs, ‘I Can’t Tell My Son Everything’, The Guardian 8 October 2011. Accessed June

2019, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/08/albie-sachs-apartheid-softvengeance. 11 P. Barkham, ‘Albie Sachs: I Can’t Tell My Son Everything’, Mail & Guardian 8 October

2011. Accessed March 2019, https://mg.co.za/article/2011-10-08-albie-sachs-i-cant-tell-myson-everything. 12  S v Makwanyane and Another 1995 (6) BCLR 665 (CC). 13  Minister of Home Affairs and Another v Fourie and Another (CCT 60/04) [2005] ZACC 19; and

Lesbian and Gay Equality Project and Others v Minister of Home Affairs and Others (CCT 10/05) [2005] ZACC 20. 14  Port Elizabeth v Various Occupiers Municipality (CCT 53/03) [2004] ZACC 7.

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15  Government of the Republic of South Africa and Others v Grootboom and Others (CCT 11/00)

[2000] ZACC 19. 16  Minister of Health and Others v Treatment Action Campaign and Others (No 2) (CCT 8/02)

[2002] ZACC 15. 17 Tang Prize Laureates, ‘Albie Sachs’ (2014). Accessed June 2019, http://www.tang-prize.org/

en/owner_detail.php?cat=13&id=48. 18 A. Sachs, ‘Oliver Tambo’s Dream (A Lecture in Four Parts)’, Oliver Tambo Centenary

Lecture, University of Pretoria, 22 February 2017, p. 1. Accessed June 2019, https://www. chr.up.ac.za/images/centrenews/2017/files/2017_justice_albie_sachs_tambo_part_one.pdf. 19 A. Sachs, Justice in South Africa (California: University of California Press, 1973). 20 A. Sachs, The Free Diary of Albie Sachs (Johannesburg: Umuzi, 2004). 21 A. Sachs, The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 22 A. Sachs, We the People: Insights of an Activist Judge (Johannesburg: Wits University Press,

2016). 23 Sachs, Oliver Tambo’s Dream, pp. 14–15. 24 A. Sachs, ‘Don’t Wait for a Beautiful Leader, South Africa: Rather Rely on the

Constitution’, The Conversation 16 November 2016. Accesssed March 2019, https:// theconversation.com/dont-wait-for-a-beautiful-leader-south-africa-rather-rely-on-theconstitution-68757.

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A.P. Mda: The Africanist giant Gregory Houston

1916–1993

Ashby Solomzi Peter ‘A.P.’ Mda is widely considered to be the organic intellectual and ‘founding spirit’ behind the Africanist tradition that later gave rise to the Pan Africanist Congress of South Africa (PAC). Mda was a teacher, lawyer, political activist and co-founder of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) as well as one of the founders of the PAC. Mda grew up in the Herschel district of what is now the Eastern Cape, near the Lesotho border, the second of six children of a refugee family originally from the Qumbu region of the Transkei. His mother, Mildred, was a school teacher, and his father, Gxumekelani Charles Mda, was a peasant farmer, headman and local shoemaker. The family were Anglicans, but Mda and his siblings attended a local Catholic school. Mda then attended St Francis School in Aliwal North, and the teacher training college at Mariazell, northeast of Matatiele.1 After qualifying, he was unable to get a teaching job in the Eastern Cape so he took a job as a gardener and kitchen servant for a white family in East London. In 1937, he went to the Witwatersrand in search of a job as a teacher, but found that teaching posts were also scarce there. Mda initially worked as a gardener and kitchen servant in the Witwatersrand, and then at a steel foundry, before he was employed as a teacher at the Germiston Catholic Primary School. In 1938, he transferred to another school, St John Berchman Primary School in Orlando township, Soweto.2 Mda left a rich written record – letters and essays in newspapers, political tracts and speeches, and letters to colleagues – that provide an insight into the evolution of his views throughout his life, not only on politics, but also on culture, language, literature, music, religion and education.3 He had not participated in any political activities when he lived in East London, but observed trade union and political events taking place at the time, and attended ANC meetings in

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nearby Cradock. At school, he had absorbed the black ‘Cape liberal’ paradigm that had been adopted by many mission-educated Africans at the time. Its central tenets were the promotion of Christian, or Western, civilisation over African culture, and its adherents adopted Western values such as individual advancement, the work ethic and the competitive spirit.4 But his political views changed dramatically after he attended a meeting of the All-African Convention (AAC) in Bloemfontein in 1936 to cover the proceedings for Umlindi we Nyanga, an East London newspaper. Mda became an avid supporter of the AAC, and defended the organisation when its leadership was criticised for capitulating to Hertzog on the so-called Hertzog Bills of 1936. When AAC support decreased significantly in the late 1930s, Mda turned to African nationalism, which, in his view, was not dependent on establishing alliances with non-African groups.5 At the AAC’s 1940 conference, Mda took the podium, and argued against the increasing leadership roles taken by Indians and coloureds in the organisation. He asserted his belief that Africans had to exert their own leadership, and express their nationalism in an independent organisation, the ANC, while consulting other organisations. However, while arguing for a nationalism that was ‘first and foremost African and predominantly pro-African’, Mda was clear that his brand of African nationalism ‘must not be the narrow kind’ that discriminated against other racial groups. His Catholic schooling background also made him strongly anticommunist.6 He had written an article in 1937 in which he criticised the Communist Party’s atheistic and anti-God stance,7 and later also criticised the Non-European United Front, a coloured-dominated organisation that had close ties to the Communist Party.8 In the early 1940s, Mda turned his attention to the African teachers’ campaign for higher wages. He became chair of the Transvaal African Teachers Association’s (Tata) salary campaign committee. The committee planned to confront the authorities, including a mass demonstration in Johannesburg and a ‘blanket’ campaign in which teachers went to school dressed in blankets to dramatise their penury. The demonstration took place on 6 May 1944, and the hundreds of participants were confronted by baton-wielding policemen. The march became confrontational, but the police eventually allowed the demonstrators to proceed. The education authorities subsequently implemented higher salaries for the teachers. This success later prompted Mda to call for more militant action on the part of the ANC.9 Along with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and Anton Lembede, Mda was a member of the ‘Class of 44’ – the founders of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) in 1944. Mda, Lembede and Jordan Ngubane were mandated to draw up the manifesto of the ANCYL.10 Mda was the Youth League president from 1947 to 1949, and was regarded by his peers as the foremost political intellectual and strategist of their generation. Robert Sobukwe had the following recollection of Mda: Mda was one man we have always admired for his ‘brilliance’ and clarity of thought. He has a great gift for language, a way of using words to express ideas with complete clarity. He can ‘untie mental knots.’ One could go to him with any problem, and he would analyse it for you, untie it. We tended to always accept

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his advice on any subject. Compared to Mda, all of us were ‘political babies.’ He had been around much longer. He had more knowledge of the South African situation than anyone. He had read very widely.11 Mda was known for his passionate advocacy of African nationalism, guiding the ANC into militant forms of protest, and pressing activists to consider turning to armed struggle in the early 1950s. It was under his leadership that the Youth League presented its militant Programme of Action at the ANC’s Cape provincial conference in June 1949. Dr A.B. Xuma’s term of office as president of the ANC was coming to an end, and members of the Youth League wanted a presidential candidate who would endorse the programme at the forthcoming ANC national conference in 1949.12 In a letter to one of the candidates, Z.K.  Matthews, Mda wrote, among others, the following conditions under which the ANCYL would support Matthews: ‘That you commit yourself to the prosecution of the nation-building programme of African nationalism[,]… to the political programme of struggle for national freedom, and for direct universal suffrage for Africans, employing for the contemporary phase of the struggle the Boycott Weapon’.13 It is not known how Matthews responded, but Dr James Moroka was elected ANC president at the next ANC conference, and the ANC adopted the Programme of Action in 1949. Throughout the 1950s, Mda worked within the ANC to promote his brand of African nationalism, and to prevent the move away from the principles of the Programme of Action. He did this by contributing articles under various nom de plumes to The Africanist, in which he promoted Africanist perspectives on issues. He had attended the Congress of the People in Kliptown in 1955, and was very critical of clauses in the Freedom Charter that stated that ‘the people shall govern’, ‘South African belongs to all who live in it’, and ‘the land shall be open to all those who work it’. Mda still maintained that the ANC could be pushed to return to African nationalist positions, and argued against the formation of a separate organisation. After the PAC was formed in 1959, he sent a letter to the leadership in which he expressed his opposition to the move, largely because he had not been consulted. Their response, in a letter written by Sobukwe, led to his subsequent support for the formation of the PAC. Mda did not attend the founding conference of the organisation because Sobukwe did not want him to be too visible at the time.14 However, he defended the formation of the PAC in an article titled ‘The Africanist Case’ in the following terms: According to its January, 1958 constitution, the African National Congress (ANC) stands for the ‘creation of a united democratic South Africa on the principles outlined in the Freedom Charter’. The new body, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), according to its April, 1959 constitution, stands for the ‘establishment and maintenance of an Africanist socialist democracy, recognizing the primacy of the material and spiritual interest of the individual’…The native Congress died a formal death in December 1943, when its constitution was scrapped…It died in 1953, with the birth of the (multi-racial) Congress Alliance, and was finally buried in December 1957, with the incorporation of the Charter into its new constitution. The manifesto of the Charterist Congress, the Kliptown Charter

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of 1955, speaks of and for the ‘people of South Africa, black and white together’. The Africanist Congress, in the 1959 Pan Africanist manifesto, speaks of and for the ‘African people’, who it regards as ‘part of one African nation’…Nationalism demands that the interests of indigenous people should dominate over those of aliens, because the country belongs to the indigenous peoples.15 In the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre and banning of organisations, many of the leaders of the PAC were imprisoned, including its president, Robert Sobukwe. After the establishment of an armed wing, Poqo, the PAC planned a countrywide revolt for 8 April 1963. The plans for the revolt were uncovered by the police, and large numbers of PAC members were arrested on that day. Prior to that, however, Mda had been arrested and detained twice by the police, and began making plans to move to what was then Basutoland (Lesotho).16 He arrived in the country in April 1963, and began to practise law. His sympathies remained with the PAC throughout the rest of his life. Meetings of the leadership were held at his house, and he hosted several PAC youth moving into exile.17 In his law practice in Lesotho, Mda embodied the PAC’s motto: ‘Service, Sacrifice and Suffering’. He charged deserving clients little or nothing for his services, and his impoverished family lived in a township house that had no electricity, a corrugated iron roof, no ceiling, and a pit latrine in the yard.18 Mda died on 7 August 1993 of heart failure, a few months before Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the country’s first black president in May 1994. Notes 1 R. Edgar and L.K. Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph: The Collected Writings of A.P. Mda

(Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2018), pp. 7–12. 2 Edgar and Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph, p. 12. 3 Edgar and Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph, p. 5. 4 Edgar and Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph, pp. 14–16. 5 Edgar and Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph, pp. 16–17. 6 A.P. Mda, ‘What Principled Africanism Is’, Inkundla ya Bantu 25 September 1948. 7 A.P. Mda, ‘“All African Convention”, Umlindi we Nyanga 15 November 1937’ in Edgar and

Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph, pp. 108–109. 8 A.P. Mda, ‘“Non-European United Front Regarded as United Bluff”, Umlindi we Nyanga

15 May 1941’ in Edgar and Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph, pp. 116–117. 9 Edgar and Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph, pp. 24–28. 10 Edgar and Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph, p. 34. 11 G. Gerhart, ‘Interview with Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, 1970’, Psychology in Society 50

(2016), p. 63. 12 Edgar and Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph, pp. 55–56. 13 A.P. Mda, Letter to Z.K. Matthews, 6 December 1949. Accessed November 2018, http://uir.

unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/5860/ZKM_B2_36.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. 14 Edgar and Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph, pp. 78–80.

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15  Mayihlome News, ‘The Late A.P. Mda on the Ideological and Political Case of Africanism’,

11 August 2009. Accessed October 2018, http://mayihlomenews.co.za/the-late-ap-mda-onthe-ideological-and-political-case-of-africanism/. 16 Edgar and Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph, p. 82. 17 Edgar and Msumza, Africa’s Cause Must Triumph, pp. 83–91. 18  The Economist, ‘Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Rejected Son’, 1 July 2012. Accessed

October 2018, https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2012/01/07/the-rejected-son.

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Robert Sobukwe: Founding president

Robert Sobukwe: Founding president Gregory Houston

1924–1978

The founding president of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, was the leading architect of the anti-pass campaign of March 1960. It was planned as a five-day non-violent event in which people would march to police stations without their passbooks, which would force the police to arrest them, clog the jails, and bring industry to a standstill. But the reaction of the police at Sharpeville, which made headlines around the world, turned everything on its head. Drum journalist Stanley Motjuwadi recalled an interview with Sobukwe: ‘A day after the Sharpeville shootings I had an interview in Johannesburg’s Fort (prison) with Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe...He was awaiting trial on a charge of incitement and seemed to have aged overnight. He was depressed and almost at the point of tears – the Sharpeville tragedy had really hit him hard.’1 Sobukwe grew up in Graaff-Reinet, where, unlike many of his contemporaries who became leaders of political organisations and had had limited interaction with whites in their early years, he came into contact at an early age with a wide variety of white people such as traders, farmers, shopkeepers, preachers, auctioneers, policemen, librarians, school teachers and missionaries. His father was a municipal labourer and a part-time woodcutter, while his mother was a domestic worker and cook at a local hospital.2 His early education was at a Methodist mission school close to his home in Graaf-Reinet, and a nearby Anglican school. He then enrolled at the Healdtown Institute near Fort Beaufort in 1940, where he studied for six years after receiving financial assistance from George Caley, the headmaster of the institute. At Healdtown, he completed a teachers’ training course (NT3) and his Junior Certificate (JC) simultaneously, and then matriculated in 1946. In 1947 he received a Department of Education bursary and a loan from the Bantu Welfare Trust, and enrolled at Fort Hare university to study for a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in English, Xhosa and native administration.

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While at university, learning about the laws governing African people during his course on native administration sparked his political consciousness, particularly under the influence of a lecturer in the department, Cecil Ntloko, a member of the All-African Convention (AAC).3 He also met with several academics and students who would later play leading roles in the liberation movement. Included among these were academics Jordan Ngubane, Professor Z.K. Matthews, Cecil Ntloko, A.C. Jordan and Godfrey Pitje, and students John Nyathi Pokela, Nthato Motlana, Ntsu Mokhehle, Denis Siwisa, Galaza Stamper, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Joe Matthews, Herbert Chitepo and Duma Nokwe. The intense political discussions on the campus served as inspiration to the young Sobukwe.4 At the end of his first year, Sobukwe was selected to deliver the address on behalf of first-year students at a farewell party they hosted for final-year students – an indication of recognition for both his academic and his leadership qualities. In his address, he criticised the senior students for their snobbery, excessive drinking and womanising, and lack of patriotism.5 The senior students demanded an apology, which he refused to make, and he was punished by confinement to a bathroom except when attending classes. This propelled him to the leadership of the undergraduate student group, and in 1949 he was elected president of the Student Representative Council, and the person selected to address students on behalf of the graduating students.6 In this speech, he argued that students ‘must be the embodiment of our people’s aspirations. And all we are required to do is to show the light and the masses will find the way.’7 By this time, the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), which had been established by Nelson Mandela, Anton Lembede, Oliver Tambo and others in 1944, had become entrenched at the University of Fort Hare. In 1948, Sobukwe and three friends launched a handwritten daily publication that they audaciously titled Beware. The topics they wrote about in the pamphlet included daily political activities that were taking place on campus, as well as key regional and national issues.8 It appears, however, that the philosophy underlying the pamphlet was based on some of the positions adopted by the AAC, such as non-collaboration, and rejection of the Native Representative Council (NRC) and Native Advisory Boards (NABs).9 Nevertheless, in the same year, Sobukwe became a member of the ANCYL, which had been introduced to students at Fort Hare by Godfrey Pitje, Sobukwe’s lecturer in African studies who would later become the president of the League. Sobukwe and his colleagues initially resisted joining the ANCYL because they were sceptical of the ANC’s continued participation in the NRC and the township NABs. However, the following year he was elected national secretary general of the ANCYL in December, the same month the ANC adopted the Youth League’s militant Programme of Action.10 Sobukwe moved to the then Transvaal in 1950, and taught at a school in Standerton until 1954. In 1950, an ideological schism between African nationalists and communists developed in the ANCYL. This spilled over into the contest between Selope Thema and J.B. Marks for the Transvaal leadership of the ANC. In the 1940s, several leading figures in the League, including Mandela, Tambo and Lembede, had been critical of the ANC’s close association with the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), and the apparent leadership of non-Africans in the

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struggle. The election of Marks convinced the African nationalists that their struggle would be a protracted one.11 At a meeting held later in the year, the African nationalists established a Bureau of African Nationalism as a political vehicle that would advocate an African-orientated philosophy. The small group of members of the ANCYL that attended this meeting included A.P. Mda, Sobukwe, P.K. Leballo and others.12 This group established the Africanist newspaper, to which Sobukwe submitted several articles under pseudonyms, and which he later edited.13 In these articles he was critical of the ANC because he felt that it was led by what he called ‘liberal-left-multi-racialists’ whose interest was preserving white domination and stalling the African struggle.14 In the wake of the ANC’s 1952 Defiance Campaign, the schism in the League deepened. Some members felt that the campaign had made its point and needed to be discontinued, but the African nationalists argued that they were just beginning to gain ground, and needed to accelerate the campaign. Leading figures in the latter group included A.P.  Mda, P.K.  Leballo, Robert Sobukwe, G.  Pitje, N.  Mokhethe, J.N. Pokela, J. Fazzie, Dr Conco, A.Z. Gweje, T.E. ka Tshunungwa, J. Lengese, Charles Lakaje, Zeph Mothopeng, Selby Ngendane, Peter Molotsi, Philemon Makhetha, N.  Tsoolo, Victor Sifora, Nyathi Pokela and Phillip Gallant.15 In 1954, Sobukwe moved to Johannesburg and settled in Mofolo, Soweto, after joining the University of the Witwatersrand as a language assistant in the Department of Bantu Studies.16 A year later, the clandestine group of African nationalists began to identify themselves as ‘Africanist’. The adoption of the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People, held in Kliptown in June 1955, raised another set of concerns for the Africanists. Among the clauses in the Freedom Charter was one that stated that ‘the land shall be shared among those who work it’ and an opening statement that ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white’.17 Sobukwe articulated the Africanists’ emphasis on the return of the land to Africans in a piece he authored, but published under Potlako Leballo’s name, in The Africanist in 1957, as ‘The Nature of the Struggle Today’: For the Africanists the struggle is both nationalist and democratic, in that it involves a restoration of the land to its rightful owners – the Africans – which fact immediately divides the combatants into the conquered and the conqueror, the invaded and the invader, the dispossessed and dispossessor.18 In 1956, 156 leaders of the Congress Alliance had been arrested, and were later charged with treason. This presented the Africanists with the opportunity to take up leadership positions in the ANC because many of those arrested and tied up in the lengthy Treason Trial were from the opposing group. Their first opportunity to put this plan into operation came at the 1957 Transvaal provincial electoral conference. However, the Africanist candidates for election were rejected. When they again failed to take over the leadership of the Transvaal ANC a year later, the Africanists severed all relations with the ANC, on 2 November 1958. A decision was then taken to form the PAC, and the inaugural conference was held at the Orlando Communal Hall

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on 6 April 1959, at which Sobukwe was elected president by an overwhelming majority.19 In his inaugural speech as PAC president, Sobukwe stated: We aim, politically, at government of the Africans by the Africans, for the 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 African…Socially we aim at the full development of the human personality and a ruthless uprooting and outlawing of all forms or manifestations of the racial myth.20 In clarifying his view of ‘race’, he added: The Africanists take the view that there is only one race to which all belong, and that is the human race. In our vocabulary, therefore, the word ‘race’ as applied to man, has no plural form. We do, however, admit the existence of observable physical differences between various groups of people, but these are the result of a number of factors, chief among which has been geographical isolation.21 In its first major political act, the PAC launched a countrywide anti-pass campaign on 21 March 1960. Sobukwe led a march of about 50 people to the local police station at Orlando, Soweto, openly defying the pass laws by not carrying his passbook. The marchers were arrested, and charged with sedition and incitement to riot.22 In the wake of the march, an order was issued on 25  March 1960, banishing Sobukwe to a native trust farm in Driefontein in the Vryburg district of what is now the North West province. At the trial in April, he entered no plea, and rejected both legal defence and bail in line with a PAC decision that all those arrested adopt this approach. On 4 May 1960, Sobukwe was convicted of inciting Africans to campaign against the pass laws, and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. He refused to appeal against the sentence because he felt that the court had no jurisdiction over him as a legitimate court of law, since it existed in an unjust and therefore, to him, illegal, white-ruled South Africa. After he served his sentence in Stofberg Prison in the Free State, Pretoria Central Prison and other jails, the new General Law Amendment Act No. 37 of 1963 was passed. This included what became known as the ‘Sobukwe clause’ because it was written specifically to keep him in jail. The law allowed the minister of justice to detain for an indefinite period anyone serving a sentence for sabotage or a similar crime after the expiration of their sentence. So, after his three-year sentence, he was transferred to Robben Island, where he served another six years in prison. He is the only person against whom the ‘Sobukwe clause’ was used. On Robben Island, he was kept in solitary confinement in a house apart from the main prison buildings, where he was prohibited from having contact with other prisoners.23 He was also subjected to episodes of harassment and systematic torture that included being deliberately served with decomposed food and crushed-bones soup, constant interference with the electric power supply to his house, inordinate delays with his mail, and the periodic introduction of concentrated hot or cold air into his room.24

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The day before his release on 12 May 1969, he was issued with a five-year banning order. He was then released from Robben Island, and banished to Galeshewe in Kimberley, which was 500 kilometres from where he had lived prior to his imprisonment. He was placed under house arrest in the house he shared with his family. In 1970, he was refused a passport after he had succeeded in getting a research and lecturing fellowship in African linguistics at the University of Wisconsin in the United States.25 A year later, the government refused to relax his banning order, which prevented him from leaving the Kimberley area, despite having given him an exit permit to leave South Africa permanently with his family. He lost a case pleading that he be allowed to travel to Jan Smuts Airport to leave South Africa in a Supreme Court judgment that found that the restrictions under the banning orders were similar in nature to a court order of imprisonment.26 Sobukwe then focused on completing a law degree. After completing his articles in 1975, he opened a law firm. In the 1978 Bethal Trial, in which 18 members of the PAC faced charges under the Terrorism Act, Sobukwe was named as one of the co-conspirators. It appeared that several of the accused in the trial had maintained contact with him during the time when they were attempting to create PAC structures inside the country, and were transporting youths out of the country to join the organisation in exile.27 A month after the trial began, Robert Sobukwe died from lung cancer at Kimberley General Hospital on 27  February 1978, at the age of 54. According to his wife, Mrs Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe, his release from prison by the apartheid authorities in 1969 had been sudden and was probably due to their concerns about his poor health.28 Sobukwe served as president of the PAC for just under 12 months before he was effectively immobilised as the leader of the organisation when he was banished to Driefontein in March 1960, sentenced to imprisonment in May 1960, banished to Kimberley and restricted under banning orders on his release from prison in May 1969 until his death in 1978. Nevertheless, as the founding president of the organisation, his ideas and sacrifices are an inspiration to new generations of Africanists. And, while the anti-pass campaign of March 1960 did not work out as planned, it was a seminal moment in the development of the struggle for freedom. The tragic consequences of the police reactions served to accelerate anti-apartheid activism, both in South Africa and across the world. Notes 1 G. Mwakikagile, Africa 1960–1970, Chronicle and Analysis (Dar es Salaam: New Africa Press,

2014). 2 T. Ka Plaatjie, Robert Sobukwe: The Making of a Pan Africanist Leader (Randburg: KMM

Review Publishing Company, 2019); T. Lodge, ‘Review Article: A Liberal of Another Colour’, Transformation 16 (1991), pp. 76–77. 3 G. Gerhart, ‘Interview with Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, 1970’, Psychology in Society 50

(2016), pp. 53–85; Lodge, ‘Review Article’, p. 77. 4 Ka Plaatjie, Robert Sobukwe.

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5 Ka Plaatjie, Robert Sobukwe; T.J. Lebakeng, ‘Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe: Acknowledging

the Legacy of a Pan-Africanist Hero’, Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies 11:5 (2018), p. 76. 6 Ka Plaatjie, Robert Sobukwe. 7 R.M. Sobukwe, ‘Address on Behalf of the Graduating Class at Fort-Hare College, 1949’,

cited in B. Pogrund, How Can Man Die Better: The Life of Robert Sobukwe (Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2006), p. 36. 8 Ka Plaatjie, Robert Sobukwe. 9 Lodge, ‘Review Article’, p. 77. 10 Lodge, ‘Review Article’, p. 77. 11 Ka Plaatjie, Robert Sobukwe. 12 Ka Plaatjie, Robert Sobukwe. 13 Ka Plaatjie, Robert Sobukwe; Lodge, ‘Review Article’ p. 78. 14 Lebakeng, ‘Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe’, p. 76. 15 Ka Plaatjie, Robert Sobukwe. 16 Ka Plaatjie, Robert Sobukwe. 17 Gerhart, ‘Interview’; T. Delport, ‘“Asazi Ukuthi Iyozala Nkomoni”: Robert Mangaliso

Sobukwe’s Historical Imagination of the Future’, Psychology in Society 50 (2016), pp. 35–52. 18 R.M.Sobukwe, ‘The Nature of the Struggle Today, 1957’ in T.G. Karis and G.M. Gerhardt

(eds), From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882–1990. Vol. 3: Challenge and Violence, 1953–1964 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1977), p. 35. 19 Ka Plaatjie, Robert Sobukwe. 20 R.M. Sobukwe, ‘Opening Address to PAC Inaugural Convention, 1959’ in T.G. Karis and

G.M. Gerhardt (eds), From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882–1990. Vol. 3: Challenge and Violence, 1953–1964 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1977), p. 35. 21 R.M. Sobukwe, ‘Opening Address’ in Karis and Gerhardt, From Protest to Challenge, p. 35. 22 S.M. Ndlovu, ‘Robert Sobukwe: How Wits and the Department of Justice Shaped His Life’,

The Thinker 8 (2009), p. 65. 23 D. Hook, Lie on Your Wounds: The Prison Correspondence of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe

(Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2001). 24 S.M. Ndlovu, ‘Robert Sobukwe’, p. 65; Department of Justice, Transcript of the

Testimony of Mrs Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe, 12 May 1997, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Human Rights Violations, Submissions – Questions and Answers, Case EC0155/97ALB, King William’s Town. Accessed October 2018, http://www.justice.gov.za/ trc/hrvtrans%5Ckwtown/sobukwe.htm. 25 Ndlovu, ‘Robert Sobukwe’, p. 65. 26 Ndlovu, ‘Robert Sobukwe’, p. 65–66. See also Hook, Lie on Your Wounds. The latter book

also gives an idea of some of Sobukwe’s evolving ideas during his period in prison. See, for example, his views on socialism in a letter to Benjamin Pogrund in 1964 (Hook, Lie on Your Wounds, pp. 119–120).

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27 Refer to A.K. Hlongwane, ‘Reflections on the Pan Africanist Congress “Underground”

in the Era of the 1976 Youth Uprisings’, Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies 3:4 (2009), p. 59ff., and T. Ka Plaatjie, ‘The PAC’s Internal Underground Activities, 1960–1980’ in South African Democracy Education Trust (eds), The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 2, 1970–1980 (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2006), p. 693ff. 28 Department of Justice, Transcript of the Testimony of Mrs Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe,

12 May 1997.

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Cissie Gool: The Joan of Arc of District Six Gregory Houston

1897–1963

Civil rights leader and anti-apartheid activist Zainunnisa ‘Cissie’ Gool grew up in District Six. She was the younger of two daughters of Dr Abdullah Abduraham, a medical doctor who led the African People’s Organisation (APO), an organisation that he co-founded in 1902. Abduraham was the first Muslim to attend the South African College, and also the first black South African to be elected to the Cape  Town City Council, in 1904. He completed his medical degree at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, where he met and married Gool’s mother, Helen James, a Scottish Christian suffragette. Gool had quite a mixed ancestry, with an Indian grandfather, Malay grandmother, Scottish mother and coloured Muslim father. Her father’s close friends included Olive Schreiner and Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi, bringing her into contact with some of South Africa’s most colourful characters of the time.1 Gool and her sister, Waradea (‘Rosie’), attended Trafalgar High School in District Six, which had been established by their father, a strong proponent of equality in public education. At the time, the sisters were members of the APO’s Women’s Guild, led by their mother.2 Gool finished her secondary school education by correspondence with London University, and thereafter enrolled at the University of Cape Town. She interrupted her studies towards a bachelor’s degree in 1919 to marry Abdul Hamid Gool, a man 11 years her senior. Thereafter, she was always known as Cissie Gool.3 Gool was raised in a very politically active family, and was often in the company of other major political figures while growing up. It appears that Gool might have had links with various leading activists because Ray Alexander joined the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) five days after meeting her and John Gomas in 1929. Gool’s active participation in politics began after she had returned to university, where she organised a march to Parliament in March 1930 to protest against the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill. The marchers demanded to see General J.B.M. Hertzog, then prime minister of the Union of South Africa. Her maiden political speech

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was made at a meeting of the APO a month later, in which she continued to protest against the bill, which granted the vote to white women only.4 Gool completed her master’s degree in psychology two years later, becoming the first coloured woman in South Africa to receive a master’s degree from the university. The rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s, and its emergence and growth in South Africa, drew Gool even deeper into political action. She responded to the establishment of fascist clubs in South Africa by establishing an Anti-Fascist League in February 1935, together with her husband Abdul Gool, and trade unionist and CPSA member Sam Kahn. In December of the same year, Gool, her brother-in-law Goolam Gool, John Gomas and James La Guma established the National Liberation League (NLL), an anti-imperialist organisation that worked towards non-racialism and unity among the working class. Gool served as president of the NLL at its inception, making her the first woman to lead a national political organisation in South Africa. She resigned as president in 1937, but was re-elected to the position in 1938.5 She had, in the meantime, forged links with the ANC and the CPSA, joining them in a civil disobedience campaign against the Hertzog Bills in 1936.6 In the same year, she left her husband for Sam Kahn, a Jewish lawyer 14 years younger than her, with whom she lived for 15 years. In 1938, Gool helped establish and was elected president of the Non-European United Front (NEUF), an organisation designed to bring a large number of popular organisations into a broad coalition of resistance, and that later developed into the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), which was referred to as the ‘Unity Movement’.7 In the same year, Gool joined her mother in the establishment of a league for the enfranchisement of non-European women.8 Later that year she became the first South African woman to be elected onto a city council, a position she held until 1963.9 Gool, as the first black woman to serve on a local government structure in South Africa, was given further recognition when she was elected to chair the Council’s health committee in 1949. As a city councillor, she focused not only on the eradication of segregation at all levels of society, but also on issues of education, health and the general advancement of ‘coloured’ people in the Cape. Gool used every opportunity in Council meetings to oppose any form of injustice and to fight for the rights of the vulnerable groups in Cape society.10 Gool’s passion for human rights led to her close association with the CPSA from 1939, when she allied herself with the Stalinist October Club.11 She remained a supporter of the communists until her death, even though her willingness to work with communists brought her into constant conflict with members of the NEUM, in particular her brother-in-law, Goolam Gool, and sisterin-law, Jane Gool, who was married to NEUM leader I.B. Tabata.12 In 1939, Gool led both the Unity Movement and the NLL in a campaign against the Nationalist Party’s petitions for enforced residential segregation between coloureds and whites. She took a key role in this campaign by addressing a mass meeting of more than 10 000 people opposing racial segregation at Cape Town’s Grand Parade on 27 March 1939.13 Here she became leader of the joint Committee of Action, and played a central role in organising mass meetings, petitioning and lobbying members of Parliament and building public sentiment against the

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proposed segregation measures. By then, Gool had become widely respected as an articulate, eloquent and powerful orator who had the grace and charm to motivate people into action. This was recognised in a May 1939 article of the Cape Standard on her tour of the Western Cape to gather support for the NEUF which stated: ‘Mrs Gool in an impassioned appeal for unity under the wing of the United Front movement held her audience spellbound for fully an hour.’14 Gool also involved herself in local community struggles, such as the the Blaauwvlei community’s resistance against forced removal in 1942. She advised the community to hold a meeting, which was attended by several leaders of the CPSA. Gool’s leadership of the Cape Passive Resistance Council, which supported the Indian Passive Resistance Campaign in the 1940s, led to her first experience of imprisonment. In 1946, she travelled to Durban, where she addressed a meeting of participants in the campaign at the Red Square in the city’s centre. Here she was arrested with fellow resisters against the so-called Ghetto Act.15 In 1951, Gool, Gomas and other members of the CPSA established the Franchise Action Council (FRAC) in response to the introduction of a bill by the apartheid government to institute a separate voters’ roll for coloured people. The FRAC developed closer ties with the ANC, and its members participated in the 1952 Defiance Campaign.16 Gool was banned in 1954 under the provisions of the Suppression of Communism Act, which partially circumscribed her activism. In the late 1950s, she enrolled at the University of Cape Town to study law, later becoming the first coloured female law graduate in South Africa and the first black woman advocate to be called to the Cape Town Bar. Gool died on 1 July 1963, a year after she had been admitted to the bar. Because of her lifelong fight for the rights of women, black people, and poor people in general, Cissie Gool was popularly known and revered as ‘Joan of Arc’ by many South Africans.17 A woman of several firsts, she is known for her foray into traditionally male activities where she shattered stereotypes, like Joan of Arc, and assumed leadership and vocal roles at a time when women were expected to be housewives.18 In 2004, Gool was posthumously awarded the Order of Luthuli in recognition of her contribution to the liberation struggle. But an honour that she probably would have appreciated more is that the formerly homeless occupiers of the abandoned Woodstock Hospital renamed the building Cissie Gool House. It seems appropriate, as one of the residents, Charol Jacobs, describes it as a place in which ‘there is love and care.’19 Another recipient of the same award at the 2003 National Awards Ceremony was a pioneer of women’s leadership in the liberation struggle, Charlotte Maxeke. Gool and Maxeke were among the first to receive the newly instituted award.

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Notes 1 G. Paleker, ‘“She Was Certainly Not a Rosa Luxemburg”: A Biography of Cissie Gool in

Images and Words’, MA mini thesis, University of Cape Town, 2002, p. 22ff.; N. Davids, ‘“This Woman Is Not for Burning”: Performing the Biography and Memory of Cissie Gool’, Social Dynamics 38:2 (2012), pp. 254, 263. 2 P. van der Spuy and L. Clowes, ‘“A Living Testimony of the Heights to Which a Woman

Can Rise”: Sarojini Naidu, Cissie Gool and the Politics of Women’s Leadership in South Africa in the 1920s’, South African Historical Journal 64:2 (2012), p. 349. 3 Paleker, ‘“She Was Certainly Not a Rosa Luxemburg”’, p. 28; D. Oakes, ‘Cissie: A Woman

Ahead of Her Time’, Cape Times 24 May 2016. Accessed November 2018, https://www.iol. co.za/capetimes/news/cissie-a-woman-ahead-of-her-time-2025787. 4  Sunday Times Heritage Project, ‘Cissie Gool: The Jewel of District Six’ (n.d.). Accessed

November 2018, http://sthp.saha.org.za/memorial/cissie_gool.htm; K. Hiralal, ‘“Mothers of the Indian Nation”: The Impact of Indian Women Nationalists on South African Women’, Alternation 15, Special Edition (2015), pp. 193–194. 5 Hiralal, ‘“Mothers of the Indian Nation”’, p. 194. 6 Hiralal, ‘“Mothers of the Indian Nation”’, p. 194. 7 Paleker, ‘“She Was Certainly Not a Rosa Luxemburg”’, p. 42. 8 Hiralal, ‘“Mothers of the Indian Nation”’, p. 194. 9 Davids, ‘“This Woman Is Not for Burning”’, p. 254. 10 Paleker, ‘She Was Certainly Not A Rosa Luxemborg’, p. 32. 11 Paleker, ‘“She Was Certainly Not a Rosa Luxemburg”’, p. 37ff. 12 Paleker, ‘“She Was Certainly Not a Rosa Luxemburg”’, pp. 31, 37–38. 13  Sunday Times Heritage Project, ‘Cissie Gool’. 14 Paleker, ‘She Was Certainly Not A Rosa Luxemborg’, pp. 42–44. 15 Davids, ‘“This Woman Is Not for Burning”’, p. 254. 16 S.P. Field, ‘The Politics of Exclusion: A Case Study of the Factreton Area’, MSocSci

dissertation, University of Cape Town, 1990, pp. 26–27. 17 Van der Spuy and Clowes, ‘“A Living Testimony”’, p. 343; Paleker, ‘“She Was Certainly Not

a Rosa Luxemburg”’. 18  Sunday Times Heritage Project, ‘Cissie Gool’. 19 T. Washinyira, ‘We Turned an Unused Building into a Place Many Now Call Home’, Daily

Maverick 27 August 2019. Accessed July 2020, dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-08-27-weturned-an-unused-building-into-a-place-many-now-call-home/#gsc.tab=0.

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Monty Naicker: Passive resister Gregory Houston

1910–1978

Gangathura Mohambry ‘Monty’ Naicker was a political activist who drew heavily from the Gandhian philosophy of satyagraha throughout his life.1 As well as leading several campaigns of non-violent ‘passive’ resistance, he was one of the few Congress Alliance members who opposed the adoption of an armed struggle and the formation of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK). Naicker was the first-born son of Papiah Gangathura Naicker, a banana exporter and well-to-do businessman who had migrated from Mauritius in the late 1880s, and his wife, Dhanalutchmee Pillay. Naicker did his schooling at Marine College in Leopold Street in Durban, and after completing his schooling in 1927 went to Scotland to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh between 1928 and 1934.2 Here he came into contact with anti-imperialist activists when he joined the Edinburgh Indian Association that hosted debates and lectures on topics such as the unfolding nationalist struggle against the British Raj in India.3 On returning to South Africa in 1935, he started a medical practice in a poor Indian community in Durban. While treating patients he became increasingly aware of their social and economic problems.4 He joined the Hindu Youth Club, which focused on the social and sporting activities of the youth, and in 1940 joined a multiracial organisation, the Liberal Study Group (LSG), where he was exposed to radical ideas that shaped his later political activities. The LSG, which included among its membership trade unionists and communists such as H.A. Naidoo, George Ponnen, Dawood Seedat, Cassim Amra, A.K.M. Docrat, P.M. Harry, Wilson Cele and I.C. Meer, held classes on political economy and public speaking, and discussed issues such as ‘passive’ resistance, non-Europeans and the war, the socialisation of medicine, and the international situation.5 A year earlier, the Natal Indian Congress (NIC), which had been formed by Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi in 1894, merged with the Colonial Born and Settlers Indian Association (CBSIA) to

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form the Natal Indian Association (NIA). The CBSIA had been established in opposition to the NIC’s participation in the government-appointed Colonisation Commission of 1933. The dominance of conservative leaders in the NIA, however, prompted divisions in the organisation soon after it was formed.6 Naicker gave his maiden speech at an NIA meeting in the Durban City Hall on 11  February 1940, criticising the conservative leadership for ‘collaborating with the white authorities to enforce voluntary segregation on Indians’, while also arguing against black support for the British in World War II, which had broken out a few months earlier. This propelled him into the leadership of a radical, younger group of activists that were to challenge the leadership of Indian organisations in Natal for most of the 1940s. This radical group, which included Cassim Amra, ‘Beaver’ Timol, George Ponnen, H.A. Naidoo and Manilal Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi’s son), were expelled from the NIA in June 1940, after they had tried to reverse talks with the government on policies aimed at preventing Indians from purchasing more land in Durban.7 Naicker turned his attention to trade union activities, and was involved in several industrial strikes during World War II. In 1943, he played a role in the campaign against restrictions on the right of Indians to purchase land, imposed in the Trading and Occupation of Land (Transvaal and Natal) Restriction Act of 1943 (the ‘Pegging’ Act).8 The intention behind the Act was to ‘peg’ Indian landownership and occupation until further measures were introduced, and was seen by radical Indians as the first step to racial segregation. Matters reached a head in 1944 following the signing of the Pretoria Agreement to establish a board, comprising two Indians and three white people, which would determine which Indians could purchase property and where, and issue licences to enable them to do so. The decision as to where Indians could own land was seen as a first step towards racial segregation.9 Naicker became president of the AntiSegregation Council (ASC) established in April of that year to oppose this segregation. This broad front of intellectuals, trade unions, and sports, cultural, youth and farmers’ associations decided to work from within the NIC to effect change. Its mobilisation of the masses through conferences, rallies and meetings led to a growth in membership of the NIC from 3  000 to 22 000.10 Naicker was elected president of the NIC at its 1945 annual elections, and was supported by an executive constituted entirely by nominees of the ASC.  This more radical leadership was to shape the NIC’s activities for years to come. In his acceptance speech, Naicker called for the repeal of the Pegging Act, a veto of the Natal Housing Ordinance, rejection of residential zoning, the removal of the barriers that prevented Indians from travelling through certain provinces, universal adult suffrage and free education for Indian children to Junior Certificate (JC) level.11 But he did not limit his protests to speech giving. He carefully planned ‘passive’ resistance campaigns in which he and scores of volunteers actively, but non-violently, broke unjust laws – usually resulting in imprisonment. In the following year, 1946, Naicker put the principles of satyagraha into action when he led the NIC’s Passive Resistance Campaign in opposition to the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act No. 28 of 1946 (the Ghetto Act) that regulated the occupation of

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fixed property by members of the Indian community. He was sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment for repeatedly occupying vacant land in defiance of the Act. One year later, in 1947, the NIC turned its attention to resisting the Immigrants Regulations Act No. 22 of 1913 that prohibited Indian interprovincial migration. Naicker led a group of resisters who crossed the Natal–Transvaal border at Volksrust, where they met Dr Yusuf Dadoo, the leader of the Transvaal Indian Congress. Naicker and Dadoo were sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for violating the 1913 law.12 While at the helm of the NIC’s leadership, Naicker addressed a rally with Chief Albert Luthuli at Red Square in Durban during the Defiance Campaign of 1952. And then, continuing in the spirit of satyagraha, he led a group of volunteers who defiantly entered the ‘Whites Only’ waiting room at the Berea railway station. He was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour for this contravention of an apartheid law.13 In 1947, Naicker and Dadoo signed a pact with Dr A.B.  Xuma, the president of the ANC, in which the leaders committed their organisations to cooperation.14 In March and April of that year the leaders of the two Congresses undertook a tour of India, where they met Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and several other prominent Indians. They also attended the All-Asia Conference held in India between 23  March and 2  April 1947, where they had opportunities to talk with representatives from Afghanistan, Indonesia, the Arab League, Egypt, Iran, Korea, Indo-China, Malaya, Palestine, the Soviet Republics, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tibet, Mongolia and Nepal, some of whom were leading forces in liberation movements in their countries.15 A year later, in 1948, Naicker made a call for the establishment of a united front in South Africa as follows: Our struggle has lit fire in the hearts of other oppressed people and unshackled their bonds to unite with all oppressed people of South Africa. We have reached a stage when we can no longer think in terms of the Indian people alone. We must form a United Democratic Front and challenge any force that will lead the land of our birth to the fate of fascist Germany or Japan.16 In the same year, Naicker and Dadoo were prevented from travelling to the United States to address the United Nations on the race question in South Africa. Naicker had been elected president of the South African Indian Council (SAIC) in September 1948 (he also served two terms as president of the organisation in the 1950s). However, in the following year riots against Indians broke out in Durban when Africans in the city began attacking Indians indiscriminately in response to injuries to an African hawker caused by an Indian shopkeeper. A day after the beginning of the violent clashes, Naicker and  A.W.G.  Champion, the then president of the Natal provincial body of the ANC, jointly appealed for peace and an end to the violence.17 This underscored the need for greater African–Indian cooperation.

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Naicker was prohibited from attending political gatherings in 1953, and was thus unable to carry out his duties as president of the SAIC and NIC. Although he did not participate in the Congress of the People that was held in Kliptown in June 1955, he had formed close alliances with the ANC. He cemented organisational cooperation by inviting ANC leaders to open annual NIC conferences, and delivering the opening address at the ANC’s 1954 national conference. He was arrested with 155 other leaders of Congress organisations in 1956,18 and charged with treason. Naicker’s charges were eventually withdrawn in April 1959. After the Sharpeville massacre and the banning of the ANC in 1960, several organisations in the Congress Alliance supported the turn to armed struggle and the formation of MK. But Monty Naicker, who was a strong adherent of non-violent resistance, was steadfast in his opposition to armed struggle. Consequently, the NIC expressed the view that there was a place for non-violent struggle, but if the ANC decided otherwise, the NIC would not be an impediment.19 The early 1960s saw both increased resistance and unprecedented state repression. Naicker’s leadership of the NIC since 1945 was effectively brought to an end in 196320 through a fiveyear banning order from 1963 to 1968 that, on expiry, was extended to 30 April 1973. When his banning order was lifted in 1973, he did not play a role in the NIC, which had been revived in 1971. He was elected chair of the Anti-South African Indian Council Committee that had been formed in November 197721 in response to a set of reform initiatives that saw the introduction of a partially elected and partially appointed Indian Council. He did not hold the position for long, however, as he died a few months later, on 12 January 1978. Most of Naicker’s adult life was spent in leadership positions, or under restrictions due to his leadership role in the liberation struggle. Even at the time of his death, he was still resisting apartheid, and still using non-violent means. Notes 1 G. Vahed, ‘Monty … Meets Gandhi … Meets Mandela: The Dilemma of Non-Violent

Resisters in South Africa, 1940–1960’, Historia 54:1 (2009), p. 34; I. Hofmeyr, ‘Introduction: South Africa-India: Towards Close Scholarly Ties’, Historia 54:1 (2009), pp. 8–9. 2 G. Vahed and A. Desai, ‘Race, Class and Nationalism: The 1947 Visit of Monty Naicker

and Yusuf Dadoo to India, 1947’, Journal of Contemporary History 36:1 (2011), p. 2; A. Desai and G. Vahed, Monty Naicker: Between Reason and Treason (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 2010), pp. vii–18. 3 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, pp. 17–18. 4 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, p. 66. 5 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, pp. 93–95. 6 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, pp. 41–46. 7 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, pp. 93–122. 8 Vahed, ‘Monty … Meets Gandhi … Meets Mandela’, p. 37. 9 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, pp. x, 125. 10 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, pp. x, 109–130. 11 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, pp. 27, 154.

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12 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, pp. 168–130. 13 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, pp. 280–281. 14 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, p. xix. 15 Vahed, ‘Monty … Meets Gandhi … Meets Mandela’. 16 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, p. 27. 17 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, pp. 234–235. 18 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, pp. 294–296. 19 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, p. 377. 20 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, p. 469. 21 Desai and Vahed, Monty Naicker, p. 469; G. Vahed, ‘A Case of “Pragmatic Ethnicity”?

The Natal Indian Congress in the 1970s’, unpublished article, p. 7 (n.d.).

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Bishop Trevor Huddleston: Naught for your comfort

Bishop Trevor Huddleston: Naught for your comfort Gary Pienaar

1913–1998

I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher. G.K. Chesterton, Ballad of the White Horse Ernest Urban Trevor Huddleston was motivated by a strong Christian faith, but a very earthbound and pragmatic one. He believed that Christ’s message was that ‘truth is revolutionary, and that it is a most powerful solvent of traditional social ideas’. And he acted on that belief. From the very broad strokes of initiating the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) to the seemingly small act of giving a young boy a trumpet, his actions have changed the world, making it a better, more equitable and more harmonious place. Huddleston decided he wanted to become a priest at the age of about six or seven,1 and at school was a part of the College Mission, which ministered to people in the worst slums in London and introduced him to the poor. He then attended Oxford and Wells Theological College. After joining the Community of the Resurrection (CR), an Anglican religious order,2 he set sail for Cape  Town, and was sent to the CR mission station in Rosettenville in Johannesburg in 1943.3 As the priest-in-charge of the CR’s Anglican mission in  Sophiatown  and Orlando and Christ the King Priory of the CR, Huddleston ministered in the townships between 1943 and 1956. In 1949 he was elected to the position of Provincial of the CR in South Africa and was made superintendent of St Peter’s School.4

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When the Group Areas Act was enacted in 1950, Huddleston, together with  Nelson Mandela,  Helen Joseph  and  Ruth First,  participated in protests against forced removals from Sophiatown. According to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, he was a man of very deep prayer and that is what sustained him in his campaigns to alleviate the sorry lot of the people that he loved so dearly. He was a spellbinding speaker as he sought to raise the consciousness of South African whites to the plight of blacks, and he was very much in the forefront in the struggle to save Sophiatown when, in 1948, the Nationalist Party came to power… Trevor Huddleston helped to galvanise the people in their efforts to resist this, the first efforts to destroy a stable black community.5 This, together with his decision to close down St Peter’s rather than hand it over for government control in terms of the Bantu Education Act,6 meant that he came into regular conflict with the authorities,7 including with Archbishop Geoffrey Clayton, archbishop of Cape Town from 1949 to 1957, ‘who regarded Father Huddleston’s views and actions, especially in relation to the Bantu Education Act, as excessive’.8 In Naught for Your Comfort, Huddleston explained his resistance to apartheid in these words: It is for the Church to proclaim fearlessly, in season and out of season, the truth of the Gospel; and to recognise that that truth is revolutionary, and that it is a most powerful solvent of traditional social ideas; amongst them the idea that miscegenation, the mixed marriage, is WRONG, i.e. contrary to the law of God…The way of apartheid or white supremacy is, and must always be, the way of injustice; for it assumes that a difference in pigmentation is a reason for exercising power. But, more than that, the way of apartheid is a denial of the very foundation of the Gospel itself…It is a denial of [love], and therefore a denial of God himself…[The solution] lies in the simple recognition that ALL men are made in ‘the image and likeness of God’.9 According to Huddleston’s biographer, Piers McGrandle, ‘he saw himself as a Christian Socialist; he was never content to be just a Christian pastor or a political activist’.10 Archbishop Desmond Tutu has described his first (unwitting) encounter with Huddleston, who lived these convictions. He tells the story of what he believes was ‘the most defining moment of my life’. The young Tutu was about nine years old, standing on the verandah outside the Blind Institute in Roodepoort where his mother was a domestic worker. He continues: [T]his tall white man in a black cassock, and a hat, swept by. I did not know that it was Trevor Huddleston. He doffed his hat in greeting my mother. I was relatively stunned at the time, but only later came to realise the extent to which it had blown my mind that a white man would doff his hat to my mother. It was something I could never have imagined. The impossible was possible.11

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As a result of these and other ‘subversive’ activities during his 13 years of service in Sophiatown and elsewhere in South Africa, Huddleston gained a reputation as a respected priest and antiapartheid activist, earning him the nickname ‘Makhalipile’ or ‘dauntless one’, a traditional indigenous African moniker given to a bold warrior adopted by a foreign tribe when their own leader was lost or had been captured.12 In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela referred to Huddleston as ‘one of the township’s greatest friends’.13 During this time he developed close friendships with Mandela and Oliver Tambo. In 1954, at St Martin’s School in Rosettenville, Huddleston gave  student Hugh Masekela his first trumpet. Huddleston asked the leader of the Johannesburg Native Municipal Brass Band, Uncle Sauda, to teach Masekela the essentials of the instrument.14 History shows that this was a prescient act, as the young Masekela clearly had talent. He left South Africa for the United Kingdom at the age of 21 to study at the Guildhall School of Music, where Huddleston had helped him secure a place. He later went to New York, where he began to develop his unique Afro-jazz style.15 In 1955, together with Chief Albert Luthuli and Dr Yusuf Dadoo, Huddleston became the first recipient of the Isitwalandwe/Seaparankoe, the highest award given by the ANC to people who have made an outstanding contribution to the liberation struggle of South Africa.16 It was at this stage that he decided to ‘impress upon British observers the need both to pledge for’ the ANC ‘and also to express that support as a way of influencing the South African government’. One way to do this was to get Canon Collins, who was based in Britain, to publicise Huddleston’s activities ‘so that the British public would be aware of his standpoint if he were to be arrested by the South African police’ and as a way of promoting international hostility against the apartheid government. From 1953, he also wrote a series of letters that were published in the Observer in Britain, appealing to readers to identify with black South Africans.17 He had earlier written to Canon Collins, in 1952, to raise funds for the ANC’s Defiance Campaign.18 Coupled with this was pressure Huddleston put on foreign artists who performed in South Africa to include performances for black audiences in his Sophiatown parish, as well as calls for the boycott of all-white sports teams participating in sporting events abroad.19 Growing fears for Father Huddleston’s safety led to his recall to England in December 1955, where he wrote passionately about the human misery that accompanied the forced removals programme in Sophiatown.20 His book Naught for your Comfort,21 first published in 1956, drew headline attention in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and brought to the world’s attention the terrible real-life consequences of South Africa’s raced-based apartheid policies. While the intensity of the portrait of black urban life in the townships ‘provided a potent moral critique of apartheid’, it also placed ‘emphasis upon identification with African struggles and aspirations’.22 Huddleston’s return to England stimulated anti-apartheid activism in that country, including a series of well-attended public meetings in London, Manchester, Bradford, Oxford and

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Cambridge.23 On 26 June 1959, Huddleston and Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere addressed the founding meeting in London of the AAM, established after Huddleston had called – as early as 1954 – for a cultural boycott of South Africa. In 1961, Huddleston became the vice-president of the AAM, holding the position until 1981.24 Despite his growing church responsibilities, Father Huddleston stepped up his anti-apartheid work. In 1981 he was elected president of the AAM.25 He held this position until 1994. He also became the chair of the trustees of the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa.26 In 1984, in order to protest the visit of South African president P.W. Botha, Huddleston led an AAM delegation to meet Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.27 In the same year he addressed the United Nations, delivering a global petition calling for Mandela’s release,28 and also addressed the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid.29 On 28  June 1986, along with  Thabo Mbeki, he addressed the Artists Against Apartheid- and AAM-organised march and festival, which was attended by 250 000 people.30 In 1987 he organised the Harare International Conference on ‘Children, Repression and the Law in Apartheid’, which brought together leaders of the South African liberation movement. In the same year, he stated: ‘I think I’ve become more revolutionary every year I’ve lived. And certainly now, because life is so much shorter. I mean I want to get apartheid dead before I’m dead.’31 In 1988 Huddleston began the Nelson Mandela Freedom at 70 campaign that included the renowned birthday concert at Wembley Stadium, London, and the Nelson Mandela Freedom March from Glasgow to London. On 18  July 1988, on the eve of Mandela’s 70th  birthday, Huddleston and Archbishop Desmond Tutu addressed a rally of 200 000 at Hyde Park.32 On 8  January 1990, then archbishop Huddleston convened the Nelson Mandela International Reception Committee, formed to coordinate campaigning for the release of Nelson Mandela and all political prisoners, and to promote activities to celebrate the release of Mandela.33 Under the auspices of the committee, the International Tribute for a Free South Africa was held at Wembley Stadium, on 16 April 1990, and televised worldwide. As convenor of the committee, Huddleston introduced the address by Nelson Mandela.34 He returned to South Africa in 1991, intending to retire here. However, he found it too difficult, as he had diabetes, and was becoming increasingly frail, so he moved back to Mirfield, West Yorkshire. Nevertheless, he delivered the opening speech at the ANC’s first conference inside the country, in 1991, after 30 years of exile.35 On 26 April 1994, as an honorary citizen,36 Huddleston entered South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, London, for the first time in order to cast his vote in South Africa’s first democratic election.37 He was also a guest at President Nelson Mandela’s inauguration in Pretoria on 10 May 1994.38 In 1995 Huddleston became the founding patron of Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA), which was established as the successor to the AAM, a position he held until his death.39

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He received numerous honorary doctorates from universities around the world, primarily in the UK, USA and South Africa; the ANC’s highest honour, Isitwalandwe, at the historic Congress of the People, Kliptown, in 1955; as well as several national honours from African countries. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in Queen Elizabeth II’s New Year’s Honours List of 1998. At his investiture on 24 March 1998 he chose the designation ‘Bishop Trevor of Sophiatown’.40 Huddleston died shortly after being knighted, on 20  April 1998, at his home in Mirfield. His ashes were buried in the garden next to the Church of Christ the King in Sophiatown. After his death, the Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre in Sophiatown was established in 1999, providing youth development and entrepreneurship programmes, as well as heritage and cultural projects promoting Huddleston’s belief in developing the potential of every young person, as well as his commitment to non-racialism, multi-faith issues and social justice.41 Hugh Masekela gave the Father Huddleston Memorial Lecture at a service in central London to mark the end of the centenary year of Huddleston’s birth in June 2013, and the 20th anniversary in 2014 of South Africa’s first democratic elections.42 Many people testified to the impact Huddleston had made on their faith and practice as Anglicans, and others, as activists. On the eve of the centenary of Huddleston’s birth, Archbishop Tutu paid tribute to him: Trevor Huddleston’s humanity, and the passion with which he opposed apartheid – and other injustices and indignities – were attributes I have sought to emulate throughout my life. As a nation that is still seized with the necessary process of healing the divisions of its past, we would do well not to allow the contributions of giants, such as Father Trevor, to be lost in the mists of time.43 It is perhaps appropriate that one version of Huddleston’s ‘Prayer for Africa’ is still widely recited in many churches in South Africa:44 God bless Africa, Guard her children, guide her leaders. God bless Africa, God bless Africa and bring her peace. Notes 1 P. McGrandle, Trevor Huddleston: Turbulent Priest (London, New York: Continuum, 2004),

p. 6. 2 T. Huddleston, Naught for Your Comfort (Glasgow: Fount, 1977), post-Appendix biography;

E.W. Amarteifio, Humanity and the Nature of Man (Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2013), p. 105.

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3 Huddleston, Naught for Your Comfort. 4 D. Tutu, ‘Preface’ in P. McGrandle, Trevor Huddleston: Turbulent Priest. (London, New York:

Continuum, 2004), p. v. 5 Tutu, ‘Preface’, p. vi. 6 Huddleston, Naught for Your Comfort, p. 119ff. 7 McGrandle, Trevor Huddleston, p. 86. 8 C. Villa-Vicencio, ‘Father Trevor Huddleston: A Tribute’, Journal of Theology for

Southern Africa 101 (1998), p. 69. Accessed April 2020, https://search.proquest.com/ docview/213326684?pq-origsite=gscholar. 9 Huddleston, Naught for Your Comfort, p. 186. 10 McGrandle, Trevor Huddleston, p. xi. 11 D. Tutu, ‘The Man Who Changed My Life’, Cape Times 17 June 2013. Accessed June 2019,

https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/the-man-who-changed-my-life-1533199. 12 Villa-Vicencio, ‘Father Trevor Huddleston’; J.D. van der Vyver, ‘Constitutional Perspective

of Church-State Relations in South Africa’, Brigham Young University Law Review 1991:2 (2001), p. 635n. 13 R.N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (London: Abacus, 1994), p. 178. 14 Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre, ‘About Fr Trevor Huddleston’ (n.d.). Accessed April

2020, http://www.trevorhuddleston.org/page21.html; Tutu 2004: vii. 15 M. Mojapelo, Beyond Memory: Recording the History, Moments and Memories of South

African Music (Cape Town: African Minds, 2008), pp. 267–268. Accessed April 2020, https://books.google.co.za/books?id=x-KW9f02oNMC&pg=PA268&dq=Hugh +Masekela+Guildhall+School+of+Music&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiL9NuE74_ pAhVQiFwKHbn9Cu8Q6AEIOjAC#v=onepage&q=Hugh%20Masekela%20Guildhall%20 School%20of%20Music&f=false. 16 Tutu, ‘Preface’, p. vi; A. Konieczna and R. Skinner, A Global History of Anti-Apartheid:

‘Forward to Freedom’ in South Africa (Berlin: Springer, 2019), p. 211. 17 R. Skinner, ‘The Moral Foundations of British Anti-Apartheid Activism, 1946–1960’,

Journal of Southern African Studies 35:2 (2009), p. 406. 18 S. Stevens, ‘Boycotts and Sanctions against South Africa: An International History,

1946–1970’, PhD thesis, University of Columbia, 2016, p. 68. 19 Stevens, ‘Boycotts and Sanctions’, p. 83. 20 McGrandle, Trevor Huddleston, pp. 101–103. 21 Huddleston, Naught for Your Comfort. 22 Skinner, ‘The Moral Foundations of British Anti-Apartheid Activism’, p. 411. 23 Skinner, ‘The Moral Foundations of British Anti-Apartheid Activism’, p. 411. 24 Skinner, ‘The Moral Foundations of British Anti-Apartheid Activism’, p. 411; Stevens,

‘Boycotts and Sanctions’, pp. 81–82. 25 McGrandle, Trevor Huddleston, p. 208. 26 McGrandle, Trevor Huddleston, p. 177. 27 McGrandle, Trevor Huddleston, pp. 183–184. 28 McGrandle, Trevor Huddleston, p. 176.

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29 D.A. Mungazi, In the Footsteps of the Masters: Desmond M. Tutu and Abel T. Muzorewa (Santa

Barbara, CA: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000), p. 178. 30 Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre, ‘Narrative Biography’ (n.d.), p. 1. Accessed April

2020, http://www.trevorhuddleston.org/Fr%20Huddleston%20Narrative%20Biography.pdf. 31 M. Andrews, D. Sclater, C. Squire and M. Tamboukou, ‘Narrative Research’ in C. Seale,

D. Silverman, J. Gubrium and G. Gobo (eds), Qualitative Research Practice (London: Sage, 2004), p. 111. 32 Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre, ‘Narrative Biography’, p. 2. 33 Nelson Mandela Foundation Archive, Archives of the International Anti-Apartheid

Movement (n.d.). Accessed April 2020, https://archive.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/ international-anti-apartheid-movement. 34 K.G. Tomaselli and B. Boster, ‘Mandela, MTV, Television and Apartheid’, Popular Music

and Society 17:2 (1993), pp. 1–19. 35 McGrandle, Trevor Huddleston, p. xiii; Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre, ‘Narrative

Biography’, p. 2; M. Lapsley, ‘A Personal Tribute to Archbishop Trevor Huddleston 1913–1998’, Anglican Theological Review 81:1 (1999), pp. 3–5. 36 J.B. Spector, ‘Is the Memory of Father Trevor Huddleston Fading?’, Daily Maverick 20 April

2018. Accessed July 2020, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-04-20-is-thememory-of-father-trevor-huddleston-fading/#gsc.tab=0. 37 Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre, ‘Narrative Biography’, p. 2. 38  Associated Press. ‘Prominent Attendees at Mandela’s Inauguration with

AM-South Africa, Bjt.’, 10 May 1994. Accessed April 2020, https://apnews. com/789942368fe89cc9352e812249db0e66. 39 Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre, ‘Narrative Biography’, p. 2. 40 Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre, ‘Narrative Biography’, p. 2. 41 Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre, ‘About Us’ (n.d.). Accessed April 2020, http://www.

trevorhuddleston.org/about%20us.html. 42 E. Claymore, ‘Hugh Masekela Pays Tribute to Trevor Huddleston at London Gala

Evening’, The South African 9 June 2014. Accessed May 2019, https://www.thesouthafrican. com/south-africans-abroad/hugh-masekela-pays-tribute-to-trevor-huddleston-at-londongala-evening/. 43 Tutu, ‘The Man Who Changed My Life’. 44 A-J. Bethke, ‘Singing a New Song for a Transforming: Experiments in Music Localization

at Grahamstown Cathedral, South Africa’, Die Suider-Afrikaanse Kerkorrelistevereniging 36 (2016), p. 13.

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Beyers Naudé: The compassionate dissident Afrikaner Gregory Houston

1915–2004

Anti-apartheid activist, cleric and theologian Christiaan Frederick Beyers ‘Oom Bey’ Naudé was a principled Christian who followed his conscience despite significant opposition from his family and community. He was born into a prominent Afrikaner nationalist family,1 and was named after Boer nationalist and war hero Christiaan Frederik Beyers. Naudé’s father, Jozua François Naudé, had served under General Beyers in the South African War of 1899 to 1902 between the British and the Boers, as a soldier and official pastor. Jozua Naudé’s choice of name for his son reflected the deep resentment that Afrikaners still felt against the British for the war, and their treatment of Afrikaner non-combatant women and children.2 It was also a period in which the burghers of the Boer republics were rebelling against the Union government order to fight on the side of Britain against Germany in World War I. General Beyers, who was one of the leaders of the rebellion, drowned in the Vaal River while fleeing from the Union forces in December 1914.3 Jozua Naudé had settled in Germiston in the Transvaal Boer Republic as a teacher at a church school in the late 1890s. After the South African War, he decided to study theology at the University of Stellenbosch. After completing his theological training in 1909, he became a superintendent at a work colony for dispossessed white tenant farmers in the Orange Free State. From 1911 he served as a pastor of a congregation in Roodepoort, an Afrikaner community that was beginning to campaign for Afrikaner rights. Jozua Naudé was a founding member and first president of the Afrikaner Broederbond, a secret society aimed at promoting Afrikaner nationalism, and a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), a Protestant church organisation rooted in Calvinist teachings.4 Both institutions played pivotal roles in the various governments that ruled South Africa between 1910 and 1948, and particularly so after the Nationalist Party came to power in 1948. By then, many who held leading positions in the government were members of the Broederbond, while the DRC (or Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk – NGK) had become prominent in many Afrikaner communities.5

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Beyers Naudé: The compassionate dissident Afrikaner

The Naudé family moved to  Piet Retief in the then Eastern Transvaal in 1919, and then to Graaf-Reinet in the Eastern Cape in 1921, when Beyers Naudé was six years old.6 Here Jozua established the first Afrikaans school in the Cape Province for the large congregation he served.7 Because he was the son of a minister of religion, and had deeply devout Christian parents, the young Beyers Naudé regularly attended church and studied the Bible intensely. During his adolescence, he experienced a Christian ‘rebirth’ that instilled in him a strong faith that he never deviated from for the rest of his life.8 Naudé also grew up during the Great Depression, and the economic devastation this event caused to Afrikaner families by making them destitute made an indelible impression on him. He also became conscious of the plight of his African and coloured playmates from the local townships in Graaf-Reinet, with whom he swam in the nearby river.9 Naudé completed his matric in 1931 at the Afrikaans Hoër Volkskool, the first Afrikaanslanguage school in the Cape that his father had helped establish in 1922.10 He and his elder brother Jozua registered at the University of Stellenbosch in 1932, where Beyers registered for a Bachelor of Arts degree, with the objective of studying law. One of his lecturers at Stellenbosch was Hendrik F. Verwoerd, who was the architect of apartheid as the first apartheid government minister of native affairs, and then prime minister. Naudé was very active at the university, becoming a member of the editorial committee of the covert student newspaper, Pro Libertate, and serving as president of the Student Representative Council in 1937.11 It was at this time that he met his future wife, Ilse Weder, who took him to the family home in Genadendal. The open relationships between white and coloured people he came across in the congregation in Genadendal and in Ilse’s parents’ home left a permanent impression on him.12 Naudé completed his MA degree in 1935 and, in 1936, enrolled at the Theology Seminary at Stellenbosch to finish his last years of study for the ministry, having abandoned his dream to study law because of a lack of funds.13 After completing his seminary studies in 1939, Naudé married Ilse Weder in 1940. He began his ministry in the same year, first in Wellington in 1940, and then in Loxton in the Great Karoo in 1942, Pretoria South in 1945 and Pretoria East in 1949. In Pretoria East, he co-ministered with Dr Ben Marais, who had earlier expressed doubts about apartheid’s scriptural basis.14 Naudé’s experiences in these different congregations had an impact on him, ranging from reigniting his earlier compassion for others after witnessing people’s living conditions in the underprivileged coloured community of Loxton, to his doubts about the NGK’s policy of having separate churches for white and coloured people, and his growing awareness that many leading Afrikaner theologians were condemning both the new government’s policy of apartheid and its scriptural basis. Naudé had joined the Broederbond in 1940, at the age of 25, and had voted for the Nationalist Party in the 1948 elections. In the mid-1950s he went on a six-month tour to North America and Europe with members of the NGK Youth Association, during which he was repeatedly

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confronted with questions about apartheid.15 In addition, he attended several public meetings of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod in Potchefstroom between 1955 and 1959, where – again – he was confronted with critical questions on apartheid.16 Two events occurred in the early 1960s that prompted a turning point for Naudé. The first was the Sharpeville massacre, which made him realise that he could not ignore the injustices of apartheid and the massacre of peaceful protesters.17 The second was his attendance at the Cottesloe (Johannesburg) Consultation of World Council of Churches (WCC) representatives. The 80 South African delegates and six representatives from the WCC issued a statement at the conclusion of the consultation, condemning many aspects of apartheid, including the policy of separate churches for the different race groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages, the low wages paid to ‘non-whites’, the policy of job reservation, the prohibitions on access to land for some of the race groups and the denial of political rights.18 Naudé was part of a group of NGK representatives who signed a separate declaration, indicating that while they supported the Cottesloe Statement, they were not dropping support for the government’s apartheid policy.19 However, he wrote an article for an Afrikaans newspaper in which he defended the findings of the Cottlesloe statement, stating that ‘the delegates were subject to the authority of the Word of God, a higher authority than the nation or the government’.20 The Cottesloe Statement was vociferously condemned and rejected by the Afrikaner establishment, including the Broederbond, the apartheid government and the media. In 1961, Naudé appeared before an NGK Transvaal synod to defend the Cottesloe Statement. He said he would apologise to the synod and the NGK if any member could convince him that the statement contravened the scriptures. He added that if there was no such evidence, he would continue to support the recommendations made at Cottesloe. He also stated that he was prepared to accept any changes to the Cottesloe declaration that the synod might propose, provided that such changes were based on the scriptures.21 In 1962, Naudé took several steps that pushed him further away from the Afrikaner establishment and the NGK. The first was to – reluctantly – take up the editorship of a newly launched monthly theological journal, Pro Veritate. The second was to deliver a sermon in which he set out his beliefs on mixed marriages and racial segregation in the church. The third was to begin preparations for the establishment of an interracial ecumenical body, the Christian Institute (CI), the sole purpose of which was to expose the injustices of the apartheid system and strengthen Christian opposition to this system.22 The CI was launched in August 1963 (the same year he resigned from the Broederbond) with Naudé as director. Facing opposition from the church to his acceptance of the position in the CI, Naudé was forced to decide whether to remain as a leader in the church and ‘therefore within the confines and restraints which were clearly set for myself and for my future ministry, or otherwise to risk the step into the unknown, into what to me had become a decision of obedience to my faith’. After delivering a sermon to his Aasvoelkop congregation on 22 September 1963, he resigned from his position as minister.23 He was subsequently defrocked by the NGK Synod and stripped of the title of Dominee (Reverend).24

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Beyers Naudé: The compassionate dissident Afrikaner

Naudé’s work at the CI led to his condemnation as a heretic by the NGK. It also led to divisions in his own family, and to the Afrikaner community’s rejection of him and his family, as outcasts.25 It also brought him into direct conflict with the security police. From 1965, his staff were intimidated, their offices raided, and, in 1973, the institute itself was the subject, together with the University Christian Movement, the National Union of South African Students and the Institute of Race Relations, of investigation by Parliament’s Schlebusch Commission. Naudé’s refusal to testify before the commission in 1976 resulted in his spending a night in jail after he had lost an appeal against being convicted for failing to testify and refusing to pay a fine.26 In 1977, the CI was declared a banned organisation, and Naudé was placed under house arrest from 11 October 1977 – banned for five years, which was later extended to seven years. A year after the banning order was lifted in 1985, he was ordained as a minister of the African Reformed Church and elected general secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC). He took over from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and served in this position until 1987. In 1990, he was a member of the first delegation of ANC leaders, together with Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, that met with senior officials of the apartheid government.27 Naudé received many awards and accolades for his humanitarian conduct and contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. These included honorary doctorate degrees from Vrije University (Netherlands, 1972); University of the Witwatersrand (1974); University of Cape  Town (1983); University of Notre Dame in Indianapolis and Garret Evangelical Seminary in Evanston (USA, 1985); University of Limburg in Maastricht (Netherlands, 1989); University of Natal (1991); University of Durban-Westville (1993); University of the North and the University of the Western Cape (1996); Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem (USA, 1996); North Park University, Chicago (USA, 1999); Rand Afrikaans University (2000); Stellenbosch University (2001); and the University of South Africa (2002). Other awards bestowed on Naudé include the Reinhold Niebuhr Award (1974); the Bruno Kreisky Award (Germany, 1979); the Franklin D.  Roosevelt Four Freedoms Award (USA, 1984); the Swedish Free Church Prize for Reconciliation and Development (Sweden, 1984); the Robert F.  Kennedy Human Rights Award (USA, 1985); the Swedish Labour Movement Award (Sweden, 1985); the Order of Oranje-Nassau (Netherlands, 1995); Elected Honorary Life President of the SACC (1995); the Order for Meritorious Service (Gold) (South Africa, 1997); the Order of Merit (Germany, 1999); and Freedom of the City of Johannesburg (2001). Beyers Naudé questioned everything from a moral perspective so, rather than blindly obeying the church hierarchy and supporting apartheid on dubious religious grounds, he critically examined the Bible, which left him no alternative but to oppose apartheid. His immense courage and steadfast faith made him one of the most respected and loved stalwarts of South Africa’s liberation struggle. Notes 1 P. Fouché, B. Burnell and R. van Niekerk, ‘The Spiritual Wellness of Beyers Naudé:

A Psychobiographical Study of a South African Anti-Apartheid Theologian’, Journal of Psychology in Africa 25:5 (2015), p. 429. Naudé also published an autobiography (in

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Afrikaans) that is very useful: C.B. Naudé, My Land van Hoop: Die Lewe van Beyers Naudé (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1995). 2 J.C. Pauw, ‘The Life and Legacy of Beyers Naudé’, in Beyers Naudé Centre on Public

Theology (eds), The Legacy of Beyers Naudé, Beyers Naudé Centre Series on Public Theology Volume 1 (Stellenbosch: SUN Press, 2005), pp. 8–9. 3 Pauw, ‘The Life and Legacy of Beyers Naudé’, p. 9. 4 Pauw, ‘The Life and Legacy of Beyers Naudé’, p. 9. 5 Fouché, Burnell and Van Niekerk, ‘The Spiritual Wellness of Beyers Naudé’ p. 429. 6 B. Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé: A Psychobiographical Study’, PhD thesis, University

of the Free State, 2013, p. 32. 7 Pauw, ‘The Life and Legacy of Beyers Naudé’, p. 9. 8 Fouché, Burnell and Van Niekerk, ‘The Spiritual Wellness of Beyers Naudé’ pp. 31–32. 9 M.T. Masuku, ‘The Ministry of Dr Beyers Naudé: Towards Developing a Comprehensive

Mission (Communication) Strategy towards the Victims of Oppression’, PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, 2010, p. 35. 10 Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, p. 35. 11 Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, pp. 35–36. 12 Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, pp. 36–37; Masuku, ‘The Ministry of Dr Beyers

Naudé’, pp. 34–35. 13 Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, pp. 36–37. 14 Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, p. 44. 15 Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, p. 45. 16 C.G.R. Clur, ‘From Acquiescence to Dissent: Beyers Naudé, 1915–1977’, MA dissertation,

University of South Africa, 1997, p. 39; Fouché, Burnell and Van Niekerk, ‘The Spiritual Wellness of Beyers Naudé’ p. 433: Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, p. 48. 17 Clur, ‘From Acquiescence to Dissent’, pp. 45–46; Fouché, Burnell and Van Niekerk, ‘The

Spiritual Wellness of Beyers Naudé’ p. 433; Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, p. 54. 18 Clur, ‘From Acquiescence to Dissent’, pp. 47–48. 19 Clur, ‘From Acquiescence to Dissent’, pp. 47–48. 20 Cited in Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, p. 53. 21 Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, pp. 53–54. 22 Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, pp. 55–56; Masuku, ‘The Ministry of Dr Beyers

Naudé’, p. 51; Clur, ‘From Acquiescence to Dissent’, pp. 54–55. 23 Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, p. 57; Clur, ‘From Acquiescence to Dissent’, p. 76. 24 Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, p. 208. 25 Burnell, ‘The Life of Beyers Naudé’, p. 160; Clur, ‘From Acquiescence to Dissent’, p. 148. 26 Clur, ‘From Acquiescence to Dissent’, pp. 151–158. 27 M. Soggot, ‘Obituary – The Rev Beyers Naudé: Courageous Afrikaner Cleric Who Became

a Champion of South Africa’s Liberation Struggle’, The Guardian 8 September 2004. Accessed January 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/sep/08/guardianobituaries. southafrica.

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Helen Suzman: A lone voice for liberty

Helen Suzman: A lone voice for liberty Gary Pienaar

1917–2009

I stand for simple justice, equal opportunity and human rights: the indispensable elements in a democratic society – and well worth fighting for. Helen Suzman, quoted in Colin Eglin, Crossing the Borders of Power It is hard to imagine what it must have been like for Helen Suzman, an English-speaking Jewish woman, to pit herself against the massed majority of the National Party, most of whom were Afrikaner men. But she did it – day in and day out. For 13 years she was the lone anti-apartheid voice in Parliament. She stood up and spoke out for her beliefs with a quiet authority that has echoed over the decades. Helen Suzman was born  Helen Gavronsky  on 7  November 1917 (‘the date of the Russian revolution’, Suzman noted) to Samuel and Frieda Gavronsky,  Jewish immigrants from Lithuania  who were living in Germiston, then a small mining town near Johannesburg. Her mother passed away soon after she was born. Suzman matriculated in 1933 from Parktown Convent, Johannesburg, having had more of a Catholic than a Jewish upbringing.1 She registered to study for a BCom degree at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) but dropped out at the age of 19 to marry Dr Moses Suzman, who was 33 at the time and a prominent physician. When she returned to her studies in 1941, she completed a degree in economics and economic history. After graduating she worked for the Governor General’s War Fund and as a statistician at the War Supply Board. In 1945, she became a tutor and subsequently a lecturer in economic history at Wits.2 Suzman joined the South African Institute of Race Relations, where she played a significant role in preparing evidence for the Fagan Commission of Inquiry into laws applicable to black Africans in urban areas and the migrant labour system.3 This awakened her first real, conscious awareness of the enormous hardship and difficulties experienced by black Africans seeking

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work in urban areas and maintaining a family life. She credits this confrontation with the harsh effects of apartheid discrimination as leading her into politics.4 However, she acknowledged also that ‘the Jewish experience of anti-Semitism deeply influenced her attitude to racial discrimination’.5 In 1953, Suzman was elected to Parliament as the  United Party (UP) representative  for the Houghton constituency in Johannesburg. In Parliament, the UP supported the 1953 Separate Amenities Bill that provided for separate (and, in effect, unequal) facilities for black, coloured, Indian and white people. Helen Suzman and one other UP member refused to vote and walked out of the House.6 In 1959, discontented with the UP’s continued tolerance of apartheid discrimination, including legislation leading to the creation of the ‘bantustans’, Suzman and 11 other liberal members left the UP to form the Progressive Party (PP).7 The PP rejected racial discrimination, and supported equal opportunities for all and a common voters’ roll, albeit with a qualified franchise.8 All the other Progressive members of Parliament (MPs) lost their seats in the 1961 general election, leaving Suzman as the only parliamentarian explicitly opposed to apartheid for 13 years – from 1961 to 1974.  Suzman retained her seat by a majority of only 564 votes.9 As the only representative of her party in Parliament, she endeavoured to perform the tasks of an opposition party single-handedly. In her first session alone, she made over 60 speeches, moved over 20 amendments and posed almost 140 questions. Her questions focused primarily on the treatment of black, coloured and Indian people on issues such as the rule of law, as well as social conditions and politically sanctioned discrimination and abuses, including housing, education, forced removals, pass-law offences, detentions, bannings, whippings, and police brutality and executions.10 When apartheid legislation was debated in the House of Assembly, she would often call for a division of the House, a procedure that required MPs to physically stand up and be counted. Frequently, as when voting against the notorious 90-day detention law, she stood alone on one side of the parliamentary chamber, facing all other MPs.11 Despite the many laws passed censoring the media, Suzman effectively used parliamentary privilege to ensure that her exchanges in Parliament could be published to keep the public and the world informed.12 Mandela later wrote that she was undoubtedly the only real anti-apartheid voice in Parliament and the ‘discourtesy of the Nat[ionalist] MPs towards her showed how they felt her punches and how deeply they resented her presence’.13 Suzman was often subject to anti-Semitic, misogynist and political abuse by Nationalist MPs inside and outside Parliament. Insults were frequently directed at her in Parliament, including ‘We don’t like your screeching Jewish voice’, ‘Go back to Israel!’, or ‘Go back to Moscow!’ One Nationalist minister, Piet Koornhof, told her in Parliament that she deserved ‘a good hiding’.14 As she was an eloquent public speaker with a sharp wit, a minister once accused Suzman of asking questions in Parliament that embarrassed South Africa, to which she famously replied: ‘It is not my questions that embarrass South Africa; it is your answers.’15

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Suzman was frequently harassed by the police, who tapped her phone. She often received telephone calls with racist, obscene and threatening messages.  She developed a particular technique for dealing with these calls – blowing a shrill whistle into the mouthpiece.16 Marie van Zyl, of the Kappie Kommando (an ultra-conservative Afrikaner women’s movement), wrote to Suzman criticising her support for ‘heathens’ and bragging that ‘her people’, the Voortrekkers, had carried the Bible over the mountains into the interior to ‘the blacks’. She asked Suzman what her people had done. Suzman famously replied: ‘They wrote it, my dear…’17 She is also on record as advising John Vorster, prime minister from 1966 to 1978, to some day visit a township, ‘in heavy disguise as a human being’.18 When a Cabinet minister complained about the high murder rate in his constituency, she suggested that he stay away ‘or it will rise by one’.19 Later, as white parliamentary opposition to apartheid grew, the PP won an additional six seats (in 1974) and Suzman was joined in Parliament by prominent liberal colleagues such as Colin Eglin. In 1975, the party merged with  the Reform Party led by Harry Schwarz and became the Progressive Reform Party. It was subsequently renamed the Progressive Federal Party (PFP) after MPs from the more progressive wing of the UP joined in 1977, making the party the official opposition.20 Suzman’s motto was to ‘go and see for yourself’.21 She used her status as an MP to undertake prison visits to inspect prevailing conditions, and she used her parliamentary platform to ensure that the media was able to report on her activities.22 She often visited prisons to protect prisoners from warders’ brutality and to continue her campaign to improve prison conditions. She frequently visited  Nelson Mandela and many other political prisoners on Robben Island and made representations to the authorities to improve their conditions. In Parliament, she advocated for Mandela’s release from prison. In Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, he wrote: ‘It was an odd and wonderful sight to see this courageous woman peering into our cells and strolling around our courtyard. She was the first and only woman ever to grace our cells’.  Many prisoners, including  Neville Alexander  and Mandela, credited her visits for improvements in their conditions. In Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela attributes the removal of the cruel warder Van Rensberg (nicknamed ‘Suitcase’) to a visit by Suzman and her resulting representations to the authorities and statements in Parliament.23 She visited  Robert Sobukwe  while he was in ‘virtual solitary confinement for six years’ and repeatedly advocated for his release in Parliament.24 She also visited several prominent anti-apartheid  leaders ‘banned’ from public life, including  Albert Luthuli,  Winnie Mandela  and  Mamphela Ramphele, and made effective representations on their behalf.  In 1963, Albert Luthuli, then president of the ANC, wrote to Helen Suzman and expressed ‘deep appreciation and admiration for your heroic and lone stand against a most reactionary Parliament…For ever remember, you are a bright Star in a dark Chamber…Not only ourselves – your contemporaries, but also posterity, will hold you in high esteem’.25

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Although Suzman was primarily concerned with issues of racial discrimination, she also contributed to the protection of women’s rights.26 Women’s rights, especially those of black women, became part of the wider struggle for human rights. She campaigned against gender discrimination, particularly as it affected African women, whose status in customary law was that of ‘perpetual minors’. She advocated equal matrimonial property rights for black women, divorce by consent and the reform of abortion laws, and opposed the death penalty.27 She also raised the underrepresentation of women during the Convention for a Democratic South Africa negotiations, after which an improvement was evident.28 After 36 years as an MP, Suzman was appointed by Mandela to the first South African electoral commission that oversaw the first fully democratic election in 1994. Nevertheless, she opposed some of Mandela’s policies, and also Thabo Mbeki’s. Speaking in 2004 at the age of 86, Suzman confessed that she was disappointed by the ANC: ‘I had hoped for something much better... [t]he  poor in this country have not benefited at all from the ANC…Instead of investing in projects to give people jobs, they spend millions buying weapons and private jets.’29 The PFP eventually became the Democratic Alliance (DA) in 2000. In November 2017, DA leader Mmusi Maimane paid tribute to Suzman, noting that ‘every value we call our own in the DA can be traced back to the principles Helen fought for over her 36-year-long career as a member of Parliament. Simple justice, equal opportunity and human rights – what she called “the indispensable elements in a democratic society”.’30 The Helen Suzman Foundation was founded in 1993 to honour her life’s work.31 Suzman died in her sleep on New Year’s Day 2009, aged 91, of natural causes.  Achmat Dangor,  chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, said Suzman was a ‘great patriot and a fearless fighter against apartheid’.32 The ANC also paid tribute to her, saying: ‘as a Member of Parliament and a vocal critic against apartheid, the ANC remembers and respects the contribution of Suzman towards the demise of apartheid’.33 Then deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke said he had a ‘virtual love affair’ with Suzman, from the time she used to visit him and many other political prisoners such as Mandela, Sisulu, Sobukwe and Kathrada on Robben Island. He said she had fought for many prisoners’ rights, including their right to study. ‘That much I owe her for the career I follow,’ he said.34 Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, forged a close friendship with Suzman when they were the leading proponents of peaceful change during the violent suppression and upheavals of the 1970s and 1980s. At her memorial service, Tutu said South Africans should remember, through Suzman’s example, that ‘our freedom has been won from the endeavours of many stalwarts of many races’.35 Flags in South Africa were ordered to fly at half-mast in her honour. She had pursued with extraordinary tenacity the principle that was inscribed on her tombstone: ‘Let right be done’.36

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Suzman was awarded 27 honorary doctorates from universities around the world, including from Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and received numerous other awards from religious and human rights organisations around the world, including the United Nations Award of the International League for Human Rights in 1978 and the post-apartheid South African government’s Order of Merit (Gold) in 1997. Suzman is mostly remembered for her courage in standing up to the apartheid state, but she was even-handed in her reproach. She spoke out against ANC representatives and officials in power who ‘put party and state above the individual whether black or white’, and was also critical of Mandela when he praised dictator  Muammar Gaddafi  as a supporter of human rights,37 as well as the ANC’s Mbeki administration’s uncritical support of Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe.38 Notes 1 R. Renwick, Helen Suzman: Bright Star in a Dark Chamber: The Biography (London: Biteback

Publishing, 2014); C. McGreal, ‘Brothers in Arms – Israel’s Secret Pact with Pretoria’, The Guardian 7 February 2006. Accessed July 2019, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/ feb/07/southafrica.israel. 2 H. Suzman, Memoirs: In No Uncertain Terms (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1994), pp. 4–7. 3 Suzman, Memoirs, pp. 14–15; C. Nel, ‘The Life of Helen Suzman: A Psychobiographical

Study’, DPhil thesis, University of the Free State, 2013, p. 18. 4 Suzman, Memoirs, pp. 14–15, 286. 5 V. Belling, The Price They Paid: A Bibliographical Survey of the Memoirs of the Jews in

the Struggle for Democracy and Human Rights in South Africa. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Convention of the Association of Jewish Libraries, Denver, CO, June 2002, p. 7. 6 Suzman, Memoirs, p. 30ff. 7 Suzman, Memoirs, pp. 46–48. 8 Suzman, Memoirs, p. 48. 9 Suzman, Memoirs, p. 61. 10 Suzman, Memoirs, p. 88ff. 11 Suzman, Memoirs, pp. 92–93. 12 Suzman, Memoirs, pp. 93–96, 135-6, 317–8. 13 R.N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (London: Abacus, 1994), p. 518. 14 J.F. Burns and A. Cowell, ‘Helen Suzman, Relentless Challenger of Apartheid System, Is

Dead at 91’, The New York Times 1 January 2009. Accessed July 2019, https://www.nytimes. com/2009/01/02/world/africa/02suzman.html?_r=1&hp. 15 G. Rachman, ‘Memories of Helen Suzman’, Financial Times 2 January 2009. Accessed

April 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/6e597d47-a47f-36b9-a930-028fbd50c7b4. 16 Suzman, Memoirs, p. 117; Burns and Cowell, ‘Helen Suzman, Relentless Challenger’. 17 Suzman, Memoirs, p. 117. 18 Suzman, Memoirs, p. 78.

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19 S. Jenkins, ‘Helen Suzman Deserves Her Tribute alongside Nelson Mandela’, The Guardian

6 March 2014. Accessed April 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/ mar/06/helen-suzman-mandela-forgotten-saint-anti-apartheid. 20 Suzman, Memoirs, pp. 180–181. 21 Suzman, Memoirs, p. 216. 22 Suzman, Memoirs, p. 137–151, 152–169; Burns and Cowell, ‘Helen Suzman, Relentless

Challenger’. 23 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, pp. 517–520; Suzman, Memoirs, pp. 153–154. 24 Suzman, Memoirs, pp. 220–221. 25 Suzman, Memoirs, pp. 93. 26 Suzman, Memoirs, pp. 28. 27 Suzman, Memoirs, pp. 108–109; B.P. van Laun, ‘Administrative Death: Bureaucracy,

Capital Punishment and Governmentality in South Africa during the 1960s’, DPhil thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2018, p. 10. 28 C. Barnes and E. de Klerk, ‘South Africa’s Multi-Party Constitutional Negotiation Process’,

Accord 13 (2002), p. 27. Accessed July 2019, https://www.c-r.org/accord/public-participation/ south-africas-multi-party-constitutional-negotiation-process. 29 Barnes and De Klerk, ‘South Africa’s Multi-Party Constitutional Negotiation Process’. 30 M. Maimane, ‘Helen Suzman Was Unashamedly Liberal – Mmusi Maimane’, Politicsweb

9 November 2017. Accessed July 2020, https://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/values-ofhelen-suzman-will-light-our-way-forward-. 31 Helen Suzman Foundation, ‘About HSF’ (n.d.). Accessed July 2020, https://hsf.org.za/about/

about-the-helen-suzman-foundation. 32 A. Dangor, Statement from the Foundation on the Death of Helen Suzman, (Nelson Mandela

Foundation, 1 January 2009). Accessed April 2020, https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/ entry/statement-from-the-foundation-on-the-death-of-helen-suzman. 33 M. Mothapo, ‘Helen Suzman and Apartheid’, Politicsweb 26 April 2013. Accessed April

2020, https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/helen-suzman-and-apartheid. 34  Mail & Guardian, ‘Helen Suzman: The Woman Who Changed a Nation’, 1 March 2009.

Accessed April 2009, https://mg.co.za/article/2009-03-01-helen-suzman-the-woman-whochanged-a-nation. 35  Mail & Guardian, ‘Helen Suzman’. 36  Mail & Guardian, ‘Helen Suzman’. 37  The Economist, ‘Helen Suzman: Liberal Light: The Long Life of a South African Heroine’,

18 January 2014. Accessed April 2020, https://archive.is/20180910141832/https://www. economist.com/books-and-arts/2014/01/18/liberal-light#selection-1021.0-1029.40. 38  News24, ‘Suzman: Mbeki Anti-White’, 16 May 2004. Accessed April 2020,

https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Suzman-Mbeki-anti-white-20040516.

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PART PART22

Cultural Public Intellectuals Cultural Public Intellectuals

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Cultural public intellectuals: Introduction

Introduction Maxi Schoeman, Heather Thuynsma and Vasu Reddy

This section of the volume frames a diverse and varied group of creative artists. They are by no means representative of all the people we would have wanted to include in this category. To provide a definitive conception of the category ‘cultural’ public intellectual is problematic and complex: ‘culture’ is a mobile and travelling concept; it crosses borders and disciplines through exchanges and transfers over time.1 However, what surfaces in our representation here is the sense of connection to a deep creativity in the work of the people we have chosen. Each has, in our view, achieved a form of cultural authority through their use of the rhetorical power of the written word, image and speech. By asking more questions than providing answers, their creative work opens up possibilities for reframing social, ethical and political issues, challenging the public to re-view entrenched beliefs and attitudes. John Frow argues that ‘cultural intellectuals’ are often located within and are associated with academia and display ‘commitment to the institutions of cultural capital, and simultaneously a set of anxieties about [their] place within these institutions’.2 Nevertheless, there is a limitation to Frow’s view in that not all academics are ‘cultural intellectuals’ (see Part 3 of this volume focused entirely on ‘academic public intellectuals’) and not all cultural intellectuals are academics. The cultural public intellectuals grouped in this section represent more than a century of cultural public intellectualism in South Africa. Olive Schreiner is the earliest public intellectual discussed in this section and she, along with others such as N.P. van Wyk Louw, was a celebrated writer – she a novelist/essayist and he a poet/dramatist. Both were able to gain access to the public sphere – or even, one could argue, were expected to participate in the public domain – to share ideas, debate problems and argue about the moral and ethical implications of the hegemony of cultural-political systems for the life of society at large. The poet Breyten Breytenbach went further than reflection on wicked problems and pursued a decidedly action-orientated path that ended in a jail sentence in 1975 after conviction on a charge of high treason. Other apartheid-era figures included in this section – such as actor, playwright and director John Kani and singer Miriam Makeba – had to make use of ‘the interstices of civic life when formal channels for debate in civil and political society [were] barred to them.’3 Michael Hanchard’s comment would describe the position of most, if not all, of the black artists, authors, poets and dramatists featured here. Several of them saw their work censored or banned at some point. James Matthews would be illustrative of this group, though

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it was not only black artists who were censored – André Brink suffered the same fate. Their art became the medium through which they, in Edward Said’s words, ‘disturbed the status quo’.4 They were often the focus of discussion in the public sphere, but seldom given an opportunity to express themselves or to become part of public debate; their medium of engagement was confined to performing their art, and yet they have left, or continue making, a contribution to the formation of identities and the shaping of cultural policy and practices. All who are profiled in this section are public figures of cultural standing, who have shaped and are shaping the broad socio-cultural and political spheres in South Africa. However, the public sphere in which they engaged differed vastly, depending on the time and socio-political context of their activity. They are thus representative of South Africa’s diverse history. They may have dealt broadly with similar issues and ideas – the wicked problems of belonging, race, gender, inequality, discrimination, power, status, opportunity, justice (the list is open to interpretation) – but they did so from vastly different vantage points. For example, in her era (late nineteenth and early twentieth century), Schreiner speaks from a privileged position in the ruling (South African) English-British white middle class, relatively easily accessing the social media of her day (print media). Van Wyk Louw, several decades later, similarly moves easily between his literary creation and the world of the public; he is, after all, in the privileged position of being white and Afrikaans, a member of the dominant social and political class of the South Africa of his time. Breytenbach, perhaps emboldened by a more tenuous link to South Africa (he was living in France during the 1960s and early 1970s and married to a woman classified by the apartheid state as ‘non-white’), moves out of that privileged position as part, if only by birth, of that power base, when he resorts to action. Fellow artists and writers in the black community were struggling from vantage points ‘not designed for direct political engagement’ and their celebrity status did not necessarily ‘shield them against sanctions’.5 The lives of Mphahlele, Kani, Makeba, Matthews and others are testimony to these narrow constraints and the constant threat of sanction that permeated their lives throughout the mid- to late-apartheid era. It is noticeable that several of the thinkers in this section chose exile. In doing so they found at least a modicum of opportunity for moving beyond ‘performance’ either as a performing or as a literary ‘actor’, and into an environment that offered an opportunity to question authority from afar, as it were, and to denounce what was wrong, or assert what was valuable or what was to be done. Such differences of race and social position aside, what draws these public figures together, and what qualifies their inclusion in a separate section, is the fact that they are all distinguished, firstly, by a creative impulse directed towards a social commitment through ideas, material change and political transformation. They remain, at their core, artists and literary figures. Following the Emersonian conception of the public intellectual – namely, that of the scholar and academic – the ‘whole man’,6 we contend that the public space facilitates engagement for non-scholarly and community-based engagement. In other words, such thinkers are to be considered and recognised for their contributions,7 as cultural entrepreneurs who inform and shape public ideas and debates. Thabo Sephiri views these cultural icons as being involved with culture, ‘either through creating, distributing or applying it’.8 Secondly, the public image

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Cultural public intellectuals: Introduction

and, if one cares for the expression, their ‘celebrity status’ 9 created opportunities through what Glen Johnson refers to as ‘cultural currency’,10 however limited for some, to have public visibility where they could ‘seek to influence and even transform the social order which they are opposed to’.11 The cultural public intellectuals included in the volume are grouped into subcategories based on the dominant cultural medium/platform used by the individual concerned: fictional novel (Olive Schreiner, Alan Paton, Es’kia Mphahlele, Nadine Gordimer, André Brink and Eugene Marais); poetry (N.P.  van Wyk Louw, James Matthews, Mazisi Kunene, Ingrid Jonker, Willie Kgositsile and Breyten Breytenbach); theatre (Athol Fugard and John Kani); music (Miriam Makeba and Hugh  Masekela); painting (Lady Skollie); and comedy (Pieter-Dirk Uys, Deep Fried Man, Loyiso Gola and Trevor Noah). Notes 1 B. Neumann and A. Nünning (eds), Travelling Concepts for the Study of Culture (Berlin: De

Gruyter, 2012). 2 J. Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1995), pp. 130–131. 3 M. Hanchard, ‘Cultural Politics and Black Public Intellectuals’, Social Text 48 (1996),

pp. 95–108. 4 E. Said, Representations of the Intellectual (New York: Vintage Books, 1996). 5 Hanchard, ‘Cultural Politics’. 6 See A. Lightman, ‘The Role of the Public Intellectual’ MIT Communications Forum

(n.d.). Accessed April 2020, http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/legacy/papers/lightman.html; J. Di Leo, ‘Public Intellectuals, Inc.’, Inside Higher Ed 4 February 2008, accessed April 2020, https://www.insidehighered.com/print/views/2008/02/04/public-intellectuals-inc.; A. du Toit, ‘Critic and Citizen: ‘The Intellectual, Transformation and Academic Freedom’, Pretexts: Literary and Cultural Studies 9:1 (2000), pp. 91–104. 7 See also J. Escoffier, American Homo: Community and Perversity (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1998). 8 T. Sephiri, The Emergence and Role of Black Intellectuals in the Development of the

Trade Union Movement in South Africa: A Case Study of NUMSA. Paper presented at the 3rd Regional Conference of the International Industrial Relations Association (IIRA), Employment Relations in a Changing World: The African Renaissance?, Cape Town, 6–8 March 2002. Accessed April 2020, https://www.ilo.org/public/english/iira/documents/ congresses/3rdAfrica/25.pdf. 9 See O. Heynders, Writers as Public Intellectuals: Literature, Celebrity, Democracy (New York:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 10 L. Johnson, ‘Emerson: America’s First Public Intellectual?’, Modern Intellectual History 2:1

(2005), pp. 135–151. 11 Sephiri, The Emergence and Role of Black Intellectuals.

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Olive Schreiner: The story of an African giant Michael Cosser

1855–1920

I think if I were dying and I heard of an act of injustice, it would start me up to a moment’s life again. Olive Schreiner, Letter to Adela Villiers Smith

Men’s bodies are our women’s works of art. Given to us power of control, we will never carelessly throw them in to fill up the gaps in human relationships made by international ambitions and greeds…War will pass when intellectual culture and activity have made possible to the female an equal share in the control and governance of modern national life; it will probably not pass away much sooner; its extinction will not be delayed much longer. Olive Schreiner, Woman and Labour The two epigraphs at the beginning of this bio-sketch – the first from a letter to a friend and the second from a ‘collection of musings’1 – epitomise Olive Schreiner’s importance as a social commentator: her keen sense of justice for all, and her passion in particular for equal treatment of women. Olive Emily Albertina Schreiner was born in Wittebergen, Eastern Cape – site of one of the battles, in 1900, of the Boer War2 – on 24 March 1855, the ninth of the 12 children of Gottlob and Rebecca Schreiner, who had left the United Kingdom for South Africa in November 1837. Gottlob Schreiner was a missionary with the London Missionary Society. All three of the siblings after whom she was named – Oliver (1848–1854), Emile (1852–1852) and Albert (1843–1843) – had died before she was born. Because of Mr Schreiner’s profession the family moved a great deal within the borders of South Africa – a pattern Olive was later to emulate. She travelled extensively – to and from the United Kingdom, and between the UK and various European countries. This frequent travel opened up

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different worlds to the young Schreiner. Olive lived through the South African War and World War I, and was to become a spokeswoman for girls and women who had borne – and who will in future bear – the brunt of war in the world, in the workplace and in the home. From the age of 16 until she was 25, Schreiner worked as a governess for four different families in the Eastern Cape. In 1881 she sailed to the UK to train as a nurse at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Her family reportedly struggled financially, and Schreiner effectively left home to fend for herself – but possibly also because she had fallen out with her parents over their strict Calvinism.3 She fell ill in Scotland, and moved to London to train as a midwife at the Endell Street Hospital. But there too she became sick – seemingly destined not to pursue a career in nursing. In London that same year she met Eleanor Marx, youngest daughter of the more famous Karl. They became firm friends, and it is likely that the influence of Eleanor’s father rubbed off on Schreiner. Over the next two years she remained in the UK, seeking a publisher for her novel The Story of an African Farm, which was published by Chapman and Hall in 1883. While still in the UK, in 1884, Schreiner met Havelock Ellis, an essayist and physician who had studied human sexual behaviour and had challenged Victorian taboos against public discussion of sexuality. His work – amongst which was the groundbreaking Studies in the Psychology of Sex – promoted open discussion of sexual issues.4 He became known as a champion of women’s rights, and would certainly have shaped Schreiner’s own views on the subject, prefiguring her publication in 1911 of Woman and Labour. Ellis gave Schreiner a copy of Edward Carpenter’s Towards Democracy, passages of which – particularly ‘To thine own self be true’ – find echoes in The Story of an African Farm. Edward Carpenter, whom Schreiner met in 1885, was an English poet, social theorist and campaigner, and one of the first gay activists. As a proponent of a mode of life antithetical to industrialism, and as an outspoken promoter of sexual freedom, he greatly influenced progressive social thought at the turn of the century5 – including, naturally, the thought of the 31-year-old Olive Schreiner. Also while still in London, Schreiner started attending meetings of the Men and Women’s Club, an exclusive club founded by Karl Pearson, a socialist and mathematics professor at London’s University College, to discuss the future of gender, the equality of the sexes and marriage reform.6 On her return to South Africa in 1889, she became involved in South African politics, writing polemical articles for British and local magazines that criticised British imperialism. Her feminist fiction was published first in 1893 in Dream Life and Real Life and, posthumously, in 1926, three years after her death.7 In 1894 Schreiner married Samuel Cronwright – a farmer and freethinker whom she had met at a friend’s house two years previously. She refused to adopt his surname, so he extended his own to become Cronwright-Schreiner. They had a daughter, who died at birth.

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Schreiner had met Cecil Rhodes in 1890, and was initially impressed by his demeanour and thinking. But his imperial policy did not endear him to her, and in 1897 she published Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland, a political allegory that was a thinly veiled attack on Rhodes’s imperialism. Before the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899, she went on to publish her pro-Boer views in The South African Question (An English South African’s View of the Situation) (1899), which embarrassed her brother Will, who was prime minister of the Cape Colony. She was interned for a year for her criticism of the British invasion of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.8 The year 1911 saw the publication of Schreiner’s Woman and Labour, which has been hailed as one of the most important feminist texts of the early twentieth century,9 constituting an impassioned and cogently argued plea for women’s emancipation. Schreiner ends the piece with the following sentiments: The ancient Chaldean seer had a vision of a Garden of Eden which lay in a remote past. It was dreamed that man and woman once lived in joy and fellowship, till woman ate of the tree of knowledge and gave to man to eat; and that both were driven forth to wander, to toil in bitterness; because they had eaten of the fruit. We also have our dream of a Garden: but it lies in a distant future. We dream that woman shall eat of the tree of knowledge together with man, and that side by side and hand close to hand, through ages of much toil and labour, they shall together raise about them an Eden nobler than any the Chaldean dreamed of; an Eden created by their own labour and made beautiful by their own fellowship.10 Schreiner’s feminism is not the sometimes strident feminism of the second half of the twentieth century that would raise women by putting men down. It is a feminism that not only sought perfect equality between the sexes, but also recognised that the fullness of both male and female sexuality could only be achieved through man’s and woman’s joint striving for ‘an Eden nobler than any the Chaldean dreamed of…made beautiful by their own fellowship’. Schreiner’s prose in the second of these two paragraphs is both generous (she eschews the first-person singular, ‘I’, for the collective ‘we’) and visionary: she speaks with authority for all women in the language of dreaming – prefiguring the ‘I have a dream’ trope deployed by Martin Luther King Jr later in the century. In 1913 Schreiner again went abroad, ostensibly seeking medical treatment in Italy but ending up spending the next six years in England, where she wrote a number of anti-war pamphlets.11 She returned to South Africa in 1920, and died of a heart attack in Cape Town in December of that year. From the chronology of Schreiner’s life we observe that, notwithstanding her frequent travels and frequent bouts of illness, she was a prolific writer. Between 1883 and 1911 she published:

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• a novel (The Story of an African Farm – 1883) • a collection of short allegories (Dreams – 1891) • a short story (‘Dream Life and Real Life’ – 1893) • three political commentaries (‘The Political Situation’ – 1896; ‘An English-South African’s View of the Situation: Words in Season’ – 1899; and ‘Closer Union: A Letter on South African Union and the Principles of Government’ – 1909) • a political allegory (Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland – 1897) • a ‘collection of musings’ (Woman and Labour – 1911). In addition, a number of her works were published posthumously: • a collection of articles – ‘stray thoughts on the land we [my husband and I] both love’ entitled Thoughts on South Africa (1923) • a collection of short stories entitled Stories, Dreams and Allegories (1923) • a second novel, Undine (drafted in 1874 but published in 1929) • a third novel, From Man to Man (drafted in 1885 and published in 1926. The posthumous publication of a number of important works, especially novels dealing ‘with the Woman Question, gender relations, as well as sexual, racial and class oppression’,12 is, on the one hand, a testament to efforts to sustain her legacy as a writer but, on the other, a consequence of the unique time and place(s) in which she lived and wrote as a woman. Dividing her time between two continents might in itself have presented challenges to her sense of place and how she depicted it in her novels, but her experience of the colonial culture of the land of her birth, the impact of English socialism on her personal and literary sensibilities, her exposure to the culture of Victorian women,13 and the mere fact of her life’s straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries located her at the intersection of powerful societal forces that precluded her from situating her characters and locating her narratives neatly within a homogeneous cultural milieu.14 Ahead of her time, she was a woman advocating equality among the sexes in a world in which she found herself a fish out of water. As First and Scott explain: Rejecting the powerlessness of the traditional female role, she chose an ‘external’ world of work for herself, yet could identify herself only as deviant within the culture: a woman who had adopted a man’s pursuits: economic independence, creative work, freedom to travel, and a measure of sexual autonomy.15 Schreiner’s claim to being a public intellectual, though she would hardly have thought of herself as such, rests not only on the nature and influence of her literary output, but on the many influential people with whom she met, and with whom she corresponded, both in South Africa and in Europe. So while Schreiner might have felt herself a failure because of the disconnect between her public persona and private life,16 she was incontrovertibly a social, political and literary giant of her time well deserving of the tribute ‘one of the most important writers and social commentators South Africa has produced to date’.17

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Notes Unless otherwise indicated, all references in this bio-sketch are to the award-winning website oliveschreiner.org, The Olive Schreiner Letters Online. 2012. A Schreiner Chronology. Accessed September 2019, https://www.oliveschreiner.org/vre?page=251. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the life, times and works of Olive Schreiner. 1 Schreiner’s own words for the contents of her treatise on women and society, Woman and

Labour (1911). See The Olive Schreiner Letters Online. Accessed September 2019, https:// www.oliveschreiner.org/vre?page=295. 2 K. Gibbs, ‘Medals of the South African War, 1899–1902, and Background Notes on

Some of the Actions in which the Recipients of Medals in the Author’s Collection Were Involved’, Military History Journal 2:3 (1972). Accessed September 2019, http:// samilitaryhistory.org/vol023kg.html. 3 A. Diniejko, Olive Schreiner: A Biographical Introduction (2012). Accessed September 2019,

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/schreiner/bio.html. 4 Encyclopaedia Britannica, (Havelock Ellis: British Essayist and Physician) (n.d.) Accessed

September 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Havelock-Ellis. 5 The Open University, ‘Making Britain: Discover How South Asians Shaped the Nation,

1870–1950: Edward Carpenter’ (n.d.). Accessed September 2019, http://www.open.ac.uk/ researchprojects/makingbritain/content/edward-carpenter. 6 Diniejko, ‘Olive Schreiner’. 7 Diniejko, ‘Olive Schreiner’. 8 Diniejko, ‘Olive Schreiner’. 9 Diniejko, ‘Olive Schreiner’. 10 O. Schreiner, Woman and Labour (E-book, [1911] 2008), chapter VI, Certain Objections, n.p.

Accessed September 2019, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1440/1440-h/1440-h.htm. 11 Diniejko, ‘Olive Schreiner’. 12 Diniejko, ‘Olive Schreiner’. 13 R. First and A. Scott, Olive Schreiner: A Biography (New York: Schocken, 1980). 14 As a fourteen-year-old, Doris Lessing said of The Story of an African Farm, ‘Here was the

substance of truth, and not from England or Russia or France or America, necessitating all kinds of mental translations, switches, correspondences, but reflecting what I knew and could see’ (cited in E. Showalter, ‘Olive Schreiner: A Biography by Ruth First and Ann Scott: Review’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 1:2 (1982), pp. 104–109). 15 First and Scott, Olive Schreiner, p. 133. 16 First and Scott, Olive Schreiner. 17 L. Stanley and A. Salter (eds), The World’s Great Question: Olive Schreiner’s South African

Letters (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 2014), p. xii.

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Alan Paton: Weeping for the beloved country

Alan Paton: Weeping for the beloved country Gary Pienaar

1903–1988

Alan Stewart Paton’s novel Cry the Beloved Country was instrumental in alerting the world to the horrors of apartheid at about the same time the National Party came into power in 1948. And its success gave Paton the economic freedom to devote his life to the two things that mattered most to him, and that he did extraordinarily well – writing and political activism.1 His strong faith and deep sense of fairness permeated everything he did – from advocating against corporal punishment to contributing to the establishment of one of South Africa’s first truly multiracial political parties. Paton’s parents weren’t highly educated, but his father had strong religious convictions and was a strict parent who used corporal punishment to discipline his sons. Paton’s response was a profound opposition to any form of authoritarianism, including physical punishment, although he shared his father’s faith. His father also introduced him to literature, and inspired in him the great love of nature that was evident in his books.2 Alan Paton grew up in Pietermaritzburg, attended Maritzburg College, and then earned a Bachelor of Science and a diploma in education at the University of Natal. While at university, he met the most significant individual influence on his life, Railton Dent, an older student and the son of a missionary. Dent imparted to him ‘one thing,’ Paton said: ‘that life must be used in the service of a cause greater than oneself’. He elaborated: ‘This can be done by a Christian for two reasons: one is obedience to his Lord, the other is purely pragmatic, namely, that one is going to miss the meaning of life if one doesn’t.’ It proved for Paton to be the prescription for a long and industrious life, full of service, courage and accomplishment’.3 After graduation, Paton worked as a teacher, initially at Ixopo High School and subsequently at Maritzburg College. He served as the principal of the Diepkloof Reformatory for young ‘native African’ offenders from 1935 to 1949, where, under Jan Hofmeyr’s enlightened leadership of the Department

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of Education while serving in the Cabinet of prime minister Jan Smuts, ‘he introduced controversial progressive reforms,  including policies on open dormitories, work permits, and home visitation’.4 Due to poor health, Paton was declared unfit for active service during World War II.  After the war he undertook a study tour, at his own expense, to correctional facilities across the world, including in Scandinavia, England, continental Europe, Canada and the United States. While in Norway, he began work on his seminal novel Cry, the Beloved Country, finishing it in San Francisco on Christmas Eve 1946.  He shared the manuscript with friends whom he was visiting in the United States. They were deeply moved by it, suggested some changes and then identified a publisher.5 Paton wrote Cry, the Beloved Country  in order to draw attention to the destructive effects of the social structures in South Africa that would later produce apartheid.6  In the novel, Paton endeavoured to provide an objective view of the divisions it described. He showed whites as affected by ‘native crime’ while blacks suffered from social and moral instability as a result of the disintegration of tribal social structures driven largely by urbanisation and economic forces.7 In 1948, four months after the publication of Cry, the Beloved Country, the right-wing National Party  became the elected government in South Africa. The book proved to be a spectacular success and has been credited with raising awareness of apartheid around the world. By the time of Paton’s death in 1988, it had sold more than 15 million copies internationally. After completing Cry, the Beloved Country, Paton resigned from his post in Diepkloof and moved to the KwaZulu-Natal coast to focus on his writing. However, he often felt torn between his two callings and later said, ‘My whole life has been a struggle between the writer and the activist, and it has not stopped.’ In his view, the political situation in the country was deteriorating, so he was reluctantly drawn into politics. In 1951, he was among a group who met in Pietermaritzburg to discuss how best to respond to the government’s steady entrenchment of apartheid, and the resulting oppression. Peter Brown and Henry Selby Msimang were also present and, in early 1953, this group formed the Liberal Association, which was a merger of several liberal groups under the leadership of Paton, together with Margaret Ballinger, Edgar Brookes and Leo Marquard.8 In May 1953, after the National Party won a second general election victory, the Liberal Association became the Liberal Party of South Africa (LPSA), with Paton one of its four founding co-vice-presidents. The party’s objective was to fight against the discriminatory and oppressive apartheid laws introduced by the National Party government. The LPSA was opposed to racebased exclusion from political participation, and its membership was open to all races. Initially, the LPSA advocated the franchise to be ‘extended gradually on a common roll to all adult persons, without any literacy, income or other qualifications’. The party subsequently

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changed its policy to immediate universal suffrage. Among other policy positions, the LPSA demanded a constitution that contained a bill of rights that made education available for all, and included freedom of association in political and trade union activities. While its initial focus was on procedural or political rights, rather than on substantive or socio-economic rights, it soon realised the necessity of a shift towards social democracy.9 Although the party initially had a predominantly white membership, this changed over time as more black people joined, several of whom held senior leadership positions in the party. The LPSA opposed the use of violence, supported only constitutional and democratic means to achieve its objectives, and was clearly anti-communist and opposed to ‘all forms of totalitarianism’. Its non-racial policy enabled oppressed people to give voice to their defiance, irking the apartheid government.10  The evolution of the party’s policies is mirrored in Paton’s own philosophy. He had ‘a…grasp of the [tragic] way good and evil are interwoven in human history’,11 and thus possessed a ‘modesty’ that enabled him to appreciate the good that even small-scale or modest initiatives and contributions could achieve.12 These charitable or community ‘commitments expressed his larger conviction that, as he said elsewhere, “[the] only power which can resist the power of fear is the power of love”’ – that the only way to achieve justice in South Africa was through change in the hearts of enough people to make a difference.13 The more militant party members who criticised Paton for proposing ‘love’ as a solution to social and political injustice appeared not to realise how much of the preparatory work for their political activism had been undertaken by the voluntary organisations of the kind in which Paton worked and which he supported. While Paton believed that the ‘root causes’ of ‘black crime’ lay in the social, economic and political conditions in South Africa, ‘for which whites were largely responsible, he also knew [from his own social work] what painstaking care, what investment of self, and what demands on the individual black person were involved in undoing the effects of these causes’. Paton recognised that ‘even his best efforts did not always succeed’ and that despite all the good he was able to accomplish at Diepkloof, ‘he was never able to eliminate corporal punishment entirely. All this gave him a kind of clear-eyed wisdom’14 that underpinned his tolerant and moderate liberalism. Paton’s liberalism was a matter of strength and courage throughout his life. He came to see, contrary to the majority white view, that ‘white supremacy was at odds with Christian theology15…and was driving South Africa toward disaster’.16 Later, he persisted with his moderation despite the increasing radicalism among those around him – again, at least in part because of his religious convictions. He maintained the belief that love is greater than hate, and that persuasion and reason are better than force and intimidation. He never lost [what is to us now the] perhaps distant conviction that “a man who fights for justice must himself be cleansed and purified”. He resisted the simplified ideologies of both Left and Right.

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His liberalism was not the narcissism of good intentions, but the lifelong commitment of a man who saw reality whole.17 These influences may account in part for his reverential adherence to liberal tenets such as the ‘miracle’ of the rule of law. In Save the Beloved Country, Paton wrote: The Rule of Law is the greatest political achievement of humankind. The Rule of Law is a miracle; it is nothing less than man protecting himself against his own cruelty and selfishness.18 The LPSA’s non-racialism and opposition to communism also created tensions with the then racialised structures of the Congress Alliance,19 and created sympathies with the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Nevertheless, Paton enjoyed a close personal relationship with Chief Albert Luthuli, who became national president of the African National Congress in 1952. Paton was elected as national chairman of the LPSA in 1956 and its president two years later,20 succeeding Margaret Ballinger and serving as its president until its forced dissolution by the government in 1968.21 The fine line walked by the party under his leadership was epitomised by the role he, Bishop Reeves and Alex Hepple played in starting Mandela’s 1956 Treason Trial Defence Fund.22 Paton also delivered a plea in mitigation of sentence in the later Rivonia Trial. Despite his opposition to the use of violence, he said that the accused had had only two alternatives: ‘to bow their heads and submit, or to resist by force’. The defendants should receive clemency, he said; otherwise the future of South Africa would be bleak.23 Other members of the party were instrumental in the formation and functioning of the International Defence and Aid Fund in South Africa,24 although it was originally Paton’s idea.25 The state harassed, intimidated and monitored party members, both black and white. Security branch officers would attend party branch meetings and produce a warrant authorising them to do so. The police would visit families of party members and ask them to persuade their relatives to leave the party. Alan Paton, as party president, was followed by the security branch, his telephone lines were tapped and his house was searched a number of times. In 1960, Paton was presented with the annual Freedom Award by Liberals International. Upon his return from New York, his passport was confiscated, and wasn’t returned to him for ten years.26 Between March 1961 and April 1966, the Suppression of Communism Act was used to ban 41 leading members of the LPSA from participation in political activities, although they were neither members of the Communist Party nor communist sympathisers. In 1968, Parliament passed the Prevention of Political Interference Act, which prohibited interracial political participation. The Progressive Party (PP) and the LPSA, two political parties with non-racial membership, were severely affected. The PP decided not to disband but to become a whitesonly party, but the LPSA felt compelled to disband rather than comply with legislation that was in conflict with its core principle of non-racialism.27

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Paton retired to Botha’s Hill in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, where he lived until his death in 1988. He was a prolific writer and published 19 books as well as poetry and numerous essays between 1948 and his passing.28 In Save the Beloved Country, which he dedicated to Helen Suzman and her lonely opposition role in Parliament, he echoed the title of his first novel and continued to discuss many of the well-known personalities and issues on different sides of South Africa’s struggle over apartheid. His Christian faith was a significant factor in his life and work,29 with the title of one work, Instrument of Thy Peace,30 echoing a traditional Anglican prayer. Paton’s literary achievements are honoured by the annual Alan Paton Award  for nonfiction,31 and his political work has been honoured in the Hall of Freedom of the Liberal International organisation.32 Notes 1 A. Paton, Cry the Beloved Country, ‘Note on the 1987 Edition’ (London: Vintage, 2002).

Accessed April 2020, https://books.google.co.za/books?id=YrXMCQAAQBAJ&printsec=fro ntcover&dq=Cry+the+beloved+country&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj09rq-3Y3pAhWGi1w KHf34CB8Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=Cry%20the%20beloved%20country&f=false. 2 A. Paton, Towards the Mountain: An Autobiography (New York: Scribner, 1980). 3 C. Iannono, ‘Classics Revisited: Alan Paton’s Tragic Liberalism’, The American Scholar 66:3

(1997), p. 442. 4 Iannono, ‘Classics Revisited’, p. 443; L. Chisholm, ‘Education, Punishment and the

Contradictions of Penal Reform: Alan Paton and Diepkloof Reformatory, 1934–1948’, Journal of Southern African Studies 17:1 (1991), pp. 23–42. 5 Iannono, ‘Classics Revisited’, p. 443. 6 S. Watson, ‘Cry, the Beloved Country and the Failure of Liberal Vision’, English in Africa

9:1 (1982), pp. 29–44. Accessed April 2020, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40238499.pdf. 7 Watson, ‘Cry, the Beloved Country and the Failure of Liberal Vision’, pp. 34–35. 8 J. Butler, R. Elphick and D. Welsh (eds), Democratic Liberalism in South Africa: Its History and

Prospect (Cape Town and Johannesburg: David Philip, 1987), pp. 118–119. 9 Butler et al., Democratic Liberalism, p. 119; University of KwaZulu Natal, Alan Paton Centre

and Struggle Archives. Accessed April 2019, http://paton.ukzn.ac.za/Collections/liberal. aspx. 10 Butler et al., Democratic Liberalism, pp. 118–119. 11 Iannono, ‘Classics Revisited’, p. 445. 12 Iannono, ‘Classics Revisited’, p. 447. 13 Iannono, ‘Classics Revisited’, p. 447. 14 Iannono, ‘Classics Revisited’, p. 447–448. 15 L.M. Martinez, ‘Exploring the Relationship between Paton’s Ideology and His Context’,

LiCuS 3 (2007), pp. 105–106. 16 Iannono, ‘Classics Revisited’, p. 451. 17 Iannono, ‘Classics Revisited’, p. 451. 18 Cited in M. Black, ‘Alan Paton and the Rule of Law’, African Affairs 91:362 (1992), p. 55.

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19 The Congress Movement consisted of the ANC for black Africans, the separate South

African Indian Congress and the Coloured People’s Congress. See Butler at al., Democratic Liberalism, p. 119, and N. Ndebele, ‘The African National Congress and the Policy of NonRacialism: A Study of the Membership Issue’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 29:2 (2002), p. 136. 20 Butler et al., Democratic Liberalism, p. 119. 21 Butler et al., Democratic Liberalism, p. 132; University of KwaZulu Natal, Alan Paton Centre

and Struggle Archives. 22 R.N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (London: Abacus, 1994), p. 237. 23 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, pp. 444–445. 24 Butler et al., Democratic Liberalism, p. 122. 25  Concord, Newsletter of the Alan Paton Centre and Struggle Archives, University of

KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg Campus, No. 12 (June 2009), p. 9. Accessed April 2020, http://paton.ukzn.ac.za/Files/Concord%202009.pdf. 26 H. Mitgang, ‘Alan Paton, Author Who Fought against Apartheid, Is Dead at 85’, New York

Times 13 April 1988. Accessed April 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/13/obituaries/ alan-paton-author-who-fought-against-apartheid-is-dead-at-85.html?pagewanted=all. 27 Butler et al., Democratic Liberalism, p. 132; University of KwaZulu Natal, Alan Paton Centre

and Struggle Archives. 28 M.B. Greeff, ‘Alan Paton: A Psychobiographical Study’, mini-dissertation, MSc Clinical

Psychology, University of the Free State, 2010. 29 Mitgang, ‘Alan Paton’; Martínez, ‘Exploring the Relationship’, p. 105. 30 A. Paton, Instrument of Thy Peace: The Prayer of St. Francis (New York: Seabury Press, 1975). 31  TimesLive (2019) ‘Sunday Times Literary Awards’, Sunday Times 21 July. Accessed July 2019,

https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/books/news/2019-07-21-the-2019-sunday-timesliterary-awards-shortlists/. 32 Liberal International, ‘Alan Stewart Paton (1903–1988)’ (n.d.). Accessed July 2019, https://

www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/books/news/2019-07-21-the-2019-sunday-times-literaryawards-shortlists/.

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Es’kia Mphahlele: ‘Afrikan humanness and Afrikan becoming’

Es’kia Mphahlele: ‘Afrikan humanness and Afrikan becoming’ Gavaza Maluleke

1919–2008

Teacher, lecturer, cultural worker and activist Ezekial ‘Es’kia’ Mphahlele was a prolific writer whose curiosity, talent and hard work took him around the world. He lived, taught and worked in Europe, the United States and many African countries. But when he questioned the meaning of his life’s work, he realised he had to return to South Africa – apartheid warts and all. Mphahlele was born in Marabastad, Pretoria, and grew up in Maupaneng, a village outside Polokwane, where he and his siblings lived with his grandmother. When he was 13, he moved back to Marabastad where he went to school at St Peter’s College, Rosettenville.1 In 1935, he received a scholarship to study at Adams College, a prestigious Christian mission school for black students in what was then Natal, where he graduated with a teacher’s certificate in 1940. Soon after, he started working as a teacher and a shorthand typist at the Ezenzeleni Institute for the Blind in Roodepoort, while completing his matric via correspondence. The 1940s were a busy period for Mphahlele because he carried on with his studies while working. He also entered the world of political activism. He started teaching English and Afrikaans at Orlando High School, where he met other young teachers and soon became active in the Transvaal African Teachers Association (Tata). The introduction of the Bantu Education Act saw the emergence of opposition from Tata together with other teachers’ organisations in the Cape, the Free State and Natal.2 During this period, Mphahlele received a BA from the University of South Africa and published his first book of stories, Man Must Live, in 1946. It was around this time that Mphahlele married Rebecca Mochadibane, a social worker, and subsequently had four children – Anthony, Motswiri, Chabi Robert and Puso.3 In 1949, Mphahlele co-founded an independent African-run newspaper,  The Voice of Africa, or The Voice, which had an explicitly African nationalist agenda. The Voice and its editors, according to Tshepo Madlingozi,4 criticised the ANC for being elitist and assimilationist,

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while pointing out the hypocrisy of white liberals. Mphahlele penned a five-part series titled ‘What It Means to Be a Black Man’, in which he rejected the moralising pretences of Western civilisation by revealing the different ways in which the South African legal system worked to subjugate black people.5 Some of Mphahlele’s work was political; however, it was his public participation in the mobilisation against the Bantu Education Act that saw him getting fired from his teaching job, and his career as an educator coming to a halt. After this, The Voice shut down, which prompted Mphahlele to undertake his first journey into physical exile, taking up a teaching post in Lesotho in 1954. A year later he was back in South Africa, obtaining a master’s degree in English with distinction from the University of South Africa (Unisa). In his dissertation, he critiqued the representations of black and white characters in South African literature.6 Since he was barred from teaching, Mphahlele began contributing short stories to Drum, New Age and other magazines. He worked at Drum magazine as a fiction editor, sub-editor and political reporter, but he never became part of the Drum ‘gang’. He left the magazine after two years because he found the liminal space occupied by those at the border of the black world and the white world to be idealistic and meaningless. To him, the Drum gang’s attitude towards apartheid and racial categorisation bordered on ignorance, which often led to their work ridiculing overt political mobilisation. According to Mandlingozi, their liminality did not go far enough, because it did not require the colonised to address questions of identity, double consciousness, ambivalence and nonbelonging. However, Mphahlele’s involvement in the ANC’s politics of integration also left him disillusioned as, in his view, their politics recentred white people, and would never result in meaningful change.7 In 1957, he went into self-imposed exile. He shares his thoughts on this in his autobiographical book, Down Second Avenue, writing: ‘I was suddenly seized by a desire to leave South Africa for more sky to soar’ because he felt he was ‘shriveling in the acid of my bitterness’.8 This act of self-exile began a 20-year period in which he saw his literary and academic career take off. He spent four years in Nigeria, where he worked both at a school and at the University of Ibadan. He worked on his writing and, in 1961, The Living and the Dead was published. His experience in Nigeria was a freeing one, and as he wrote: ‘It was a fruitful experience. The people of Nigeria were generous. The condition of being an outsider was not burdensome. I had time to write and engage in the arts.’ 9 Being in Nigeria also allowed him to work with the best in the literary and academic worlds in Nigeria and Ghana, such as Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and Christopher Okigbo, to mention but three. In 1961, Mphahlele and his family moved to France, where he became the director of an international cultural centre in Paris. He mastered French very quickly, which opened up the rich world of francophone African poets and novelists to him. The cosmopolitan experience in Paris allowed him to view Western culture from the inside. While in Paris, Mphahlele set up an Mbari Centre in  Enugu, Nigeria, under the directorship of  John Enekwe. He also organised several conferences in Kampala, Dakar and Freetown, with the aim of opening up debate about the place of African literature in the university curriculum.10 A suggestion by

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John Hunt, the executive director of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, prompted his next move – to Kenya – where Hunt wanted Mphahlele to establish a centre similar to the Mbari Centre.11 He spent two years in Kenya establishing the centre, and whilst there he published In Corner B. After this, he moved to Denver, Colorado, to finish his PhD, which took the form of his first novel, The Wanderers, and earned him a teaching post at the University of Denver. While there, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.12 He was later appointed professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Mphahlele’s main preoccupation in the United States was his engagement with the dilemma of whether Americans of African descent should seek a cultural and symbolic return to Africa, or assert their identity as black Americans. This resulted in a collection of essays titled the Voices in the Whirlwind (1973), where he made a case for black Americans to pursue their self-realisation project in the United States, instead of on the African continent.13 In 1977, Mphahlele gave up his university post, ending his 20 years of self-exile by returning to apartheid South Africa. In a statement to the New York Times as he was leaving, he said: ‘I couldn’t grasp the cultural goals of the Americans. I found them so fragmented. I asked myself, “What am  I contributing to American education?” I had no answer.’14 Upon arrival in South Africa, he was the first black professor to be appointed at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he taught African literature and created a department devoted to the subject. While there, he wrote two more novels, Chirundu in 1980 and Father Come Home in 1984, as well as a second volume of memoirs, Afrika My Music, in 1984.15 He founded the Es’kia Institute in 2002, an arts organisation working on the preservation of traditional African culture. Mphahlele focused efforts into teaching, hosting writing workshops, and other conscientisation processes. He co-founded black-people-only programmes, including the Pan-African Writers Association and the Council for Black Education and Research, which were explicitly inspired by the Black Consciousness Movement. Through these programmes, he aimed to cultivate black self-reliance, self-pride and self-determination in order to shift black people’s consciousness beyond the poetics of bitterness and hatred of white people.16 Mphahlele did his best to alert South Africans to the pitfalls surrounding non-racialism and ‘the reconciliation project’ as they would not create a conducive environment to reassert ‘Afrikan humanness’ and ‘Afrikan becoming’. He warned that the constitutional negotiations between black and white elites would only result in a transition from white domination to white hegemony, which is a scenario in evidence today. As he rightly predicted, ‘[A] decolonial project focused on whiteness, or repeating colonial ideas of Africa and blackness, cannot enable a genuine return to “the source”.’17 Mphahlele was the recipient of numerous international awards. In 1969, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in 1984, he was awarded the Order of the Palm by the French government for his contribution to French language and culture. He was the recipient of the 1998 World Economic Forum Crystal Award for Outstanding Service to the Arts and Education. In 1998, former president Nelson Mandela awarded Mphahlele the Order of the Southern Cross, then the highest recognition granted by the South African government (equivalent today

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to the Order of Mapungubwe).18 He was awarded several honorary doctorates, including from the University of Pennsylvania (1982), the University of Natal (1983), Rhodes University (1986), the University of Colorado (1994), the University of Limpopo (1995), the University of Denver (1999), the University of Cape Town (2003) and the University of Pretoria (2004). Notes 1 P.N. Thuynsma, Es’kia Mphahlele 1919 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1997). 2 E. Mphahlele, Down Second Avenue (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2004). 3 W. Grimes, ‘Es’kia Mphahlele, Chronicler of Apartheid, Dies at 88’, The New York Times

31 October 2008. Accessed April 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/01/world/ africa/01mphahlele.html. 4 T. Madlingozi, ‘Decolonising “Decolonisation” with Es’kia Mphahlele’, Power987

Online 1 November 2018. Accessed May 2019, https://www.power987.co.za/culture/life/ decolonising-decolonisation-with-eskia-mphahlele/. 5 Madlingozi, ‘Decolonising “Decolonisation”’. 6 Madlingozi, ‘Decolonising “Decolonisation”’. 7 Madlingozi, ‘Decolonising “Decolonisation”’. 8 Cited in Grimes, ‘Es’kia Mphahlele, Chronicler of Apartheid’. 9  News24, ‘A Journey Toward Reviving the African Humanism for a “New World”’, 1 August

2017. Accessed June 2019, https://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Featured/a-journeytoward-reviving-the-african-humanism-for-a-new-world-20170801. 10  News24, ‘A Journey Toward Reviving the African Humanism’. 11  News24, ‘A Journey Toward Reviving the African Humanism’. 12  News24, ‘A Journey Toward Reviving the African Humanism’. 13 Madlingozi, ‘Decolonising “Decolonisation”’. 14 Showme, ‘Dr Es’kia Mphahlele’ (n.d.). Accessed April 2019, https://showme.co.za/pretoria/

tourism/dr-eskia-mphahlele/. 15 Showme, ‘Dr Es’kia Mphahlele’. 16 Madlingozi, ‘Decolonising “Decolonisation”’. 17 Madlingozi, ‘Decolonising “Decolonisation”’. 18  City Press, ‘Celebrate Pan-African Writers with Es’kia Mphahlele and the Market Theatre’,

31 October 2008. Accessed April 2019, https://city-press.news24.com/Trending/celebratepan-african-writers-with-eskia-mphahlele-and-the-market-theatre-20171031.

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Nadine Gordimer: Writer with a conscience

Nadine Gordimer: Writer with a conscience Joleen Steyn Kotze

1923–2014

Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer is one of South Africa’s greatest literary treasures. A selfproclaimed political novelist by accident of birth,1 Gordimer grew up in a home that was not particularly politically conscious. She described her father as ‘uninterested’ in the political realities of segregated South Africa, even though ‘he was kind, but kindness is not the thing, is it?’.2 Gordimer described her mother as caring towards others and ‘troubled by the conditions under which blacks lived. But it would never have occurred to her that the answer was radical political change.’3 Elsewhere, she observed that her mother always felt pity for blacks that they were poor. She did a lot of charity work, and she helped run a crèche, but it never occurred to her that what was really wrong was that they were in a position to be pitied. They didn’t have basic rights.4 Her political awakening came through literature. Reflecting on her years growing up, Gordimer felt that she had an odd and lonely childhood, and found escape in reading. Her proverbial awakening to the lived realities of oppression in which black South Africans found themselves came through Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which detailed the lives of meatpackers in Chicago, and allowing Gordimer to see comparisons between black South Africans and the characters in Sinclair’s book.5 As she grew up, literature and stories allowed her to draw ‘parallels between my daily life and what I discovered in books – particularly about the class struggle.’6 When she started university, Gordimer interacted for the first time with black South Africans who had education, interests and passions similar to hers; and this allowed her to see the realities of apartheid South Africa differently from how her parents did: ‘They wrote, painted, played and wrote music. For artists, race is not a barrier. That’s how I came to see things differently from my parents. I can’t tell you if my family was truly racist. I believe that many people like them – and it continues today – do not ask themselves questions that are likely to upset them.’7

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Gordimer engaged difficult questions about herself, her position in apartheid South Africa, and the unjust system that oppressed the majority of its people. She was particularly aware of her privilege by virtue of being white in a society that oppressed those who were not. For Gordimer, her awakening to the social and political realities of the apartheid state’s oppression of black people was a ‘kind of rebirth’, allowing her to, not just comprehend, but appreciate the daily struggles of oppression non-white South Africans had to endure.8 This experience allowed her to embrace all people of South Africa, in that at first the individual sees only the offense done to blacks. But then that person perceives that it is likewise an offense done to whites – that one’s life, even if extraordinarily privileged, is diminished by the fact that all normal contact is impossible with the majority of the people in one’s country. I realised that ‘my’ people were not just the whites of South Africa, but the whole population. Little by little as time went on, I understood that I was not a European. I am a white African. That is now totally clear to me.9 Her work, described by the Alfred Nobel Prize website as ‘magnificent epic writing [that] has…been of very great benefit to humanity’,10 interrogates privilege, political persecution and the inhumane realities of life under apartheid, and also explores the need and hence search for belonging. Indeed, as Holcombe notes, Gordimer’s words carry ‘extraordinary power and acuity’.11 For Holcombe, the power of Gordimer’s work is found in her uncanny ability to link personal experiences to political contexts, which brings forth a ‘redemptive power of humanity; its ability to overcome what she has called “the violence of pain”’.12 Gordimer started writing stories at the age of nine, and at 15 she published her first short story in a Johannesburg liberal-orientated magazine called Forum.13 For Gordimer, writing was natural; her talent for storytelling through the written word was ‘just there. It’s a way of life for me’. Gordimer is seen as the ‘the conscience of South African literature’.14 Creating what some saw as a new way of writing protest literature,15 her work focused, not on the grand gestures of resistance against apartheid, but rather, through her storytelling, on bringing to life the deplorable impact that apartheid had on the lives of ordinary South Africans.16 She engaged themes of social justice, isolation, a stubborn refusal to go into exile and questions of identity.17 Indeed, her work portrayed the realities of ordinary South Africans, giving ‘the “voiceless” masses of our people a voice through which to claim agency over their lives and the realities of apartheid’.18 As Marcoux notes, Gordimer’s strengths were characterisation, language and artistic form which enabled her to bring the ‘political into her novels, rather than project it’.19 Yet, Gordimer did not see herself as a political novelist. Rather, the realities of the brutal and unfair world of apartheid shaped her writing as she struggled with identity, equality and a sense of belonging: You see, writing is not for me a political activity. Before anything else, I am a writer. But because the society in which I live is so permeated with politics,

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my work has become intimately connected with the translation of political events, of the way politics affects the lives of people. I imagine that the South African government considers me a political adversary – as if I was utilising my profession to combat it. But I myself would not call what I do a political activity, because even if I lived elsewhere, I would still be a writer.20 Gordimer’s involvement in the struggle against apartheid followed the arrest of her best friend, Bettie du Toit, after the Sharpeville massacre.21 It is believed that her renowned novel Burger’s Daughter, published in 1979 and banned in South Africa, paid a ‘coded homage’ to those involved in the infamous Rivonia Trial.22 Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter was banned because the apartheid state regarded the book as promoting communism and adverse criticism in a society where race was highly politicised.23 For Gordimer, however, while she felt that what she had to say would not be understood,24 the tremendous political influences, political entities, became the entities of my life around me…Rosa’s life [character in Burger’s Daughter] was not mine. I was not born into a political family like hers, but I became more and more fascinated by observing and knowing, in some cases rather well, people who were. They became mysterious and fascinating beings to me and still are – and [there is] also a certain awe around them. People of such courage, a combination of almost selflessness, gaiety, and appetite for life that you wouldn’t think would go together. One thinks of selflessness in terms of meekness and withdrawal…But these people were just the opposite. They seemed to live life so fully.25 Even though the apartheid government banned three of her books in the 1960s and 1970s and placed embargoes on others,26 Gordimer demonstrated a great commitment to remain in South Africa and not go into exile, as did many of her contemporaries. While she was often torn between remaining in South Africa and going into exile, Gordimer ultimately felt that she belonged to her country and her people, regardless of race.27 She saw herself as inherently African and, as such, also interrogated white identity and belonging in South Africa, most notably through her essay ‘Where Do Whites Fit In?’: If one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay in Africa…I myself fluctuate between the desire to be gone – to find a society for myself where my white skin will have no bearing on my place in the community – and a terrible, obstinate and fearful desire to stay. I feel the one desire with my head and the other with my gut.28 Gordimer’s legacy is one that sought to challenge what was considered a natural order to things. Her writing and stories tell the tales of the connection between the personal and the political, but also reveal a deeply personal journey of discovery and self-reflection. She leaves the legacy of a brave writer, who wrote what she saw and experienced in the daily routines of life in apartheid South Africa. More importantly, she fearlessly delved into the depths of herself to

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find identity, belonging and truth at a time when it mattered the most. She lived by her words: ‘When one is sitting down and writing something, one mustn’t refuse any truth that comes to mind, one mustn’t censor oneself from following any line of thought.’29 Notes 1 D. Loercher, ‘South Africa’s Nadine Gordimer: Novelist with a Conscience’ in N. Topping-

Bazin and M. Dallman Seymour (eds), Conversations with Nadine Gordimer (Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 1990), p. 96. 2 Cited in N. Wyn-Ellis, ‘In Black and White’ in Topping-Bazin and Seymour, Conversations

with Nadine Gordimer, pp. 91–92. 3 Cited in Wyn-Ellis, ‘In Black and White’, p. 92. 4 Cited in Loercher, ‘South Africa’s Nadine Gordimer’, p. 98. 5 Cited in Loercher, ‘South Africa’s Nadine Gordimer’, p. 98. 6 Cited in C. Servan-Schreiber, ‘Nadine Gordimer: A White African against Apartheid’ in

Topping-Bazin and Seymour, Conversations with Nadine Gordimer. 7 Cited in Servan-Schreiber, ‘Nadine Gordimer: A White African against Apartheid’. 8 Cited in Servan-Schreiber, ‘Nadine Gordimer: A White African against Apartheid’,

pp. 117–118. 9 Cited in Servan-Schreiber, ‘Nadine Gordimer: A White African against Apartheid’,

pp. 117–118. 10 The Nobel Prize, ‘The Nobel Prize in Literature 1991: Nadine Gordimer Facts’ (n.d.).

Accessed September 2019, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1991/gordimer/ facts/. 11 G. Holcombe, Nadine Gordimer: Critical Perspective (British Council 2008). Accessed

September 2019, https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/nadine-gordimer. 12 G. Holcombe, Nadine Gordimer. 13 Holcombe, Nadine Gordimer: Critical Perspective. 14 Freedom of Expression Institute, ‘Nadine Gordimer: A Life Well-Lived Serving Truth in

South Africa’s Democracy’ (2014). Accessed September 2019, https://www.fxi.org.za/docspress-releases/NADINE-GORDIMER.pdf. 15 N. Marcoux, ‘Nadine Gordimer and the Politics of Literature in the Twentieth Century:

Redefining the Responsibilities of Political Literature’, Honours dissertation, University of Michigan, 2012, pp. 3–7. 16 The Nobel Prize, ‘The Nobel Prize in Literature 1991’ (n.d.). 17 Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Nadine Gordimer: South African Author’ (n.d.). Accessed

September 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nobel-Prize. 18 Freedom of Expression Institute, ‘Nadine Gordimer: A Life Well-Lived’. 19 Marcoux, ‘Nadine Gordimer and the Politics of Literature’, p. 7. 20 Cited in Servan-Schreiber, ‘Nadine Gordimer: A White African against Apartheid’, p. 114. 21 D. Walder, ‘Nadine Gordimer Obituary’, The Guardian 14 July 2014. Accessed September

2019, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/14/nadine-gordimer. 22 Walder, ‘Nadine Gordimer Obituary’.

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23 S. Barrett, ‘“What I Say Will Not Be Understood”: Intertextuality as a Subversive Force

in Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter’, E-rea 2:1 (2004). Accessed October 2019, https:// journals.openedition.org/erea/491. 24 Barrett, ‘“What I Say Will Not Be Understood”’. 25 Cited in Loercher, ‘South Africa’s Nadine Gordimer’, p. 98. 26 Topping-Bazin and Dallman Seymour, Conversations with Nadine Gordimer, p. xi. 27 Cited in A. Salkey, ‘Nadine Gordimer Talks to Andrew Salkey’ in Topping-Bazin and

Dallman Seymour (eds), Conversations with Nadine Gordimer, p. 44. 28 Cited in Marcoux, ‘Nadine Gordimer and the Politics of Literature’, p. 3. 29 Topping-Bazin and Dallman Seymour, Conversations with Nadine Gordimer.

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André Brink: Controversial author Hester du Plessis

1935–2015

André Brink was a prolific South African novelist who approached life, love and literature with passion and verve. He was one of the band of Afrikaans writers who lived and studied in France, and brought an element of French joie de vivre back to South Africa. But his writing did more than just push the boundaries of Afrikaans literature by dealing with the previously taboo subjects of love, passion and sex. His political writing trod that fine line between deep criticism of apartheid and all it stood for, and a celebration of what was (and is) good about Afrikaner heritage. In short, his aim was to ‘liberate the Afrikaner from the ideology in which he has come to negate his better self’.1 He wrote in both English and Afrikaans, and lectured in English literature. Born in the Free State and schooled in Lydenburg, Brink studied Afrikaans literature at the Afrikaner-dominated Potchefstroom University. Like his peers of that time, he left for France (1959 to 1961), where he obtained a PhD at the Sorbonne University in Paris in comparative literature. His decision to study at the Sorbonne is considered significant since ‘the resort to European, particularly French, models is what distinguishes South African literature after about 1960 from the literature from other Anglophone ex-colonies’.2 Here, like Jan Rabie, Breyten Breytenbach and others, he found his literary home, while at the same time becoming aware of the socio-political horrors of apartheid. Once back home, along with other rebellious young Afrikaans writers (including the novelists Etienne Leroux, John Miles, Ampie Coetzee and Breyten Breytenbach) he used his writing to oppose the Nationalist Party’s apartheid policy in the 1960s. This group, together with the poet Ingrid Jonker, became key figures in the noteworthy Afrikaans literary movement known as Die Sestigers (The Sixtyers). The group of writers intended to speak against the apartheid government, and also, in a way, to introduce contemporary French trends into Afrikaans literature. Brink’s early novels were especially focused on apartheid, but his writing mellowed

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André Brink: Controversial author

and diverged over time to engage with a new range of issues that began to be exposed within the newly democratic South Africa.3 During a second stay in France, between 1967 and 1968, he was obliged to return to South Africa due to the May 1968 student uprisings in Paris. This experience and exposure to social unrest served to harden his political opposition to apartheid. He now attempted to broaden his audience by writing in both Afrikaans and English. In this manner he was able to overcome the censure he was facing from fellow Afrikaners at the time, particularly after his novel, Kennis van die Aand (1973), was banned by the South African government, the first Afrikaner novel to be so treated. Brink retaliated by translating Kennis van die Aand into English and publishing it abroad under the title Looking on Darkness (1973). At that time he also broadened his education and obtained a PhD in literature at Rhodes University (1975). In 2008, long after apartheid had ended, he faced, like so many South Africans encountering the widespread crime of our current times, the cruel death of his nephew Adri Brink, who was murdered in front of his wife and children in their Gauteng home. This was a tragic echo of a scene portrayed in his novel A Chain of Voices (1982). In a highly acclaimed study of Brink’s work, Leon de Kock shows how Brink’s interest in women and his self-confessed sexual prowess infuse his novels.4 As a child of the sixties, he was probably influenced by the sexual free-spiritedness prevalent in Europe during the time he spent there. When Brink contracted a sexually transmitted disease in France, for example, he struggled to identify its source since it could have been ‘either Barbara, Mireille, Kim or Paula’ at that time. This is reminiscent of an account of those times by the French author Michel Houellebecq, in Atomised, his semi-autobiographical account of two brothers who grew up in the free-spirited and fragmented society of the sixties, where shallow ‘new-age’ philosophies and meaningless sex were the order of the day.5 The press played a significant role in turning Brink and his five marriages and affairs into what Antony Giddens described as ‘plastic sensuality – sexuality freed from an intrinsic connection with reproduction, and hence open to innovation and experimentation’.6 What was once accessible only to elites became ‘generalised with the advent of mass contraception: sexuality and identity become far more fluid than in the past’.7 This was part of ‘wider transformations affecting the self and self-identity’. This links with the rise, at the time, of a type of self-identity whereby romantic love introduces the idea of a general ‘narrative’ into a ‘narrative of the self’, as practised by authors like Michel Houellebecq.8 Brink produced a large amount of work during his lifetime. His first novel, Die Band om ons Harte (1956), was a typical love triangle set within the context of the British settlers in the Cape. He published a drama, Caesar (1961), based on the life of the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. It was, however, with the publication of Lobola vir die Lewe (1962) that Brink made his first serious contribution to Afrikaans literature, through its clear recognition of a west-European literary tradition. It is generally considered that Brink was influenced by James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), and he indicated that the main character was inspired by Simone de Beauvoir’s Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome (1960).

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Die Ambassadeur (1963) was similar in context to Lobola vir die Lewe, but is set in Paris. Orgie (1965) was written during the time of his affair with the poet Ingrid Jonker and was also dedicated to her. Miskien Nooit (1967) was dedicated to Breyten Breytenbach and his wife Yolande, and was written in their home in Paris. Love at that time remained central to his writing. It was only with the novel Kennis van die Aand that attention shifted to the political situation in South Africa. He commented on this work, referenced by Human,9 as being ‘committed to exploring and exploiting the South African political situation specifically in order to comment on its neo-colonity in a way which directly attempts to change it’.10 Pravane (1974), ’n Oomblink in die Wind (1975) and Gerugte van Reën (1978) quickly followed. It was with the politically based ’n Droë Wit Seisoen (1979), published by the underground publishing house Taurus, that Brink really caught attention. The title is based on a poem by Mongane Wally Serote with the same title. Of this work, Human quoted Brink as saying: [The dissent writer’s] struggle is not just against what is evil in the Afrikaner, but for what he perceives to be his potential for good. In other words, it is not just a struggle aimed at the liberation for blacks from oppression by whites but also a struggle for the liberation of the Afrikaner from the ideology in which he has come to negate his better self.11 Brink retained this stance throughout the remainder of his work. Brink received the Hertzog Prize for Afrikaans Literature for Donkermaan (2000), but his work Anderkant die Stilte (2002) was criticised as rife with stereotyping and caricatures, and of little literary merit. His work started to shift to somewhat surrealistic backgrounds, alienating many of his readers. Bidsprinkaan (2005) and the story of the slave told in Philida (2012) were not received without controversy. Brink died in 2015 while on a flight from Amsterdam to South Africa. He was returning to South Africa from Belgium after receiving an honorary doctorate from the Belgian francophone Université Catholique de Louvain, accompanied by his fifth wife, Karina Szczurek. She wrote of him, and of his death: ‘I knew André had never been ordinary. He did everything his own way. He also died on his own terms, quickly and without prolonged suffering – the way he wanted. He was not alone; the person who loved him most in the world accompanied him during these last minutes of his life.’12 Notes 1 T. Human, ‘André P. Brink (1935–2015)’ in H.P. van Coller (ed.), Perspektief en Profiel: ’n

Afrikaanse Literatuurgeskiedenis Deel 1 (Pretoria: Van Schaik Uitgewers, 2015), p. 452. 2 N. Wroe, ‘Out of the Laager’ in W. Burger and K.M. Szczurek (eds), Contrary: Critical

Responses to the Novels of André P. Brink (Pretoria: Protea Book House, 2013), pp. 30–31. 3 Human, ‘André P. Brink (1935–2015)’.

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4 L. De Kock, André P. Brink en die Spel van die Liefde (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball

Publishers, 2019). 5 M. Houellebecq, Atomised (London: Vintage, 2007). 6 L. de Kock, ‘Resensie: Kennis van die Naglewe’, Rapport 12 Mei 2019. 7 A. Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies

(Cambridge: Polity, 1992). 8 De Kock, ‘Resensie’. 9 Human, ‘André P. Brink (1935–2015)’. 10 G. Meintjies, ‘André Brink’s Prose Oeuvre: An Overview (1996, 1998, 2009)’ in Burger and

Szczurek (eds), Contrary, p. 43. 11 Human, ‘André P. Brink (1935–2015)’, p. 452. 12 K.M. Szczurek, The Fifth Mrs Brink, A Memoir (Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2017).

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Eugène Marais: Author and naturalist Hester du Plessis

1871–1936

Eugène Nielen Marais had a charismatic personality, an uncanny affinity with horses and was beloved by children for his vivid imagination and gentleness.1 But it was for his sublime poetry, insightful prose and prophetic scientific discoveries that this brilliant polymath was to be remembered. Battling depression and morphine addiction, Marais found respite in the solitude of the bush. Spending hours alone in the Waterberg, he would observe everything – snakes, birds, animals and insects. His in-depth studies of baboons and termites, later published respectively as The Soul of the Ape and The Soul of the White Ant, were to earn him a place in the annals of science, most notably in the fields that were later to be called psychology and evolutionary biology. His studies of termites, for example, led him to the significant conclusion that the termite colony should be considered as a single organism, a perceptive insight that was later elaborated by Richard Dawkins. In an era in which serious scientists had to be published in English or French, Marais published his observations on the termites of the Waterberg serially in Afrikaans-language publications Die Burger in 1923, and Huisgenoot in 1925 and 1926. So his groundbreaking research had a very small audience largely restricted to Afrikaans-speaking people in South Africa. Nonetheless, very soon after Marais’s serialised study appeared in Afrikaans, the Belgian Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck, who had never seen a termite, but who knew Flemish and thus understood Afrikaans, published his internationally acclaimed La Vie des Termites in 1926 without acknowledging Marais. Faithfully reproducing Marais’s thesis, and containing almost word-for-word similarities, Maeterlinck’s work has subsequently been acknowledged as blatant plagiarism.2  Marais tried to find justice through the South African press and an attempted international lawsuit, but it was financially impossible, so he did not pursue the case. However, Marais became popularly known because he was the aggrieved party and an

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Afrikaner researcher who had opened himself up to plagiarism because he published his work in Afrikaans out of nationalistic loyalty. Marais brooded at the time of the scandal: ‘I wonder whether Maeterlinck blushes when he reads such things [critical acclaim], and whether he gives a thought to the injustice he does to the unknown Boer worker?’3 Impervious to any misgivings, Maeterlinck made no reference to Eugène Marais in his bibliography and his other works on entomology, including The Life of the Ant (1930). Marais was an accidental scientist. He matriculated in 1887 at the age of 16, and joined his older brother’s law firm Kurunda & Marais as an articled clerk. But he was bored, so he also worked part-time as a journalist on the Transvaal Advertiser,4 where he earned a reputation as a fearless critic of Kruger’s government, most notably of the way in which concessions were awarded for businesses allied to the rapidly developing gold mines – a nineteenth-century version of the tenderpreneurism that still plagues South Africa. In 1890, at the age of 19, Marais was appointed editor of the Afrikaans newspaper Land en Volk, specifically to continue his campaign against corruption in the government of the day. Notably, this was the only Dutch-Afrikaans opposition newspaper in the Transvaal. It was here that his poetic ear came in handy, as he struggled to write and publish in a language that – as yet – did not actually exist, and that was fraught with inconsistencies in spelling, usage and pronunciation.5 But succeed he did – and he also published an extensive anthology of Afrikaans poems. In 1897, when he was in his mid-twenties, Marais abandoned journalism and went to London to study medicine, but ended up studying law (even though he had found legal articles boring) and eventually qualified as an advocate. He was in London when the South African War broke out in 1899, and was declared an enemy alien, so he made his way back to South Africa via Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique). He contracted malaria and languished there for months, possibly sustained by laudanum (morphine dissolved in alcohol), which was an accepted malaria treatment at the time. He reached Pretoria only after the end of the war. In 1906, at the age of 36, Marais settled in the Waterberg on the farm Doornhoek and joined a group of prospectors who were interested in mining tin. These tin deposits were fairly well distributed in the region, and its mining was part of the ancient trade route between Great Zimbabwe and the Rooiberg in the Waterberg region of what is now the Limpopo province in South Africa.6 While living amongst the prospectors, Marais started to observe the behaviour of a troop of baboons living close by. His observations and notes were later published under the title Die Siel van die Aap.7 A mining company from Johannesburg took over the farm Doornhoek in 1908, and he moved to the farm Rietfontein. From there he served as a medic for the Doornfontein mine, and it was during this time that he made a study of termite colonies in the vicinity.8

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In 1916, he eventually had to leave his beloved Waterberg and settled in the Sunnyside/ Muckleneuk area in Pretoria. He committed suicide on 29  March 1936 on his good friend Gustav S. Preller’s farm near Pelindaba.9 Eugène Marais’s legacy is twofold: scientific and literary. In his observations of nature he was one of the pioneers of using animal behaviour to explain human nature, today known as the field of ethology, or evolutionary psychology. It is a discipline that was developed in the years leading up to World War II by the ethologists Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen, and that has changed over the years, as noted by Paul Griffiths: The ‘human ethology’ of the 1960s appears to have been replaced in the early 1970s by a new approach called ‘sociobiology’. Sociobiology in its turn appears to have been replaced by an approach calling itself evolutionary psychology. Closer examination, however, reveals a great deal of continuity between these schools…[However] empirical and theoretical research on the evolution of mind and behaviour is marked by a diversity of ideas and approaches and it is far from clear which direction(s) the field will take in future.10 Marais’s work has been quite controversial, and in later years analysis by Stephen Gray pointed to a number of either misinterpretations or, at best, manipulations to suit the palate of the newly emerging Afrikaner identity.11 This was not unusual for its time and should be seen in the context of history rather than in the context of his individual contributions. His literary works place him amongst the greatest of the Afrikaner poets.12 Described as the first professional Afrikaner poet, Marais played a leading role in the Second Afrikaans Language Movement, which was initiated during 1902. His work remains popular, particularly his poems dealing with nature, the wonders of life, and the inevitability of death. The work of Eugène Marais will remain an inspiration for generations to come. One of his bestknown poems, ‘Winternag’ (Winter night) (1905), is still regarded as one of the most important poems in Afrikaans: O koud is die windjie en skraal. En blink in die dof-lig en kaal, so wyd as die Heer se genade, le die velde in sterlig en skade En hoog in die rande, versprei in die brande, is die grassaad aan roere soos winkende hande.

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O treurig die wysie op die ooswind se maat, soos die lied van ’n meisie in haar liefde verlaat. In elk’ grashalm se vou blink ’n druppel van dou, en vinnig verbleek dit tot ryp in die kou! Breyten Breytenbach wrote one of his most enduring poems in honour of Marais, describing him as being as nakedly vulnerable as a queen termite buried deep underground.13 Notes 1 L. Rousseau, The Dark Stream: The Story of Eugène Marais (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball

Publishers, 1982, 1999), p. 213. 2 Rousseau, The Dark Stream; S. Gray, ‘Soul-Brother Eugène N. Marais: Some

Notes towards a Re-Edit of His Works’, Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 50:2 (2013), pp. 62–80. Accessed April 2019, http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_ arttext&pid=S0041476X2013000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso. 3 P.E. Griffiths, ‘Ethology, Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology’, PhilSci Archive

1 March 2006. Accessed May 2019, http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/2643. 4 Rousseau, The Dark Stream. 5 Rousseau, The Dark Stream. 6 C. van der Merwe, Donker Stroom: Eugène Marais en die Anglo-Boereoorlog (Kaapstad:

Tafelberg Uitgewers, 2015); J.L. Marais, ‘Eugène N. Marais (1871–1963)’ in H.P. van Coller (ed.), Perspektief en Profiel: ’n Afrikaanse Literatuurgeskiedenis, Deel 2 (Pretoria: Van Schaik Uitgewers, 2015); A. Brink, Aspekte van die Nuwe Prosa (Pretoria: Academica, 1972). 7 E. Marais, The Soul of the Ape (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1969). 8 D. Pinnock, Worker in A Science Yet Unborn (n.d.). Accessed December 2011,

www.southernwrite.net. 9 Marais, ‘Eugène N. Marais (1871–1963)’; Brink, Aspekte van die Nuwe Prosa. 10 Griffiths, ‘Ethology, Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology’. 11 Gray, ‘Soul-Brother Eugène N. Marais’. 12 Marais, ‘Eugène N. Marais (1871–1963)’. 13 B. Breytenbach, ‘Die Blindes Luister met die Oë’ in B. Breytenbach, Skryt: Om ’n Sinkende

Skip Blou te Verf: Verse en Tekeninge (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1972).

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N.P. van Wyk Louw: Poet and intellectual Marie Wentzel

1906–1970

Nicolaas Petrus ‘N.P.’ van Wyk Louw was a renowned Afrikaans language poet, playwright, lecturer, cultural theorist and intellectual. As an important member of the ‘Dertigers’ movement (poets of the thirties), he published some of the most influential poetry, prose, plays and dramatic work in Afrikaans. His strong nationalism was tempered by a prescient understanding that the ‘continued existence’ of Afrikaners would only be sustainable in a ‘righteous relationship to the other Peoples of South Africa’.1 By the 1950s Van Wyk Louw was the principal writer in Afrikaans literature. Olivier writes that his ‘idealistic notion of an Afrikaner national literature that would encompass all diversity within a hierarchical whole that guaranteed a link between the individual creator and the collective spirit of the “volk” had gained wide acceptance’ at the time.2 In 1946 he was instrumental in the founding of Standpunte, an important platform for debate by Afrikaans intellectuals.3 In 1950 he defined an intellectual as ‘the scientifically formed person, the person who often, or usually, thinks about the world in a scientific way…the person who fairly consistently holds himself to at least the ideals of scientific thinking – objectivity and a careful assessment of well-observed facts that have been assembled as comprehensively as possible – and not only in one area, but in every encounter with reality’.4 Van Wyk Louw’s work had an important impact on Afrikaner intellectuals, and his thoughts on the concepts of ‘open discussion, loyal resistance, and survival with justice’ influenced the public discourse in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.5 Apart from his scholarly writings, Van Wyk Louw regularly published articles, amongst others, on the purpose of the Afrikaans writer, Afrikaner nationalism and his personal innovative work in Die Huisgenoot, the flagship popular Afrikaans magazine at the time.6 Furthermore, he wrote numerous letters to Afrikaans newspapers, in that way reaching a large, diverse audience.7

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Van Wyk Louw was born in Sutherland, a small Karoo town in what is today the Northern Cape, where his father was a lawyer. In 1920 the family moved to Cape Town, where he matriculated and graduated from the University of Cape Town. From 1929 to 1949 he was a lecturer at the University of Cape Town and in 1950 appointed as professor of Afrikaans at the Gemeentelijke University of Amsterdam. From 1958 to his death in 1970, he headed the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch at the University of the Witwatersrand. His younger brother, W.E.G. Louw, was also a prominent Afrikaans poet.8 Van Wyk Louw was a prolific writer who produced literary theory, six volumes of poetry, several volumes of essays,9 and numerous stage plays such as Dias (1952), Germanicus (1956) and Die Pluimsaad Waai Ver.10 His interest in poetry and literature started at an early age and, although he received his primary and secondary education in English, his first poem was published in Afrikaans, in 1921, ‘albeit with some Dutch influence’.11 In 1935 he published his first volume of poetry, Alleenspraak, for which he won the Hertzog Prize in 1937. He did not accept it as he refused to share the prize with I.D. du Plessis, who was regarded as an ‘older poet’.12 In 1937 another volume of poetry, Die Halwe Kring, appeared, and in 1938 a play for the centenary of the Great Trek, Die Dieper Reg, followed.13 He published his most famous work, the epic poem Raka, in 1941. He ‘supported language rights for speakers of African languages…and Raka recounts a black hero’s desperate struggle against a nightmarish beast to save his people’s heritage of language and art – a metaphor as powerful now, in the era of globalisation, as it was then’.14 In 2006 the poem ‘Groot Ode’, from Tristia (1962), his last volume of poetry, was described as ‘a particular apex of intellectual and creative achievement in Afrikaans literature’.15 Although Van Wyk Louw was a dedicated nationalist, he was an ‘Afrikaner intellectual struggling with the moral predicament of Afrikaner nationalism’. He was devoted to a continued developing interpretation of ‘Afrikaner sacred history, and to creative use of the Afrikaans language – indeed to the survival of the Afrikaner people’.16 In his writings three prominent issues came to the fore. Firstly, Afrikaner survival must be earned by inhabiting the local ethnic context, but transmuting it to create genuinely moving insights into the human condition; secondly, ethnic survival without just relations with other neighbouring cultures is empty (ultimately, for him this amounted to a proclamation of the necessity for separate but equal development); and thirdly, both insight and justice are best served by open discussion guaranteed by checks and balances.17 In the years to come these general guidelines were differently interpreted by Afrikaner leaders in all fields of life. However, Moodie noted that ‘open discussions’ were between Afrikaners and mostly excluded English-speaking whites and Afrikaans speakers of colour, while black Africans were ‘almost entirely excluded’ and could only resort to protest to be noted.18

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By the 1950s Van Wyk Louw had deviated from his initial thoughts on Afrikaner nationalism ‘in which he focused on non-rational forces’, and argued that intellectuals should incorporate ‘respect for justice, and reconciling nationalism with liberalism’ in their writings.19 In the motivation for a government award in 2005, it was noted that Van Wyk Louw had already warned in 1952 ‘against any tendency for a nation to regard survival per se as more important than the survival of justice’, which was quite significant considering later historical developments in South Africa.20 Olivier attributed Van Wyk Louw’s ‘radical shift towards intellectual enquiry’ in his writings on nationalism during the late 1930s to the early 1950s to the effect of World War II, which illustrated the damaging power of ‘anti-intellectualism’, and the National Party’s victory of the 1948 general election that changed the country politically.21 For the fifth anniversary of the Republic of South Africa, in 1966, Van Wyk Louw wrote Die Pluimsaad Waai Ver, a play centred around President M.T.  Steyn during the South African War of 1899–1902. The erstwhile prime minister H.F. Verwoerd criticised him for departing from the ‘elevated script of the sacred history’ of the Afrikaner.22 This criticism was followed by the general public’s insulting letters to Afrikaans newspapers.23 Verwoerd’s criticism startled Van Wyk Louw as the play’s intention was not to harm Afrikaner nationalistic ideology, but to strengthen it whilst cautioning against Afrikaner division.24 He commented: ‘As iemand sê ek is ’n vrot skrywer, haal ek my skouers op – wie is ek om te oordeel? Maar as my Afrikanerskap in twyfel getrek word, kan dit nog seer maak, bitter seer.’ 25 (When somebody says that I am a rotten writer, I just shrug – who am I to judge? But when my Afrikanership is questioned, that can still sting, very painfully.)26 Van Wyk Louw’s work has to be framed in a historical context. During the 1930s the impact of white poverty, the depression years, and memories of defeat during the South African War still prevailed amongst many Afrikaners. Gradually Afrikaner nationalism gained momentum, culminating in the National Party’s victory in the 1948 general election. Despite Van Wyk Louw’s disapproval of some National Party policies, and critique against him, he remained a loyal advocate of Afrikaner nationalism. For Renders, his ‘world view’ was ‘determined by his steadfast Afrikanership’ and ‘prevented him from analysing South African reality from an inclusive perspective’. Although Van Wyk Louw deemed ‘resistance and revolt against the injustice experienced by a people as an inalienable right, he grants this right only to the Afrikaner people’.27 For Sanders, ‘Louw’s political thinking remained firmly within the culturalnationalist vision of the volk, upon which he based his defence of apartheid’.28 Van Wyk Louw was widely acknowledged for his work and won many awards. Amongst others, he was awarded the prestigious Hertzog Prize for a record five times for poetry (1937, 1940, 1965); drama (1960); and critical prose and essays (1958).29 The South African Academy for Science and Arts introduced the N.P. van Wyk Louw Medal in recognition of his significant intellectual contribution, in 1992. It is awarded annually for exceptional achievement in the natural sciences and humanities.30

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The Order of Ikhamanga in Gold was awarded posthumously to him in 2005 by the South African government for his ‘exceptional contribution in literature and advocacy of language rights for the African languages’.31 Since 1971 to date, the University of Johannesburg has been hosting annual N.P. van Wyk Memorial Lectures.32 The impact of Van Wyk Louw in literary circles is illustrated by the numerous academic studies on his work, and many translations and reprints. His oeuvre continues to have an important impact on Afrikaner intellectuals, and has influenced the public discourse for many years. In 2008 Viljoen investigated the standing of Louw as a poet by exploring the sustained presence of his writings in Afrikaans poetry ‘through intertextuality and citation’. She analysed more than a hundred Afrikaans poems, and concluded that his poetry evoked response by a diverse range of poets, and appeared in both scholarly and popular publications. Seemingly ‘Louw’s poetry functions as a yardstick for some of the most important poets in Afrikaans (Breytenbach, Cussons, Stockenström, Krog)’.33 Whilst using his work to measure theirs, these poets developed their individual views to establish their personal identities. His poems also influenced a younger generations of poets – for example, Ilse van Staden, Gert Vlok Nel and Danie Marais.34 Popular culture writers and performers such as Koos Kombuis, Fokofpolisiekar and Jan Blohm have also rewritten parts of his work.35 Notes 1 T.D. Moodie, ‘N.P. van Wyk Louw and the Moral Predicament of Afrikaner Nationalism:

Preparing the Ground for Verligte Reform’, Historia 54:1 (2009), p. 181. 2 G. Olivier, ‘Loyal Resistance: N.P. van Wyk Louw (1906–1970) and the Intellectual’, Social

Dynamics 36:1 (2010), p. 204. 3 Olivier, ‘Loyal Resistance’, p. 204; P. Kapp, ‘Verdeelde Vennote: N.P. van Wyk Louw en die

Akademie’, Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe 46:3 (2006), p. 321. 4 Olivier, ‘Loyal Resistance’, p. 202. 5 J.C. Steyn, Biografie: N.P. van Wyk Louw (n.d.) N.P. van Wyk Louw Sentrum vir

Gemeenskapstudies. Accessed May 2019, https://npvanwyklouw.org.za/biografie-n-p-vanwyk-louw/; Olivier, ‘Loyal Resistance’, pp. 205–209. 6 L. Renders, ‘And the Greatest is... N.P. van Wyk Louw’ in A. Grundlingh and S. Huigen

(eds), Reshaping Remembrance. Critical Essays on Afrikaans Places of Memory (Amsterdam, Rozenberg Publishers, 2011), p. 149. 7 For Louw’s letters to the press, see J.C. Steyn, Van Wyk Louw: ’n Lewensverhaal Parts I

and II (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1998). 8 E. Terblanche, ‘N.P. van Wyk Louw (1906–1970)’, Litnet 10 April 2017, pp. 1–3. Accessed

May 2019, https://www.litnet.co.za/np-van-wyk-louw-1906-1970/; The Presidency, ‘Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk Louw: The Order of Ikhamanga in Gold’ (2005). Accessed May 2019, http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/nicolaas-petrus-van-wyklouw-1906-1970; Tafelberg Publishers, ‘N.P. van Wyk Louw. Biographical Information’ (n.d.). Accessed May 2019, http://www.tafelberg.com/authors/330. 9 The Presidency, ‘Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk Louw’. 10 Although written for the Republic’s anniversary in 1966, it was published in 1972.

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11 Steyn, Biografie. 12 Tafelberg Publishers, ‘N.P. van Wyk Louw’. 13 Terblanche, ‘N.P. van Wyk Louw’, p. 6. 14 The Presidency, ‘Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk Louw’. 15 H. van Vuuren, ‘Tussen Grense en Groot Ode. ’n Klein Essay oor die Poềsie van N.P. van

Wyk Louw (1906–1970)’, Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe 46:3 (2006), p. 279. 16 Moodie, ‘N.P. van Wyk Louw and the Moral Predicament’, p. 186. For Van Wyk Louw’s

early views on issues such as the Afrikaans language and culture, Afrikaner politics, and Afrikaner national literature, see N.P. van Wyk Louw, W.E.G. Louw and J.C. Kannemeyer (eds), Ek Ken Jou Goed Genoeg … Die Briefwisseling tussen N.P. van Wyk Louw en W.E.G. Louw 1936–1939 (Pretoria: Protea Boekhuis, 2004). 17 Moodie, ‘N.P. van Wyk Louw and the Moral Predicament’, p. 185. 18 Moodie, ‘N.P. van Wyk Louw and the Moral Predicament’, pp. 186, 187. 19 Olivier, ‘Loyal Resistance’, p. 201. 20 The Presidency, ‘Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk Louw’. 21 Olivier, ‘Loyal Resistance’, pp. 204, 205. 22 Moodie, ‘N.P. van Wyk Louw and the Moral Predicament’, p. 183. 23 M. Sanders, ‘“Problems of Europe”: N.P. van Wyk Louw, the Intellectual and Apartheid’,

Journal of Southern African Studies 25:4 (1999), p. 612. 24 Renders, ‘And the Greatest is...’ p. 149. 25 Steyn, Van Wyk Louw: ’n Lewensverhaal, p. 1046. 26 Translation by Renders, ‘And the Greatest is...’, p. 149. 27 Renders, ‘And the Greatest is...’, p. 150. 28 Sanders, ‘“Problems of Europe”’, p. 612. 29 This includes the unaccepted 1937 prize for Alleenspraak. 30 Kapp, ‘Verdeelde Vennote’, p. 317. 31 The Presidency, ‘Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk Louw’ (n.d.). 32 University of Johannesburg, ‘N.P. van Wyk Louw Lectures’ (n.d.). Accessed July 2019,

https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/Department-of-Afrikaans/Pages/N-P-van-WykLouw-Lesings.aspx. 33 L. Viljoen, ‘Digterlike Gesprekke met Van Wyk Louw’, Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe 48:3

(2008), p. 268. 34 Renders, ‘And the Greatest is...’ p. 146. 35 Viljoen, ‘Digterlike Gesprekke’, p. 268.

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James Matthews: ‘Black voices shout!’

James Matthews: ‘Black voices shout!’ Gregory Houston

b. 1929

South African journalist, poet, author and publisher James Matthews was an outspoken critic of apartheid, and a proponent of a form of black pride based more on the Black Panthers than the Black Consciousness Movement. His writings were widely used by various individuals and organisations to further their aims, but he was never a ‘joiner’. He supported movements and allowed them to use his work, but he always remained fiercely independent, so that he would never be required to ‘toe the party line’. Born to an illiterate dockworker and a domestic servant, Matthews grew up in a run-down tenement building in the working-class district of Cape Town’s Bo-Kaap.1 A keen reader from an early age, he read whatever he could find, which was mostly the books that his mother was reading – what he termed ‘penny-horribles’.2 He began his schooling at the nearby St Stephen Primary School – where he completed Sub A and B (today Grades one and two) in one year – and Prestwich Primary school near the Waterfront, before proceeding to Trafalgar High School for his secondary education. He had to leave school in Standard eight (Grade 10) at the age of 14, after falling from a wall and being forced to stay at home for three months because of severe concussion and memory lapses. Instead of returning to school after he recovered, he started to work to supplement the family income. He held a variety of jobs, such as delivering newspapers, and working as an office messenger and as a clerk and telephonist at the Cape Times.3 He discovered libraries while he was working as a messenger for the newspaper, and began to read the works of authors such as Maupassant, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, Gorky, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Ignazio Silone, George Orwell and Ariel Dorfman.4

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His first newspaper article, which he sold to the Sun and Cape Standard newspapers, was titled ‘Requiem for the Room at the Top’, a story about the closing of the Room at the Top jazz club in Loop Street, Cape Town. He was 17 years old at the time. However, his work as a journalist really began later, at the Golden City Post newspaper, where he specialised in sob stories, and stories about rapes, murders and young people stabbed by gangs. His next job was with Drum magazine, where he sent in an average of four articles a month.5 In the second half of the 1960s, he began working for the independent community newspaper Muslim News, which published a poem he had written about Imam Haron, who had been killed in police detention in 1969. Under his editorship during the early 1970s, the newspaper would often find itself on the wrong side of the law, and several of its editions were banned because of its consistent criticism of apartheid.6 Besides his awareness of life as a black South African under apartheid, Matthews’s early political inspiration came from his exposure to Communist Party teachings towards the end of the 1950s, when he was selling newspapers. In particular, Communist Party member Wolfie Kodesh would talk to clusters of youngsters on street corners in his neighbourhood in BoKaap. Matthews grew close to Kodesh, who taught him a lot about what the apartheid state was doing, and what communism was all about.7 However, as he grew older he avoided becoming a member of any political organisation, stating that I learnt early that if you belong to a group and they make statements you don’t approve of, you either shut up or walk out. So I avoided belonging to any organisation. I allowed them to use my work, but they couldn’t claim that I was a member. I always felt that I must be free to fight against oppression, but not necessarily as part of a group.8 Matthews’s early writings were short stories, which he claimed were authentic because he wrote from what he knew. These stories were published in the Cape Times, Cape Argus, Drum, Hi-Note, Africa South, Transition and New African. Two of his stories – ‘Azikwelwa’, published in 1958, and ‘The Park’, published in 1962 – achieved international acclaim in Sweden, West Germany and Holland because of their strong anti-apartheid and black solidarity themes. Matthews claimed that his ideas about black pride and solidarity that underpin the Black Consciousness philosophy evident in his works were developed independently of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). Instead, he claimed that his works were influenced by the philosophy of the Black Panther Party in the United States, as well as the ideas of Negritude found in the works of Léopold Senghor, Cheikh Aata Diop and Aimé Césaire.9 His first collection of poems, Cry Rage, published in 1972, was the first publication of a collection of poetry that the apartheid authorities banned. The opening poem in Cry Rage sets out Matthews’s stance on the role of poets: It is said the poets write of beauty of form of flowers

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and of love but the words I write are of pain and rage I am no minstrel who sings songs of joy mine a lament I wail of a land hideous with open graves waiting for the slaughtered ones. Balladeers strum their lutes and sing tunes of happy times i cannot join in the merriment my heart drowned in bitterness with agony of what the white man’s law has done.10 During the 1976 Soweto uprising, Matthews was detained at Victor Verster Prison from September to December.11 In 1977, he published a collection of poems, Realities: Poems from a Prison Cell, which was immediately banned by the apartheid authorities. An excerpt from one of the poems captures what he felt: Visiting day tremors set in the night Before As you lay huddled unable to sleep Eyes furtively fluttering to the Window.12 In 1979, Matthews was twice denied a passport, first to spend six months at the University of Iowa in the United States, where he had been awarded a fellowship, and then to attend a meeting of PEN, the international organisation of writers. He was only able to get a passport in 1980, to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair, after the West German government had intervened. He travelled to various parts of the country to share his poetry with students at high schools and universities, finding that in West Germany he was given the respect denied to him in South Africa because of his attacks against the apartheid regime. In 2004, he was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga (Silver) for his ‘excellent achievements in literature, contributing to journalism and his inspirational commitment to the struggle for a non-racial South Africa’. He is the recipient of the Woza Afrika Award (1978), was included on the Kwaza Honours List of the Black Arts Celebration, Chicago (1979), and has been made Freeman of the cities of Lehrte and Nienburg, Germany (1982). He has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of the Western Cape (2013) and Rhodes University (2016). He is a founding member of the Vakalisa Art Association and founding member and patron of the Congress of South African Writers.

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Matthews saw himself as a dissident poet whose role was to fight an oppressive government. His poetry captures conditions of black suffering in apartheid South Africa, and it is also aimed at making black people, in particular, understand their worth.13 Several of his collections of poems were banned, including an anthology of poems that he edited, titled Black Voices Shout!, which was another way for him to show how black poets fought against apartheid. In the 1970s and 1980s, he would read his poetry at mass protest rallies, as well as at literary get-togethers arranged by youth clubs or in shebeens. In 2000 he established a publishing house, Realities, as a vehicle to ensure that South African writers’ voices could be heard. He still lives on the Cape Flats, where he spends part of his time reading his poetry to students at local high schools.14 His is one black voice that is still shouting! Notes 1 M. Adhikari, ‘From Manenberg to Soweto: Race and Coloured Identity in the Black

Consciousness Poetry of James Matthews’, African Studies 62:2 (2003), p. 172. 2 S. Mati, Interview with James Matthews, Cape Town, Unsung Heroes and Heroines of

the South African Liberation Struggle Project, Human Sciences Research Council, 2013; G. Houston, S. Mati, H. Magidimisha, E. Vivier and M. Dipholo, The Other Side of Freedom: Stories of Hope and Loss in the South African Liberation Struggle 1950–1994 (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2017), p. 133. 3 Mati, Interview with James Matthews. 4 Houston et al. The Other Side of Freedom, p. 133. 5 Houston et al. The Other Side of Freedom, p. 134. 6 K. Naidoo and S. Singh, ‘James Matthews: The Stories behind the Dissident Poet.

Interview with James Matthews’, WritingThreeSixty 6 August 2015. Accessed Novemeber 2018, https://uwcjournal.wordpress.com/interviews/. 7 Adhikari, ‘From Manenberg to Soweto’, p. 172. 8 Cited in Houston et al. The Other Side of Freedom. 9 Adhikari, ‘From Manenberg to Soweto’, p. 172. 10 Refer to M. Wa Bofelo, ‘James Matthews: Still Kicking Butt @ 77’, Botsotso 6 May 2013.

Accessed November 2018, https://botsotso.org.za/2013/05/james-matthews-still-kickingbutt-77/. 11 Naidoo and Singh, ‘Interview with James Matthews’, p. 50. 12 J. Matthews, Realities: Poems from a Prison Cell (Cape Town: Blac Publishing House, 1977). 13 Houston et al. The Other Side of Freedom. 14 Naidoo and Singh, p. 50.

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Mazisi Kunene: Africa’s Poet Laureate

Mazisi Kunene: Africa’s Poet Laureate Gregory Houston

1930–2006

South African Poet Laureate, academic and anti-apartheid activist Mazisi Raymond Kunene bestrode three continents and multiple cultures. He moved smoothly from working for the ANC in exile in London to lecturing in the USA, all the while maintaining his deep love and appreciation of traditional Zulu beliefs and heritage, which he explored in his poetry. Kunene grew up with gospel music and traditional praise singing. He was introduced to the former by his mother, Eva Kunene (née Ngcobo), who was a teacher and gospel singer, and to the latter by his father, Mdabuli Albert Kunene, a descendant of the Swazi royal clan who worked as a labourer.1 It was his father and a teacher, Mr Ngema, who encouraged him to write poetry in the tradition of the Zulu praise poets and keepers of oral tradition. And it was also his father (and his paternal grandmother) who discussed with him the genealogy of their royal clan, the histories of past wars, and the general truths of African philosophy and values, and to whom he read his poetry on a daily basis while he was growing up.2 Kunene grew up at Amahlongwa on the south coast of what was then the province of Natal, where he also started his primary schooling. He later attended KwaHluzingcondo High School before matriculating in Marianhill at a college founded by Catholic Trappist monks in 1882. Kunene then obtained a teaching certificate at Maphumulo Teachers’ Training College and went on to study at the University of Natal (Black Section), where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Zulu and history, followed by a master’s degree in Zulu poetry in 1959.3 Kunene’s circle of friends at this time included Johnny Makhatini, who would later rise to prominence in the ANC, and Bernard Magubane, who would later become a prominent academic. All three had taken the teacher training course at Maphumulo College, and had viewed with horror the introduction of Bantu Education in the middle of the decade.

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Kunene began writing at an early age – his first collection of poems was published in newspapers and magazines from the time he was 11 years old. In 1956, he won the Bantu Literary Competition Award for a collection of poems titled Idlozi Elingenanttethelelo. In his master’s thesis he had focused on an analysis of traditional and modern Zulu poetry, after which he left for London to conduct research on comparative literature for his doctorate at the School of Oriental and African Studies.4 However, in 1960, the apartheid regime banned the ANC in the wake of the Sharpeville massacre. Oliver Tambo, ANC deputy president general, was in England at the time on a mission to popularise the ANC’s political cause abroad, and to promote international solidarity. Tambo appointed Kunene ANC chief representative in Europe and the United States in 1962 to support this effort.5 Kunene also served as the head of the London committee of the ANC, made up of Joe Matthews, Mendi Mendi Msimang and O.R. Tambo, until the latter two were relocated to the ANC’s headquarters at Morogoro, Tanzania, in 1963.6 In December 1962, the ANC’s London committee established an Information Service and International Relations Division to implement the campaign for the international isolation of apartheid South Africa. Throughout 1963 and 1964, Kunene, together with some colleagues in the London office of the ANC, worked with the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) through the latter’s second global campaign to impose economic sanctions on South Africa. The campaign to bring about the economic, political and social isolation of South Africa had been the primary task assigned to Oliver Tambo when he left the country a few days before the Sharpeville massacre. The London committee linked their activity to the Rivonia Trial, which began soon after the arrests of the ANC leadership at Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivionia in 1963, as well as the plight of political prisoners in South Africa in general. Kunene pushed to elevate the campaign from one of protest about political imprisonment to one emphasising the underlying cause of such imprisonment, the apartheid system, ‘and the need to fight for the ideals espoused by the Rivonia Triallists’.7 The London committee led by Kunene and the AAM then turned their attention to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference, scheduled for the end of January 1965. They designed a programme of action that included a demand for concrete policies on South Africa, and support for United Nations (UN) resolutions on the country. Kunene played a major role in securing a publisher for a book on Mandela’s Rivonia speeches titled No Easy Walk to Freedom, which had been edited by Ruth First.8 In 1966, Kunene’s poetry was banned by the apartheid regime under the Suppression of Communism Act. Under Kunene’s leadership, a solid working relationship had been established between the ANC’s London office and the AAM by April 1966. Included in their joint activities was the publication of a weekly news bulletin that included ‘articles two or three times per month, one or two weekly sets of news items, and occasional papers focusing on, for example, South African trade or South West Africa’. Newspapers and broadcasters in countries such as Britain, Afghanistan, China, Zimbabwe, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Sweden, West Germany, the Soviet Union, the Netherlands and Kenya were furnished with material from the bulletin. They also planned to expand the subscription list by approaching the foreign offices of countries abroad,

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libraries and international organisations. A multimedia strategy included a collection of photographs and anti-apartheid paintings that was exhibited in Holland, Britain and Germany.9 Kunene also participated in numerous ANC delegations at world forums such as the UN, the Women’s International Democratic Federation, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, the International Union of Students, the World Federation of Trade Unions and the International Labour Organization. He also participated in other anti-apartheid events, such as a European Conference against Apartheid in Paris on 6–7  May 1967, organised by the French Liaison Committee against Apartheid, and participated in one of the cultural events at the conference, where he read his poetry.10 Kunene travelled to the United States in 1964 on an ANC mission to revitalise the stagnating anti-apartheid movement in that country. His plan was to establish South Africa action committees, which were eventually established with the help of the American Committee on Africa. During the time he spent in the United States, Kunene was able to reconnect with Bernard Magubane, who was then studying in Los Angeles, and other South Africans. Such individuals were instrumental in setting up South African Action Committees in a number of major cities in the country. Kunene urged these committees to ‘badger the influential American press’ to publish stories about repression in South Africa. He also worked on the development of a bulletin in the manner that was later established in Britain, and attended as an observer a conference in Washington focusing on America’s foreign policy on southern Africa.11 Another task Kunene undertook on behalf of the ANC was to raise funds for the rapidly increasing number of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) cadres based in Tanzania. Kunene, sometimes together with Oliver Tambo or other high-ranking ANC officials, went on numerous fund-raising trips to France, the Netherlands, Italy and Scandinavia.12 In 1967, he attended the Third Afro-Asian Writers Conference in Beirut, and a year later, in 1968, he relocated to Cairo when he became an executive member of the Afro-Asian Writers Committee. Here he played a role in establishing various other organisations in different countries. He also continued working for the ANC, becoming its director of finance in 1972. He established the South African Exhibition appeal to raise funds for the ANC, and obtained support from influential figures in the art world such as Picasso, Chagall, Giacometti and Rauschenberg.13 In 1973, Kunene left political activism to begin his career as a lecturer, first at the University of Iowa and then at Stanford University, before joining the Los Angeles campus of the University of California (UCLA) in 1975 as an associate professor in African literature and Zulu.14 He remained at UCLA until his return to South Africa in 1993, when he became a professor in the Department of Zulu Language and Literature at the then University of Natal. By 1993, Kunene had published 13 volumes of poetry and 38 individual poems, and had written two film scripts and a play. He obtained his DLitt degree for his two epic poems, which he had translated from the original isiZulu into English for publication in Great Britain, instead of a thesis. The poems are a modern reflection on Zulu cultural ideals, and on the events which have shaped the history of South Africa and especially Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal). The London Observer selected both Anthem of the Decades and Emperor Shaka the Great as Books of

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the Year. He was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Natal in recognition of the contribution he made to Zulu poetry, to the appreciation of African literature and culture, and to the struggles for liberation in South Africa. In 1993, Unesco appointed Kunene Africa’s Poet Laureate, and in 2005 he was appointed South Africa’s first Poet Laureate. For Kunene, being appointed as Africa’s Poet Laureate meant that he was ‘one of the very best’ poets that Africa had ‘produced in a long time’, and that he had been ‘endorsed‘ by the African continent.15 Kunene had combined his love of history and poetry in the research for his master’s thesis. This included material from secondary books on Zulu history, oral tradition on this history, and Zulu praise poems (izibongi) in the archives. He surveyed the history of the Zulu nation during the period of King Dingane in the secondary literature and oral tradition, and compared these to how they are portrayed in praise poems.16 His analysis of the development of Zulu poetry from the period before King Shaka to modern times led him to several conclusions about the more recent poetry: ‘its emulation of the Western tradition’, including ‘its reliance on European stylistic techniques rather than traditional ones’; ‘its unanalytical documentary writing’; and ‘a slide toward sentimentality and escapism’ influenced by the Christian and Romantic traditions.17 Kunene is best known for his three epic works: Emperor Shaka the Great (1979), Anthem of the Decades (1981), and The Ancestors and the Sacred Mountain (1982),18 which were received with critical acclaim, and established him as one of Africa’s literary giants. He was also well known for creating an isiZulu version of one of Shakespeare’s plays, Macbeth, which he titled Mabatha. The books he published in isiZulu include Isibusiso sikamhawu (1994), Indida yamancasakazi (1995), Umzwilili wama-Afrika (1996) and Igudu likaSomcabeko (1997). He also wrote the introduction to John Berger and Ann Bostock’s translation of Aimé Césaire’s Return to My Native Land.19  Most of Kunene’s poems were written in isiZulu, probably because of his distaste for the adoption of Western styles by earlier Zulu poets, as well as his use of the only language he knew in his early writings. However, he used the lyric style in his epic poems. His Emperor Shaka the Great, in which he made use of oral tradition in the archives, was originally written in isiZulu but the manuscript disappeared. He thereafter provided his own English translation. In 2017, an isiZulu version titled Unodumehlezi Kamenzi was published in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of his death. This work traces the expansion of the Zulu nation under King Shaka, whose reform of the military and the nation enabled the Zulus to conquer many of the tribes living in then Natal. Kunene portrays an idealistic vision of this history with the following objective clearly stated in the poem: By our ancient epics we are made beautiful. The puffadders come and lick our feet. Our pride shall be restored then, And the wilderness shall echo with our song!20 Anthem of the Decades: A Zulu Epic, published in English, is a retelling of the Zulu legend of how death came to mankind. Kunene published a second collection of poems, titled The Ancestors

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and the Sacred Mountain: Poems, in 1982. This collection contains 100 poems with a particular focus on socio-political issues and the role of the ancestors in the South African liberation struggle.21 Some of the poems, such as ‘The Rise of the Angry Generation’, deal with the armed struggle; others with the peace that follows, such as the poems ‘Brave People’ and ‘Anthem of Fruitfulness’; and the remainder with the celebration of freedom, such as the poem ‘Sun of Beautiful Ones’.22 Kunene also wrote from his own life experiences; for instance, in the collection Zulu Poems, he describes the ache of exile as follows: I stood on the third world, Bitter, neither young nor old Heaving and heaving like a volcano, Multiplying with fire: I was all things.23 Kunene provides an explanation of the purpose of his poetry in a chapter he contributed to a book written by South African exiles that was edited by Hilda Bernstein: ‘setting out to write…gives the next generation a heritage which is really worthwhile, which they will be able to celebrate…it is not a demoralised people who create masterpieces. It is their spirit that revolts against demoralisation and against their marginalisation. So I see that responsibility.’24 Elsewhere he stated that culture was a weapon for those wanting to bring about change.25 Notes 1

S. Adenekan, ‘Mazisi Kunene: South African Poet Laureate and Key Player in the ANC’, The Guardian 17 October 2006. Accessed October 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/ news/2006/oct/17/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries1; J. Wilkinson, ‘An Interview with Mazisi Kunene’, Commonwealth Essays and Studies 10:2 (1988), pp. 34–42. Accessed November 2018, http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/DC%20Metadata%20Files/Centre% 20for%20African%20Literary%20Studies/ALS%204_1_4_44/ALS%204_1_4_44.pdf.

2 M. Kunene, ‘Problems in African Literature’, Research in African Literatures 23:1 (1992),

pp. 27–44. 3 Wilkinson, ‘An Interview with Mazisi Kunene’, p. 5. 4 Wilkinson, ‘An Interview with Mazisi Kunene’; N. Masilela, ‘The Return of Mazisi Kunene

to South Africa: The End of an Intellectual Chapter in Our Literary History’, Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies 21:3 (1993), p. 7. 5 Masilela, ‘The Return of Mazisi Kunene’, p. 8. 6 S.M. Ndlovu, ‘The ANC and the World’ in South African Democracy Education Trust

(eds), The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 1, 1960–1970 (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2004), p. 553. 7 Ndlovu, ‘The ANC and the World’, p. 551. 8 Ndlovu, ‘The ANC and the World’, p. 553. 9 Ndlovu, ‘The ANC and the World’, p. 552. 10 Ndlovu, ‘The ANC and the World’, p. 553. 11 Ndlovu, ‘The ANC and the World’, pp. 557–558. 12 Ndlovu, ‘The ANC and the World’, p. 556.

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13 M. De Saxe, ‘Sing Me a Song of History: South African Poets and Singers in Exile,

1900–1990’, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2010, p. 245. 14 Adenekan, ‘Mazisi Kunene’. 15 V. Reddy, ‘The Writer as Philosopher: Interview with Mazisi Kunene’, South African Journal

of African Languages 16:4 (1996), p. 141. 16 S.M. Ndlovu, African Perspectives of King Dingane kaSenzangakhona: The Second Monarch of

the Zulu Kingdom (Johannesburg: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 17 Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Mazisi Kunene: South African Author’ (n.d.). Accessed

November 2018, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mazisi-Kunene. 18 M. Kunene, Emperor Shaka the Great: A Zulu Epic (London: Heinemann, 1979); M. Kunene,

Anthem of the Decades (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1981); M. Kunene, The Ancestors and the Sacred Mountain: Poems (London: Heinemann, 1982). 19 Masilela, ‘The Return of Mazisi Kunene’, p. 11. 20 Kunene, Emperor Shaka, p. 2. 21 Wilkinson, ‘An Interview with Mazisi Kunene’. 22 Wilkinson, ‘An Interview with Mazisi Kunene’. 23 M. Kunene, Zulu Poems (New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1970), p. 82. 24 Cited in H. Bernstein, The Rift: The Exile Experience of South Africans (London: Jonathan

Cape, 1994), p. 357. 25 Reddy, ‘The Writer as Philosopher’, p. 142.

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Ingrid Jonker: A bohemian figure

Ingrid Jonker: A bohemian figure Hester du Plessis

1933–1965

Ingrid Jonker remains one of the most interesting and enigmatic poets in South Africa. She lived a life of emotional turbulence with a tragic love life. However, her fine poems with their raw emotional content could speak to most South Africans living under the apartheid regime of her time. She lived a life less ordinary outside of the unbearably conservative and paternalistic constraints of Afrikaner society at a time when Calvinism regulated Afrikaner life. She was raised by unconventional grandparents and an emotionally unstable mother, Beatrice Catharina (née Cilliers 1905–1944). Jonker’s mother left her very conservative husband Abraham Jonker (1905–1966) after the birth of Ingrid’s sister Anna, and while pregnant with Ingrid. This was after Abraham had claimed that Ingrid was not his child. The little family then lived with her grandparents, who were, by all accounts, unconventional freethinkers.1 One can only speculate about the combined impact on Ingrid of her mother’s emotional instability and her grandparents’ unconventional lifestyle. It is likely, though, that the family would have been ostracised. At the time, it was the norm to turn a collective back on those who did not live by the strict regulations of the Dutch Reformed Church – a close partner in the Nationalist Party’s propaganda network. After the death of her grandfather, the family had little money and were forced to leave their farm near Durbanville to settle in Gordon’s Bay near Cape Town.2 Later Jonker and her sister Anna lived with her father, Abraham Jonker, in Plumstead, Cape  Town, with a stepmother, Lulu Jonker (Brewis), a half-brother Koos and half-sister Suzanne. In sharp contrast to the free existence Jonker had enjoyed from an early age, she now had to conform to the strict Calvinist values of middle-class Afrikaners.3 Her father was very conservative, and an influential Nationalist Party member of Parliament. Ironically, his appointment as chairman of the parliamentary select committee that was responsible for introducing censorship laws on art, publications and entertainment had a direct impact on Jonker, who vehemently

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opposed the censorship laws. Their political differences were made public when her father denounced her as his daughter during a speech in Parliament.4 The animosity between the two was exacerbated by her identification with the black oppressed at a time when South Africa was going through a turbulent period in its history – evident in events such as the Sharpeville massacre, the banning of the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress, South Africa’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth, and the declaration of the Republic of South Africa.5 In Cape Town, Jonker attended Wynberg Girls’ High School, an English-medium school. Here she started to come into her own when she started writing poetry for the school magazine, although she had been writing poetry from the age of six. She wrote her first collection of Afrikaans poems, Na die Somer (After the Summer) before the age of 13, but was advised by several publishers to wait before publishing them. In 1956, she published her first book of poems, Ontvlugting (Escape),6 which established her as a rising talent in Afrikaans poetry – even among those in more conservative Afrikaner literary circles. Jonker married Pieter Venter in 1956, and their only child, Simone, was born a year later. Three years after they had moved to Johannesburg, they separated. Jonker relocated with her daughter to Cape  Town, where, it is claimed, she had affairs with Jack Cope and André Brink, both prominent South African writers. During this sexually and emotionally unrestrained time, her second anthology, Rook en Oker (Smoke and Ochre) (1963), was published. It was dedicated to both her lovers. Jonker won the Afrikaanse Pers-Boekhandel Prize in 1964 that included a scholarship from the Anglo American Corporation. She used her prize money to travel in Europe. It was claimed that she invited André Brink to join her. The pair travelled to Paris as well as Barcelona, but their relationship was cooling, and Brink soon returned to South Africa. In a manner that was becoming fairly familiar, Brink wrote about this period as a time of complete sexual abandonment on his side, and lists numerous escapades with other women as well as with prostitutes – ending in his contracting a sexually transmitted disease. Jonker stayed in Europe, and remained in contact with both her lovers, Brink and Cope. Once back in South Africa, she continued her relationship with Brink.7 Jonker committed suicide by walking into the sea from the beach at Three Anchor Bay on the night of 19  July 1965. After her death she quickly reached iconic status. Because her funeral could have constituted an illegal gathering under the strict security laws of the time, her casket was carried by members of the security police, and her friends were forbidden to speak. By 1965, she was considered to be among the many dissident South African writers who were communists, and therefore enemies of the state. She was a member of the Afrikaans literary group known as the Sestigers, which included Breyten Breytenbach, André Brink, Adam Small, John Miles, Ampie Coetzee and Bartho Smit, and collectively challenged the politically unfair Afrikaner nationalism of the ruling National Party. During the apartheid era many of her politically charged works were avoided by publishers as well as other authors. Her mentor, D.J.  Opperman, a prominent writer who compiled The Great Anthology of Afrikaans Poetry, included only poems from her first volume because it was inoffensive.8

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Ingrid Jonker: A bohemian figure

Jonker’s friends instituted the Ingrid Jonker Prize for the best debut work of Afrikaans or English poetry, which became a prestigious award, in her honour after her death in 1965. This is an annual prize, consisting of R1  000 and a medal, awarded alternately to an Afrikaans or English poet on the merit of their first published collection. She remains as inspiration of many artistic events. Saskia van Schaik produced a documentary Korreltjie Niks is My Dood (Having No Pellets is My Death) (2001) for Dutch television. In 2002 Ryk Hattingh wrote a one-woman interactive play, Assignment: Ingrid Jonker. This play was produced at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, with leading Afrikaner actress Jana Cilliers starring in the lead role. Interwoven with her poems and other writing, the play dealt with issues affecting Jonker’s life. Jonker was posthumously awarded the Order of Ikhamanga by the South African government in 2004 for ‘her excellent contribution to literature and a commitment to the struggle for human rights and democracy in South Africa’.9 Petrovna Metelerkamp published the biography Ingrid Jonker – Beeld van ’n Digterslewe (Ingrid Jonker – Image of a Poet’s Life) in 2003. The book provides details and new insights into the poet’s life, including love letters that were never sent, and an account of the night of Jonker’s death by her friend Bonnie Davidtsz.10 The list of work is comprehensive and includes poems set to music, such as the song cycle ‘Vyf Liedere for Soprano and Piano’ by Stefans Grové (1981),11 sung by a number of artists such as Laurika Rauch, Anneli van Rooyen and Chris Chameleon.12 The Afrikaans pop group Disselblom released a CD containing the track ‘Falkenburg’, which is a very well-executed adaptation of Jonker’s ‘Ontvlugting’ (2003). Chris Chameleon (the lead singer of the South African band Boo!) released an album Ek Herhaal Jou (I Repeat You) in 2005, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Jonker’s death. Jonker’s poems inspired many of Chris Chameleon’s songs, such as ‘Bitterbessie Dagbreek’ (Bitterberry Daybreak), ‘Lied van die Gebreekte Riete’ (Song of the Broken Reeds) and ‘Ontvlugting’ (Escape) in his album Ek Herhaal Jou. Chameleon released an album of Jonker’s works in 2011, under the provocative title As Jy Weer Skryf (If You Write Again).13 The number of South African artists stimulated by Jonker speaks to the ongoing reach of her poetry, as well as respect for a life bravely lived. A documentary, Ingrid Jonker, Her Lives and Time, produced by Mozambique-born South African film and documentary maker Helena Nogueira, was released in South Africa in 2007. This production is considered the definitive work on Jonker. A feature film produced in 2007 looked at three years in the life of Jonker and the Sestigers, who were all gathered around the poet Uys Krige. The scriptwriter was again Helena Nogueira and had as a working title All that Breaks. The Dutch actress Carice van Houten played Jonker in the biopic Black Butterflies (2011) directed by Paula van der Oest. In 2012, a dance drama that told the life story of Jonker, choreographed by Nicola Haskins, was performed at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and later at various other venues including the University of Pretoria.14 A monograph was written in her memory shortly after her death.15 Van Zuydam provides a literary overview of the work of Jonker that is worth reading,16 while Louise Viljoen has produced a shorter introduction to her work for the uninitiated.17

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Jonker is probably best remembered for her 1960 poem about a child who was shot dead in his mother’s arms by police in the township of Nyanga, in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre. Nelson Mandela read this poem, in the original Afrikaans, during his address at the opening of the first democratic Parliament on 24 May 1994. Die kind wat doodgeskiet is deur soldate by Nyanga, Die kind is nie dood nie die kind lig sy vuiste teen sy moeder wat Afrika skreeu skreeu die geur van vryheid en heide in die lokasies van die omsingelde hart Die kind lig sy vuiste teen sy vader in die optog van die generasies wat Afrika skreeu skreeu die geur van geregtigheid en bloed in die strate van sy gewapende trots Die kind is nie dood nie nòg by Langa nòg by Nyanga nòg by Orlando nòg by Sharpeville nòg by die polisiestasie in Philippi waar hy lê met ’n koeël deur sy kop Die kind is die skaduwee van die soldate op wag met gewere sarasene en knuppels die kind is teenwoordig by alle vergaderings en wetgewings die kind loer deur die vensters van huise en in die harte van moeders die kind wat net wou speel in die son by Nyanga is orals die kind wat ’n man geword het trek deur die ganse Afrika die kind wat ’n reus geword het reis deur die hele wêreld Sonder ’n pas 

(Ingrid Jonker – Maart 1960)

Notes 1 L. Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker: Poet under Apartheid (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2012),

p. 16. 2 Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker, pp. 17–24. 3 Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker, pp. 25–27. 4 Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker, pp. 27–28, 80. 5 Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker, p. 10. 6 Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker, pp. 29, 30, 35.

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7 Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker, p. 47ff. 8 P. Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker: Beeld van ’n Digterlewe (Hemel & See Uitgewers, 2003);

L. Viljoen, A Jacana Pocket Book Biography: Ingrid Jonker (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2012); S.W. van Zuydam, ‘Ingrid Jonker (1933–1965)’ in H.P. van Coller (ed.), Perspektief en Profiel: ’n Afrikaanse Literatuurgeskiedenis Deel 1 (Pretoria: Van Schaik Uitgewers, 2015). 9 Viljoen, A Jacana Pocket Book Biography; L. De Kock, ‘Ingrid Jonker: ’n Biografie, A Review

Essay’, Litnet, 5 June 2018. Accessed May 2019, https://www.litnet.co.za/ingrid-jonker-nbiografie-review-essay. 10 Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker. 11 S. Muller and C. Walton, A Composer in Africa: Essays on the Life and Work of Stefan Grové

(Stellenbosch: SUN Press, 2006), p. 126. 12 Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker, p. 149. 13 F. Galloway, Flame in the Snow: The Love Letters of André Brink and Ingrid Jonker (Cape Town:

Umuzi, 2015). 14 Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker; L. Bisschoff, ‘Women in African Cinema: An Aesthetic and

Thematic Analysis of Filmmaking by Women in Francophone West Africa and Lusophone and Anglophone Southern Africa’, PhD thesis, University of Stirling, 2009, pp. 70–71; N. Haskins, ‘Embodied Narratives: Mapping A Choreographic Signature through Physical Theatre Practice’, MA mini-dissertation, University of Pretoria, 2015. 15 J. Cope, In Memoriam: Ingrid Jonker (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1966). 16 Van Zuydam, ‘Ingrid Jonker (1933–1965)’. 17 Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker.

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Keorapetse Kgositsile: Revolutionary Poet Laureate Gregory Houston

1938–2018

South Africa’s Poet Laureate from 2006 to 2018, ‘Professor’ Keorapetse William ‘Bra Willie’ Kgositsile was strongly influenced by his grandmother and mother, whose family had a long tradition of passing on the collective wisdom of their ancestors through oral tradition. This instilled in him a love of storytelling, and he acquired a wealth of historical insights that were to influence his literary work later. Other influences were his grandmother’s strong distaste for the English language, which she saw ‘as a tool to bludgeon and kill the cultures and languages of the natives’, and his uncle’s love of jazz. Kgositsile lived in Dithakong, where he experienced a sense of alienation after being introduced ‘to a world external to his experience’ at the English primary school he attended. After his grandmother’s death in 1949, he went to Mahikeng to live with his uncle, Tholo Kgositsile, who instilled in him an appreciation for jazz that would later become a major influence on his work.1 Kgositsile spent several years in Mahikeng, where he attended the Tshidi Barolong Secondary School, before he went to boarding school at the Ohlange Institute in Inanda, Durban, in 1952. However, because of his participation in school boycotts at a time of heightened political activity in the country, including the 1952 Defiance Campaign, he was expelled from the school. He then went to do his schooling in Johannesburg, and attended Madibane High School in Western Native Township.2 The introduction of Bantu Education in 1955 was fodder for the already politically conscientised Kgositsile, leading him to search for alternative literature in response to the English literature that he had been taught in primary school, and the Afrikaans literature that was now being forced on him. He was helped in this, ironically, by his Afrikaans teacher, Setswana author Daniel Philip Semakaleng Monyaise.3

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Living in Johannesburg during a period of heightened political activity – the 1953–1955 campaign against Bantu Education, the 1955 Congress of the People and the 1956 women’s march to the Union Buildings – Kgositsile was drawn towards the ANC.  He finished his schooling in 1955, and after working at a series of jobs usually reserved for Africans, he became a freelance journalist for The Guardian, the radical anti-apartheid newspaper edited by Ruth First. This brought him into contact with many of the leading black journalists of the time, such as Alex la Guma, Can Themba, Casey Motsisi and Stan Motjuwadi.4 In the wake of the Sharpeville massacre, there was an unprecedented wave of repression, including the banning of black political organisations. As a result, the ANC leadership instructed Kgositsile to leave the country. He left through Botswana in 1961, and spent the next two years in Dar es Salaam working for Spearhead, a monthly journal published by the ANC.  After receiving a scholarship from the Africa-America Institute, which was funded by the American government, he went to the United States in December 1962, and registered to study fine art at Lincoln University.5 Here, in interaction with African American students and fellow South African exiles such as Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa, Kgositsile recognised the similarities between the experiences of African Americans and black South Africans. He became immersed in a world of African American politics and culture, in which he saw close parallels with black South African politics and culture.6 However, he left Lincoln University without completing his degree, although he subsequently studied at Pennsylvania State University, the University of New Hampshire and Columbia University, finally graduating with a master’s degree from Columbia. By 1969, Kgositsile’s poetry had been extensively published in black journals, books and magazines such as Soul Book (1964), Transition (1965), Contrast (1966), Poems Now (1966), Journal of Black Poetry (1967), Negro Digest (1967), Pan-African Journal (1968), Black Fire: An Anthology of African American Writing (1968), Black Arts: An Anthology of Black Creation (1969) and For Malcolm: Poems on the Life and the Death of Malcolm  X (1969).7 His first collection of poems, Spirits Unchained, achieved some acclaim when it won him the Harlem Cultural Council Poetry Award and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Award. His most significant poetry collection, My Name is Afrika, published in 1971, established him as one of the leading African poets in the United States. He remained in the United States until 1975, and then returned to the African continent to take up a teaching post at the University of Dar es Salaam. He subsequently taught at universities in Kenya, Botswana and Zambia. He also became active in the ANC again, helping to establish the organisation’s Department of Education in 1977, and its Department of Arts and Culture in 1983. He only returned to South Africa in 2001, several years after the first democratic elections.8 Kgositsile’s early poems were lyrical, politically charged attacks against colonialism and apartheid, and were characterised by an anger that was devised to inspire young people. This is clearly evident in the excerpt from his poem ‘Shotgun’, published in 1971 and included in his 2002 collection:

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300 years in the grip Of blood-drenched sweat I Walk the flesh of the future Like the heir’s nimble Grin at diamond dust. And my Son playing in the nimble Leaves of the mimosa soil-bound Over 300 years…but every night The red-lipped sun kisses the sea The leaf mates even With factory-filthed air And love loves love Bathed in a drop of the sun Kissing the singing muscle Of the mine labourer’s son Over 300 years of deballed grins...9 Such poetry captured the imagination of many young South Africans living inside the country and abroad. The popularity of his poetry was also bound to its lyrical connection with his love of jazz, his collection of poems, Spirits Unchained, being a prime example of the way he used words to draw the association between poetry, jazz and politics. Kgosistile felt the burden of the past and the challenges of the future, which is evident in one of his more recently published poems, ‘No Serenity Here’ (2010), where he writes, ‘I fear the end of peace....’ However, he also used his poetry to speak truth to power, and was critical of the ANC government. In the same poem, he identifies the outcomes of government-sponsored initiatives such as the New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), the African Union (AU) and the South African Development Community (SADC) as a betrayal of the nation, even as these initiatives seem to reference ubuntu.10 Kgositsile’s other major poetry collections include For Melba: Poems (1970), The World is Here (1973), The Present is a Dangerous Place to Live (1974), Places and Bloodstains: Notes for Ipeleng (1975), Heartprints (1980), When the Clouds Clear (1990), To the Bitter End (1995), If  I Could Sing: Selected Poems (2002) and This Way I Salute You (2004). He also published several books, including The Word is Here: Poetry from Modern Africa (1973), Approaches to Poetry Writing (1994) and Beyond Words: South African Poetics (with Don Mattera, Lebo Mashile and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, in 2009). In his view: The point of view of Black writers is Black, and their experience as Black people colors their ethics and aesthetics, if they are honest people…A writer’s language,

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Keorapetse Kgositsile: Revolutionary Poet Laureate

that is, his images, rhythms, earliest memories, and so forth, come from his people’s experience – real or imagined.11 Apart from the awards for his first collection of poems, he also received, among others, the Conrad Kent Rivers Memorial Award (1969), the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize (1969), the Herman Charles Bosman Prize (2005) and the national Order of Ikhamanga Silver (2006) ‘for excellent achievements in the field of literature and using these exceptional talents to expose the evils of the system of apartheid to the world’.12 On the occasion of Kgositsile’s being named South Africa’s second Poet Laureate in 2006, arts and culture minister Pallo Jordan said of him: Like the traditional bard he has been unsparingly and rigorously critical, when it was necessary, about the performance of Africa’s leadership and statesmen. Thanks to that sharp tongue, he has often been characterised as an ‘unguided missile’. But he is at the same time one of the most enthusiastic advocates and defenders of political tolerance, rooted in an appreciation that truth is elusive, and that it can only be sought in an environment of untrammelled contestation and debate among differing opinions. Like any sensible twentieth century intellectual he is also a secularist who nonetheless values pluralism for its intrinsic value…He has dedicated himself to the struggle for freedom and his poetry to the creation of a better world. Such a man deserves the title ‘Poet Laureate’.13 Notes 1 P.M. Phalafala, ‘My Name is Afrika: Setswana Genealogies, Trans-Atlantic Interlocutions,

and NOW-Time in Keorapetse Kgositsile’s Life and Work’, PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 2016, pp. 36–37. 2 Phalafala, ‘My Name is Afrika’, pp. 37–39. 3 Phalafala, ‘My Name is Afrika’, pp. 39–40. 4 Phalafala, ‘My Name is Afrika’, pp. 41–49. 5 Phalafala, ‘My Name is Afrika’, pp. 53–56. 6 Phalafala, ‘My Name is Afrika’, pp. 57–60. 7 Phalafala, ‘My Name is Afrika’, p. 64. 8 Phalafala, ‘My Name is Afrika’, pp. 89, 156n. 9 K.W. Kgositsile, ‘Shotgun’ in If I Could Sing: Selected Poems (Cape Town: Kwela/Snailpress,

2002), p. 21. 10 K.W. Kgositsile, ‘No Serenity Here’ in K. Kgositsile, D. Mattera, L. Mashile and P. van

de Villiers (eds), Beyond Words: South African Poetics (London: Flipped Eye, 2009), p. x. 11 Cited in Negro Digest 17:3 (1968), p. 18. Accessed November 2018, https://books.google.

co.za/books?id=sTkDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA18&dq=willie+Kgositsile&hl=en&sa=X&ved= 0ahUKEwiNx4b9uJTpAhVjs3EKHaNjCgY4ChDoAQg-MAM#v=onepage&q=willie%20 Kgositsile&f=false.

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12 South African Government, ‘National Orders Awards’ (28 October 2008). Accessed July

2020, https://www.gov.za/about-government/national-orders-awards-28-october-2008. 13 South African Literary Awards, ‘National Poet Laureate Programme: Background’ (n.d.).

Accessed July 2020, https://sala.org.za/national-poet-laureate-programme/.

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Breyten Breytenbach: Word nomad and revolutionary spirit

Breyten Breytenbach: Word nomad and revolutionary spirit Hester du Plessis

b. 1939

Breyten Breytenbach was a student at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in the early 1960s – when apartheid was at its height, and resistance against it was intensifying. Like many Afrikaners of his time, he was deeply disturbed by the political ideology of apartheid that was dividing the citizens of South Africa. His resistance and aversion to the atrocities executed by the Afrikaner-dominated National Party became an enduring theme throughout his life. All young white men at that time were conscripted to serve two years in the army, but he opted to leave the country, and went to Europe. Many Afrikaner intellectuals, such as Jan Rabie, had already paved the way by leaving South Africa. Rabie had settled in Paris, France, in 1948, and stayed on for seven years before returning to South Africa. When Breytenbach joined this group of intellectuals in Paris in the early 1960s, he found much to his liking. Paris provided an antidote to the oppressive, Calvinist-Protestant ethos prevalent amongst the Afrikaners of that time. The apartheid regime was also becoming more aggressive in the execution of its laws that were hell-bent on separating the races. Paris, which provided intellectual freedom as well as the delight of daily contact with the arts and liberal politics in a culture not unfamiliar to most South Africans of European descent, is where Breytenbach made his permanent home. He married Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien (which means Yellow Lotus), a French woman of Vietnamese ancestry, and they settled in Paris in 1962. As a result of this ‘mixed marriage’, he was not allowed to return to South Africa due to the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 and the Immorality Act of 1950, which made it a criminal offence for a white person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race. Paris was in the lingering grip of the 1968 student uprising and its Marxist slant and critique of Eurocentrism (with colonialism as a common enemy), which dominated the philosophy of French intellectuals of that time.1 Within this atmosphere of revolution and resistance, the

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stage was set for this most prolific poet, painter and author to embark on a lifetime of defiance against oppression and injustices. He also embraced Zen Buddhism as a way of life. In 1973, a special visa was granted to him and Yolande to attend a writers’ congress at the University of Cape Town. By this time Breytenbach had already made his mark as a poet and painter in Europe. Experiencing first-hand the degrading effects of apartheid, he returned to Paris and became involved with Atlas/Okhela, an anti-apartheid movement operating in France and the Netherlands.2 In November 1975, with the intention of opening a leftist ‘white’ sector within the ANC, Breytenbach paid an illegal visit to South Africa, using a false passport. Upon arrival, he was betrayed by a senior ANC office-bearer, and arrested by the South African security police. He was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment for high treason under the Terrorism Act by the Pretoria Supreme Court. He was retried in June 1977 on new and fabricated charges that, among other things, he had planned a Russian submarine attack on the prison at Robben Island through the conspiratorial Okhela Organisation. However, the judge found him guilty only of having smuggled letters and poems out of jail, for which he was fined the nominal amount of R50. He remained a political prisoner for seven years, often kept in solitary confinement. He was unexpectedly released in December 1982. During his time in prison, amid strict embargoes, Taurus Publishing was able to provide Breytenbach with a copy of his poetry book Lotus,3 which contained a photo of his wife, Hoang Lien. This small act of personal defiance in collaboration with his Afrikaans friends at Taurus Publishing provided some solace and camaraderie amongst like-minded friends in South Africa and a way to circumvent political and personal oppression.4 His work The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist5 describes aspects of his imprisonment.6 In later years Breyten Breytenbach sometimes reflected on and referred back to this period in his life,7 with its unfinished truths,8 in work that Louise Viljoen refers to as his ‘tronk poësie’.9 Released as a result of international protests, he returned to Paris and obtained French citizenship. In 1987 Breytenbach, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine met on the island of Gorée off the coast of Dakar, Senegal, to discuss the possibility of organising a conference in Dakar between a group of Afrikaners and a delegation from the ANC in exile. Together they raised funds for the conference from George Soros, a well-known US international philanthropist, even though Soros at that time feared that South Africa was doomed and the conference futile. Breytenbach also used his contacts with Danielle Mitterand, the French president’s wife and head of the France Liberté Institute, to smooth entry for the delegates into Senegal since she enjoyed a good relationship with Abdou Diouf, the Senegalese president.10 From 9 to 12 July 1987, a group of 61 Afrikaner academics and 17 members of the ANC met in Dakar, Senegal. This meeting was followed by a conference, initiated by Breytenbach and Van Zyl Slabbert, from 8 to 12  July 1989 at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.11 Both these meetings with the ANC had political significance since the Afrikaans writers had been part of the cultural hegemony on which the ruling class built its political regime. Meeting with the ANC was a direct act of resistance against apartheid and the authoritarianism of the ruling National

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Party. It opened up communal dialogue in an effort to find a future away from apartheid and the by now endemic violence within the country. Considering themselves to be a permanent part of Africa, their efforts towards reconciliation with the ANC as well as embracing African intellectuals continued, and in January 2000 Breytenbach, Van Zyl Slabbert and André Saayman initiated the Gorée Institute in Dakar, where the arts were promoted. In one of Breytenbach’s more recent publications, Parool/Parole,12 he shares a collection of speeches he gave between the years 1968 and 2015. This collection provides insight into the diverse interests and topics he engaged with over this period. Today, Breytenbach, as artist, is internationally acclaimed. His first poems appeared in the student newspaper Groote Schuur in 1959, and his debut major publication was the innovative volume Die Ysterkoei Moet Sweet in 1964, followed by the inspiring Om te Vlieg.13 Breytenbach became a prolific painter after his first art exhibition, Painting the Eye, in which he portrayed surreal animal and human figures (1993 in Cape Town). He sometimes combines his paintings and sketches with his poetry, as in the ever-charming Plakboek14 or as cover illustrations for his books. At times he uses photographs to create a desired mood, as in the exclusive Agterblyfsel/ Blackface15 with its English and Afrikaans poems, and in his recent Op Weg na Kû.16 He has received numerous awards, including the Hertzog Prize for Poetry in 1984 for Yk, which he, in defiance, refused to accept. In 1965 he received the A.P.B. Prize for Die Ysterkoei Moet Sweet and, in 1984, for Katastrofes, and the Hertzog Prize for Poetry in 1999 for two Afrikaans poetry volumes, an elegy Oorblyfsels: ’n roudig and Papierblom (Paper Flower). This was followed by another Hertzog Prize for Poetry in 2008 for Die Windvanger. International awards include the Mahmoud Darwish Literature Prize 2010 for Oorblyfsel/Voice Over, the Max Jacob Prize 2010 for Outre Voix/Voice Over, the French edition of his poetry collection Oorblyfsel/Voice Over, and the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award 2017. He was elected to the World Council of the International Parliament of Writers in 1993, with the likes of Jacques Derrida, Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie as president. Breytenbach is the subject of films, such as the German Prison Mailbag X4 South Africa, a Letter to Breyten Breytenbach, produced by Jobst Grapow, and shown on German television in 1983. Seisoen in die Paradys was the subject of several films in 1997 – among others, one in English directed by the Swede Richard Dindo and one in French. Breytenbach’s much discussed play Boklied premiered in 1998 during the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees and received the De Kat Herrie Prize. It also roped in eight FNB Vita Regional Theatre Awards for 1997/1998, for, among others, best production. In February 2007, Breyten’s parental home in Wellington was opened as the Breytenbach Centre. Breytenbach, as a French citizen, currently divides his time between Europe, South Africa and the United States. In 2000 he became a visiting professor at the University of Cape  Town in the Graduate School of Humanities. He is also involved with the Gorée Institute in Dakar and with New York University, where he teaches in the graduate Creative Writing Programme. He

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spends long northern summers in Catalonia, where the Spanish landscape is most conductive to his painting. Notes 1 L. Ferry and A. Renaut, (1990) French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism

(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990). 2 F. Galloway (ed.), Breyten Breytenbach Woordenaar Woordnar (Pretoria: Protea Boekhuis,

2019), pp. 188–190. 3 B. Breytenbach, (under the pseudomom of Jan Blom), Lotus (Johannesburg: Taurus

Publishing, 1970). 4 Taurus Publishing was established with overseas funding to resist the oppressive

censorship maintained by the apartheid regime. 5 B. Breytenbach, True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (Johannesburg: Taurus Publishing,

1984). 6 Martin Welz provides a detailed background on Breytenbach’s trial and its outcome. See

M. Welz, Breyten en die Bewaarder: Die Breytenbach Verhoor Junie–Julie 1977 (Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill, 1997). 7 B. Breytenbach, The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution (New York: Harcourt Brace &

Company, 1996). 8 S. Linfield, ‘An Interview with Breyten Breytenbach’, Salmagundi 128/129 (2001/2),

pp. 249–274. 9 L. Viljoen, Die Mond Vol Vuur: Beskouings oor die Werk van Breyten Breytenbach (Cape Town:

Sun Press, 2014). 10 H. Gilliomee, ‘True Confessions, End Papers and the Dakar Conference: A Review of the

Political Arguments’, Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 46:2 (2009), pp. 28–42. 11 A. Coetzee and J. Polley, Crossing Borders: Writers Meet the ANC (Johannesburg: Taurus

Publishing, 1990). 12 B. Breytenbach, Parool/Parole: Versamelde Werke/Collected Speeches (Cape Town: Penguin

Books, 2015). 13 B. Breytenbach, Om te Vlieg (Cape Town: Buren-uitgewers, 1971). 14 B. Breytenbach, Plakboek (Groenkloof: HOND, 1994). 15 B. Breytenbach, Agterblyfsel/Blackface (’n beperkte, genommerde uitgawe van 100 kopië

deur island Position, die druknaam van Pirogue Kollektief en HOND, 2014). 16 B. Breytenbach, Op Weg na Kû. (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2019).

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Athol Fugard: Prophet not without honour

Athol Fugard: Prophet not without honour Michael Cosser

b. 1932

Anybody who thinks there’s nothing wrong with this world needs to have his head examined. Just when things are going all right, without fail someone or something will come along and spoil everything. Somebody should write that down as a fundamental law of the Universe. The principle of perpetual disappointment. If there is a God who created this world, he should scrap it and try again. Athol Fugard, ‘Master Harold’…and the Boys Athol Fugard’s semi-autobiographical play ‘Master Harold’...and the Boys is a microcosm of the larger apartheid world into which its creator was born. ‘The boys’ are Sam and Willie, two middle-aged African servants of Hally’s parents’ household, who have cared for the 17-year-old Hally since birth. Hally is modelled on Fugard himself – Harold Athol Fugard. ‘Master Harold’ is the name Hally forces Sam to address him by as the narrative of the play unfolds. This, along with the ambiguity of the term ‘the boys’, encapsulates the plot of the play. ‘The boys’ may refer to a man’s male friends or work partners viewed as a group,1 or to the form of address white ‘masters’ used for adult African men during apartheid. ‘The boys’ are Hally’s friends on a long rainy afternoon – until Hally hears from his mother that his father, a cripple and a drunk, has been discharged from hospital, and is on his way home. Hally vents his anger on Sam and Willie; and when Sam chastises Hally for mocking his father, Hally lashes out at Sam, and the more familiar narrative of white master–black servant takes over. In a fit of rage, Hally compels Sam to address him as ‘Master Harold’, and spews forth such soliloquies as the one quoted above. ‘Just when things are going all right, without fail someone or something will come along and spoil everything’ are the words of a white apartheid-era teenager who, unable to master the fear he feels at the news of his alcoholic father’s imminent return, dominates his erstwhile black friends instead.

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Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard was born in 1932 in Middelburg, in the Karoo desert region of South Africa, the middle child of three. His father, Harold David Fugard, was a native English speaker of Irish descent. His mother, Elizabeth, was an Afrikaner, a descendant of earlier Dutch settlers. Her first language was Afrikaans. Athol spoke both languages from childhood, and has described himself as ‘an Afrikaner writing in English’.2 The family moved to Port Elizabeth, where Mr Fugard was a jazz pianist. Crippled by a childhood accident (shades of Johnny’s father in Fugard’s play Hello and Goodbye), his disability was aggravated by alcoholism. As he was increasingly unable to work, Mrs Fugard took responsibility for supporting the family. She operated a small boarding house, and later a small tea room – the St George’s – that provided the setting for ‘Master Harold’…and the Boys. Fugard’s first job in Johannesburg was as a clerk in the native commissioner’s court that adjudicated passbook violations. For black South Africans, being caught without a passbook could – and often did – result in arrest. Fugard suggests that it was through this courtroom experience that he was inspired to resist apartheid through theatre: ‘During my six months in that courtroom…I saw more suffering than  I could cope with. I began to understand how my country functions.’3 In his play Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972), Fugard condemns South Africa’s unequal treatment of black people within the country, and questions the legality of the passbook system. His first play, No-Good Friday (1958), was performed in Johannesburg before a segregated white audience, and starred Fugard alongside Zakes Mokae, a black South African actor. Fugard started writing seriously while still at school. His mother sacrificed significantly to send him, ironically enough, to an English-medium university, the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he studied philosophy and social anthropology. But, wanting to see the outside world and experience the kind of life that would set him up for a writing career, he dropped out of UCT after three years without getting his degree4 and hitchhiked from Cape Town to Cairo. In Port Sudan, he joined the crew of a cargo ship and spent a few years as a merchant seaman in Asia. On his return to South Africa, he worked as a radio journalist in Port Elizabeth before moving to Cape Town, where he befriended a group of young actors and theatre workers, and began to write plays. He married the English-born actress Sheila Meiring in 1956. In 1958 they moved to Johannesburg, where black friends introduced him to the street life of Sophiatown, the mixedrace suburb that inspired his plays No-Good Friday and Ngogo. Fugard staged his plays in private, with non-professional black actors. It was at this point that he met Zakes Mokae. Fugard returned to Port Elizabeth in the early 1960s, working with the Serpent Players (so called because their first performance was in a zoo, in what had been a snake pit).5 The troupe staged plays by other writers and workshopped new plays penned by Fugard as well. He and Mokae travelled to England in 1967 to act in a BBC television production of The Blood Knot. On his return to South Africa, his passport was confiscated to prevent him from travelling abroad for future productions. His plays, and his movements, were closely watched by the

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government, and publication and performance of his plays were prohibited. Most of his work – including one of the Port Elizabeth–workshopped plays, Boesman and Lena – was staged in New York and London. In 1973 he was allowed to travel to London with two of his actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, to perform the workshopped play Sizwe Bansi is Dead. The play won the London Theatre Critics Award, and the following year the play was performed by the trio in New York, alongside The Island. The 1980s were highly successful years for Fugard. He acted in a number of feature films, including  The Killing Fields  and  Gandhi, in which he played Prime Minister Jan Smuts. His novel Tsotsi, about gang life in Sophiatown, which he had first written in 1961, was published in 1980. (The film version went on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2006). His Notebooks 1960–1977 was published in 1983. Blood Knot and ‘Master Harold’…and the Boys were staged on both sides of the Atlantic, ‘Master Harold’ receiving Best New Play awards from both London and New York critics, and earning Zakes Mokae a Tony Award for his portrayal of Sam. Fugard himself received a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre in 2011. He has been awarded honorary degrees from many universities, including Yale and UCT.6 Fugard wrote, or developed through workshopping, 24 plays in the apartheid era.7 Many won international awards – in addition to those already mentioned, the 1971 Obie Award, Best Foreign Play and the 1992 Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Revival, for Boesman and Lena; and the 1988 Drama Critics’ Circle Award, Best Foreign Play, for The Road to Mecca.8 With the unbanning of the ANC in 1990, the release of Nelson Mandela from Robben Island, and the negotiations towards a multiracial democracy, Fugard initially doubted his usefulness as a playwright and social observer. But the teething difficulties associated with the transition to democracy continued to provide him with material for his plays. In the democratic era he has written and staged 11 plays, including Coming Home (2008), Have You Seen Us? (2009), The Train Driver (2010), The Bird Watchers (2011), Die Laaste Karretjiegraf (‘The Last Donkey Cart Grave’ – his first play in Afrikaans, written to fulfil a promise he had made to his Afrikaans-speaking mother), Shadow of the Hummingbird (2014) – in which he acted – and The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek (2015). He was the 2005 recipient of the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver for his excellent contribution to theatre,9 and is an honorary fellow of Britain’s Royal Society of Literature. While he travels the world and frequently visits Cape Town, Fugard’s home, which he shares with his partner, Paula Fourie (he and Sheila Meiring parted ways some years ago), is a house in Nieu-Bethesda, one-time home of Helen Martins, who created the world-famous Owl House, and who was the inspiration for the main character in Fugard’s play The Road to Mecca. Interviewed in 1985, Fugard was asked whether the pain he saw one night in his brother’s sleeping body had ‘translated into the injection of race and whiteness’ in The Blood Knot,10 which features two half-brothers – a light-skinned coloured man playing opposite a black man. His response was:

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I was trying to examine a guilt more profound than racial guilt – the existential guilt that I feel when another person suffers, is victimised, and I can do nothing about it. South Africa afforded me the most perfect device for examining this guilt.11 That perfect device was born in a native commissioner’s court and raised in the St George’s tea room in Port Elizabeth. It was in this crucible of ambivalence that Fugard fully realised the pain of racial and existential guilt: Hally victimising and inflicting pain on Sam, transfiguring him instantly from friend to servant. But while in that moment Hally could do nothing about it, his namesake has spent a lifetime of dramaturgy getting to grips with that guilt. For his pains he was awarded not a gold but a silver medal – a reminder that a prophet is not without honour except in his homeland. Notes 1 Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of ‘the boys’. See https://www.merriam-webster.

com/dictionary/the%20boys. 2 Academy of Achievement, ‘Athol Fugard: Novelist and Playwright’ (n.d.). Accessed

November 2018, https://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/. 3 L. Richards, ‘Athol Fugard, the Art of Theater’, The Paris Review 8:111 (1989). Accessed

June 2019, https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2416/athol-fugard-the-art-of-theaterno-8-athol-fugard. 4 Richards, ‘Athol Fugard, the Art of Theater’. 5 I. Fisher, Athol Fugard Biography (n.d.). Accessed May 2019, http://www.iainfisher.com/

fugard/athol-fugard.html. 6 Richards, ‘Athol Fugard, the Art of Theater’. 7 See Fisher, Athol Fugard Biography; I. Fisher, Athol Fugard Plays (n.d.). Accessed May 2019,

http://www.iainfisher.com/fugard/athol-fugard-play.html; A. Fugard, My Children! My Africa! and Selected Shorter Plays, edited by Stephen Gray (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 1990); S. Gray (ed.), File on Fugard (London: Methuen Drama, 1991). 8 Lortel Archives, Athol Fugard. Accessed May 2019, http://iobdb.com/CreditableEntity/2869. 9 South African Government Information, ‘National Orders Awards 27 September 2005:

Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard (1932–)’ (2008). Accessed July 2019, https://web.archive.org/ web/20081121220102/http://www.info.gov.za/aboutgovt/orders/2005/fugard.htm. 10 Richards, ‘Athol Fugard, the Art of Theater’. 11 Richards, ‘Athol Fugard, the Art of Theater’.

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John Kani: Titan of South African theatre

John Kani: Titan of South African theatre Gerard Hagg

b. 1943

Actor, playwright, trainer, philosopher and cultural leader in the South African theatre world, Bonisile John Kani has paid a high price for his commitment to his craft and his country. After his 1985 performance in Miss Julie, which featured South Africa’s first on-stage interracial kiss, he was stabbed 11 times and lost an eye, and he was detained directly as a result of his performances in protest theatre. But the veteran thespian, who has never bowed to pressure, continues to write, produce and act in films and plays that both challenge and entertain. Kani, whose theatre career has – so far – spanned over 60 years, started acting in plays when he was still at school in Port Elizabeth. He is a prolific stage actor, writer and director; has performed in numerous movies; and has been involved in training young aspiring actors throughout his career. After completing his high school education, Kani started training drama groups in schools and community halls in New Brighton. In 1965 he joined the Serpent Players drama group, and worked there with Athol Fugard and Winston Ntshona, experimenting and improvising plays, some of which were then published. This partnership lasted for many years.1 In 1972 the three actors produced  Sizwe Bansi is Dead, which  dealt with the apartheid government’s oppressive pass laws. The Island  followed in 1973. Both plays were performed in many places in South Africa. In 1974 Kani and Ntshona toured overseas with the two plays, which were performed over 50 times at Broadway’s Edison Theatre. The two actors also offered workshops in Washington, New York and Los Angeles. Two years later Kani toured Australia. After he came back to South Africa, he continued touring in rural communities with the same two plays. Responding to the strong anti-apartheid message of the plays, the state detained Kani and Ntshona, but had to release them after popular demonstrations.

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In 1977 Barney Simon convinced Kani to join him at the new Market Theatre in Johannesburg, where protest theatre had found a home within the white city. Kani’s protest plays resulted in his being continuously harassed by the police, sent death threats and even assaulted. Over the years, the political climate in South Africa changed. In 1987, when Kani accepted the role of Othello in Shakespeare’s play, he remarked that at least the uproar over an interracial kiss – as happened with Miss Julie – would not be repeated. Things got easier after 1994, and Kani performed in many plays and movies in South Africa and abroad. In 2002 Kani marked his debut as a sole playwright with the staging of Nothing But the Truth at the Market Theatre. The play was about the tensions between black South Africans who had remained in South Africa under apartheid, and those who had gone into exile. Between 2012 and 2013 Kani played the role of Mkhuseli Mthetho in the Mzansi Magic telenovela Inkaba, a series that was his own creation. He accepted the lead role in the movie Black Panther in 2017, and he was the voice of  Rafiki  in the reproduction of the film  The Lion King in 2019. In the same year his play  Kunene and the King was staged in Stratford-upon-Avon’s Swan Theatre  in the United Kingdom, and in Cape Town’s Fugard Theatre. Kani is currently a director of the Market Theatre Laboratory and a trustee of the Market Theatre Foundation. He is also the chairperson of the funding organisation National Arts Council of South Africa. As in the work of many black artists, Kani’s themes developed broadly over two periods, before and after 1994, ranging from resistance to apartheid and the search for identity to the complexities of the post-1994 South African society. While his plays reflect the current society, he insists that he never writes with the express intention of being political. ‘When you write as an artist, you just tell a story, and people say it addresses issues. But when  I met Athol, I was already a political animal and our combination became beautiful because he isn’t, he’s a storyteller.’2 For Kani, ‘acting became a powerful tool for change’3 under apartheid. Shakespeare exerted a lasting influence on his performances,4 but his work inevitably focused on life under apartheid – ‘so isolated that people believed there was no world beyond the township’. A typical example was Sizwe Bansi is Dead, in which Kani reflected the apartheid regime’s oppressive pass laws. The play moved between a motor factory and a photography studio in a nearby township, with a focus on the characters’ thoughts about their identity – the way black men behaved in front of their white bosses, in comparison with how they presented themselves to the camera in the photography studio. Responding to Albie Sachs’s statement that the use of culture solely as a ‘weapon of the struggle’ is inadequate,5 Kani creates spaces on stage that embrace ‘ambiguity and contradiction’ as a way of reflecting on the legacy of apartheid.6 In Nothing But the Truth, for example, he portrays events in post-apartheid South Africa in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

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hearings, highlighting the ‘struggle to negotiate new identities within the shifting social and physical geographies of post-apartheid South Africa’.7 In other plays, he extends this theme to intercultural encounters, keenly aware of the ‘sociopsychological conversation where we, through our painful personal and collective stories and memories, are re-assessing the justice foundation of our constitution’.8 This reconciliation and acceptance of different identities is the central theme of his 2019 play Kunene and the King, which deals with the effects of apartheid 25 years into democracy, through the relationship of two elderly men – one white, one black. Kani stars as Lunga Kunene, a headstrong male nurse contracted to care for the cantankerous actor Jack Morris, played by Sir Antony Sher. As Kani says: The individual has to commit to change, the individual has to look at the past and take accountability of the past – for the wound to heal we have to dress it together…In my writing, it’s always about the points of meeting. And, in that meeting, how we carefully weave a tapestry of reconciliation and humanity. And those are the stories I like; the stories that say we have found each other.9 There is more to theatre than performance and protest. Kani has always been resolute in his commitment to making sure that young people are given the chance to participate in theatre, and explore aspects of themselves they may never have known existed. He had started workshops with youth in Brighton soon after finishing school and, during his visits to rural communities in South Africa in 1977, he trained local drama groups wherever he performed his plays. Through the Market Theatre Laboratory, Kani and Barney Simon for many years provided training to disadvantaged youth. During his 1976 tour in Australia, he offered workshops to Aboriginal community groups.10 But the world changes fast, and social commentators and social activism need to change with it. Kani’s observation of society makes him aware of emerging social trends: ‘What has happened over the past ten years is that we have moved apart again through politicisation of society…We’re tinkering on the verge of a new revolution where the youth and a vocal society are questioning us as elders, whether we made the right decisions, and we need to say, let’s sit down and talk.’11 Kani has received numerous awards and honours: • In 1974 he received the Tony Award in the United States for outstanding work in theatre productions on Broadway, and a nomination for the Olivier Award for his role in Fugard’s My Children! My Africa! 12 • In 1987 the Southern Transvaal Chamber of Commerce presented him a merit award for his contribution to the cultural struggle under apartheid. • For Nothing But the Truth, he received the 2003 Fleur du Cap Award for best actor, best indigenous script and best new South African play. The play also received Naledi Theatre Awards, and was turned into a feature film in 2008.

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• He was awarded the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation Award in 2000, as well as the Tribute Magazine’s ‘Titan of the Century’ Award and the Olive Schreiner Prize in 2005. • In 2005 the South African government awarded Kani the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver for ‘excellent contributions to theatre and, through this, the struggle for a non-racial, nonsexist and democratic South Africa’. • Kani has two honorary doctorates: one from the University of Cape Town (2006), and one from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (2013). • In 2008, a special Obie Award was conferred on Kani for his contribution to American theatre. • He was included into the Avanti Hall of Fame in 2008, a recognition by the South African film, television and advertising industries. • Kani received a SAFTA (South African Film and Television Awards) Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010 and, in 2019, the kykNET 2019 Fiesta Award for his lifetime contribution to theatre. • The main theatre of the Market Theatre complex in Johannesburg is now called the John Kani Theatre. The worldwide recognition accorded to Kani is an indication of his influence on both theatre practice, and the discourses on the role of theatre in social transformation. This influence is also borne out in his embracing of Albie Sachs’s proposals for change in content, with renewed attention to underlying social issues, such as identity and reconciliation. Kani’s involvement in youth theatre training and his leadership at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg have ensured that his ideas are transferred to future generations in ways that are both intellectually challenging and remain within the artistic realm of the theatre. Notes 1 The Presidency, ‘Bonisile John Kani: The Order of Ikhamanga in Silver’ (2005). Accessed June

2019, http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/bonisile-john-kani-1943. 2 L. Folb, ‘John Kani’s “5pm Phenomenon” in New Play’, Weekend Argus 5 May 2019.

Accessed June 2019, https://www.iol.co.za/weekend-argus/john-kanis-5pm-phenomenonin-new-play-22617926. 3 M. Trueman, ‘Playwright John Kani on Apartheid: “You Had to Tell Stories That Were

Important to You”’, Financial Times 29 March 2019. 4 Trueman, ‘Playwright John Kani’. 5 I. Kok and K. Press, Spring Is Rebellious: Arguments about Cultural Freedom by Albie Sachs and

Respondents (Cape Town: Buchu Books, 1990). 6 G. Shane, ‘“I Was Those Thousands”: Memory, Identity and Space in John Kani’s Nothing

But the Truth’, Theatre Research International 32:1 (2007), pp. 68–84. 7 Shane, ‘“I Was Those Thousands”’, p. 68. 8 E. Du Plessis, ‘Lessons on Land from John Kani – South Africa’, Farming Portal: News of

the Day 25 February 2019. Accessed April 2019, http://www.farmingportal.co.za/index.php/ all-agri-news/news-of-the-day/1679. 9 Folb, ‘John Kani’s “5pm Phenomenon” in New Play’.

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10 Trueman, ‘Playwright John Kani’. 11 Folb, ‘John Kani’s “5pm Phenomenon” in New Play’. 12 The Presidency, ‘Bonisile John Kani’.

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Miriam Makeba: Giving voice to the voiceless Samela Mtyingizane

1932–2008

Zenzile Miriam Makeba, nicknamed ‘Mama Africa’, was a respected African musician and human rights activist. Makeba was born on 4  March 1932 in Prospect Township near Johannesburg.1 Her mother, Christina Makeba, was a sangoma (traditional healer) of Swazi descent who held a job as a domestic worker. Makeba was born into a poor household, and to make ends meet, her mother brewed and sold umqombothi (traditional beer). When she was only 18 days old, her mother was imprisoned for illegally brewing and selling umqombothi, and the family could not afford bail. Consequently, Makeba spent six months of her life in jail with her mother when she was very young.2 After her father, Caswell Makeba, died when she was six,3 Makeba went to live with her grandmother and cousins in Pretoria while her mother continued working as a domestic worker.4 She started her work life helping her mother clean houses. From a very young age, she enjoyed singing in the church choir in English, isXhosa, Sesotho, and isiZulu. She could sing in the English language before she could speak it.5 Makeba’s professional musical career began when she sang popular songs with her cousin’s all-male South African group called the Cuban Brothers.6 However, her career kicked off when she was 21 years old, and had joined the jazz group the Manhattan Brothers, which specialised in popular songs from South African musicians and famous pieces released by African American groups. Makeba was the only female member of the group.7 In 1953, she acquired a reputation as a musician after she recorded and released her first hit song with the Manhattan Brothers called ‘Laku Tshoni Ilanga’. With the band, she toured South Africa, Zimbabwe, which was known as Rhodesia at the time, and the Congo.8

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Makeba began singing for an all-female group called the Skylarks in 1956. They sang a combination of jazz and traditional South African melodies.9 In 1959, Makeba was the female lead in the South African jazz opera King Kong that included Hugh Masekela in the cast.10 To avoid contravening apartheid laws, the musical was often performed at universities in front of a racially mixed audience. This also raised the profile of Makeba amongst whites. That same year she made an appearance in an anti-apartheid film with the title Come Back, Africa,11 playing a small role as a singer in a shebeen. In 1959, Makeba moved to the United States,12 motivated by the need to further her career and the desire to explore a foreign country.13 The opportunity to travel was presented when film producer Lionel Rogoson invited Makeba to attend the Venice Film Festival in 1959 to personally accept an award for the movie Come Back, Africa. Romance was another personal reason for leaving her home country. Makeba and her then boyfriend, Shunna Pillay, who had already relocated to London, contemplated seeking greener pastures in foreign countries.14 The political movie Come Back, Africa was very critical of the ruling apartheid government; without a doubt, the government detested the film particularly because it was distributed to other countries without the consent of state officials.15 In the end, her departure was untroubled, and contrary to struggle heroes of her time she did not have to ‘jump the fence’ to exit the country. In the 1960s, racial segregation become entrenched in South African society, and the apartheid state became more repressive. In America, as Makeba grew in popularity, she used her musical talent to raise awareness of apartheid and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.16 During her time in the United States, her music was increasingly appreciated, and she became a legitimate celebrity who appealed to the American media and public.17 A New York Times reviewer labelled her on-stage performances as ‘a piquant combination of the exotic, the primitive and the sophisticated’. Her songs with isiZulu and isiXhosa lyrics clicked, according to the reviewer, ‘like a field of beetles’.18 Her singing ability, attractive appearance, and ‘exotic songs’ with ‘the weird tongue-smackings of her native isiXhosa language’ impressed audiences.19 Her African background and lyrics distinguished her from other performers in America. The media and public support associated her within the African continent, her motherland South Africa, and its struggle against apartheid.20 According to Makeba, this was intentional: In America, I realised I was something of a novelty. I was different. This made me realise that my strength would be in staying true to my roots. If I sang my music from home, if I sang of the music of my roots, only then could I be someone.21 Makeba returned to South African in 1960 for her mother’s funeral – against the advice of fellow exiles and family in South Africa22 because they feared for her life if she returned.

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When  she  arrived, her passport was stamped invalid, and she was officially denied the opportunity to return home.23 This brought into sharp focus her victimisation by the apartheid state. At this point, her music became increasingly explicit about apartheid and the oppressive white-minority government in South Africa.24 In 1963, Makeba testified before a United Nations Special Committee against South Africa’s National Party government and apartheid rule, including making a request for economic sanctions.25 She also requested an arms injunction against South Africa on the grounds that the weapons sold to the South African apartheid state were being used on black women and children.26 These are the daring actions taken by Makeba that led to her citizenship being taken away, and her music being banned in South Africa.27 She was a woman without a country until she was issued passports by Algeria,28 Guinea, Belgium and Ghana.29 In her lifetime, Makeba had nine passports30 and honorary citizenship in ten countries.31 In the midst of travelling, Makeba’s music career flourished. She won a Best Folk Recording Grammy for An Evening with Harry Belafonte in 1966.32 This album laid out the unjust and oppressive politics confronting black South Africans under apartheid. Several of Makeba’s songs, such as ‘Ndodemnyama we Verwoerd’ (Watch out Verwoerd), were critical of the South African government.33 In 1967, Makeba’s hit song ‘Pata Pata’ made it to the worldwide Top Ten, making her the first black woman to reach such an achievement.34 In March 1968, Makeba married the militant African American civil rights activist and leader of the Black Panthers, Stokely Carmichael. This led to a dramatic decrease in her popularity in the United States and cancellation of performances, and her press coverage deteriorated in spite of her efforts to portray her marriage as apolitical. Harassment from the United States government forced Makeba out of the country, and she settled in Guinea, where she remained until her return to the United States in 1987.35 She was unrelenting in her career as a performer in the 1970s and 1980s as she toured Africa, South America and Europe. However, in this period her performances were predominantly hosted in smaller venues such as cultural institutions and trade union halls.36 In 1975, Makeba was appointed as Guinea’s official delegate to the United Nations, and in that year she twice addressed the UN’s General Assembly, where she spoke against apartheid.37 The 1980s proved to be a difficult period for Makeba because she lost her daughter Bongi, who died while giving birth. In 1987, Makeba was introduced to Paul Simon by Hugh Masekela, and shortly thereafter she joined Simon on his very successful Graceland tour to the newly independent Zimbabwe.38 The concert was inclusive of multicultural music, and attracted muchneeded attention to the widespread racist policies in South Africa. However, her participation in the concert with Simon was controversial, and it generated a cultural boycott within South Africa. Simon was criticised for not discussing the recruitment of session players with the exile groups before he made his decision about who to include. Nevertheless, Makeba gave Simon full support.

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In 1990, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years, he encouraged Makeba to return home after more than 30 years of exile. After the fall of apartheid, Makeba was at last able to return to South Africa. She was greeted by her family at the airport.39 In 1991, Makeba, along with other musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simon and Masekela, released an album that was a combination of R&B, jazz, pop and traditional African music. The album was titled Eyes on Tomorrow, and the group then toured the world promoting it. It was a success across the African continent.40 In 1999, she was assigned the role of South Africa’s goodwill ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.41 Makeba continued being a humanitarian; she established the Makeba Centre for Girls, which was a home for orphans and abused girls. In her obituary, this project was described as one of the closest to her heart.42 She joined with Graça Machel Mandela, the former first lady, to advocate for children suffering from HIV and AIDS, child soldiers, and people with physical handicaps.43 In 2002, she took part in the making of the documentary Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony. The documentary was about the popular struggles against apartheid inside South Africa through the music of the period.44 In 2005, Makeba announced that she was retiring from the mainstream music industry. However, she still made appearances and smaller performances. She died on 9 November 2008,45 of a heart attack after performing one of her famous songs, ‘Pata Pata’, at a concert in the Castel Volturno near Caserta, Italy. Notes 1 M.K. Masemola, ‘Between Tinseltown and Sophiatown: The Double Temporality of

Popular Culture in the Autobiographical Cultural Memory of Bloke Modisane and Miriam Makeba’, Journal of Literary Studies 27:1 (2011), pp. 1–27. 2 S. Schwarz-Bart, A. Schwarz-Bart and S. Turner, Modern African Women. In Praise of Black

Women: Volume 3. (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 2003). 3 A. Lara, ‘Makeba, Miriam Zenzi’, in E.K. Akyeampong and H.L. Gates (eds), Dictionary of

African Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 4 R Feldstein, ‘Screening Anti-apartheid: Miriam Makeba, ‘Come Back, Africa’’, Feminist

Studies 39:1 (2013), pp. 12–39. 5 M Jaggi, ‘The return of Mama Africa’, The Guardian, 29 April 2000. 6 G. Ewens, ‘Miriam Makeba-Legendary South African singer and outspoken opponent of

apartheid, she was exiled for 30 years’, The Guardian, 11 November 2008. Accessed July 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/nov/11/miriam-makeba-obituary. 7 C. Kirkpatrick, ‘Miriam Makeba: Activist on Two Fronts’. (n.d.). Accessed July 2019, https://

www.sahistory.org.za/jquery_ajax_load/get/article/miriam-makeba-activist-two-frontsconnor-kirkpatrick. 8 J. Lusk, ‘Miriam Makeba: Singer banned from her native South Africa for fighting

apartheid’, The Independent, 11 November 2008. Accessed July 2019, https://www. independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/miriam-makeba-singer-banned-from-her-native-southafrica-for-fighting-apartheid-1009604.html.

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9 A. Lara, ‘Remembering Miriam Makeba’, Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa 5:1 (2008),

pp. 89–90. 10 R. Feldstein, How It Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement.

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 11 S. Schwarz-Bart et al., Modern African Women. 12 M.Z. Makeba and J. Hall, Makeba: My Story. (New York: New American Library, 1988). 13 N. Mwamuka, Makeba: The Miriam Makeba Story. (Johannesburg: STE Publishers, 2004). 14 N. Mwamuka, Makeba, p. 50. 15 Feldstein. How it Feels. 16 Kirkpatrick, Miriam Makeba. 17 T. Fleming, ‘A Marriage of Inconvenience: Miriam Makeba’s Relationship with Stokely

Carmichael and her Music Career in the United States’, Safundi 17:3 (2016), pp. 1–27. 18 Feldstein, How it Feels. 19 Fleming, A Marriage of Inconvenience. 20 Feldstein, How it Feels; Fleming, A Marriage of Inconvenience. 21 Sizemore-Barber, ‘The Voice of (Which?) Africa’. 22 Mwamuka, Makeba. 23 Makeba and Hall, Makeba. 24 Feldstein, How it Feels. 25 Kirkpatrick, Miriam Makeba. 26 Feldstein, How it Feels. 27 T. Ravell-Pinto and R. Ravell, ‘Obituary: African Icon: Miriam “Mama Africa” Makeba,

dies at age 76’, Journal of the African Literature Association. 2:2 (2008), pp. 274–281. 28 D.C. Ohadike, Sacred Drums of Liberation: Religions and Music of Resistance in Africa and the

Diaspora. (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2007). 29 J. Poet, ‘Miriam Makeba: Mama Africa Goes Home’, Crawdaddy!, 11 February 2009. 30 Nkrumah, ‘Miriam Makeba’. 31  The New Times Achievers, ‘Zenzile Miriam Makeba’. 32 C. Harris, ‘South African Songstress dubbed “Mama Africa”, an Absolute Icon of African

Jazz’, AllMusic 2019. Accessed July 2019, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/miriam-makebamn0000496097/biography. 33 A. Schumann, ‘The Beat that Beat Apartheid: The Role of Music in the Resistance against

Apartheid in South Africa’, Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien 14:8 (2008). 34 Feldstein, How it Feels. 35 L. Shana, Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora.

(New York: New York University Press, 2013). 36 Sizemore-Barber, ‘The Voice of (Which?) Africa’. 37 Ravell-Pinto et al., ‘Obituary’. 38 Ravell-Pinto et al., ‘Obituary’. 39 Kirkpatrick, Miriam Makeba. 40 Poet, ‘Miriam Makeba’.

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41 Food and Agricultural Organisation, The Goodwill Ambassadors of the Food and Agricultural

Organisation of the United Nations. (2008). Accessed July 2019, http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/ user_upload/Get_Involved/FAO_AMBASSADORS_E.pdf. 42 Lara, ‘Remembering’. 43 Nkrumah, ‘Miriam Makeba’. 44 M. Vershbow, ‘The Sounds of Resistance: The Role of Music in South Africa’s Anti-

Apartheid Movement’, Inquiries 2:6 (2010), pp. 1–2. Accessed July 2019, http://www. inquiriesjournal.com/articles/265/the-sounds-of-resistance-the-role-of-music-in-southafricas-anti-apartheid-movement. 45 WBSS Media, ‘Miriam Makeba’. (n.d.) Accessed July 2019, https://wbssmedia.com/artists/

detail/231.

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Hugh Masekela: Still grazing our hearts Namhla Ngqwala

1939–2018

South African trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer and singer Hugh Ramapolo Masekela began singing and playing piano at an early age after being inspired by the film Young Man with a Horn, in which Kirk Douglas portrayed an American jazz trumpeter. Then, when Hugh was 14, Father Trevor Huddleston from St Peter’s Secondary School, gave him his first trumpet, which he mastered with the help of his uncle Sauda, who played for the Johannesburg ‘Native’ Municipal Brass Band.1 Masekela played music that closely reflected his life experience. In 1960, after the political instability of the Sharpeville massacre, he left South Africa at the age of 21 along with Abdullah Ibrahim, Jonas Gwangwa, Miriam Makeba, Chris McGregor and Kippie Moeketsie.2 He spent 30 years in exile, living in the United States, Europe and Africa, while bringing his own country’s unique rhythms and harmonies to international stages, simultaneously making the world aware of the effect that the apartheid regime had had on black people in the country. Masekela got his big break when he joined the cast of Todd Matshikiza’s jazz opera King Kong, which toured the world in 1961. Masekela studied at some of the best music schools in the world, such as London’s Guildhall School and the Manhattan School of Music. While he was in New York, he became friends with Harry Belafonte, who helped him settle in the United States as a student. He also worked with Belafonte’s Clara Music, and arranged the music on several albums for his then wife, Miriam Makeba. They were divorced in 1966 after two years of marriage.3 He composed and recorded many original songs, including his 1968 number-one hit ‘Grazing in the Grass’, which won him a Grammy for Best Contemporary Pop Instrumental Performance that same year. Through his music, Masekela portrayed the hardships and the struggles that black South Africans encountered during the apartheid era,4 and the beauty of his beloved

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country. For instance, the song ‘Soweto Blues’, which was performed by his former wife, Miriam Makeba, was a reflection on the events of the 1976 Soweto riots. In 1987, Masekela released what became known as the anti-apartheid hymn for many South Africans and others who supported the struggle for liberation, ‘Bring Him Back Home’. The song was about the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, which soon grew into a battle song for the ongoing liberation struggle.5 Masekela proved that music can be a tool for activism and, during the anti-apartheid struggle, he constantly created works that opposed racial division. The artist is known for his role in preserving Tswana heritage and culture throughout his music career, and for being involved in numerous social initiatives. In 1985, Masekela founded the Botswana International School of Music (BISM). After his death in January 2018, the Manhattan School of Music (MSM), together with ELMA Music Foundation and the Hugh Masekela Heritage Foundation, launched the Hugh Masekela Heritage Scholarship, which provides an opportunity for six South African students to pursue Bachelor of Music degrees at Manhattan School of Music.6 Masekela returned to South Africa in 1990, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison. He was recognised by several academic institutions for the role he played as an apartheid activist, and was awarded several honorary doctorates, including an honorary doctorate in music by the University of the Witwatersrand in recognition of his contribution in music and talent as a world-class musician (2017); an honorary doctorate in music by the University of KwaZuluNatal (2017); an honorary doctorate in music by Rhodes University (2015); an honorary doctorate in music by the University of New York (2014); and an honorary doctorate in human sciences by the Vaal University of Technology (2011) for the role he played locally and internationally in the arts, and in activism against apartheid. In 2010, he was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga during the National Orders ceremony for that year.7 Besides winning a Grammy Award for ‘Grazing in the Grass’, Masekela was nominated in 1998 for Broadway’s Tony Award for Best Score for Sarafina. He received the International Award of the year during the BBC Radio Jazz Awards in 2002 and a Lifetime Achievement Award during the Channel O Music Video Awards in 2005. In 2007, he was given an African Music Legend Award at the Ghana Music Awards. Masekela was nominated for a Grammy for his 2010 album Jabulani in the Best World Music category. Masekela’s autobiography, Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela, which was published in 2004, describes in great detail his life experiences. Included here are recollections of his loves and losses, experiences with drugs and sex, and of exile and revolution. At the centre of his life story is the description of how he maintained his African heritage throughout his musical career. Masekela was a fearless trumpeter who expressed his feelings and opinions through songs overtly laced with rage.8 He used his music as a powerful tool to inspire and unite people in the country and the rest of the world to fight against the injustices of the apartheid system. He was, in fact, one of his country’s most recognisable freedom fighters in the battle against apartheid.

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President Cyril Ramaphosa quoted the first verse of Hugh Masekela’s ‘Thuma mina’ (Send me) song in his first State of the Nation address, after becoming president in 2018, in the wake of Jacob Zuma’s resignation: I wanna be there when the people start to turn it around When they triumph over poverty I wanna be there when the people win the battle against AIDS I wanna lend a hand I wanna be there for the alcoholic I wanna be there for the drug addict I wanna be there for the victims of violence and abuse I wanna lend a hand Send me Masekela passed away peacefully at his home in Johannesburg at the age of 78 on 23 January 2018. But his music lives on. Notes 1 K.J. Borek, ‘The Horn of Freedom Hugh Masekela’, 2017. Accessed April 2020, https://

static1.squarespace.com/static/57dc0961f5e231de185340bc/t/59ef9dd69f07f5b75fb2 4e89/1508875734619/XXIII.1_CM15.pdf. 2 A. Schumann, ‘The Beat that Beat Apartheid: The Role of Music in the Resistance against

Apartheid in South Africa’. Stichproben: Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien 14:8 (2008), pp. 17–39. 3 National Public Radio, ‘Hugh Masekela, South African Jazz Master and International

Chart-Topper, Dies at 78’, 2018. Accessed April 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwoway/2018/01/23/579885226/hugh-masekela-south-african-jazz-master-and-internationalchart-topper-dies-at-7. 4 D. Durosomo, ‘Remembering Hugh Masikela the Activist and Anti-apartheid Hero’,

Okayafrica, 23 January 2019. Accessed April 2019, https://www.okayafrica.com/hughmasekela-jazz-artist-activist-and-anti-apartheid-hero/. 5 eNCA, RIP: Hugh Masekela’s Train comes to a Halt, 23 January 2018. Accessed April 2019,

https://www.enca.com/life/entertainment/rip-hugh-masekelas-train-comes-to-a-halt. 6  Manhattan School of Music Launches Hugh Masekela Heritage Scholarship. Accessed April

2019, https://alexnews.co.za/129065/manhattan-school-music-launches-hugh-masekelaheritage-scholarship. 7 N. Schreuder, ‘The Most Notable Awards and Accolades Masekela racked up over his

Career’, The Star, 23 January 2018. Accessed April 2019, https://citizen.co.za/lifestyle/yourlife-entertainment-your-life/1791750/the-most-notable-awards-and-accolades-masekelaracked-up-over-his-career/. 8 L. Dalamba, ‘Disempowering Music: the Amandla! Documentary and other Conservative

Musical Projects’, Safundi 13 (2012), pp. 295–315.

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Lady Skollie: ‘Confronting society’s ills’

Lady Skollie: ‘Confronting society’s ills’ Chris Broodryk

b. 1987

Lady Skollie, born as Laura Windvogel, is a fine artist whose paintings speak to the linkages between gender, violence (abuse) and sexuality. In an interview with Andrea Crossan in 2017, she says, ‘[We women] can’t walk anywhere in Johannesburg.’ Everything women do ‘is monitored and controlled by our fear of men here’.1 ‘Skollie’ is a derogatory Afrikaans term for a crook or naughty child. For Windvogel, the sobriquet ‘Lady Skollie’ serves to negate gender binaries, merging her feminine and masculine energies, and reclaims the word as an act of artistic intervention.  Born to teacher parents in Cape Town, she attended the Frank Joubert Art Centre, where she indulged her creative side three times a week for nine years. After matriculating, she studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art (University of Cape Town) for two years before dropping out of the art course. ‘I realised it wasn’t for me, even though I knew I wanted to be an artist.’  2 Instead she obtained a BA in art history and Dutch literature, and a Certificate in Business Acumen for Artists from the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. She then worked for a few years in retail before taking up art full-time. In 2016, the Mail & Guardian commissioned her to create a work for the cover of its annual Abafazi supplement honouring South Africa’s Women’s Month. The painting, titled Cut-Cut, Kill-Kill, Stab-Stab: A South African Love Story by Lady Skollie, depicts a pawpaw surrounded by pocket knives that are about to penetrate the fruit from all sides.3 The inspiration she draws from the fruit is its link to female genitalia and in particular, she states, as ‘a bizarre symbol of femininity for me; the way it can go rotten in just a few hours. Its transience is an inspiration.’ The knives are symbolic of ‘the energy of forever waiting to be hurt – always at the tip of a knife’.4

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Using ink, watercolour and crayon, her politically engaged art has attracted substantial interest nationally and globally. She has exhibited individually, and as part of a group, in exhibitions in Johannesburg, Birmingham, London and Paris. She captures the impact of her work as follows: ‘First laughter, then tears. South Africans always laugh before they cry. People are drawn in very quickly. I have seen people at art exhibitions even reaching out to touch the work. I think they feel overwhelmed.’  5 In 2018, Lady Skollie’s work was featured as part of several group exhibitions: ‘Old Masters/New Realities: Gerard Sekoto x Lady Skollie at TMRW Gallery, Johannesburg; This is the Gallery and the Gallery is Many Things at Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK; Close: Proximity, Intimacy, Tension at Johannesburg Art Gallery; and Right at the Equator at Depart Foundation, Malibu, CA, USA.’  6 In 2017 she showed Lust Politics at London’s Tyburn Gallery; the acclaimed Fire with Fire at the FNB Joburg Art Fair; and Mating Dance at the AKAA Art Fair in Paris. Writing for ArtThrob in June 2019, Gemma Hart described Lady Skollie’s Good & Evil exhibition at the Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg as [seeking] to complicate the binarized notions associated with light and dark, good and evil – beautifully illuminating the sordid underbelly of society through the creation of a personal mythology. Her work speaks to mechanisms of systemic violence against a historically subjugated people whilst reclaiming the new narratives.7 As dark as much of Lady Skollie’s art might be, it constitutes a measure of agency articulated by a distinctive voice, as it intertextually responds to other works of visual and print art: [she] maintains a level of playfulness in her brightly coloured works. Formulated through [her] own take on empowerment, some of the works appear to celebrate aspects of her identity. Visual interpretations of Faldela Williams’ cookbook commemorate the culinary heritage of South Africa’s Cape Malay people… Throughout the exhibition, Lady Skollie uses tongue-in-cheek humour as a lure to delve into deep and murky waters of poignant social commentary and reimagined histories.8 In 2019, Lady Skollie was commissioned by the South African Mint to design a commemorative R5 coin to celebrate 25 years of institutional democracy. Her design depicts a winding queue of people heading towards a voting station to cast their ballots, thereby embodying one of the most central democratic acts while reflecting on a history in which millions of South Africans were unable to vote. It brings the past into the present, and gives us hope for democracy. Although her art deliberately engages the socio-political realities of lived experience in contemporary South Africa – as it intersects with histories and mythologies of oppression and marginalisation – she refutes the label of ‘activist’, preferring instead to be referred to as an

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artist. In Skollie’s view, the use of the word ‘activist’ has become ‘vague and gratuitous’; she explains that, while her work foregrounds gender violence, she has never made a conscious decision about being an activist.9 As an artist, she simply and critically confronts the social ills of the world she lives in. But it can be argued, and it has been argued, that that is a form of activism. Like Lady Skollie herself, her art, her life and her ‘activism’ defy labels and prescriptions. Notes 1  TFG Club Magazine, ‘Lady Skollie on a Mission’, n.d. Accessed April 2020, https://www.

tfgclubmagazine.co.za/celeb-news/lady-skollie-on-a-mission/; Z. Hlalethwa, ‘Lady Skollie: A Pussy Power Prophet Delivers Us from Good and Evil’, Mail & Guardian 17 June 2019. Accessed April 2020, https://mg.co.za/article/2019-06-14-00-pussy-power-prophet-deliversus-from-good-and-evil; D. Mann, ‘Laura Windvogel’s Got Business Down to a Fine Art’, Between 10 and 5 12 August 2016. Accessed July 2020, https://10and5.com/2016/08/12/laurawindvogels-got-business-down-to-a-fine-art/. 2  TFG Club Magazine, ‘Lady Skollie on a Mission’. 3  TFG Club Magazine, ‘Lady Skollie on a Mission’. 4  TFG Club Magazine, ‘Lady Skollie on a Mission’. 5  TFG Club Magazine, ‘Lady Skollie on a Mission’. 6 Tyburn Gallery, ‘Lady Skollie’ (2017). Accessed April 2020, http://www.tyburngallery.com/

artist/lady-skollie/. 7 G. Hart, ‘Drowning and Denialism: Lady Skollie’s “Good & Evil”: Review’, ArtThrob 21 June

2019. Accessed July 2020, https://artthrob.co.za/2019/06/21/drowning-and-denialism-ladyskollies-good-evil/. 8

G. Hart, ‘Drowning and Denialism: Lady Skollie’s “Good & Evil”: Review’.

9 N. Sesay, ‘100 Women: Lady Skollie on Papayas, Politics, & Breaking the Patriarchy’,

okayafrica 6 March 2018. Accessed April 2020, https://www.okayafrica.com/100-womenlady-skollies-feminist-art/.

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Pieter-Dirk Uys: ‘Biting critique’ Marié-Heleen Coetzee

b. 1945

Theatre has a great way of getting under the fingernails and illuminating darkness with all sorts of tricks. And humour is a trick. And drag is a trick. I love getting my dress and my heels, and they say look at those legs, [a]nd then I hit them with a cold fish across their face. Robert Nesti, ‘Pieter-Dirk Uys on “Foreign Aids”’ Internationally renowned South African performer, playwright, screenwriter, director, producer, author, social activist and advocate for gay rights Pieter-Dirk Uys has been active in the theatre for over 40 years. The ‘fat, bald, Afrikaner-Jewish drag queen from Cape Town’, as Uys once described himself,1 is the recipient of five honorary doctorates, a Hertzog Prize for Drama (2018), and numerous other local as well as international awards. He is the subject of two documentaries: Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story (2007) and Nobody’s Died Laughing: A Journey with Pieter-Dirk Uys (2016). Uys has often been described as South Africa’s leading political satirist. Being Jewish and Afrikaans means, he jokes, that he belongs to both groups of chosen people.2 He fearlessly aimed his uncompromising satire at the apartheid government and its leaders – demanding in(tro)spection into social conservatism, absurd politics, and whiteness. During the turbulent 1970s and 1980s, Uys was closely associated with the Space Theatre in Cape  Town and the Market Theatre in Johannesburg – venues that defiantly established themselves as non-racial spaces. Much of his work required multiracial casts. Due to his associations and the content of his work, he became a target of the Publications Control Board (later the Directorate of Publications). The Board held the power to censor, ban and close down creative works based on ‘undesirable content’. Uys found creative ways of side-stepping and subverting the rulings of the Board. He quips that the Board is ‘the great love of my life, a diversion that made me famous’3 and his ‘very own public relations department’.4

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Three of Uys’s works were banned in close succession during the 1970s. The first of these works that became a signature cause célèbre was Selle Ou Storie (1974), which started out as a play he wrote in English some years before. The play offered a scathing critique of Afrikanerdom, and it was subjected to several rulings, including an age restriction of 2–21, and that it may not be performed in Pretoria. Subsequently, the script was banned and, later, the performance. In 1975 he wrote and staged Karnaval, which was banned as a production. Uys captures the farcicality of the rulings in stating that at some point, he had ‘a play you could see but not read, and a play you could read and not see’.5 In 1978, he opened the Laager at the Market Theatre with Die Van Aardes van Grootoor. It, too, was banned, but the ruling was overturned, and it could continue on the proviso that prescribed cuts and edits were made. While many of his plays were banned, his solo revues were not, which prompted him to focus on solo performances. This is perhaps because they were not considered as ‘serious’ as other modes of theatre (including protest theatre). In his solo works, Uys often impersonated and ridiculed apartheid leaders, and used women personae through ‘drag-lampooning’6 to expose the hegemony and hypocrisy of Afrikanerdom. This permissive stance granted the apartheid government a chance to present a façade of democracy and free speech – working to the advantage of both Uys and the regime. Moreover, his gender-bending acts drew laughter and wolf whistles from male audience members.7 Considering the conservatism of Afrikanerdom, such reactions to the unthinkable – ‘a jock in a frock’ – epitomise Uys’s extraordinary skill as a satirist. His most celebrated alter ego is Evita Bezuidenhout. She was inspired by a character he created as a mouthpiece for his column in the Sunday Express newspaper in the late 1970s. At a time that did not allow for freedom of the press, Uys found a way to speak safely to the scandals of the apartheid regime. Someone named this character ‘the Evita of Pretoria’, and she subsequently developed into a phenomenon that saw her lauded as ‘the most famous white woman in South Africa’ who did not exist.8 Uys imagined Evita as the white, middle-class wife of a National Party member of Parliament, using ‘inside information’ to gossip about government shenanigans. She shifted from page to stage in Adapt or Dye (1982). Subsequently she moved from being a minor character in his shows to a showperson in her own right. Evita became the ex-ambassador to the fictional independent black homeland of the Republic of Bapetikosweti. Her revisionist approach to history, and her heterodox treatment of current affairs related to the homelands, foregrounded the ways in which the white middle class struggled to come to grips with power shifts in South Africa. The humour arises from the discrepancies between the white middleclass’s fear of losing their privileges, and the aspirations of the new democracy.9 She also offered biting critique on the sometimes hypocritical attitudes of white liberals. Evita, however, also represents something that Afrikaans women did not have at the time of her creation – a political voice. Since her first appearance in the newspaper to her joining the ANC in 2012, and later founding Evita’s People’s Party (www.epp.org.za), Evita has used South African politics and politicians as inspiration for her performances. Post-1994, she embodies a national consciousness that compels

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South Africa to reflect critically on itself in its process of democratic (re)constitution. Further, she has actively engaged with critical national issues such as the HIV and AIDS pandemic, as well as voter education. She has addressed Parliament, interviewed Nelson Mandela and Cyril Ramaphosa, received a Living Legacy Award by the Women’s International Centre in San Diego (2000), and was declared a Living Treasure by the Human Sciences Research Council in 2002. Books about and by her include A Part Hate, a Part Love: The Biography of Evita  Bezuidenhout (1990),10 two cookbooks (Evita’s Kossie Sikelela in 201011 and Evita’s Bossie Sikelela in 201212); and her diary-journal, Evita’s BlackBessie (2011).13 Then there is also the autobiography of Evita’s younger sister, Bambi Kellermann, in Never too Naked: A Thrilling Tale of Love, Lust and Life (2011).14 A second biography was published in 1995, titled Funigalore: Evita’s Real-Life Adventures in Wonderland.15 She developed a wine range, a cologne for men and a perfume (Jeau Moor) ‘created for the woman who is, by the woman who isn’t’. At present, she is ambassador without portfolio, living at Evita se Peron in Darling. Evita se Peron includes a ‘nauseum’ of apartheid artefacts and Boerassic Park – both satirical exhibitions of South Africa’s past.16 Over the years, it became difficult to ascertain where Uys stopped and Evita began – a topic he deals with in his 2019 solo production #HeToo. The act of crossing sex and gender boundaries signals a moment of cultural and social dissonance that is compounded by Uys’s seamless fusion of fact and fiction into satirical commentary. Yet, according to Uys, Evita is not seen as a man in drag. Rather, she is seen ‘as so real that women recognise the femininity in her, and men forget that there’s a guy inside’.17 However his Evita may be positioned, the persona (and his satirical commentary) leave audiences convinced beyond a doubt by something that can only be a ‘lie’.18 The discrepancy between what is real and what is not, what sounds true but isn’t – yet is presented as real – is characteristic of Uys’s work. This evocation of interstitiality compels audiences to navigate critically the slippery conceptual and experiential terrains that Uys creates. Sometimes they, indeed, leave audiences to ‘Skate on Thin Uys’ (1985). His extensive oeuvre includes solo productions; more than 25 plays (including Macbeki 2009 and The Merry Wives of Zuma 2012); a novel (Panorama 2013); memoirs, DVDs, TV performances and shows (including Evita’s Funigalore 1994); film performances; and a YouTube channel: Evita’s Free Speech (https://www.youtube.com/user/EvitaSePerron). To celebrate his 70th birthday in 2015, a new collection of his Afrikaans plays was published (Stukke Teater); his play African Times premiered at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown; Die Van Aardes van Grootoor was reworked into a musical; he performed in three special solo productions (A Part Hate, a Part Love, featuring Evita Bezuidenhout; Never Too Naked, featuring Evita’s sister, Bambi Kellerman; and The Echo Of A Noise); and KykNet presented Kyknet vir Tannie produced by Evita’s former secretary Bokkie Bam (Lizz Meiring). Uys’s work demonstrates public intellectual engagement with democracy, citizenship, culture and gender: a four-decade long act of resistance. This is poignantly captured in his memoirs, Elections and Erections: A Memoir of Fear and Fun, published in 2003;19 Between the Devil and the Deep: A Memoir of Acting and Reacting, published in 2005;20 and Pieter-Dirk Uys: Echo of Noise: A

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Memoir of Then and Now, published in 2018.21 He has also published several journal articles that are critical of both apartheid22 and the post-apartheid political leadership, including Thabo Mbeki on his approach to the AIDS pandemic.23 Pieter-Dirk Uys’s influence is evident in the large number of academic studies of his work, including in books such as Taking Comedy Seriously: Stand-Up’s Dissident Potential in Mass Culture by Jennalee Donian; Playing the Market: The Market Theatre, Johannesburg, 1976–1986 by Anne Fuchs; A History of South African Literature by Christopher Heywood;24 articles in academic journals, such as ‘A Queer Transition: Whiteness in the Prismatic, Post-Apartheid Drag Performances of Pieter-Dirk Uys and Steven Cohen’ by April Sizemore-Barber, and ‘The Rise of the First Ambassador Bezuidenhout’: Pieter-Dirk Uys’s Creation of Evita Bezuidenhout, Her Fictional Actuality and His Approach to Female Impersonation’ by Mervyn McMurtry;25 academic dissertations and theses such as ‘The Playwright-Performer as Scourge and Benefactor: An Examination of Political Satire and Lampoon in South African Theatre, with Particular Reference to Pieter-Dirk Uys’ by Mervyn Eric McMurtry, ‘The Use of Chiastic Configurations as a Satirical Tool in Selected Works by Pieter-Dirk Uys’ by Barbara Edith Basel, and ‘Stages on Pages: A Comparative Study of Pieter-Dirk Uys’s One Man Shows as an Autobiographical Alternative to Memoir’ by Sheldon Troy Campbell;26 and conference papers such as ‘Class Movements in the New South Africa: Post-Colonial Politics, Neocolonialism, and Mimicry in Pieter-Dirk Uys’s MacBeki:  A Farce to be Reckoned With’ by Rose  J Copen, and ‘‘‘You ANC nothing yet!” Gender Roles in the New South Africa According to Pieter Dirk Uys’ by Peter Hawkins.27 As for his alter ego, Evita has become so well entrenched in South Africa’s consciousness that she has virtually overshadowed her creator and alter ego – the real Uys. But in many ways, she is him. She is, he says, the vehicle he uses to say the things that are important to him, and that he – an aging, bald, gay white man – could not say. Or at least could not say to an audience that would listen.28 Almost everything about Evita, from her palm-frond eyelashes and her Christmas-tree earrings to her deliciously pouting smile and blood-red talons, is larger-than-life. She is at once the familiar figure of the powerful-by-marriage, once-glamorous woman of a certain age, and also a caricature of died-in-the-wool intolerance and political expediency. She is our darker side, the skeleton in every South African’s cupboard, the dragon lurking in our subconscious, and the devil on our shoulder. But she glitters with light. She is feminine, elegant, caring, gentle, polite and ever so proper. She never swears, she never blasphemes and she never says anything nasty. Well, anything nasty she says is as sugar-coated as her diabetes-inducing koeksusters, so most people don’t notice they are being impaled on the barb of her sharp and implacable wit. Or, if they do notice, they are so busy laughing they don’t have the energy to be offended.29

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Notes 1 R. Nesti, ‘Pieter-Dirk Uys on “Foreign Aids”’, EDGE 4 January 2005. Accessed April 2020,

http://pdu.co.za/articles%20about%202005-1.html/. 2 D. Lieberfeld, ‘Pieter-Dirk Uys: Crossing Apartheid Lines’, The Drama Review 41 (1997),

pp. 61–71. Accessed April 2020, http://pdu.co.za/interviews%201997.html. 3 http://evita.co.za/news-archives-2015/. 4 P-D. Uys, Funigalore: Evita’s Real-Life Adventures in Wonderland (Cape Town: Penguin (1995).  5 http://evita.co.za/news-archives-2015/. 6 R. Sassen, ‘Just Another Day in Africa: Speaking through an Interpreter’, PopMatters

31 March 2004. Accessed April 2020, http://pdu.co.za/articles%20about%202004.html. 7 http://evita.co.za/who-is-evita/. 8 http://evita.co.za/who-is-evita/. 9 P. Hawkins, ‘“You ANC nothing yet!” Gender Roles in the New South Africa According

to Pieter-Dirk Uys’, Observatoire Réunionnais des Arts, des Civilisations et des Littératures dans leur Environnement (1996). Accessed July 2020, http://pdu.co.za/articles%20about%201996-1. html. 10 P-D. Uys, A Part Hate, a Part Love: The Biography of Evita Bezuidenhout (New York: Radix,

1990). 11 E. Bezuidenhout and P-D. Uys, Evita’s Kossie Sikelela (Cape Town: Umuzi, 2010). 12 E. Bezuidenhout and L. Vicquery, Evita’s Bossie Sikelela (Cape Town: Penguin Random

House, 2012). 13 E. Bezuizenhout, Evita’s BlackBessie (Cape Town: Penguin Random House, 2011). 14 B. Kellerman and P-D. Uys, Never Too Naked: A Thrilling Tale of Love, Lust and Life

(Johannesburg: Zebra Press, 2011). 15 Uys, Funigalore. 16  Speakers Inc., ‘Pieter-Dirk Uys – Evita’, 10 December 2018. Accessed April 2020, https://

www.speakersinc.co.za/pieter-dirk-uys-evita-bezuidenhout/. 17 Lieberfeld, ‘Pieter-Dirk Uys’. 18 Uys, Funigalore, p. 5. 19 P-D. Uys, Elections & Erections: A Memoir of Fear and Fun (Cape Town: New Holland, 2003). 20 P-D. Uys, Between the Devil and the Deep: A Memoir of Acting and Reacting (Cape Town:

Zebra Press, 2005). 21 P-D. Uys, Pieter-Dirk Uys: Echo of Noise: A Memoir of Then and Now (Johannesburg:

Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2018). 22 P-D. Uys, ‘Cry Freemandela and Don’t Be Such a Fool’, Index on Censorship

3 (1998), pp. 22–25. Accessed April 2020, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ pdf/10.1080/03064228808534382. 23 P-D. Uys, ‘AIDS Comes from Venus, HIV from Mars’, Index on Censorship

4 (2001), pp. 20–29. Accessed April 2020, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ pdf/10.1080/03064220108536973; P-D. Uys ‘No Laughing Matter’, Index on Censorship 1 (2004), pp. 42–52. Accessed April 2020, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ pdf/10.1177/030642200403300108.

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24 J. Donian, Taking Comedy Seriously: Stand-Up’s Dissident Potential in Mass Culture

(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019; A. Fuchs, Playing the Market: The Market Theatre, Johannesburg, 1976–1986 (Chur, London, Paris, New York and Melbourne: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1990); C. Heywood, A History of South African Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 25 A. Sizemore-Barber, ‘A Queer Transition: Whiteness in the Prismatic, Post-Apartheid

Drag Performances of Pieter-Dirk Uys and Steven Cohen’, Theatre Journal 68:2 (2016), pp. 191–211; M. McMurtry, ‘The Rise of the First Ambassador Bezuidenhout: PieterDirk Uys’s Creation of Evita Bezuidenhout, Her Fictional Actuality and His Approach to Female Impersonation’, South African Theatre Journal 8:2 (1994), pp. 79–108. 26 S.T. Campbell, ‘Stages on Pages: A Comparative Study of Pieter-Dirk Uys’ One Man

Shows as an Autobiographical Alternative to Memoir’, MA dissertation, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2011; B.E. Basel, The Use of Chiastic Configurations as a Satirical Tool in Selected Works by Pieter-Dirk Uys’, DLitt thesis, University of Pretoria, 2001; M. McMurtry, ‘The Playwright-Performer as Scourge and Benefactor: An Examination of Political Satire and Lampoon in South African Theatre, with Particular Reference to Pieter-Dirk Uys’, PhD thesis, University of Natal, 1993. 27 R.J. Coplen, Class Movements in the New South Africa: Post-Colonial Politics,

Neocolonialism, and Mimicry in Pieter-Dirk Uys’s MacBeki: A Farce to be Reckoned With. Paper presented at the Modern Languages and Literatures Annual Graduate Conference 7, Western University, Ontario, March 2013; Hawkins, ‘“You ANC nothing yet!” 28 J. Stern, ‘Laugh Until You Cry with Evita’, Brand South Africa 27 November 2008. Accessed

June 2020, https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/people-culture/arts-culture/pdu261108. 29 Stern, ‘Laugh Until You Cry with Evita’.

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Daniel Friedman: ‘Evoking white fragility’ Marié-Heleen Coetzee

b. 1981

Daniel Friedman (aka Deep Fried Man) is a South African Jewish musical stand-up comedian and writer. His stage name, which is a play on his name and his love for deep-fried food, resonates with the kind of comedy he sets out to do: ‘My comedy is not low GI or free of trans fatty acids. It is delicious, but probably quite bad for you.’1 Friedman graduated with a BA degree from Rhodes University and completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at Wits. Before becoming a comedian he worked in journalism and social media, and performed indie folk music, all of which contribute to his particular brand of comedy – a blend of music, comedy and satire. Friedman writes for the Daily Maverick and Memeburn on a diverse range of topics, and was the digital news editor of City Press. He develops customised musical comedy for corporate functions, campaigns and activations. He is an internet phenomenon with a large and loyal Twitter, Facebook and YouTube following for his channel MalContent. Some of his internet highlights include ‘An Idiot’s Guide to the South African National Anthem’, co-created with Gareth Woods, an interview with Julius Malema for MTV Base, and sparking Helen Zille’s trend on Twitter (#askhelenzille). The latter became one of the biggest South African Twitter trends of all time and trended worldwide.2 His debut one-person show Deeply Fried (2011) won a Standard Bank Ovation Award at the 2011 National Arts Festival in Makhanda. His subsequent shows (besides his work in the stand-up comedy circuit) include White Whine (2012), In Good Taste (2016) and Deep Fried Man in Good Taste 2.0 (2018). As well as performing on comedy stages, Deep Fried Man has been aired on radio and television. He was featured in Comedy Central, and he has contributed to Emmy-nominated television

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shows such as Late Nite News with Loyiso Gola and ZANews: Puppet Nation. He acted in the films Material (2012) and Mrs Right Guy (2016). He was the joint winner of the 2010 Parkers’ Comedy Showdown. The common thread underlying all his work is his biting satire. Thematically his work centres on self-deprecation, South African politics and culture, ‘being white, being Jewish, sex, social media, living in South Africa, living on Earth, and living in the universe’.3 He states that ‘the more uncomfortable an issue makes you, the more you should be talking about it’.4 His lyrical repertoire consists partly of his own songs, partly of parodies of well-known songs, and partly of improvised songs based on how the performance and audience responses unfold. He is particularly skilled at localising and applying his knowledge of current affairs in his comedy.5 One of the uncomfortable issues that Deep Fried Man addresses and that got him into hot oil, is whiteness. In 2011, he performed a satirical song on DStv’s Comedy Central that toyed with racial and gender stereotypes of white South Africans. Complaints to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of SA (BCCSA) claimed that the song was racist against white South Africans.6 The complaints were dismissed by the BCCSA. In 2018, his 2013 YouTube video of the song ‘The White Genocide’7 was intentionally and maliciously linked to a video to gain support for divisive right-wing narratives. Following this, Friedman and his family received death threats, and racist and anti-Semitic messages, prompting him to take a break from social media. The complaints to the BCCSA and threats to his personal safety suggest that his work not only critiques, but also evokes, white fragility. The complaints testify that his work purposefully subverts the ‘racially familiar’ and normalises bias – creating racial discomfort and ‘triggering a range of defensive moves’.8 Deep Fried Man simultaneously (and overtly) centres and decentres whiteness, exposing the cultural production of whiteness that positions it as invisible and ‘racially illiterate’.9 By parodying the defensive responses white fragility invites, he challenges audiences to self-reflect and consider their complicity in the continued dynamics of domination. His satirical engagement with whiteness extends beyond the suggested conservatism to include white ‘wokeness’. He pointedly critiques the potential artifice and self-serving dimensions of/in social performances of wokeness, and creates awareness of the porous line between allyship and appropriation. Deep Fried Man serves as a reminder that wokeness does not erase whiteness. Notes 1 A. Nayika, ‘Deep Fried Funny Man’, Mail & Guardian, 20 September 2012. Accessed April

2020, https://mg.co.za/article/2012-09-20-deep-fried-funny-man. 2 Nayika, ‘Deep Fried Funny Man’. 3 Nayika, ‘Deep Fried Funny Man’. 4 T. Mthombeni and A. McBrown, CUE, 2 July 2016. Accessed April 2020, http://cuemedia.

co.za/2016/07/02/the-good-taste-of-deep-fried-man/.

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5 M. De Waal, ‘Daniel Friedman Debuts “Deeply Fried”’, Daily Maverick 22 November 2011.

Accessed April 2020, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2011-11-22-daniel-friedmandebuts-the-deeply-fried/#.UVn9_aJTCz4. 6 SAPA, ‘BCCSA: Comedian Complaint a Joke’, IOL News. 7 March 2012. Accessed April

2020, https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/bccsa-comedian-complaint-a-joke-1251336. 7 Deep Fried Man, ‘The White Genocide’, 2013. Accessed April 2020, https://www.youtube.

com/watch?time_continue=63&v=C8AEwiDRYf8. 8 R. DiAngelo, ‘White Fragility’, International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 3:3 (2011), pp. 57. 9 R. DiAngelo, ‘White People are still Raised to be Racially Illiterate. If We don’t Recognize

the System, Our Inaction will Uphold It’, THINK, 16 September 2018. Accessed April 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/white-people-are-still-raised-be-raciallyilliterate-if-we-ncna906646.

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Loyiso Gola: ‘Question everything’

Loyiso Gola: ‘Question everything’ Chris Broodryk

b. 1983

Stand-up comedian, social commentator and satirist Loyiso Gola was born in May 1983 into a world of violent oppression and forceful subjugation, which influenced not only his life but also his work. His mixture of sharp wit and a keen sense of how to use humour to challenge the political status quo helped him to make his mark on the South African entertainment industry during the 2000s. After being runner-up at the 2003 Freshest Five Comedy Competition in Johannesburg, Gola performed at a host of comedy events, including Comedy Blackout, the Sprite Soul Comedy Jam and the Blacks Only Comedy Show. In time, he would become a standout member of ‘a younger generation of comedians…[who] have attained their own prominence and visibility’ in a context in which Leon Schuster and his brand of comedy had dominated.1 Following more than 15 years of successful festival appearances, his acclaimed 2017 work Unlearning was a culmination of many of his interests and skills. Indeed, the show was an intellectually invigorating experience for both audience members and the host himself.2 As TimesLive commented, in Unlearning Gola ‘invites the audience to question everything they currently know about politics, history, sexism, and race’.3 Gola echoed this emphasis on destabilising ‘learnt’ knowledge and world views in an interview with City Buzz. As the show ‘delves into unpacking what we’ve learnt growing up, viewing the world differently and realising that there’s a need to unlearn it instead of being stuck in our own stereotypical mindsets [sic]’, Gola himself questions his understandings of, amongst other things, masculinity and relationships.4 Along with being a signature voice on the South African live-comedy circuit, Gola also honed his craft across numerous television shows, including appearances on Phat Joe Live and the provocative Pure Monate Show (PMS). He has anchored the current-affairs satire Late Nite News with Loyiso Gola on eTV since 2010.

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Gola has hosted the Metro FM Music Awards and the South African Music Awards, and was nominated as ‘Comedian of the Year’ in the 2008 Star of Mzansi Awards. His talents are featured in the Netflix comedy special Comedians of the World, where he is joined by other South African comedy heavyweights such as Riaad Moosa. He was the youngest comic ever to perform at the prestigious Cape Town International Comedy Festival in 2005 and 2006, followed by wellreceived appearances in New York and Dubai. He is a two-time international Best Comedy Emmy nominee for Late Nite News with Loyiso Gola. He appeared at the Apollo Theatre in London to considerable critical acclaim and television coverage on the BBC (TimesLive) and at the New York Comedy Festival in 2016, where his stand-up show Loyiso Gola Live in New York was recorded live.5 His latest comedy special, Pop Culture, debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019. Ebewo notes that Gola’s ‘pursuit of pure comedy has metamorphosed into transparent satire in the monumental category of Pieter-Dirk Uys’. For Ebewo, Gola’s principal technique is ‘parody, which entails imitating newscasters’ style to castigate miscreants in society by amusing audiences while conscientising them about the lions in society who parade the streets wearing sheep’s clothing’.6 In his television series Late Night News, he has dealt with topics such as the Nkandla upgrading scandal to draw attention to excesses on the part of politicians in a country in which thousands live in shacks, and the short-lived marriage between the Democratic Alliance and Agang to expose the lack of transparency among political leaders, among others.7 Ebewo concludes that Gola presents his satire as ‘a social service to his country’ because he ‘hopes fervently that the exposure of bad tendencies may help to end them’.8 Musila notes that Gola’s work ‘simultaneously chronicles contemporary realities, and spotlights the gaps and silences in these realities’.9 For instance, he uses comedy to highlight South Africa’s racialised socio-economic landscape in the following joke: White people don’t march for sh*t. You guys just send an email. (Mimes typing) ‘I am upset’, enter: cc. Mary. And when you do march, you march over the dumbest sh*t. (Mimes a march) ‘Don’t cut the trees’, ‘Don’t cut the trees!’, ‘Save the panda bear!’ I’ll tell you now, there’s no black person in this room that will march for a f*ck’n panda bear. Imagine Julius [Malema] trying to mobilise the youth for a f*ck’n panda bear. (Mimics Malema) ‘But comrades we must be sure that we are only marching for the black part of the panda bear. The white part of the panda bear cannot be trusted.’10 Race seems to feature significantly in Gola’s comedy. For Belanger (2017), this is evident in his joke about the drastic difference in likelihood that a white man or black man will be imprisoned: ‘White people don’t think of going to jail. Jail is so far away. As a black man, you think of jail at least once a day. At least once. You wake up, breakfast, jail. Ok sure, sure.’11 This type of comedy is also used to bridge the chasm that exists between the races by providing audiences of different race groups with an understanding of how black people view South Africa’s realities.

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This draws from Gola’s ‘intimate and immediate understanding of South African politics, current events, and cultural references’.12 Given Gola’s meteoric rise in both stand-up comedy and television, his reach to young and old across racial lines is quite broad. In a country where stand-up comedy is booming, and if his past accomplishments are anything to go by, he is set to entertain and provoke for many years to come. Notes 1 R.K. Crigler, ‘No Laughing Matter? Humour and the Performance of South Africa’, South

African Theatre Journal 31:3 (2018), p. 156. 2  Cape Town Magazine, ‘Loyiso Gola Back in His Hometown for a Stellar Performance’, 2017.

Accessed April 2020, https://www.capetownmagazine.com/loyiso-gola-at-baxter-theatre. 3 K. Zeeman, ‘Loyiso Gola Claps back at Hate: They are not Qualified for Anything I give

a F*ck About’, TimesLive, 13 December 2018. Accessed April 2020, https://www.timeslive. co.za/tshisa-live/tshisa-live/2018-12-13-loyiso-gola-claps-back-at-hate-they-are-notqualified-for-anything-i-give-a-fck-about/. 4 City Buzz, ‘Loyiso Gola sets out to challenge societal norms’ 2018. Accessed April 2020,

https://citybuzz.co.za/90703/loyiso-gola-sets-challenge-societal-norms/. 5 L. Gola, ‘Loyiso Gola: South African Comedian’, n.d. Accessed July 2020, www.loyisogola.

com. 6 P.J. Ebewo, Explorations in Southern African Drama, Theatre and Performance. (Newcastle

upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), pp. 179–180. 7 Ebewo, Explorations, pp. 182–189. 8 Ebewo, Explorations, p. 190. 9 G.A. Musila, ‘Laughing at the Rainbow’s Cracks: Blackness, Whiteness and the

Ambivalences of South African Stand-Up Comedy’, in E. Obadare and W. Willems (eds), Civic Agency in Africa: Arts of Resistance in the 21st Century. (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2014). p. 151. 10 L. Gola, ‘Loyiso Gola: Life and Times’, DVD. 2011. Cited in Musila, ‘Laughing’, p. 152. 11 J. Belanger, ‘Speaking Truth to Power: Stand-Up Comedians as Sophists, Jesters, Public

Intellectuals and Activists’, PhD thesis, University of Rhode Island, 2017, p. 97. 12 M. Hron, ‘From “Tsutsi Crush” to “FWP”: Satire, Sentiment, and Rights in African Texts

and Contexts’ in S.A. McClennan and A.S. Moore (eds), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2015).

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Trevor Noah: Breaking down boundaries Samela Mtyingizane

b. 1984

Trevor Noah is a television host, political commentator and comedian. His father is of SwissGerman descent, and his mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, of isiXhosa descent. Under apartheid law, Noah was therefore classified as coloured. At the time of his birth, mixed-race relationships were criminalised under the Immorality Act, with possible imprisonment for up to five years for those who contravened the law. ‘My mother had to be very clandestine about who my father was,’ Noah said. ‘He couldn’t be on my birth certificate.’ In public spaces, Noah had to avoid indicating that Patricia Noah was his mother. Also, being half-white, he was teased by his black grandfather, who would call him ‘master’.1 His mixed-race (coloured) inheritance, his experience of growing up as coloured in Soweto township, as well as his racial and ethnic observations informed much of his work as a comedian. In 1992, Noah’s mother married Ngisaveni Abel Shingange, and they had two sons, Andrew and Isaac. Patricia and Noah experienced years of abuse at the hands of Shingange and the couple divorced in 1996. Patricia nevertheless continued to live with her ex-husband in Highlands North in Johanneburg.2 By this time, Noah had stopped visiting his mother because he could not bear to witness her suffering. In 2009, his mother decided to relocate and married Sifiso Khoza. Patricia and her new husband nearly lost their lives when Shingange tracked her down, and shot her in the leg and head.3 After this incident, Noah spoke out about the lack of assistance from the police: ‘For years my mother reached out to police for help with domestic abuse, and nothing was ever done. This is the norm in South Africa. Dockets went missing and cases never went to court.’4 The shooting of Patricia Noah was a nightmare that had turned into reality for the comedian. He confronted his ex-stepfather over the telephone and, in response, Shingange threatened to kill him.5

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Trevor Noah: Breaking down boundaries

His response to these threats was to leave South Africa for the United States in 2011, and it was there that his career took off. In early 2012, Noah became the first South African comedian to make an appearance on The Tonight Show and The Late Show with David Letterman.6 In the following year, he won the South African Comics’ Choice Award for being the comic of the year.7 By this time, he had become an internationally acclaimed comedian. A documentary on his life, You Laugh But It’s True, was produced in 2012.8 This occurred just before he starred in the show ‘Trevor Noah: The Racist’, which was related to his South African special ‘That’s Racist’. In 2013, he performed another comedy special titled ‘Trevor Noah: African American’, in which he used comedy to explore cultural flaws while identifying communal connections in a world infatuated with attaching labels. Noah is still living in the United States, where he hosts the popular satirical news programme The Daily Show, which has a global reach. This makes Noah very influential and, in 2018, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people globally. The list of prominent guests who have appeared on his show serves as testimony to this. They range from political heavyweights Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, to media hotshots such as Christiane Amanpour and entertainment stars like Jennifer Lopez. This enables him to express his perceptions about key political and social issues on the global stage: Noah’s sharp-witted comparison between U.S. race relations and South Africa’s apartheid state speaks jarringly to the persistent reality of racial oppression in U.S. culture. His punchline strikes a blow to the post-racial narratives that downplay racial injustice by insisting that the scourge of racism remains in countless daily manifestations: for instance, structural oppression such as gross wealth inequalities and mass incarceration of men and women of color; discursive constructions that mark people of color as outsiders, criminals; and psychologically violent micro-aggressions against racial minorities. Satirical jabs such as Noah’s may not dismantle entrenched systems of racism; however, such comedic discourses play a vital role in the struggle against hegemonic racism.9 As the host of The Daily Show, and in his role as a stand-up comic, Noah is able to draw attention to some hard truths. This was evident when he suggested that US president Donald Trump had reached the stage where the truth has so little meaning to him that his relationship with facts is weaker than that with his estranged daughter, Tiffany.10 Noah attributes his success as a comedian largely to influences from performers he labels as indisputable kings of comedy: namely, Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle and Bill Cosby. According to Noah, these are black comedians who have moved the goalposts, not just for black comedians, but for comedians across all races.11 He has performed with respected South African comics David Kau, Kagiso Lediga, Riaad Moosa, Darren Simpson, Marc Lottering, Barry Hilton and Nik Rabinowitz at various comedy festivals. He has also performed with international comedians Paul Rodriguez, Carl Barron, Dan Ilic and, during their tours in South Africa, with Paul Zerdin, Gabriel Iglesias and Canadian comedian Russell Peters.

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For Noah, comedy is a platform for retelling the story of a boy who has made it in a world where, by law, he was not supposed to exist. With humour he portrays how he has made his way through a dangerous world armed with the unconditional love of his mother. He tours around the world to present comedy shows, with sold-out crowds. However, his comedy is not simply an account of how he grew up in South Africa under apartheid, or a comical retelling of how poverty, violence and abuse were an obvious problem in his life. Noah’s comedy is a tool for political resistance, particularly when applied to racial matters, disease and poverty. His comedy can be understood as a two-minded mockery of global politics with race being conceptualised and deconstructed, disease being portrayed as awful yet laughable, and poverty as tragic, valorised and misunderstood. Between 2009 and 2013, Noah performed several standup comedy specials across South Africa: ‘The Daywalker’ (2009), ‘Crazy Normal’ (2011), ‘That’s Racist’ (2012) and ‘It’s My Culture’ (2013).12 Noah is effective as a corporate comedian because of his satisfying on-stage comedy delivery – he barely ever utters profanities, but instead depends on accents, impersonations and mimicry. In his on-stage comedy shows he speaks about hardhitting themes from a position of ambivalent mockery, criticising white privilege and satirising attitudes to issues such as gender, crime, and the HIV and Aids pandemic. He was celebrated by US liberals for his contributions to the debates on #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo.13 He voices his views on matters that are typically uncomfortable such as racial politics, apartheid, violence and poverty, and his political comedy has teeth: we laugh but feel the bite, recognising his activism on social issues that concern us and his exposure of the contradictions in modernday power structures, and also in our own attitudes and behaviour. Noah has a huge social media presence and, like those of many comedians, his posts are bold and at times skirt close to the edge. For instance, in 2011 he was criticised for mocking buxom women on a social media post in which he wrote: ‘Oh yeah the weekend. People are gonna get drunk & think that I’m sexy!’ – a quote he attributed to ‘fat chicks everywhere’.14 He also posted a joke about Jews: ‘Almost bumped a Jewish kid crossing the road. He didn’t look b4 crossing but I still would have felt so bad in my German car.’15 These tweets led to a charge that he was sexist and anti-Semitic. Noah tweeted in his defence: ‘To reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn’t land is not a true reflection of my character, nor my evolution as a comedian.’ The television channel Comedy Central and Mary Kluk, chairperson of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, came out in support of the comedian and cleared him of all accusations.16 As the only one in his family who is racially mixed, and with his birth having been considered a crime under apartheid rule in South Africa, he decided to explicitly narrate his life story. In 2016, he signed a book deal with Spiegel & Grau for his book Born a Crime.17 The book received positive reviews, and won three awards in 2016 – a Zora Neale Hurston Award, and two NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Image Awards for outstanding literary work.18 Born a Crime was a number-one New York Times bestseller, and was amongst the best books identified by Newsday, Esquire, NPR, and Booklist standards. The book is to be adapted as a movie with Noah as the producer and Lupita Nyong’o playing the role of his mother.

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Currently Noah hosts The Daily Show on a contract extended until 2022. He’s made it in a very tough world, and continues to expand his horizons by walking that precarious tightrope on which stand-up comedians wobble daily. As Comedy Central said of him in defence of some of his more controversial tweets: ‘Like many comedians, Trevor Noah pushes boundaries; he is provocative and spares no one, himself included.’19 Notes 1 A. Cherie, Here’s Why Trevor Noah Is a Good Replacement for Jon Stewart, 106.7 WTLC,

n.d. Accessed July 2019, https://wtlcfm.com/2243187/heres-why-trevor-noah-is-a-goodreplacement-for-jon-stewart/. 2 V.R. Wolfson, ‘The Deadly Power of Patriarchy’, Daily Maverick 27 February 2017. Accessed

July 2019, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2017-02-27-the-deadly-power-ofpatriarchy/. 3 L. Sidimba, ‘Trevor Noah “Fled” to Hollywood’, City Press 11 March 2012. Accessed July

2019, https://www.channel24.co.za/TopStories/Trevor-Noah-fled-to-Hollywood-20120311. 4 Sidimba, ‘Trevor Noah “Fled” to Hollywood’. 5 Sidimba, ‘Trevor Noah “Fled” to Hollywood’. 6 S. Armstrong, ‘Heard the One about the Swiss South African?’, Sunday Times 16 December

2012. Accessed July 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/heard-the-one-about-theswiss-south-african-lzx9jq6nth8. 7  BizCommunity, Marketing and Media News, ‘Trevor Noah Wins Top Award at the South

African Comic’s Choice Awards’, 26 August 2013. Accessed July 2019, https://www. bizcommunity.com/Article/196/429/99054.html. 8 #ylbit You Laugh but It’s True. Accessed July 2019, http://www.youlaughbutitstrue.com/. 9 J.P. Rossing, ‘Emancipatory Racial Humor as Critical Public Pedagogy: Subverting

Hegemonic Racism’, Communication, Culture & Critique 9 (2016), p. 614. 10 J.C. Richmond and D.V. Porpora, ‘Entertainment Politics as a Modernist Project

in a Baudrillard World’, Communication Theory 29 (2019), pp. 421–440. Accessed June 2019, https://academic.oup.com/ct/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/ct/ qty036/5304815?redirectedFrom=fulltext. 11 Y. Sangweni, ‘New & Next: Meet South African Comedian Trevor Noah’, Essence 12 June

2013. Accessed July 2019, https://www.essence.com/celebrity/trevor-noah-talks-beingsouth-african-comedian/. 12  City Press, ‘No Overnight Success: Trevor Noah’s Rise to Stardom’, 23 November 2018.

Accessed July 2019, https://www.channel24.co.za/The-Juice/News/no-overnight-successtrevor-noahs-rise-to-stardom-20181123. 13 M. Wilstein, ‘Trevor Noah’s Powerful Message on Trump and Male Victimhood During

#MeToo’, Daily Beast 5 October 2018. Accessed May 2019, https://www.thedailybeast.com/ trevor-noahs-powerfulmessage-on-trump-and-male-victimhood-during-metoo. 14 F. Bacardi, ‘New Daily Show Host Trevor Noah Faces Backlash over Controversial Tweets’,

E-News 31 March 2015. Accessed July 2019, https://www.eonline.com/news/641377/newdaily-show-host-trevor-noah-faces-backlash-over-controversial-tweets. 15 Bacardi, ‘New Daily Show Host Trevor Noah Faces Backlash’.

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16 C. Sieczkowski, ‘Comedy Central Supports Trevor Noah after Backlash over Past Tweets’,

HuffPost 31 March 2015. Accessed July 2019, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trevor-noahbacklash-tweets_n_6976666; Africans in America, ‘Meet Trevor Noah: The Most Vocal African in America’, 13 November 2018. Accessed July 2019, https://africans-in-america. com/2018/11/13/meet-trevor-noah-the-most-vocal-african-in-america/. 17 H. Italie, ‘Trevor Noah Writing Book of Personal Essays Due in November’,

AP News 26 January 2016. Accessed July 2019, https://www.apnews. com/4a6b34a181db4e7fad3114141e31dd92. 18 J. Darden, ‘Born a Crime: A Memoir of Love, Hope, and Resistance’, Los Angeles Review

of Books 18 February 2017. Accessed July 2019, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/borncrime-memoir-love-hope-resistance/#!. 19 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trevor-noah-backlash-tweets_n_6976666.

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PART PART33

Academic Public Intellectuals Academic Public Intellectuals

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Academic public intellectuals: Introduction

Introduction Gregory Houston

In this section we turn to academic public intellectuals. These are academics whose public engagement involves the discovery and advocacy of significant ideas, and who play a crucial role in the intellectual, social and political agenda of their society.1 What they share is their professional link to the academy and their public engagement on critical intellectual, social and political issues. So firstly, these are public intellectuals who are academics: individuals who have undergone a lengthy ‘apprenticeship’ until they acquire the postgraduate degrees – normally a master’s degree or doctorate – that are prerequisites for employment as lecturers at a university.2 Jim Parsons provides a limited definition of an intellectual as ‘a person who has been trained in a particular discipline (linguistics, biology, history, economics, literary criticism, education) and whose work engages ongoing discourses of this chosen field. Intellectuals are found in universities and colleges, but not exclusively.’3 This definition is more appropriately applied to what are termed ‘academics’ than to intellectuals in general because it is based on a narrow view of intellectual activity. It ignores the intellectual outside the university, including others identified by Lewis Coser: ‘mass cultural intellectuals; scientific intellectuals; unattached intellectuals; intellectuals in power’.4 In addition, only a few of the 100 most important public intellectuals identified by Richard Posner in 2003 were university-based academics.5 Not all academics are public intellectuals. Indeed, much of the literature on the relationship between academics and public intellectuals is critical of the general tendency of academics to distance themselves from engaging publicly on social and political issues. In large part, this disengagement from broader society is because of ‘their willingness to sacrifice broader public intellectual endeavours for career success’ in the ‘pursuit of professional rewards, promotion and material acquisition’; and the pressures that universities impose on academics to be more focused on academic competition with their peers instead of broader social issues.6 Those academics who are simultaneously public intellectuals must therefore exhibit certain other characteristics. Secondly, therefore, these are academics who critically engage with society on important social and political issues in a public manner. In this regard, the academics included here take responsibility as social critics who challenge powerful actors and institutions; as social activists

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who engage publicly to advance a particular social or political agenda; and as experts who help societies to better understand themselves and the world around them. The academic public intellectual as social critic is ‘someone whose place it is to publicly raise embarrassing questions’ and ‘to speak truth to power’.7 Noam Chomsky, writing about the responsibility of intellectuals, asserts that intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. In the Western world, at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression. For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.8 Academics have the potential to become ‘autonomous social’ critics, ‘free from the constraint of national state interest, political orthodoxy, purely academic professional discourse, and the fashions of the day’.9 According to Parsons, this enables them ‘to speak and act freely, widely, and fearlessly’. Parsons adds that ‘fearless speech helps define public intellectuals as those who use their intellects to work, study, consider, or ask and answer questions about ideas within a large public arena’.10 Some of the academic public intellectuals included in this volume have spoken truth to power by challenging powerful intellectual traditions (Magubane and Mafeje); exposing reprehensible government activities (David Webster); and criticising powerful political forces (Suttner). The academic public intellectual as social activist is someone who uses the authority and platform derived from being an academic to advance a particular social or political agenda in the interests of a particular public or group. These are usually ‘established academic professionals’ who have ‘august reputations and impregnable professional standings’ that enable them to reach a wide and influential audience to further their agendas.11 Once intellectual eminence is established in their particular field (i.e. within the realm of the purely intellectual field), ‘then this reputation is parlayed into a resource for wider public recognition’. The older the intellectual becomes, the more extensive his or her social activism becomes.12 For these academics, as Edward Said pointed out, ‘the lecture platform, the pamphlet, radio, alternative journals, occasional papers, the interview, the rally, the church pulpit, and the Internet, to name only a few’,13 are places where they assert their role as public intellectuals. A number of the academic public intellectuals included here – Degenaar, Tobias, Meer, Turner and Eddie Webster – fit into this category of social activists who establish a broad public following and use their academic positions to spread their ideas inside and far beyond the academy.

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Academic public intellectuals: Introduction

The academic public intellectual as ‘expert’ is someone whose writing and other public engagements can help create an informed citizenry and a more just society through the provision of disciplined arguments and analysis.14 Academic public intellectuals provide ‘expertise’ in areas where the required expertise is beyond the capacity of other specialists in the area.15 In this regard, one of the major public roles of the academic as public intellectual is to provide solutions to societies’ ‘wicked problems’ through a focus on research that deals ‘with specific questions of public value and policy’. These academics engage in academic work in order to address social and political issues important to society with a view to facilitating effective policyand decision-making.16 They may wield influence in many ways: some may take high political office or become senior government officials, while others may have significant influence over government policy through their research. Others exert their influence in opposition to the government, including as members of liberation movements, and carry out empirical research that is directly useful to these movements. A few of the academic public intellectuals included here have seen their role as providing expertise to the liberation movement and the democratic government: Wolpe, Gerwel, Shisana, Makgoba and Pandor, while several others mentioned above have also made a similar contribution. Notes 1 J.R. Di Leo and P. Hitchcock (eds), The New Public Intellectual: Politics, Theory, and the Public

Sphere (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 2 A. von Rothkirch, Out of the Ivory Tower, into the Public Sphere? Academics as

Intellectuals. Unpublished work-in-progress paper, 2008. Accessed March 2020, https:// sites.google.com/site/alycevonro/Home/work-in-progress/academic-intellectuals. 3 J. Parsons, ‘The Ethical Academic: Academics as Public Intellectuals’, The

Free Library (2013), p. 7. Accessed April 2020, https://www.thefreelibrary.com/ The+Ethical+Academic%3A+Academics+as+Public+Intellectuals-a0325333949. 4 L. Coser, cited in S. Dallyn, M. Marinetto and C. Cederström, ‘The Academic as Public

Intellectual: Examining Public Engagement in the Professionalised Academy’, Sociology 49:6 (2015), p. 1034. 5 R.A. Posner, cited in Dallyn, Marinetto and Cederström, ‘The Academic as Public

Intellectual’, p. 1034. 6 Dallyn, Marinetto and Cederström, ‘The Academic as Public Intellectual’, p. 1034. 7 Edward Said, cited in G. Fallis, ‘Professors as Public Intellectuals’, Academic Matters:

OCUFA’s Journal of Higher Education (Oct/Nov 2008). Accessed April 2020, https:// academicmatters.ca/professors-as-public-intellectuals/. 8 N. Chomsky, ‘The Responsibility of Intellectuals’, The New York Review of Books

23 February 1967. Accessed April 2020, https://chomsky.info/19670223/. 9 N. McLaughlin, ‘The Global Public Intellectual, Academic Professions and the

Intellectual Hero: Reflections on Edward Said’, The Discourse of Sociological Practice 7:1/2 (2005), pp. 161–174. 10 Parsons, ‘The Ethical Academic’, p. 4. 11 Dallyn, Marinetto and Cederström, ‘The Academic as Public Intellectual’, p. 1037.

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa 12 R. Colllins, ’Who Has Been a Successful Public Intellectual?’, European Journal of Social

Theory 14:4 (2011), p. 447. 13 E. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004),

p. 132. 14 R.G. Hubbard, ‘The Economist as Public Intellectual’, Journal of Economic Education 35:4

(2004), pp. 391–394. 15 Posner, Public Intellectuals, p. 41. 16 E. Cushman, ‘Opinion: The Public Intellectual, Service Learning, and Activist Research’,

Service Learning, General Paper 84 (1999), pp. 328–329.

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Bernard Magubane: ‘Analysing the colonial situation’

Bernard Magubane: ‘Analysing the colonial situation’ Gregory Houston

1930–2013

Bernard Makhosezwe Magubane was a prominent academic and political activist who challenged the Eurocentric biases of sociology and anthropology. According to Magubane, in order to develop a full understanding of various social processes one has to ‘grasp the objective socio-economic historical process to which man is subject in society’.1 Magubane went further by arguing that not enough work had been done by anthropologists to analyse the colonial situation from the African perspective, which gives attention to Africans’ point of view of the situation imposed on them.2 To this must be added a failure to incorporate an analysis of one of the most important features of colonial history, ‘as opposed to its economics, its politics, its sociology, and its psychology’, and that is ‘a history of the variety of African responses’ to the colonial situation.3 Magubane grew up near Colenso in KwaZulu-Natal. His father, Xhegwana Elliot Magubane, and mother, Ella Magubane, were labour tenants on a white-owned farm at the time. After the family moved to Cato Manor in Durban several years after Magubane’s birth, he attended schools in Chesterville before registering for a teacher training course at the Marianhill Teacher Training College. He subsequently completed his matric at Sastri College and acquired a fellowship to attend the University of Natal, where he completed a master’s degree in sociology. Thereafter he received a scholarship to attend the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he completed his master’s and doctoral degrees in anthropology. Magubane then lectured for two years in Lusaka before returning to the United States, where he lectured at several universities before his return to South Africa in 1997.4 He then joined the Human Sciences Research Council as a researcher, before he was appointed project leader of the South African Democracy Education Trust (Sadet), an independent research organisation established in 2000 after then president Mbeki expressed concern about the paucity of research on the history of the liberation struggle. Magubane retired from Sadet at the end of 2009.

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While studying in Marianhill, Magubane joined the ANC, which marked the beginning of his involvement in political activities. He continued this involvement for the rest of his life, playing a leading role in the anti-apartheid movement in the United States until his return to South Africa. Throughout his academic career, Magubane published articles in the ANC’s various journals, including Mayibuye. Whilst at UCLA, he read Marx and Engels, although it was the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois and the struggles of the African Americans of the time that shaped his thinking on race and class.5 He became internationally notorious when he critically attacked the then dominant sociological and anthropological approaches to the study of Africa in a series of controversial journal articles. The first, ‘Pluralism and Conflict Situations in Africa: A New Look’, published in 1969, took issue with the analysis of the nature and scope of conflicts and social change in Africa found in the works of prominent anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski and Alfred RadcliffeBrown. Magubane argued that their works oversimplified conflicts and social change in Africa by reducing the conflicts to tribal differences and describing tropical African societies as plural societies. Instead, he posited, a better understanding of the conflicts in Africa can be arrived at by examining what happened during the colonial era, while social change can be better understood through an analysis of the social structure and psychology that was created by colonial rule.6 In particular, Magubane criticised Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown for their aversion to historical analysis, and, more directly, for their failure to trace the socio-economic structure inherited from long periods of colonial rule and exploitation. He called for a deeper historical perspective that takes into account the impact of colonialism on African societies.7 This attack on the two powerful academics was followed by another journal article published in 1971, in which he criticised their anthropological studies of ‘acculturation’ in Africa, or what some scholars call ‘Europeanisation’ and/or ‘Westernisation’. Magubane criticised such studies for, among other things, their lack of a ‘historical perspective’. These studies focus on the dynamics of ‘culture contact’ in Africa by looking at certain social indices to determine the extent to which Africans in town adopted European behaviour and value systems. In this article, Magubane criticised a brand of British social anthropology that was popular in the 1940s to the early 1960s, initiated in the works of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown and furthered by the work of James Clyde Mitchell and Arnold Epstein. Magubane provided more detail of the limitations of the functionalist approach in his review of the work of Mitchell and Epstein, which he claimed lacks an emphasis on colonial history. In particular, he argued, that by focusing on certain indices they identified as ‘most indicative of both the process of acculturation and the formation of new status groups in the urban situation’, such as ‘European’ clothing, professions, education and income, these authors fail to treat ‘the colonial system as an essential dimension of the new social structure, have tended to take it for granted’, or assumed ‘that its general characteristics are known’.8 His challenging of the dominant sociological and anthropological approaches to the study of Africa provoked widespread support among other scholars, who saw merit in Magubane’s

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arguments and soon also adopted his approach. Several journal articles were published at the time that indicated acceptance among African scholars in particular of his perspective.9 Magubane then went on to publish his most celebrated work in 1979, The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa, which begins with a description of African societies prior to European contact, followed by an analysis of the impact of European conquest and cultural domination of the African peoples from the 1600s. He then turns to the history of capitalist development, focusing on the emergence of capitalist agriculture and the formation of ‘native reserves’, the discovery of precious minerals in 1864 and 1884 and the introduction of the migrant labour system, and the impact of these on South Africa’s economy and society. This is followed by an analysis of the historical and contemporary roots of urbanisation; the development of Afrikaner urban-based industry, commerce and capitalist agriculture; the history of imperialist exploitation in South Africa; and the development of Afrikaner nationalism; and concludes with the African reaction to domination and exploitation. He situates the problems of race and class in a historical context by demonstrating their ‘historical specificity’ – i.e. that the social phenomena such as race and class and the laws that govern them are only valid in the context of particular historical periods since they are generally specific to these periods.10 In his historical analysis of the development of capitalism in South Africa, Magubane portrays events through African eyes. He documents the numerous ways in which the European invaders stole land, destroyed livestock and killed Africans in their pursuit of personal and corporate profit. He shows how the once independent African population was reduced by violence, force and theft to a servant population, serving white South Africa and often forced to live on whitedetermined tribal reservations. This is how Africans see the development of capitalism in South Africa, and it is this perspective that is crucial, Magubane argued.11 In the concluding two chapters that deal with the liberation struggle, Magubane drew attention to African responses to conquest and oppression in South Africa. He showed that Africans have not been ‘passive and willing sufferers’, and that ‘resistance to white conquest is almost as old as the first colonial settlement’. He demonstrated the Africans’ resistance to the white invasion in a region that was ‘threatened with white settlement of the land and physical extermination of the people occupying it’.12 Other publications of note13 include South Africa: From Soweto to Uitenhage: The Political Economy of the South African Revolution;14 The Round Table Movement: Its Influence on the Historiography of Imperialism;15 The Making of a Racist State: British Imperialism and the Union of South Africa, 1875–1910;16 African Sociology: Towards a Critical Perspective: The Selected Essays of Bernard Makhosezwe Magubane;17 and Race and the Construction of the Dispensable Other.18 In 1999, Magubane was awarded National Orders by the South African government for his contribution to the social sciences. The University of Fort Hare and Walter Sisulu University awarded him honorary doctorates, and in 2007 he was invested as a founding fellow of the African Sociological Association. His 80th birthday in 2010 was marked by an international conference in Tshwane.

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Bernard Magubane’s greatest legacy is the introduction in the early 1970s of an African perspective in anthropology and sociology that would influence a generation of scholars to study Africa in a new way. His writings continue to serve as inspiration and provided intellectual guidance for many South Africans inside the country as well as those living abroad. Notes 1 B. Magubane, ‘A Critical Look at Indices Used in the Study of Social Change in Colonial

Africa’, Current Anthropology XII:4–5 (1971), pp. 419–431; Okediji Q.O. ‘Comment’, Current Anthropology XII:4-5 (1971), pp. 436–438. 2 P. Mayer, ‘Comment’, Current Anthropology XII:(4/5) (1971), p. 433. 3 Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’, p. 420. 4 B. Magubane and M. Mzamane, Bernard Magubane: My Life and Times. (Pietermaritzburg:

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2010). 5 Magubane and Mzamane, Bernard Magubane. 6 B. Magubane, ‘Pluralism and Conflict Situations in Africa: A New Look’, African Social

Research 7 (1969), pp. 559–654. 7 Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’. 8 Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’; Okediji, ‘Comment’, p. 437. 9 Refer to Current Anthropology XII:4–5 (1971) for comments by Q.O. Okediji, V. D’Souza,

N. Gonzales, P. Mayer and S. Saberwal, pp. 436ff. 10 A. Aidoo, ‘Review of “The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa, by Bernard

Makhosezwe Magubane’”, Review of African Political Economy 21 (1981), pp. 115–116. 11 J.R. Feagin, ‘Review of “The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa, by Bernard

Makhosezwe Magubane”  ’, Contemporary Sociology 9:6 (1980), pp. 823–825. 12 B. Rogers, ‘Review of The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa, by Bernard

Makhosezwe Magubane”  ’, Third World Quarterly 2:3 (1980), p. 604. 13 See also B. Magubane, ‘The “Xhosa” in Town, Revisited Urban Social Anthropology:

A Failure of Method and Theory’, American Anthropology 75:5 (1973), pp. 1701–1715. 14 B. Magubane, South Africa: From Soweto to Uitenhage: The Political Economy of the South

African Revolution. (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1988). 15 B. Magubane, The Round Table Movement: Its Influence on the Historiography of Imperialism

(Seminar paper series). (Harare: SAPES Books, 1994). 16 B. Magubane, The Making of a Racist State: British Imperialism and the Union of South Africa,

1875–1910 (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1997). 17 B. Magubane, African Sociology: Towards a Critical Perspective: The Selected Essays of Bernard

Makhosezwe Magubane (African Renaissance Series). (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1988). 18 B. Magubane, Race and the Construction of the Dispensable Other (Pretoria: Unisa Press,

2007).

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Archie Mafeje: An Afrocentric social science?

Archie Mafeje: An Afrocentric social science? Gregory Houston

1936–2007

Monwabisi Archibald ‘Archie’ Mafeje was a world-renowned academic who taught and worked in some of the top universities on three continents. He was one of the pioneers in advocating an Afrocentric approach to the study of issues affecting Africans and African countries – not only in his own disciplines of sociology and anthropology, but also in contemporary economic and political theory and practice. Mafeje was born on 30  March 1936, the son of a primary school headmaster, Bennet Mafeje, and a school teacher, Frances Lydia Mafeje (née Qambata). He grew up in Gubenxa in the eNgcobo district in the former Transkei. The first of seven children, he began his secondary schooling in 1951 at the Nqabara Secondary School in Willowvale. Here he came under the influence of the principal of the school, Nathaniel Honono, the leader of the Cape African Teachers’ Association (CATA) and a leading figure in the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM). Honono engaged the students in debates and on the literature of the NEUM, leading to Mafeje’s later membership of the youth affiliate of the NEUM, the Society of Young Africa (SOYA).1 In 1953, Mafeje moved to Healdtown College in Fort Beaufort, where he came under the influence of Livingstone Mogotsi, his history teacher and an activist, journalist and writer. Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe are some of the former Healdtown students. It was here that Mafeje denounced religion and became a Marxist atheist.2 Mafeje enrolled at the University of Fort Hare after completing his schooling in 1954, but was expelled in his first year in 1955 for engaging in political activities. In 1956, he enrolled at the University of Cape Town (UCT), completing a BA and BA (Honours) in social anthropology, and a master’s in political anthropology.

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Mafeje became more politically active during the time he spent as a student at UCT. Having been inspired by the ideas of NEUM at school, he joined SOYA, an affiliate of the All-African Convention (AAC). Here he met fellow adherents of the NEUM such as A.C.  Jordan, Fikile Bam and Welsh Makanda. In 1961, he became a member of the NEUM’s African People’s Democratic Union of South Africa (Apdusa), and joined the Cape Peninsula Students’ Union (CPSU). During this time, he published his first book on Langa township with Professor Monica Wilson in the same year, 1963, that he submitted his master’s dissertation. Mafeje completed a PhD in anthropology and rural sociology at Cambridge University in 1966. Two years later, he was appointed as senior lecturer at UCT, but his appointment was reversed because of apartheid legislation. Some UCT students and academic staff protested and demanded his reinstatement. The university’s administration did not accede to the demands of the protesters, but instead established an Academic Freedom Research Award in honour of Mafeje. He subsequently left the country.3 He then lectured at various tertiary institutions in Africa, including the University of Dar es Salaam, the  American University in Cairo  and Makerere College in Uganda. In 1973, he lectured in anthropology and sociology of development at the Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, in the Netherlands.4 Mafeje’s work in the 1960s was among the first to challenge Eurocentrism, which assumes Europe’s development was the prime mover of world history. He was to sustain this position throughout his life, as illustrated by the following excerpt from a review article published in 1981: To overcome Euro-centric social theory, it is imperative that the absent must be made present because the greater part of the truth, as is shown by the continuing revolutions in the Third World, is in that which is absent.5 In calling for ‘new forms of awareness and self-identification’, Mafeje argued that critical African social scientists had the responsibility to ‘include what has been excluded’ by European social theory in its analysis of Africa. In his own approach to this task, Mafeje, in his article ‘The Ideology of “Tribalism”  ’, published in 1971, questioned the use of the concept of tribalism in the analysis of African societies by European anthropologists. He argued that it is an ideology used by European authors that has led to a distortion of reality. In essence, he asserted that it is incorrect to apply the term ‘tribes’ to explain societies that have been penetrated by Europeans and changed by the introduction of new modes of production, division of labour, and distribution of material goods and political power. In his view, the use of the term ‘tribalism’ to explain African societies ‘over-simplifies, mystifies, and obscures the real nature of economic and power relations between Africans themselves, and between Africa and the capitalist world’.6 This is what has been excluded in Eurocentric studies of Africa. In making these arguments, Mafeje was articulating the view that African scholars, who have a different perception of the African reality that does not include a focus on tribalism, are best placed to study Africa. This is the essence of Afrocentric social sciences.

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During the period he spent outside the country, he was a researcher, professor or fellow at Cambridge University, the Nordic Africa Institute, the University of Copenhagen, Umeå University in Sweden, and Northwestern University in the US. He also served as the director of the Multidisciplinary Research Centre at the University of Namibia in Windhoek. Mafeje played a central role in charting an Afrocentric approach to the study of issues affecting Africans and African countries in the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (Codesria), a pan-African research organisation headquartered in Dakar, Senegal.7 The 1980s and 1990s were his most productive years, during which he published widely on an extensive range of topics. It was during this time that he wrote his seminal article, ‘The Ideology of Tribalism’, and book chapters with the following titles: ‘The Land Question and Agrarian Revolution in Buganda’, ‘Religion, Class, and Neo-Colonialism’, and ‘State Capitalism or Revolution’. He also engaged in numerous debates on issues such as the significance of the 1976 Soweto uprising, the concept of a dual economy and the nature of the land question in Africa.8 Throughout the course of his career, Mafeje was to reflect on the failure of African anthropologists to ‘provide a clear definition of “African anthropology” as against “colonial anthropology”  ’. In addition, he complained, ‘unlike colonial anthropology, they exhibited no theoretical framework which guided their discourse, nor were they able to say what their designating categories and units of analysis were’. According to Mafeje, post-independence African anthropologists had failed to make an ‘epistemological break from colonial anthropology’.9 These reflections were a culmination of concerns he had raised about the state of anthropology and the problem of African anthropology, first in 1976 in a journal article,10 and again in 1992 in a monograph.11 From 1994, Mafeje turned his mind to the national question.12 This was followed by reflections on democracy and the role the state should play in poverty reduction. ‘In reality,’ he wrote, ‘what the African peoples, poor or not so poor, are faced with is a predatory state which is preoccupied with its own survival. Therefore, any amelioration or transformation of the conditions of life in Africa presupposes the emergence of a democratic state.’  13 Mafeje produced numerous works on several other topics, including a monograph on the relationship between science, ideology and development;14 three articles on agriculture and rural poverty in Africa;15 a monograph on imperialism;16 a book titled Revolutionary Theory and Politics;17 an analysis of tribalism in the Oxford Companion to Politics of the World; and a book, which was co-edited with Samir Radwan, on Economic and Demographic Change in Africa.18 Mafeje returned to South Africa in 2000, and was appointed a research fellow at the University of South Africa’s (Unisa) African Renaissance Centre. He had been involved with CODESRIA virtually throughout his academic life, but only became a member of its scientific committee after his return to South Africa and, in 2003, was awarded honorary life membership. Owing to his outstanding contributions to African scholarship, he was appointed a CODESRIA

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Distinguished Fellow in 2005. Mafeje died in Pretoria on 28 March 2007. After his death he was described by the then minister of arts and culture as ‘A pioneering intellectual powerhouse’; by the Institute for Social Studies in the Hague as ‘One of the outstanding social scientists whom ISS has been honoured to have counted on its staff’; and by the Executive Secretary of CODESRIA as ‘A great pan-African, an outstanding scientist, a first rate debater, a frontline partisan in the struggle for social justice, and a gentleman of great humanitarian principles’.19 Notes 1 B. Nyoka, ‘Archie Mafeje: An intellectual biography’, DLitt et Phil thesis, University of

South Africa, 2017, pp. 24–7. 2 Nyoka, ‘Archie Molefe’, pp. 27–8. 3 Nyoka, ‘Archie Molefe’, pp. 27–55. 4 B. Nyoka, ‘Archie Molefe’, pp. 27ff.; F. Wilson, ‘Citation for the Honorary Degree for Dr.

Archie Mafeje @ the University of Cape Town’ (2008). Accessed November 2018, https:// www.uct.ac.za/usr/vcinstallation/Mafeje_citation.pdf: 1–2. 5 A. Mafeje, ‘On the Articulation of Modes of Production: Review Article’, Journal of

Southern African Studies 8:1 (1981), p. 138. 6 A. Mafeje, ‘The Ideology of “Tribalism”  ’, Journal of Modern African Studies 9:2 (1971),

pp. 253–261. 7 Nyoka, ‘Archie Molefe’, pp. 55–73. 8 Wilson, ‘Citation’, p. 3. 9 A. Mafeje, ‘Conversations and Confrontations with my Reviewers’, African Sociological

Review/Revue Africaine de Sociologie 2:2 (1998), pp. 95–107. 10 A. Mafeje, ‘The Problem of Anthropology in Historical Perspective: An Inquiry into the

Growth of Social Sciences’, Canadian Journal of African Studies X:2 (1976), pp. 307–333. 11 A. Mafeje, Studies in Imperialism: A Discourse in Methodology, Research Methods & Techniques.

(Harare: SAPES, 1992). 12 A. Mafeje, The National Question in South African Settler Societies. (Harare: SAPES, 1997). 13 A. Mafeje, ‘Conceptual and Philosophical Predispositions’, in F. Wilson, N. Kanji and

E. Braathen (eds), Poverty Reduction: What Role for the State in Today’s Globalised Economy. (London: Sed Books, 2001), p. 25. Cited in Wilson, ‘Citation’, p. 4. 14 A. Mafeje, Three Essays on Development Theory. (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African

Studies, 1978). 15 A. Mafeje, ‘African Agriculture the Next 25 years’, Africa Development XII:2 (1987),

pp. 5–34; A. Mafeje, ‘African Households: Prospects of Agricultural Revival in subSaharan Africa’, CODESRIA Working Paper, Dakar (1991); and A. Mafeje, Dynamics of Rural Poverty in Africa. (Accra: Food and Agricultural Organisation, 1991). 16 Mafeje, Studies in Imperialism. 17 Mafeje, Studies in Imperialism. 18 Wilson, ‘Citation’, p. 3. 19 Wilson, ‘Citation’, p. 4.

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David Webster: A life cut short

David Webster: A life cut short Gregory Houston

1944–1989

Academic and anti-apartheid activist David Webster spent his childhood, adolescence, student days and academic life in one or the other of ‘four different countries in southern Africa in different phases of decolonialisation’.1 Prior to Webster’s birth, his family had migrated from South Africa to settle in Luanshya, in the then Northern Rhodesia. He was educated at Falcon College boarding school in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) before the family returned to South Africa. He registered at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, first to study accountancy, and then anthropology. At Rhodes, he became actively involved in student politics, and participated in a student protest in 1965 against the decision of the Grahamstown City Council to ban black students from watching games of the Rhodes University rugby team. The students organised a sit-in at the steps of the university’s library in protest. Webster completed his studies at Rhodes in 1967.2 In 1969, while conducting fieldwork for his doctorate among the Chopi of southern Mozambique, he saw direct evidence of the effects of South Africa’s migrant labour system on African communities.3 This prompted him to conduct research on related issues, including the social history of tuberculosis and causes of malnutrition. He had been trained in the structuralfunctional approach in anthropology, which emphasised the different structures in a society such as the family and the community that work together in order to promote stability and solidarity. Noting the disruption caused by the migrant labour system, Webster saw this approach as inadequate to explain Chopi society, and instead adopted the frameworks of analysis developed by the scholars of the Manchester school of anthropology, with their emphasis on the analysis of interactions in particular situations in order to infer their underlying rules and assumptions. In 1970, Webster started lecturing in the anthropology department at the University of the Witwatersrand. He then lectured for two consecutive periods between 1976 and 1978 at the University of Manchester.4

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After his return from Manchester to his lecturing job at the University of the Witwatersrand, Webster adopted a more radical analysis, which became evident in his teaching on Marxism, and his publications on the Chopi that focused on their proletarianisation and participation in the migrant labour system on South Africa’s gold mines.5 His later publications are also indicative of this radical shift, including his analysis of South African apartheid healthcare and nutrition. Webster’s publications drew attention to the importance of social history, community activism and, in particular, the link between trade unions and community struggle that mirrored the positions adopted by the ‘political’ trade unions of the late 1970s and 1980s.6 He conducted two other major anthropological studies in the 1980s. The first was a jointly run study on unemployment and the role of the informal sector in Soweto in an attempt to reconceptualise ‘informal sector’ activities as ‘petty commodity production’. The results of this research were captured in a report he submitted in 1984 titled ‘The Reproduction of Labour and the Struggle for Survival in Soweto’ to the Second Carnegie Commission. In this report, he traced events from the Soweto uprising, and the socio-economic and other factors that led to the uprising, to address the question of how working-class communities in Soweto, faced with much the same material conditions as those schoolchildren in 1976, subject to the same forms of oppression and exploitation, manage to creatively employ strategies for survival, against such formidable odds.7 The second research project, in which he made use of the ethnographic research method, was a study of the migrant labour system, ethnicity, gender and the household among the TembeThonga of northern Zululand.8 Webster continued with his research in Mozambique, and it is possible that he came into contact with the leaders of the ANC and South African Communist Party (SACP) who were based in that country. In the early 1980s, several leaders of the liberation movement, such as Jacob Zuma, Joe Slovo, Ruth First and Ronnie Kasrils, were living in Maputo. Webster even considered working at the Eduardo Mondlane University at the time.9 Another incident that had a major influence on him was the 1981 arrest of several of his students, including Barbara Hogan, Barbara Klugman and Joanne Yawitch. Hogan was subsequently sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for treason as a member of the ANC.  Several members of the Crown Mines community where the students lived – Gavin Anderson, Cedric de Beer and Caroline Cullinan – had also been arrested.10 The arrests were behind Webster’s role in the establishment in 1981 of the Detainees’ Parents Support Committee (DPSC), a support group for families of political detainees and banished people. The main role he played was to assist families to track down the whereabouts of their banished and detained relatives, and bring families of detainees together at social functions held at his home.11 Webster’s other key role in the DPSC was to monitor and publicise human rights abuses. He contributed regularly to the DPSC’s weekly ‘Our View’ articles that were published in The Star newspaper, and the DPSC Monthly Report that was widely circulated to

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local and international media, foreign diplomatic missions and governments, and anti-apartheid movements throughout the world. The monthly reports, which were drawn from many different sources, included information on people who had been detained, banned or imprisoned for their political activities, as well as news on political trials, court actions against the police, and relevant legislative changes. The ‘Our View’ articles provided critical comment that ranged more widely over changes in the law, the effect the changes were likely to have on political opposition, police conduct and political trials, and analyses of state tactics to criminalise the activities of political opponents.12 The DPSC would later become an affiliate of the United Democratic Front (UDF), a radical front organisation founded in 1983 by ANC-aligned organisations and individuals. By 1983, Webster had been active for several years in a number of other UDF affiliates, including the End Conscription Campaign (ECC), the Five Freedoms Forum (FFF), and the Detainees’ Education and Welfare Organisation (DEWO). Webster’s involvement in these organisations and his work monitoring apartheid repression and violence probably led to his death. In 1984, he submitted a report with extensive evidence of human rights abuse at hearings on apartheid and its effects organised by the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) in Lusaka. This was followed by another report to the hearings submitted in 1985. Together with his partner, Maggie Friedman, he researched the use of torture during interrogations of detainees, and assassinations conducted by members of the South African security forces. The two authored a report and book chapter about repression during the state of emergency from 1987. Their detailed analysis of the various forms of repression based on documentation and other forms of evidence drew attention to the precise nature and extent of apartheid repression.13 At the time of his assassination, he and Maggie Friedman were gathering information on the apartheid regime’s use of assassination squads. While doing fieldwork in the two areas in the late 1980s, he had also uncovered smuggling routes used to illegally take arms or ivory through Natal into southern Mozambique.14 Webster was shot and killed outside his Johannesburg home on 1 May 1989 by assassins of the Civil Cooperation Bureau. This clandestine agency, which had been created by the apartheid state’s military intelligence, was later found to be responsible for many apartheid-era political murders. At the time of his assassination, Webster was beginning to make a considerable contribution to the development of anthropology in South Africa, but he is remembered more widely for his political activism. His life was cut short at a time when he was playing a critical role in exposing the excesses of the apartheid security forces. In acknowledgement of both his academic and activist contributions, a residence hall for students at the University of the Witwatersrand bears his name, while the City of Johannesburg renamed a park after him. His house in Johannesburg has been declared a heritage site.

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Notes 1 D. James, ‘David Webster: An Activist Anthropologist Twenty Years On’, African Studies

68:2 (2009), pp. 288–290. 2 James, ‘David Webster’. 3 D. Webster, ‘Kinship and Cooperation: Agnation, Alternative Structures and the

Individual in Chopi Society’, Ph.D. dissertation, Rhodes University, 1975. 4 James, ‘David Webster’, pp. 290–293. 5 D. Webster, ‘The Origins of Migrant Labour, Colonialism and the Underdevelopment of

Southern Mozambique’ in P.L. Bonner (ed.) Collected Seminar Papers of the African Studies Institute. (Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand, 1975); D. Webster, ‘Spreading the Risk: The Principle of Laterality in Chopi Society’, Africa 47 (1977), pp. 192–207; D. Webster, ‘Migrant Labour, Social Formations, and the Proletarianisation of the Chopi of Southern Mozambique’, African Perspectives 1 (1978), pp. 151–174. 6 C. Merret, ‘The Lesson the Murder of David Webster Holds for the Present’, Mail &

Guardian 2 May 2014. Accessed November 2018, https://mg.co.za/article/2014-05-01-thelesson-the-murder-of-david-webster-holds-for-the-present. 7 D. Webster, ‘The Reproduction of Labour Power and the Struggle for Survival in Soweto’,

Carnegie Conference paper No. 20 (1984a), p. 1. 8 D. Webster, ‘Tembe-Thonga Kinship: The Marriage of Anthropology and History’, Cahiers

d’etudes africaines 104:XXVI (1984b), p. 4. 9 James, ‘David Webster, p. 290. 10 G. Webster, ‘David Webster’s Role in the DPSC: A Fearless Defence of the Principles

of Legality and Due Process’. (n.d.) Accessed January 2019, https://www.sahistory.org.za/ archive/david-webster%E2%80%99s-role-dpsc-fearless-defence-principles-legality-anddue-process-glenda. 11 Webster, ‘David Webster’s Role’, p. 6. 12 Webster, ‘David Webster’s Role’ p. 14. 13 D. Webster and M. Friedman, ‘Repression and the State of Emergency: June 1987-March

1989’, Southern African Research Service (eds) South African Review 5. (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1989). 14 Webster ‘David Webster’s Role’, p. 20; James, ‘David Webster’, p. 292.

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Raymond Suttner: Analysing the liberation struggle

Raymond Suttner: Analysing the liberation struggle Gregory Houston

b. 1945

Marxist scholar, academic, journalist, and social and political activist Raymond Suttner has remained committed to achieving a democratic, just South Africa for about half a century. Parts of his life read like a spy novel – counter-intelligence, disguises, invisible ink, illegally skipping the country and being detained for more than two years, much of it in solitary confinement. But the ‘cloak and dagger’ stuff is balanced with some very pragmatic service. He was an advocate of the Supreme Court, a member of Parliament, and South Africa’s ambassador to Sweden. He has lectured at many universities in South Africa and abroad, and he continues to speak out against injustice as a respected journalist. Suttner was born on 29 August 1945 in Durban into a liberal Jewish family. Suttner thus became politically involved initially as a liberal while he was at school. Before he went to university, he spent one month as an articled clerk with the view to becoming a chartered accountant. It did not take him long to realise that this was not a career he wanted, and he had a vague idea of doing a law degree. He had studied Latin at school because his father advised him that it was necessary for the study of law.1 In 1965, he registered at the University of Cape Town (UCT) for a BA degree with comparative African government and law, constitutional history and Roman law as his majors. In 1968, he registered for a master’s degree in law, and was admitted as an advocate of the Supreme Court (now High Court) of South Africa in the same year. Suttner’s grandparents owned a hotel in Onrust, near Hermanus, and the grandchildren would spend weekends and holidays there. UCT lecturer Professor Jack Simons and his wife, Ray Alexander, owned a cottage there, and he used to play or meet with their children. He did not know or pay attention to the parents at that time. However, in 1969 Suttner finalised a Master of Laws (LLM) thesis at the University of Cape  Town that drew on the writings of Professor Jack Simons, the leading authority in African customary law. Simons was a ‘listed’ Communist and could not be quoted. Suttner’s supervisor, Professor Donald Molteno, advised him that

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he could not allow the thesis to be presented with quotations from Simons. Suttner withdrew the work rather than using Simons’ works without acknowledgement.2 Between February 1968 and August 1969, Suttner was a junior lecturer in comparative African government and law at the University of Cape Town. In 1969, he went to the United Kingdom to pursue research on law and government at the universities of London and Oxford after being awarded an Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust study grant. In 1970, Suttner abandoned his studies at Oxford University in order to participate in the struggle. After joining the South African Communist Party (SACP) in the United Kingdom, he was trained by Ronnie Kasrils and Rusty Bernstein in counter-intelligence, the use of invisible ink, how to disguise himself, and how to make leaflet bombs. He returned to South Africa in 1971, and from June 1971, he lectured at the University of Natal until his arrest in 1975. He operated for four years, secretly distributing pamphlets on behalf of the ANC until he was exposed after he had made a bulk order for envelopes through the University of Natal. He was arrested on 30 May 1975, and sentenced to eight years in prison.3 On his release in 1983, he joined the United Democratic Front (UDF), while establishing and maintaining contacts with the ANC and SACP illegally. In the same year, he completed the requirements for the LLD (Doctor of Laws) that he had been working on for the University of South Africa (Unisa) while in prison. He was employed between June and December 1983 as a research officer in the African Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand before being appointed a senior lecturer in law at the university in January 1984. Following the declaration of a state of emergency in 1985, he began to operate underground on a range of political activities – in particular, the popularisation of the Freedom Charter, and the advance to people’s power. He was arrested in June 1986 at an airport in South Africa on his way to Zimbabwe to meet with the ANC. He was detained for 27 months, spending 18 months in solitary confinement because he was the only white person in detention at the time. When he was released in September 1988, heavy restrictions were imposed on him, including house arrest. After spending a year under such restrictions, Suttner decided to defy them by taking a flight to Harare to attend the discussions the ANC was holding that gave rise to the Harare Declaration on the pre-conditions for negotiations. Because he expected to be arrested on his return to South Africa, he decided to extend his stay out of the country and went on a tour of several countries, including Zambia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and the former Soviet Union. When he returned to South Africa just before the unbanning of the ANC, his restrictions fell away.4 In 1990, Suttner was able to return to his lecturing post at Wits, but he resigned when Walter Sisulu asked him to work full-time as the ANC’s head of political education. He served the ANC in this position until 1997, where his responsibilities included coordinating the induction of new ANC members. He also initiated many written, audio and audiovisual productions, including a five-part film titled Ulibambe Lingashoni (Hold up the Sun), for which he served as

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executive consultant. In 1991, he was elected to the national executive committee of the ANC, and later in the year he became a member of the central committee of the SACP.5 Suttner was an ANC member of Parliament between 1994 and 1997, and served as South Africa’s ambassador to Sweden between 1997 and 2001. He occupied several academic positions in recent years. He was a visiting fellow in the Department of Women’s Studies at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India; visiting research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies; research fellow at Unisa; honorary professor in the School of Social Sciences of the University of the Witwatersrand; research professor in the College of Human Sciences at Unisa; and visiting part-time professor attached to the history department of Rhodes University. He is currently a visiting professor and strategic advisor to the dean of the Humanities Faculty at the University of Johannesburg, and an honorary research fellow in Unisa’s history department. Suttner is a regular contributor to Creamer Media’s website, polity.org.za, and video interviews with him on current political and social issues are regularly featured. His articles are reprinted in the Daily Maverick and enca.com. His publications include 30 and 50 Years of the Freedom Charter,6 Inside Apartheid’s Prison,7 and The ANC Underground,8 and he is the editor of Ray Alexander’s autobiography that was published in 2004. His publications on a wide range of issues can be found in a number of South African and international journals. Several of Suttner’s publications focus on the history of the liberation struggle and the ANC and SACP in particular. His doctoral thesis, titled ‘Rendering Visible: The Underground Organisational Experience of the ANC-led Alliance until 1976’, is a detailed history of the underground activities and organisation of the ANC and its allies from the 1950s to 1976. In setting out this history, Suttner challenges some popular notions of the underground activities of these organisations, including, for example, the notion that the Communist Party controlled the ANC. In other publications, he provided insights into the history of some of the ANC allies, including the UDF,9 where he argued for recognition in post-apartheid South Africa of the importance of the role of the UDF. In some recent publications he has examined the culture of the ANC,10 including the culture of masculinity,11 where he described how cultural factors shaped the development of concepts of manhood in the ANC; the formation of ANC and SACP intellectuals,12 where he identifies and describes the intellectual and educational processes, as well as theoretical developments, that led to the formation of these intellectuals; and the impact of various cultural experiences in exile on the development of different political traditions and notions of, for instance, democracy in South African society.13 In a number of his other publications, Suttner dealt with some of the key theoretical issues of the liberation struggle. Included here is his treatment of the concept of non-racialism as articulated by the ANC and its allies.14 Here he set out to describe what is meant by the concept of political mobilisation in South Africa, and the ways in which non-racialism can be emancipatory. In another journal article, he dealt with the notion of nation building, where he argued that the concept of ‘brotherhood’ in the Freedom Charter, which signifies cooperation rather than individual isolation or competitiveness, is an important requirement for nation

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building in post-apartheid South Africa. Linked to this is an analysis of the extensive discourse in the liberation movement as a whole that emphasises unity.15 Suttner’s publications also focus on the threats to democracy during the post-apartheid era. For instance, in a journal article published in 2004 titled ‘Democratic Transition and Consolidation in South Africa’, he examined the potential for a ‘reversion to previous authoritarian rule’, and the need for ‘democratic rights’ to be protected and ‘freedom of political activity’ to be defended. This, he argued, is dependent ‘on the extension and deepening of democracy, the involvement of people in politics during and between elections, the viability of participatory democracy, and the existence of autonomous organisations of civil society, organs of direct democracy’.16 This view was echoed in a chapter published a year later titled ‘Democracy: Is it All Doom and Gloom?’, where he saw the lack of a strong opposition to the ANC as a threat to the future of democracy in the country. He argued, according to Pityana, that by imposing preconceived notions of liberation movements’ evolution to political parties in newly formed democracies, the temptation is to assume a tendency towards authoritarianism and, ultimately, autocratic rule that is antagonistic to democratic rule – and yet it was these liberation struggles which secured democracy following years of undemocratic rule.17 In 2014, he again explored this issue in a journal article in which he argued that ‘constitutionalism is currently in crisis’ in the country, and that ‘extensive lawlessness undermines democratic gains’. He argued ‘for the formation of a united, non-sectarian organisation behind broadly agreed goals, including defence of the constitution, clean government, and an end to violence’.18 In 2007, the Netaji Subhas Open University in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India, awarded him a DLitt honoris causa for his contribution to the development of higher education.19 He was awarded an LLM by the University of Cape Town in 2014 for the thesis he had initially prepared and had wanted to present in 1969. Notes 1 R. Suttner, ‘Ethics and Scholarship: Revisiting Why I withdrew a Thesis 49 Years Ago’,

Daily Maverick, 6 November 2018. Accessed January 2019, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/ article/2018-11-06-ethics-and-scholarship-revisiting-why-i-withdrew-a-thesis-49-yearsago/. 2 R. Suttner, ‘About Raymond Suttner’, Accessed January 2019, https://raymondsuttner.com/

about/. 3 T. Simpson, Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle (Cape Town: Penguin Books,

2016), pp. 192–3; V. Belling, ‘The Price They Paid: A Bibliographical Survey of the Memoirs of the Jews in the Struggle for Democracy and Human Rights in South Africa. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Convention of the Association of Jewish Libraries, Denver, CO, June 2002, p. 5. 4

Polity, ‘Raymond Suttner: Biography’, 9 July 2010. Accessed January 2019, http://www. polity.org.za/article/raymond-suttner-2010-07-09.

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Raymond Suttner: Analysing the liberation struggle 5

Polity, ‘Raymond Suttner’.

6 R. Suttner and J. Cronin, 30 Years of the Freedom Charter. (Johannesburg: Ravan Press,

1986); R. Suttner and J. Cronin, 50 Years of the Freedom Charter. (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2006). 7 R. Suttner, Inside Apartheid’s Prison: Notes and Letters of Struggle (Pietermaritzburg:

University of Natal Press and Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2001). 8 R. Suttner, The ANC Underground in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2008). 9 R. Suttner, ‘Rendering Visible: The Underground Organisational Experience of the ANC-

led Alliance until 1976’, PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 2005. 10 R. Suttner, ‘Culture(s) of the African National Congress of South Africa: Imprint of Exile

Experience’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 21:2 (2003a), pp. 303–320. 11 R. Suttner, ‘Periodisation, Cultural Construction and Representation of ANC

Masculinities through Dress, Gesture and Indian Nationalist Influence’, Historia 54:1 (2009), pp. 51–91. 12 R. Suttner, The Character and Formation of Intellectuals within the South African

Liberation Movement, Draft paper prepared for the CODESRIA’S 30th Anniversary Conference, Dakar, 8-11 December 2003. (2003b). Accessed January 2019, http://ccs.ukzn. ac.za/files/suttner.pdf. 13 Suttner, ‘Culture(s)’. 14 R. Suttner, Understanding Non-Racialism as an Emancipator Concept in South Africa’.

Paper presented at a CODESRIA Conference on Africa and the Challenges of the Twenty First Century, Rabat, Morroco, 5–9 December 2011. 15 R. Suttner, ‘Talking to the Ancestors: National Heritage, the Freedom Charter and Nation-

Building in South Africa in 2005’, Development Southern Africa 23:1 (2006), pp. 3–27. 16 R. Suttner, ‘Democratic Transition and Consolidation in South Africa: The Advice of “the

Experts”  ’, Current Sociology 52:5 (2004), pp. 755–773. 17 B. Pityana, ‘Preface’ in M. Andersson (ed.), Journeys to Freedom Narratives. (Pretoria: Unisa

Press, 2007), p. ix. 18 R. Suttner, ‘Popular Power, Constitutional Democracy and Crisis: South Africa 1994-2014’,

Strategic Review for Southern Africa 36:2 (2014), p. 7. 19 Suttner, ‘About Raymond Suttner’.

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Johan Degenaar: The Socrates of Stellenbosch Gerard Hagg

1926–2015

Johannes Jacobus ‘Johan’ Degenaar, the ‘Socrates of Stellenbosch’,1 is generally considered the most influential philosopher in South Africa to date. As a highly original thinker, he influenced the South African philosophical discourse by pioneering existentialist, nihilist, phenomenological and postmodernist philosophy (Søren Kierkegaard, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Albert Camus) in his teaching at Stellenbosch University, and in his extensive writing, public lectures and the discussion group at his home in Stellenbosch. His views on religion, nationalism and apartheid brought him into conflict with the Afrikaner-dominated Dutch Reformed Church, Broederbond and Nationalist government but, until his death, he retained his philosophical and personal integrity, bringing him national and international acclaim. After starting theological studies, Degenaar completed his master’s degree with a dissertation titled ‘Kennis as Lewe’ (Life of knowledge) and his DPhil with a thesis titled ‘Die herhaling van die vraag na die filosofie’ (Repeating the question of philosophy) at Stellenbosch University (1944–49). He wrote his doctoral thesis about the German philosopher Max Scheler at the Groningen University (Netherlands) under Helmuth Plessner and Gerhardus van der Leeuw (1949–50). In 1961, he continued his studies at Leiden University under C.A. van Peursen. Between 1949 and 1991, Degenaar taught philosophy and political philosophy at the University of Stellenbosch, first at the Department of Philosophy, and after 1969, as head of his ‘own’ Department of Political Philosophy. In his search for meaning, Degenaar interpreted the work of other philosophers dealing with ‘being’, such as Teilhard de Jardin, Camus and the South African poet/philosopher N.P. van Wyk Louw. But, for him, knowledge started through a Socratic approach by questioning, answering, and questioning the answer again, with each question building on the reply to the previous

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one. Acquiring knowledge this way is an active, two-way dialogue with the ‘students’ playing as important a role as the ‘teacher’. During the 1950s, Degenaar increasingly focused on the issue of secularisation, partly in response to the prison writing of the German pastor and writer Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died under the Nazi regime. In his 1967 book Sekularisasie, Degenaar argued that secularisation either alienates or leads to more solidarity amongst people, involving the so-called theology of encounter.2 This renewal in Degenaar’s thinking resulted in the publication Die Sterflikheid van die Siel (The mortality of the soul), which brought him into conflict with the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC). The DRC, which was rooted in orthodox Protestant thinking,3 used Stellenbosch University for the training of its ministers. The church leadership requested the university to remove Degenaar from his lecturing post. To accommodate Degenaar, the university established a separate Department of Political Philosophy with only two staff members, chaired by Degenaar. This department allowed him to continue teaching on existentialism, nihilism and postmodernism, and to engage in robust debates until his retirement. This furthered his interests in ideology and, from the 1980s, he wrote extensively on Afrikaner nationalism, Marxism/Leninism, morality and politics, structural violence and ethnicity. Throughout these debates, he challenged the foundations and structures of these ideologies and their absolutism, and offered the possibility of pluralism as a valid alternative for South Africa.4 His rejection of apartheid and his search for justice and freedom strengthened over time, based on his belief that ‘philosophy has an important contribution to make, not in producing easy answers but in involving one in the exploration of the meaning of terms’.5 His philosophical thinking about freedom, creativity and engagement across ideological boundaries became clear in his statement: ‘Maar net so seker as wat die Afrikanervolk ’n volk van bevryding is, so seker is hy ook ’n volk van onderdrukking’ (As much as the Afrikaner nation is a nation of liberation, it is also a nation of oppression),6 concluding that nationalism inevitably entails cultural imperialism.7 Throughout the 1980s, he challenged the concept of the Afrikaner nation, as well as those who denied their Afrikaner roots.8 His alternative to dominance was ‘solidarity’, the attitude that grows when plural entities and cultural groups develop, and are willing to engage across their boundaries. His article on pain (‘Filosofiese besinning oor pyn’)9 is highly relevant to the debates on ‘black pain’ in the years 2015–2018, when students confronted the oppressive nature of Western dominance in university education. In opposition to the idea of nationalism and the nation state, Degenaar promoted the concept of pluralism and plural democracy in the political arena, and its possibility in a democratic South Africa. It was particularly his view on the existential reality of free individuals as part of multiple cultural and other communities that made him aware of the dangers of a nation state. He challenged the belief that people who come from different cultural backgrounds can ignore these differences in an attempt to have one nation. He denied that such attitudes could be the starting point for politics, as it would result in centralised power of the state in all its

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configurations.10 Such an approach to politics was, in his eyes, as dangerous as the apartheid state. For him the question was ‘whether we have a liberating vocabulary’,11 and ‘How can South Africa live its difference in a democratic state, including post-national Afrikaners?’12 Thus, ‘a democratic involvement in the search for and creation of a democratic culture is our primary political obligation’.13 During the late 1970s, his interest shifted to aesthetics and literary theory, and he introduced the postmodernist/deconstructivist tradition, and the literature-theoretical work of Derrida, to aesthetic philosophy and linguistics in South Africa.14 In his view, ‘[p]ost-modernity consists of an acknowledgement of the complexity of things, and criticises pre-modernity [with its lack of self-awareness] for operating within a closed worldview, and modernity for its trust in the supremacy of reason’.15 Postmodernism thus offers more acceptable options to the current South African situation, particularly with regard to the existence of a plural cultural context. Language is a key component in his postmodernist model, as people speak through language, but language also speaks through people, where language is not a neutral phenomenon, but conditions the speaker through a system of signs with meanings that represent power relations. In this regard, Degenaar referred to typical examples, such as ‘tuislande’, ‘onafhanklike nasionale state’, ‘algemene’ and ‘eie sake’, ‘ensovoorts’ (homelands, independent national states, general and own affairs, etc.). In the same article, he warned against the new monopolising power of the mass media.16 Discourse-analysis and deconstruction were, for him, important postmodern tools to counter such dominances.17 Degenaar’s influence went far beyond his academic classes and lectures, and included his relationships with both followers and opponents, his friends and colleagues – relationships that were always characterised by honesty and integrity. This became most apparent during his increasing resistance to apartheid, in which he was ostracised by his opponents from Afrikaner communities, academia and the apartheid state. Equally influential were his classes and group discussions with like-minded intellectuals, which he started in 1958 at his home in Stellenbosch.18 In these discussions, he adopted a Socratic approach of questioning towards a deeper understanding, without an attempt to achieve a final answer. Such questioning always ‘start[ed] with the experience of wonder, not only in an intellectual but first and foremost in an existential sense’.19 In his thinking, Degenaar also emphasised the importance of laughter as the expression of a sense of wonder, as a sign of ‘knowledge that can dance’.20 Degenaar’s impressive list of over 150 articles in scientific journals – in Afrikaans and English – and over a dozen books, as well as many articles in the media, resulted in spreading his thoughts across the world. His publications, starting with his 1948 MA thesis ‘Kennis as Lewe’ to ‘The Concept of Violence’, reflect the broadness of his thinking and argumentation. Influential articles were ‘Pluralisme’ (1974), ‘Afrikaner Nationalism’ (1978), ‘Voortbestaan in Geregtigheid: Opstelle oor die Politieke Rol van die Afrikaner’ (Survival in justice: Essays about the political

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role of the Afrikaner [1980]), ‘Myth of the South African Nation’ (1991), and ‘The Concept of Politics and Postmodernism’ (1996). Two excellent introductions to his writing are the commemorative volumes Gesprek Sonder Grense (Discussion without boundaries) by Dirk Hertzog, Etienne Britz and Alistair Henderson in 2006, and Tweede Refleksie (Second reflection) by Willem  L. van der Merwe and Pieter Duvenage in 2008. These writings reflect the extent and depth of his contributions to philosophy, politics and literary philosophy, and the promotion of solidary and tolerance. Degenaar was awarded the Stals Prize in 1984 and the N.P. van Wyk Louw Medal in 1998, followed by the award of DPhil. honoris causa by the University of Port Elizabeth in 1997 and by the University of Stellenbosch in 2001. The South African government bestowed him with the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver in 2004.21 Degenaar’s philosophical approach was existential and experiential rather than abstract. He always maintained a ‘sense of wonder’ about what he observed in the world around him, and he grappled with the concept of ‘being human’. For him, in the words of poet Lina Spies, this meant being ‘connected to this earth, not as a curse but as a blessing…an exciting destiny’.22 This ‘wondering’ led him to surprising exegeses of texts, from fairy tales (‘Little Red Riding Hood’) to the Bible and existential philosophy. It was also the core of his dialogical approach to argumentation. In his thesis that humans are being human through relationships – and can only fulfil their destiny through solidarity – he bridged Western and African philosophy. Notes 1 H. Ester, ‘In Memoriam: de Zuid-Afrikaanse Filosoof Johan Degenaar’, Reformatories

Dagblad, 25 July 2015. Accessed April 2019, https://www.rd/nl/in-memoriam-de-zuidafrikaanse-filosoof-johan-degenaar-1926-2015-1.485554. 2 Prabook (World Biographical Encyclopedia), ‘Johan Degenaar: Anthropologist, Interpreter,

Philosopher’ (n.d.) Accessed June 2019, https://prabook.com/web/johan.degenaar/1120684. 3 A. Du Toit, ‘Johan Degenaar – Ter Herinnering’, Litnet 5 August 2015. Accessed April

2019, https://www.litnet.co.za/johan-degenaar-ter-herinnering. 4 J. Degenaar, ‘Pluralisme’, Standpunte 27:3 (1974), pp. 6–21; J. Degenaaar, ‘Art and Culture in

a Changing South Africa’, South African Journal of Philosophy 12:3 (1993), pp. 51–56. 5 Degenaar, ‘Art and Culture’. 6 J. Degenaar, Voortbestaan in Geregtigheid: Opstelle oor die Politieke Rol van die Afrikaner.

(Kaapstad: Tafelberg, 1980). 7 Degenaar, ‘Art and Culture’. 8 P. Duvenage, ‘By 80: In Gesprek met Johan Degenaar’, Blik 15 March 2006. Accessed

March 2019, https://blik.co.za/artikels/515. 9 J. Degenaar, ‘Filosofiese Besinning oor Pyn’, South African Journal of Philosophy 1/2 (1982),

pp. 45–57. 10 Duvenage. ‘By 80’. 11 Degenaar, ‘Art and Culture’, p. 53. 12 Duvenage, ‘By 80’ pp. 2/4.

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa 13 Degenaar, ‘Art and Culture’, p. 55. 14 A. Van Niekerk, ‘Johan Degenaar Retires’, South African Journal of Philosophy 10:3

Commemorative Issue (1991), pp. i–vii. 15 Degenaar, ‘Art and Culture’. 16 J. Degenaar, ‘Taal, Kultuur, Ideologie. Tweede Rykie van Reenen-Huldigingslesing,

18 March 1992’, Communicatio 18:1 (1992), p. 5. 17 J. Degenaar, The Concept of Politics in Postmodernism. Politikon 23:2 (1996), pp. 54–71. 18 Du Toit, ‘Johan Degenaar’. 19 Van Niekerk, ‘Johan Degenaar’, p.: ii. 20 Cited in W.L. Van der Merwe and P. Duvenage (eds) Tweede Refleksie – ’n Keur uit die Werk

van Johan Degenaar. (Stellenbosch: African Sun Media, 2008). 21 The Presidency (2004) Johannes Jacobus Degenaar (1926–). The Order of Ikhamanga in Silver.

Accessed May 2019, https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/johannesjacobus-degenaar-1926?page=10#!slider. 22 Stellenbosch Writers (2015) Johan Degenaar 1926-2015. Accessed July 2019, http://www.

stellenboschwriters.com/degenaarj.html.

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Phillip Tobias: ‘Humanity’s past and future’

Phillip Tobias: ‘Humanity’s past and future’ Francois Gilles de Pelichy

1925–2012

In his autobiography Into the Past (2005), Phillip Vallentine Tobias described how the early death of his sister Val from diabetes affected him so much that he chose to study genetics at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg in 1943.1 His intention was to find a protocol that would end the suffering of diabetics – and their surviving family members. Although he completed his medical studies, he never practised as a doctor. Instead, with a mind that ranged freely from the tiniest particles to the biggest of big-picture scenarios, he became a leading scholar in the fields of genetics, palaeo-anthropology, anatomy and physiology, and he applied this knowledge to some of the biggest questions facing humanity at the time (and possibly still): Where do we come from? What makes us human? How do we relate to other humans? After fellowships at leading universities in the USA and UK, he was appointed as a lecturer in the Wits Medical School. It was here that he met Raymond Dart, who had identified the ‘Taung child’ as a new and different species (Australopithecus africanus) and a possible ancestor – or at least distant relative – of humans. Under Dart’s influence, Tobias developed a keen interest in evolution and, along with several other medical students, organised an expedition to Makapansgat2 – a series of caves in Limpopo province that have yielded immense fossil and archaeological treasures. Closer to Johannesburg was an even more spectacular palaeontological treasure trove: Sterkfontein, which was obtained by Wits in 1958, along with other sites in the Cradle of Humankind. For more than two decades, under the leadership of Phillip Tobias, these caves yielded the most prolific and complete hominin fossil assemblage in the world. A year later, in 1959, Louis and Mary Leakey excavated an australopithecine skull in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, which they asked Tobias to describe and measure. His descriptions

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of this new, initially contentious, hominin species effectively started his career as a hominin palaeontologist;3 and would form the bedrock of our understanding of human origins.4 The same year, upon the retirement of Professor Dart, Tobias was appointed head of the anatomy department at Wits, a position he held for the remainder of his career.5 His dedication to the fields of anatomy and genetics was among the chief reasons for this appointment.6 Despite never becoming a medical practitioner, his love for anatomy led him to write several anatomical textbooks,7 and many of his former students remember him as a motivating and exciting lecturer whose passion for the intricacies of morphology was limitless.8 Over the next five years, Tobias studied a series of fossils originating from the Olduvai Gorge. The specimens had feet capable of a bipedal stride, nimble and sensitive hands and a large cranial capacity, so it was called Homo habilis – a skilled and dextrous manufacturer of tools.9 But Tobias is best known for his work on Australopithecus robustus – a chunkier relative of the Taung child, whose remains have been found in profusion in Kromdraai and other caves at the Cradle of Humankind. While working in both areas, Tobias refused to participate in the one-upmanship of the contest as to which was the ‘real’ cradle of humankind – South Africa or East Africa. Certainly, during the apartheid years the Kenya finds were well documented and well received internationally, but the spectacularly rich assemblage of South African fossils was barely acknowledged.10 It was almost certainly this wealth of palaeontological data that motivated Tobias to stay in South Africa despite his opposition to apartheid, rather than lack of international opportunity. His most famous paleo-anthropological find is almost certainly ‘Little Foot’, which is to date the oldest, most complete hominin skeleton discovered and identified. The bones were initially collected in 1977 and set aside,11 until palaeo-anthropologist Ron Clarke came across them while sorting through the box in 1994.12 In 1995, Clarke and Tobias jointly published a description of the bones, thereby providing the first evidence that our ape-like ancestors evolved to bipedalism more than 3 million years ago.13 Little Foot was initially placed in the genus Australopithecus, but – after a long and interesting excavation and lots of bone classification and research – it was dubbed Homo naledi. Prior to World War II, questions of ethics were confined to the realm of philosophy. Unsurprisingly, Tobias also initially held the view that scientific research should be pursued wherever it might lead. The use of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6  August 1945 and the aberrations that a science devoid of ethics produced under the Nazi regime, however, marked a turning point in the relationship between scientific endeavour and ethics. Like many scientists, most notably those involved in the creation of the atomic bomb, Tobias became convinced that scientific discoveries could not be dissociated from the ethics of their consequences.14 Tobias’s work should, therefore, be viewed in the context of the post–World War II humanitarian debates, anti-racism discourse, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Indeed, Tobias emphasised the biological and genetic unity of humans, stressing that the

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only variable across humankind was culture. As Corbey noted, the biological homogeneity of the Homo genus challenged the earlier moral and political inequality that used to be justified on the basis of presupposed biological differences.15 Importantly, Tobias contributed to the humanist, egalitarian, and anti-racist debate by extending homogeneous humanness to the very beginnings of the human odyssey.16 On 25  March 1969, at the first Raymond Hoffenberg Lecture delivered under the auspices of the Department of Medicine at the University of Cape  Town, Tobias critically questioned published interracial comparisons of brain size, and the scientific validity of the inferred racial intellectual differences that these implied.17 This was followed by another publication in 1972 in which he demonstrated that racial categories cannot be physically defined.18 His criticism of race theories must be seen in the context of who he was – an internationally renowned scientist – and what he was criticising – the race science foundations of the South African government’s policy of apartheid. In 1985, he wrote the following: In societies as obsessed with racial differentiation as have been those in Southern Africa, it was perhaps inevitable that the biology of race and the sociology of racism should have been a concern of anthropologists and other scholars…Since shortly after World War II, the policy of apartheid has been based on the categorisation of every individual’s race and the predication thereon of his or her whole pattern of life, from the cradle to the grave. With this has gone the development of socio-political campaigns in favour of race ‘purity’ and betterment, and against race mixing and ‘impurity’. These developments elicited reasoned and sometimes spirited opposing responses from several South African physical anthropologists and human geneticists. They were at pains to point out that there were no valid scientific reasons to justify racial discrimination, nor were there good genetic or anthropological foundations for the assumptions, explicit or implicit, that lay behind the racially discriminatory legislation…19 Tobias had been publicly rejecting biological foundations of race from as early as 1953.20 He also confronted apartheid in other ways – for instance, by leading a challenge in 1985 against the South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC) for whitewashing the doctors who had failed to treat Steve Biko in the days before his death in September 1977. The court case launched by Tobias forced the SAMDC to reverse its position and acknowledge that medical practitioners had collaborated with the apartheid police.21 The promotion of a new sense of ethics, based on the equality of all human beings and the denunciation of injustice, played a prominent role in Tobias’s scientific endeavours. His enduring intellectual legacy is that of a scientific philosopher who sought to place all humans in the ethical universe. In his Raymond Dart Lectures collected in Man’s Past and Future (1969), he highlighted two fundamental qualities of humans: intellect and compassion.22 Following the thoughts of C.H. Waddington, Tobias stressed that humans’ second mechanism of evolutionary

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advance, after their intellect, was their capacity to think and form ethical systems. ‘The two forces,’ he said, ‘intellect with its fruits, and compassion with its humane outlook, will march together into the future.’23 Notes 1 B. Wood, ‘Interview with Phillip Tobias’, Current Anthropology 30:2 (1989), pp. 215–224. 2 Wood, ‘Interview with Phillip Tobias’. 3 B. Wood, ‘Phillip Vallentine Tobias (1925–2012)’, Nature 487 (2012), p. 40; R.J. Clarke and

B. Kramer, ‘Phillip Vallentine Tobias Hon. FRSSAf, 1925–2012’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 67:3 (2012), pp. 169–173. 4 Wood, ‘Phillip Vallentine Tobias’, p. 40. 5 Wood, ‘Phillip Vallentine Tobias’, p. 40. 6 Clarke and Kramer, ‘Phillip Vallentine Tobias Hon. FRSSAf’, p. 170. 7 Clarke and Kramer, ‘Phillip Vallentine Tobias Hon. FRSSAf’, p. 170. 8 Clarke and Kramer, ‘Phillip Vallentine Tobias Hon. FRSSAf’, p. 170. 9 R. Corbey, ‘Homo Habilis’s Humanness: Phillip Tobias as Philosopher’, History and

Philosophy of the Life Sciences 34 (2012), pp. 103–116. 10 C. Kuljian, Darwin’s Hunch: Science, Race, and the Search for Human Origins (Johannesburg:

Jacana Media, 2016). 11 Cradle of Humankind, ‘Little Foot’ (n.d.) Accessed April 2020, https://www.maropeng.

co.za/content/page/little-foot. 12 Wood, ‘Phillip Vallentine Tobias’. 13 R.J. Clarke and P.V. Tobias, ‘Sterkfontein Member 2 Foot Bones of the Oldest South

African Hominid’, Science 269:5223 (1995), pp. 521–524. 14 P.V. Tobias, Into the Past: A Memoir (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2005). 15 Corbey, ‘Homo Habilis’s Humanness’. 16 Corbey, ‘Homo Habilis’s Humanness’. 17 P.V. Tobias, ‘Brain‐Size, Grey Matter and Race – Fact or Fiction?’, Physical Anthropology

32:1 (1970), pp. 3–25. 18 P.V. Tobias, The Meaning of Race (Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations,

1972). 19 P.V. Tobias, ‘History of Physical Anthropology in Southern Africa’, Yearbook of Physical

Anthropology 28 (1985), pp. 1–52. 20 P.V. Tobias, ‘The Problem of Race Identification: Limiting Factors in the Investigation

of the South African Races’, Journal of Forensic Medicine 1:2 (1953), pp. 113–123. See also P.V. Tobias, The Meaning of Race, (first edition) (Johannebsurg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1961); P.V. Tobias, ‘The Biological Invalidity of the Term Bantu’, South African Journal of Science 67:11 (1971), pp. 517–520; P.V. Tobias, ‘The Meaning of Race’ in P. Baxter and B. Sansom (eds), Race and Social Difference (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972); P.V. Tobias, ‘IQ and the Nature-Nurture Controversy (1st Rosenhach Memorial Lecture)’, Journal of Behavioral Science 2:1 (1974), pp. 1–24; P.V. Tobias, ‘Race’ in A. and J. Kuper (eds), The Social Science Encyclopaedia (London: Academic Press, 1985).

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Phillip Tobias: ‘Humanity’s past and future’ 21 A. Morris, ‘Phillip Tobias: Anthropologist and Mentor (1925–2012)’, South African Journal of

Science 108:7/8 (2012), pp. 26–28. 22 P.V. Tobias, Man’s Past and Future (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 1969). 23 Tobias, Man’s Past and Future, p. 42.

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Fatima Meer: Promoting justice through nonviolence Gregory Houston

1928–2010

South African anti-apartheid and human rights activist, educator, and author Fatima Meer was the second of nine children of Moosa Meer, an immigrant from Surat, Gujarat in India, and Rachel Farrel, a Jewish orphan of Portuguese descent who took the name Amina when she converted to Islam. Moosa Meer was highly respected because he had read widely and had an immense knowledge of Islam, Hinduism and Christianity. His children inherited his love for language, scholarship, tolerance of other religions, and opposition to any form of discrimination. He initially worked in his uncle’s shop as a shop assistant before becoming the editor as well as publisher of Indian Views, which he published weekly for the southern African Gujarati-speaking Muslim community. The newspaper focused on the struggle against white minority rule and colonialism, in particular the struggle against British imperialism in India. The extended Meer family was large, and many of the male members of the family were leading activists in the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) as well as the South African Indian Congress (SAIC) and in anti-apartheid campaigns.1 Fatima Meer attended Durban Indian Girls’ High School at a time when very few Muslim girls attended high school. During this time, she assisted with the production of Indian Views and, in the process, learnt the power of the written and spoken word, and developed a strong command of English. She became politically active as a school student when, at the age of 16 in 1944, she helped raise £1 000 for famine relief in Bengal, India. She participated in the 1946 Indian Passive Resistance Campaign by establishing the Student Passive Resistance Committee that provided support to the campaign. This drew her to the attention of leaders of anti-apartheid organisations, and she was asked to speak at mass rallies that were addressed by prominent leaders such as Yusuf Dadoo and Monty Naicker. In the aftermath of the 1949 Indo–African riots in Durban, during which many Indians were assaulted by Africans, Meer became involved in community action aimed at improving relations between Indian and African people in Durban. She joined with Bertha Mkhize of the African National Congress Women’s League

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Fatima Meer: Promoting justice through non-violence

(ANCWL) in the Durban District Women’s League to organise a crèche, and to distribute milk to people living in the poverty-stricken shacks in Cato Manor. This led to a lifetime of work promoting justice, reconciliation and non-violent action in order to improve relations between South Africans who belong to different race groups.2 The latter events all occurred while Meer was studying at the universities of the Witwatersrand and Natal, where she obtained a BA degree and master’s degree in sociology, respectively. At Wits, she participated in campaigns of the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM). After the Nationalist Party (NP) victory in the 1948 general elections, and the implementation of its apartheid policies in the early 1950s, Meer was drawn deeper into political activism when she participated in the ANC- and SAIC-led 1952 Defiance Campaign. In consequence, she was amongst a number of people banned for a period of three years under the new Suppression of Communism Act in 1952, making her the first woman in South Africa to be banned. Her banning orders confined her to the district of Durban, and she was prohibited from attending all public gatherings, and from having her work published.3 However, this did not prevent her from becoming a founding leader of the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) in 1954, joining with thousands of female members of affiliates of a range of African, coloured, white and Indian political organisations and trade unions in the Congress Alliance. In 1956, Meer joined the sociology department of the University of Natal as a lecturer, becoming the first black woman to get such a position at a predominantly white South African university.4 In the same year, 156 leaders of the Congress Alliance, including her husband Ismail Meer, were arrested and later tried for treason. Meer organised efforts to aid the Treason trialists and their families. In 1960, Meer’s husband was amongst the thousands of people detained in a countrywide swoop that followed the Sharpeville massacre and banning of political organisations. She organised vigils at the Durban prison entrance on a weekly basis, and provided food and other support for the detainees and their families. During the 1970s, Meer embraced the Black Consciousness (BC) philosophy of the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) established by Steve Biko. In 1972, she established the Institute of Black Research (IBR) at the University of Natal. The IBR became the leading black-run research body, publishing house, and welfare and educational organisation in South Africa. In 1975, Meer was banned for another five years, but in the same year she co-founded the BC-aligned Black Women’s Federation (BWF) with Winnie Mandela, and became its first president. In the course of the 1976 Soweto uprising, she was detained with Winnie and 11 other members of the BWF.5 They were held at Johannesburg’s Fort Prison for six months, during which she solidified what was to become a lifelong close friendship with Winnie and her family. Meer recalls that Winnie, ‘knowing all the ins and outs and how to survive, requested the authorities to allow me to coach her in sociology. So she was allowed to come to my cell.’6 Fatima and Ismail Meer had become important targets for the apartheid security forces, and in late 1976 they survived an attempted assassination in which petrol bombs were thrown into their house.7

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Meer was banned for a third time in 1981 and arrested in 1982, the first of several such arrests, for contravening her banning order by working outside Durban. After the unbanning of political organisations in 1990, she established the Clare Estate Environment Group to address the needs of shack dwellers and migrants from the rural areas, drawing attention to their lack of access to clean water, sanitation and proper housing. She declined a seat in Parliament after the first democratic elections in 1994, and decided instead to focus on non-governmental work. In May 1999, in response to the large support given to white political parties by members of the Indian community in the 1994 election, Meer helped found the Concerned Citizens’ Group (CCG) to persuade Indian people not to vote for these parties. She also served the ANC government in a number of capacities: as an advisor to the minister of arts, culture, science and technology; as a member of the National Symbols Commission and the National Anthem Commission; as a member of the advisory panel to the president; as a member of the Film and Publication Board; and as a member of the board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation.8 Her writings indicate a variety of academic and political interests. In particular, the focus in her books has been on South African Indian history and the history of the liberation struggle. She has authored, edited or published over 40 books, and many, many more journal articles. As an academic and political activist, she attended numerous academic and other conferences, where she delivered close to 200 papers and criticised apartheid. The lectures and conference papers she delivered were well received by international audiences and she gained an international reputation as a black spokesperson. For instance, in an opening address she delivered to the 41st Annual Conference of the Natal Coloured Teachers’ Society, held in Durban in June 1974, she stated: The political liberation of Africa and Asia and the explosion of Black pride in the United States of America have extended the idea of education to include the imparting of other than European cultures and techniques, through formal institutions. This is the second revolution of the previously colonised and enslaved peoples, for it heralds the liberation of their cultures suppressed and nearly destroyed by European domination. The third revolution, liberation from economic domination, is yet to come.9 Meer was a member of the staff of the University of Natal from 1956 until 1988. She was a visiting professor at universities in South Africa, the United States, India, Mauritius, the Caribbean and Britain, and was a fellow of the London School of Economics. Among her most important books are Portrait of Indian South Africans (Avon House, New York, 1969); Race and Suicide in South Africa (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1976); The Trial of Andrew Zondo (Skotaville, Durban, 1987); Resistance in the Townships (Madiba Publications, Durban, 1989); Apprenticeship of a Mahatma (Institute for Black Research/Madiba Publications, Durban, 1994); The South African Gandhi: The Speeches and Writings of M.K. Gandhi (Institute for Black Research/Madiba Publications, Durban, 1996); Passive Resistance (Institute for Black Research/Madiba Publications, Durban, 1996); and

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Higher than Hope (Harper & Row, 1999; the first authorised biography of Nelson Mandela). One of these, the Trial of Andrew Zondo, deals with the life, arrest, trial and sentencing of the ANC guerrilla who bombed an Amanzimtoti shopping centre on the Natal south coast. Meer claimed in her book that the trial did not take into account the context in apartheid South Africa that prompted Zondo to plant the bomb.10 In her 1976 publication, Race and Suicide in South Africa, she made a study of 1 500 cases of suicide in Durban between 1940 and 1970 to demonstrate how social conditions factor into acts of suicide from all points in the race, gender and class spectrum.11 Meer was the recipient of an honorary doctorate in philosophy from Swarthmore College in the United States in 1984; an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Bennet College in the United States in 1994; and an honorary doctorate in social sciences from the University of Natal in 1998. In 2009, she was one of the South Africans – including Govan Mbeki, Harry Oppenheimer and Miriam Makeba – who were honoured with the Order for Meritorious Service by then president Nelson Mandela. Among the other awards she received were the Union of South African Journalists’ Award (1975); the Imam Abdullah Haron Award for the Struggle against Oppression and Racial Discrimination (1990); the Vishwa Gurjari Award for Contribution to Human Rights (1994); and being named in the Top 100 Women Who Shook South Africa list (1999) and number 45 in the Top 100 Great South Africans (2004). Meer was a prolific writer whose works contributed to the liberation struggle both before and after 1994. She published book chapters and journal articles on the philosophy of non-violent opposition to injustice and its application in South Africa;12 the 1949 Durban riots and Indo– African relations;13 the oppression of women in the Indian family and community;14 the apartheid education system;15 detention and banishment in apartheid South Africa;16 indentured labour in South Africa;17 future political scenarios in a post-apartheid South Africa;18 negotiations;19 the myth of black-on-black violence;20 and the impact of the global economy on Third World countries.21 But her legacy is not only academic, it’s practical too. From 1979, she focused on establishing schools and vocational training centres for indigent black children and adults, including the Tembalishe Tutorial College and a crafts centre at Gandhi’s Phoenix Settlement at Inanda. This was work she continued to do for the rest of her life, and she established the Phambili High School for African students in 1986; the Khanyisa School Project as a bridging programme for African children from informal settlements in 1993; and the Khanya Women’s Skills Training Centre in 1996. She also arranged scholarships for African students to study medicine and political sciences in India. Under her leadership, the IBR organised tutorial programmes in science and mathematics from 1986 to 1988 to address the low pass rate among African matriculants.22

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Notes 1 F. Meer, Fatima Meer: Memories of Love and Struggle. (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2017);

S. Hassim, Voices of Liberation: Fatima Meer. (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2019); D. Rajab, ‘Obituary: Fatima Meer (1928–2010)’, Natalia 40 (2010), p. 151. 2 Meer, ‘Fatima Meer’; Hassim, ‘Voices of Liberation’; Rajab, ‘Obituary’, pp. 151–152. 3 Meer, ‘Fatima Meer’; Hassim, ‘Voices of Liberation’; Rajab, ‘Obituary’, pp. 152–153. 4 Meer, ‘Fatima Meer’; Hassim, ‘Voices of Liberation’. 5 Meer, ‘Fatima Meer’; Hassim, ‘Voices of Liberation’; Rajab, ‘Obituary’, p. 153. 6 J. Carlin, Interview with Fatima Meer. PBS, Frontline: The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela

Interviews, n.d. Accessed October 2018, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ mandela/interviews/meer.html. 7 Meer, ‘Fatima Meer’; Hassim, ‘Voices of Liberation’; Rajab, ‘Obituary’, p. 153; Nanima,

‘Fatima Meer Passes Away’, 31 March 2010. Accessed January 2019, http://www.nanima. co.za/2010/03/fatima-meer-passes-away/. 8 Hassim, ‘Voices of Liberation’. 9 F. Meer, ‘Education in a Multi-Racial South Africa’, Opening address to the 41st Annual

Conference of the Natal Coloured Teachers’ Society held in Durban, June 1974, p. 7. 10 A. Desai, ‘Fatima Meer: From Public to Radical Sociologist’, South African Review of

Sociology 41:2 (2010), p. 122; P. Lalu and B. Harris, ‘Journeys from the Horizons of History: Text, Trial and Tales in the Construction of Narratives of Pain’, Current Writing 8:2 (1996), p. 26. 11 Desai, ‘Fatima Meer’, p. 122. 12 F. Meer, ‘Satyagraha in South Africa’, Africa South 3:2 (1959), pp. 21–28. 13 F. Meer, ‘African and Indian in Durban’, Africa South 4:4 (1960), pp. 30–41. 14 F. Meer, ‘Women and the Family in the Indian Enclave in South Africa’, Feminist Studies

1:2 (1972), pp. 3–47. 15 Meer ‘Education’. 16 F. Meer, ‘Winnie Mandela in Brandfort’, Index on Censorship 1 (1984), p. 46. 17 F. Meer, ‘Indentured Labour and Group Formations in South Africa’, Race & Class 26:4

(1985), pp. 45–60. 18 F. Meer, ‘South Africa’s Tomorrow’, Third World Quarterly 9:2, After Apartheid (1987),

pp. 396–407. 19 F. Meer, ‘Negotiated Settlement: Pros and Cons’, Race & Class 31:4 (1990), pp. 27–37. 20 F. Meer, ‘The Myth of Black-on-Black Violence’, In N. Rhoodie and I. Liebenberg (eds),

Democratic Nation–Building in South Africa. (Pretoria: HSRC Press, 1994). 21 F. Meer, ‘The Global Crisis – A Crisis of Values and the Domination of the Weak by the

Strong’, Journal of Human Values 5:1 (1999), pp. 65–74. 22 Hassim, ‘Voices of Liberation’.

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Rick Turner: ‘Through the eye of the needle’

Rick Turner: ‘Through the eye of the needle’ Gregory Houston

1941–1978

Political philosopher, academic and anti-apartheid activist Richard ‘Rick’ Albert Turner has had an influence on politics, protests and trade unions that has lasted long after his untimely assassination. He studied in Paris during the 1960s, when the French were showing the world what student protest could achieve, and he brought that knowledge back to South Africa when he returned in 1966. Turner balanced a rigorously academic understanding of the nature of class and participatory democracy1 with a hands-on approach to community initiatives.2 Turner was born in South Africa because his mother moved from the then Gold Coast (Ghana) during World War II, in search of safety, and the good medical facilities of Cape Town for the birth of her first child. His father had earlier been to South Africa, when he fought in the South African War of 1899 to 1902. Turner grew up on a fruit farm called Welcarmas just outside the university town of Stellenbosch which had been purchased by his parents. After his father died in 1953, when he was 12 years old, he was raised by his mother, Jane, and became a boarder at St George’s Grammar School, a private school in Cape Town run by the Anglican Church.3 In 1959, Turner registered for a course in engineering at the University of Cape Town (UCT), but switched to philosophy in the middle of his second year. He joined the National Union of South African Students (Nusas), and taught adult literacy classes in a black African township with his childhood friend John Clare.4 At UCT, he was friendly with Jonty Driver (with whom he shared a room), Alan Brooks and others who joined the African Resistance Movement, a white liberal organisation that initiated acts of sabotage before it was crushed by the apartheid regime.5 He completed an honours degree in philosophy in 1963, the year he married Barbara Hubbard. He registered almost immediately at the University of Paris for a doctorate, and began reading for a thesis titled Quelques implications de la phenomenologie existentielle (Implications of existential phenomenology) on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre.6

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The years he spent in Paris had a major impact on Turner, who witnessed the potential the nascent French student movement provided for students to wield genuine power, as well as the growing relationship between students and workers. He had the opportunity to share ideas with the radical left student movement that, a few years after his departure, was to confront the De Gaulle government of France.7 Turner returned to South Africa in 1966 to take over the running of the family farm. However, he soon gave up farming and took temporary lecturing posts, first at the University of Stellenbosch in the first academic term of 1969, and then at the politics department at Rhodes University in the second term.8 At both universities, Turner became a magnet for students and assorted bohemian radicals who were beginning to become aware of the New Left, with its deep commitment to participatory democracy that was taking root in Western Europe. He was interested at the time in events back in Paris in May 1968, the Prague Spring, the Cultural Revolution in China, Rudi Dutschke, Ivan lllich and Che Guevara, among others. He is reported as saying in a lecture on Herbert Marcuse that ‘whilst a revolution cannot succeed without direct worker participation, nevertheless student revolt can act as a vital detonator’.9 Turner took an active role in student politics, serving as an advisor to Nusas and holding frequent weekend seminars at Welcarmas. In 1970, he took a job teaching philosophy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Natal. By this time, he was divorced, and he then met Foszia Fisher, a ‘coloured’ postgraduate philosophy student at the university. They were married in a Muslim religious ceremony, in contravention of the Mixed Marriages and Immorality Acts, and they also contravened the Group Areas Act by living together.10 In Durban, Turner became involved in Nusas, the emerging independent trade union movement, and a wide array of community-based initiatives, as well as with the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) and Steve Biko.11 Turner had a major impact on students wherever he taught. His thesis on ‘The Relationship between Being and Nothingness and the Critique of Dialectical Reason in Sartre’ was widely circulated in Durban during the early 1970s, especially amongst his postgraduate students, and his book The Eye of the Needle and article ‘Dialectical Reason’,12 published in the journal Radical Philosophy, were well received.13 In his writings as well as his lectures, he played a critical role in encouraging young white students to develop a class analysis and to make connections with struggles of the black working class. In the aftermath of the 1973 Durban strike wave, several of his former students took a lead in establishing independent trade unions. He also frequently addressed students ‘on white campuses and at Nusas seminars, where his lucid analyses contributed…to the spread of philosophical radicalism among white students’.14 He helped to set up the Nusas Wages Commission in Durban in 1971, which used the latest sociological research to formulate the ‘poverty datum line’, challenge the exploitative labour policies of Durban companies, and politicise Durban’s black workers. Turner’s impact went beyond the confines of the university, even influencing, some argue, the direction the independent trade union movement took after his death. It has been argued

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that the policies of the trade unions and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) that emerged between the late 1970s and mid-1980s reflect ‘the core values of Turner’s vision of participatory democracy’. It is further argued that ‘this is the contribution of the life and writings of Richard Turner to the process of transition in the nineties’.15 While he was still alive, Turner attempted to make an alliance with trade unions in the hope that they could be part of an overall process of moving away from the capitalist human model towards a utopian model in which everyone is guaranteed meaningful participation both in their workplace and in all of the decisions that affect their lives.16 For his part, Turner, his wife Foszia, and several students founded the Institute of Industrial Education (IIE), which published the first comprehensive study of the strikes in 1974, inaugurated the South African Labour Bulletin, and became a vibrant centre for workers’ education in the Durban area.17 Turner was intellectually highly receptive to the Black Consciousness (BC) ideology because of his grasp of existentialist humanism and his critical view of white liberals. He saw the BC assertion that change in South Africa was only possible if there existed a powerful black movement as an invitation to whites to address the limits of their own white consciousness as an obstacle to social transformation.18 Turner and Biko met in Durban in 1970 soon after Turner had joined the University of Natal, and while Biko was studying medicine at the University of Natal Medical School for black students. Turner subsequently developed close contacts with members of the South African Students’ Organisation (Saso), the Natal Indian Congress and the Coloured Labour Party, and with Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Inkatha Cultural Movement.19 He often visited the Alan Taylor student residence in Wentworth, where he would spend hours talking with Biko, who would challenge him to conscientise white workers who had a closer connection to white capitalists than with black workers. Turner, in turn, would argue that it was not race that explained the exploitation of black workers but capitalism, and that the power lay in the unorganised workers.20 He also drew white students into Saso self-help projects in the townships. Turner appeared as a defence witness in the trial of nine Saso leaders in 1975. Turner was appointed to the Political Commission of the Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society (Sprocas) which had been established in mid-1969 by the South African Council of Churches and the Christian Institute of Southern Africa to determine the need for change in South Africa with a focus on economics, education, law, politics, sociology and the Church. However, when he was banned on 27 February 1973, his essay in Directions of Change (SPROCAS Occasional Publication 3) had to be torn out, and the book was later reprinted with blank pages. White Liberation had already been printed with an essay he had written. The same procedure had to be followed. Several hundred copies of his book Eye of the Needle21 had to be withdrawn from distribution. In addition, he could no longer serve on the Sprocas Political Commission, and was unable to sign its report. He was no longer allowed to lecture, but the university showed its support by keeping him on as an academic.22 In 1976, the government denied him permission to take up a prestigious Humboldt fellowship in Germany.

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Despite being restricted, Turner engaged in several covert activities before his untimely death. For instance, he played a significant role in drafting a series of workbooks – called handbooks – for the workers’ education programme pioneered by the IIE. He also covertly supervised the work of some postgraduate students.23 In April 1973, Turner and other banned individuals staged an Easter fast to illustrate the sufferings that bannings impose on people. Rick Turner was murdered at his home in Dalton Avenue, Bellair, in Durban, by an unknown assassin who shot through the window of the house just after midnight on 8 January 1978. He was 36 years old when he died in the arms of his 13-year-old daughter, Jann. He had already experienced years of police harassment: his phone was tapped, he was followed and they attempted to kill him on at least one occasion. His house was firebombed in March 1972, and in December his car’s tyres were slashed and his engine damaged. His legacy has not extended much beyond the South African trade union sector and academia.24 Turner’s most important contribution in the realm of ideas was his powerful series of essays, The Eye of the Needle: Towards a Participatory Democracy in South Africa, published in 1972. The central idea in this short book was the necessity of utopian thinking: the need for activists to have an alternative vision of what the world could look like. Such a world was one of ‘a decentralised and cooperative economic and political structure, in which hierarchy is obliterated as much as possible, and autonomy is maximised’.25 The book’s impact was far-reaching, particularly amongst white South Africans looking for alternatives to the underground activism and the liberalism then on offer. Another major contribution was in the handbooks he developed for the IIE, in which he analysed the transformation of capitalism, the rise of trade unions, the dangers of bureaucratisation and corruption, the necessity of democracy and the need for workers to be knowledgeable about their organisation. Turner argued for worker control as opposed to control by elected leaders. His approach was to become a central position of the ‘workerist’ tendency that took root in the independent trade union movement in the 1980s and that still predominates in some trade unions. Unfortunately, this is a tradition that has emerged as the single most divisive factor within the trade union movement from as early as the ‘Unity Talks’ in the early 1980s, preceding the formation of Cosatu, between unions that adopted this tradition and the so-called political or community unions that prioritised the liberation struggle over worker issues. Notes 1 E. Webster, ‘Review: Billy Keniston (2013) Choosing to be Free: The Life Story of Rick Turner’,

Transformation 85, pp. 147–148. 2 I. Macqueen, ‘Black Consciousness in Dialogue in South Africa: Steve Biko, Richard

Turner and the “Durban Moment”, 1970–1974’, Journal of Asian and African Studies 49:5 (2014) p. 513. 3 B. Keniston, Choosing to be Free: The Life Story of Rick Turner (Johannesburg: Jacana Media,

2013); J. Turner, ‘Rick Turner: Thirty Years On’ (2007). Accessed November 2018, http:// www.sahistory.org.za/r-turner/Thirty_Years_On; T. Fluxman and P. Vale, ‘Re-reading Rick Turner in the New South Africa’, International Relations 18:2 (2004): 174. 4 Keniston, Choosing to be Free.

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Rick Turner: ‘Through the eye of the needle’ 5 Macqueen, ‘Black Consciousness’, p. 512. 6 Fluxman and Vale, ‘Re-reading Rick Turner’, p. 174. 7 Keniston, Choosing to be Free. 8 Macqueen, ‘Black Consciousness’, pp. 512–513. 9 A. Lichtenstein, ‘Review: Choosing to Be Free in South Africa: The Radical Thought of

Rick Turner’, Against the Current 185 (2016), p. 41. 10 Lichtenstein, ‘Review’, p. 41. 11 Macqueen, ‘ Black Consciousness’, p. 513. 12 R. Turner, ‘Dialectical Reason’, Radical Philosophy 4 (1973), pp. 30–34. 13 P. Hudson, ‘Let’s Talk About Rick Turner’, Theoria 64:151 (2017), p. 1. 14 T.G. Karis and G.M. Carter, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African

Politics in South Africa 1880–1990. Volume 5: Nadir and Resurgence, 1964–1994. (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 70–71. Cited in Macqueen, ‘Black Consciousness’, p. 513. 15 E. Webster, ‘Moral Decay and Social Reconstruction: Richard Turner and Radical Reform’,

Theoria 80 (1993), pp. 11–12. 16 B. Keniston, ‘Response to Eddie Webster’s Review of Choosing to be Free: The Life Story

of Rick Turner’, Transformation 86 (2015), p. 79. 17 Macqueen, ‘Black Consciousness’, p. 517; Lichtenstein, ‘Review’, p. 41. 18 Lichtenstein, ‘Review’, p. 42. 19 Macqueen, ‘Black Consciousness’, p. 513. 20 Macqueen, ‘Black Consciousness’, p. 515. 21 R. Turner, The Eye of the Needle: An Essay on Participatory Democracy (Johannesburg:

Spro‑cas, 1972). 22 P. Randall, ‘Spro-Cas: Some Publishing Problems’, Africa Today, 21:2 (1974), pp. 75–78. 23 Fluxman and Vale, ‘Re-reading Rick Turner’, p. 149. 24 Macqueen, ‘Black Consciousness’, p. 522. 25 Turner 1972: iv. Cited in E. Webster, ‘Review’.

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Eddie Webster: Advancing democracy through labour activism Gregory Houston

b. 1942

Edward ‘Eddie’ Webster is noted for his contribution to the advancement of democracy through labour activism,1 but he acknowledges the limitations of the union structure in a post-apartheid South Africa: Although the rise of a democratic state has created new opportunities for strengthening union rights, the changing employment relationship…has redivided workers on the shop floor, and weakened their workplace bargaining power. More importantly, the incorporation of trade unions into existing labour market institutions has led these unions to defend the system to the benefit of permanent employees rather than the growing numbers of precarious workers.2 Webster is distinguished research professor in the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) and founder and professor emeritus in the Society, Work and Development Institute (Swop) at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).3 He is the older brother of the late David Webster. After matriculating from Selborne College in the Eastern Cape, Webster obtained a BA (Honours) degree and a University Education Diploma from Rhodes University; a master’s in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University; a PhD from Wits; and a BPhil from York University. He joined Wits in 1976, eventually becoming head of the Department of Sociology. He lectured at the university for the next 40 years, during which time he founded Swop. He is credited with influencing several generations of sociology students at Wits, transforming the sociology curriculum at the university, and producing a new generation of black sociologists. During the course of his illustrious academic career, Webster authored and co-authored many books and academic articles, and numerous project-related research reports. Through these scholarly achievements, he served as a pioneer of the study of labour in South Africa.4

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Webster made his mark as a leading scholar in labour studies in South Africa. Even in his scholarly works, there is evidence of his being what he terms an ‘activist intellectual’. In one journal article,5 he outlined his short-term goals for labour: ‘assisting working people in their struggle for an organisational “voice” in the workplace and in society’. He does this in several ways. One of these is by identifying some of the key challenges facing labour. This is evident in an article he wrote jointly with Rahmat Omar,6 in which the authors describe the impact of the restructuring of work on labour. It is argued, among other things, that the restructuring of production, and establishment of new patterns of work organisation and/or relocating of production units by employers responding to a changing post-apartheid environment, have led to the growing casualisation of work, and inadequate trade union responses to these changes. According to Webster and Omar, this is one among a number of challenges workers and unions face in post-apartheid South Africa. This article was followed by another, jointly written with Sakhela Buhlungu,7 in which the question of the marginalisation of workers in post-apartheid South Africa is explored through an analysis of the structure and organisation of the trade union movement. Another way in which Webster provides assistance to workers is by suggesting ways in which labour can deal with some of the challenges it faces. In one of his recent works,8 Grounding Globalisation: Labour in the Age of Insecurity, he and his co-author, Andries Bezuidenhout, make the ‘case for incremental reform in the short term with a long-term radical vision of a participatory democracy’. In this book, Webster and his co-author examined the impact of the ‘global restructuring of the white goods [domestic appliances] corporations’ on labour in Ezekheni (in South Africa), Changwon (in South Korea), and Orange (in Australia). They concluded that this restructuring has resulted in ‘insecurity among workers, their families, and their communities’, and suggested ‘an alternative developmental path…[which] would require a social floor of minimum income and social security benefits’.9 This development path, they argued, is based on social policies that were being implemented already in countries such as South Africa, Brazil and India. For Webster, these are incremental measures that should, ideally, lead eventually to a participatory democracy in which workers have a leading ‘voice’. The book represents an exploration of some of the challenges faced by labour, and suggested solutions. A similar approach is found in an article written jointly with Karl von Holdt.10 Here it is shown that in the growing ‘non‐core and peripheral’ zones of work in South Africa, i.e. in marginalised sectors of the economy, ‘while there have been significant innovative union organising experiments’, such as initiatives to organise home industrial workers, taxi drivers, and casualised retail workers, ‘it may be that the structural weakening of labour has been too great and that the new sources of power are too limited, to permit effective reorientation’. Webster and Von Holdt suggest that ‘significant progress will only be made if there is a concerted effort to commit resources and above all to develop new associational strategies that recognise the potential for symbolic power as an alternative to the erosion of structural power of workers and the unions that represent them’. In 2008, he was jointly awarded, with Andries Bezuidenhout, the prestigious award for the best scholarly monograph published on labour in that year by the American Sociological Association for Grounding Globalisation.

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Webster also published several studies that draw attention to the ways in which labour deals with some of the challenges it faces, including the role of social movement unionism in labour activism. For instance, in a book chapter written together with Robert Lambert, a description is given of how an international structure of democratic trade unions of the global South, the Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights (Sigtur), adopted social movement unionism in order to build progressive global networks that promote new forms of global action. The history of this initiative is used to illustrate how organised labour adopts new mechanisms ‘to respond creatively and positively’ to globalisation’s negative impact on it.11 As an activist intellectual, Webster has participated in research projects commissioned by government departments as a way of dealing with some of the critical issues confronting labour in South Africa. Included here is a study conducted by Swop to assist the Department of Labour to develop appropriate labour market policies.12 He has also conducted research on labour in several African countries, including a nationwide survey of industrial relations practices at firm level in Mozambique.13 Above all else, Webster has been central in developing new approaches to the study of the world of work, including providing a shift from its Eurocentric focus of the past, linking research on trade unions with research on social movements and emphasising the importance of social movement unionism, identifying the impact of globalisation on labour in the global South, and focusing research on new forms of labour internationalisation. This type of research is critical in developing the most appropriate responses to a changing work environment in which the position of labour is constantly under threat. In his keynote address at the 2017 Wits graduation ceremony, at which he was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature, Webster ‘called on the graduating class of 2017 to make real the call that has echoed through the decades from the times of Robert Sobukwe to decolonise institutions of higher learning’. He praised the current and past generations for the contributions they have made to the democratising of South Africa, and exhorted graduates to ‘become the authors of the books the next generation of students read, the articles they cite, and the theories that shape their thinking’.14 Notes 1 E. Webster, ‘From Critical Sociology to Combat Sport? A Response to Michael Burawoy’s

“From Polanyi to Pollyanna: The False Optimism of Global Labour Studies”  ’, Global Labour Journal 1:3 (2010), p. 384. 2 E. Webster, ‘“The End of Labour?” Revisiting the Past to Understand the Future’, Daily

Maverick, 12 November 2019. Accessed July 2020 https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/ article/2019-11-12-the-end-of-labour-revisiting-the-past-to-understand-the-future/#gsc. tab=0. 3 Webster, ‘The End of Labour?’ 4 Wits University, ‘A Life Servicing Many Generations’, 31 March 2017. Accessed November

2018, https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/graduations/2017/a-life-servicing-manygenerations-.html. Refer also to M. Burawoy, ‘Southern Windmill: The Life and Work of Edward Webster’, Transformation 72/73 (2010), pp. 1–25.

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Eddie Webster: Advancing democracy through labour activism 5 Webster, ‘From Critical Sociology to Combat Sport?’ p. 384. 6 E. Webster and R. Omar, ‘Work Restructuring in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, Work and

Occupations 30:2 (2003), pp. 194–213. 7 E. Webster and S. Buhlungu, ‘Between Marginalisation & Revitalisation? The State

of Trade Unionism in South Africa’, Review of African Political Economy 100 (2004), pp. 229–245. 8 Webster and Bezuidenhout, ‘Between Marginalisation & Revitalisation?’ 9 E. Webster and A. Bezuidenhout, Grounding Globalisation: Labour in the Age of Insecurity.

(Victoria: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), p. 219. 10 K. von Holdt and E. Webster, ‘Organising on the Periphery: New Sources of Power in the

South African Workplace’, Employee Relations 30:4 (2008), pp. 333–354. 11 R. Lambert and E. Webster, ‘Global Civil Society and the New Labor Internationalism:

A View from the South’, In R. Taylor (ed), Creating a Better World: Interpreting Global Civil Society. (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2016), pp. 82–115; R. Taylor, ‘Interpreting Global Civil Society’, In R Taylor (ed), Creating a Better World: Interpreting Global Civil Society. (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2016), p. 9. 12 E. Webster, A. Benya, X. Dilata, C. Joynt, K. Ngoepe and M. Tsoeu, ‘Making Visible the

Invisible: Confronting South Africa’s Decent Work Deficit’, A Research Report prepared for the Department of Labour by the Sociology of Work Unit, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, March, 2008. 13 E. Webster, G. Wood and M. Brookes, ‘International Homogenisation or the Persistence

of National Practices? The Remaking of Industrial Relations in Mozambique’, Relations industrielles 61:2 (2006), pp. 247–270. 14 Wits University, ‘A Life Servicing Many Generations’.

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Harold Wolpe: The revisionist Marxist Gregory Houston

1926–1996

South African lawyer, sociologist, political economist and anti-apartheid activist Harold Wolpe was an intellectual whose prime concern was to create a new moral and political order. He is fondly remembered for his Hollywood-thriller-like prison escape, and the dramatic manhunt that followed, but his real legacy is his deconstruction of the relationship between capitalism, segregation and apartheid.1 By insisting that social research should be based on the needs of the liberation struggle,2 he successfully married academic rigour with activism. Wolpe was born into an immigrant Jewish family from Lithuania. He attended Athlone Boys High in Bez Valley and, in 1944, went to the University of the Witwatersrand to do a Bachelor of Science degree. After a year, he changed to a BA in social science, which included courses in sociology and statistics. Wolpe obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in social studies in 1949 and a Bachelor of Law degree in 1952. He played a leading role in the National Union of South African Students (Nusas), and became president of the Student Representative Council (SRC) at the university.3 During this period, he also attended the founding conference of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) in London with Ruth First. From there they travelled on to Prague for the conference of the International Union of Students. This was followed by a tour of France, Italy, Hungary and Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia, they addressed meetings and met partisan leaders who gave them detailed accounts of the partisan struggles during World War II. Wolpe, First and Joe Slovo were members of a student liberal-left alliance at Wits.4 After graduating with an LLB, he worked as a lawyer, and in the 1950s, largely because of his close association with fellow South African Communist Party (SACP) members Ruth First and Joe Slovo, got to know Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. The latter employed Wolpe as his lawyer, and he represented several other leading anti-apartheid figures in their political cases in the 1950s and 1960s.5 Wolpe was thus a leading member of the underground Communist Party, which had been established covertly in 1953, and of the Congress of Democrats, an organisation

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that was affiliated to the Congress Alliance led by the then militant ANC under Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki that had been established in the mid-1950s. Wolpe was banned in 1954, as were many of the people he associated with at the time. After the banning of organisations in April 1960, Wolpe was among the thousands detained during a countrywide swoop by the security forces and held in detention for several months. When the SACP and ANC turned to armed struggle in 1961, Wolpe played a role in helping both organisations plan their actions against the government, including becoming a member of the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK). He was also at the centre of the reestablishment of the Communist Party, and helped purchase Lilliesleaf Farm, which was used as the headquarters of MK, the ANC and the SACP.6 After the leading members of MK were arrested at Lillliesleaf in July 1963, Wolpe was arrested even though he had not been at the farm at the time. Wolpe, Arthur Goldreich, Abdulhay Jassat and Mosie Moolla subsequently escaped from a Johannesburg prison after bribing a guard, giving rise to one of the most extensive manhunts ever launched in South Africa. For days, Communist Party members Wolpe and Goldreich hid in safe houses before being taken to neighbouring Swaziland in the trunk of a car. The two fugitives were eventually flown to Bechuanaland (now Botswana), from where they were taken on a flight to Tanzania.7 Wolpe then flew to England, where his wife, AnnMarie, and three children joined him from South Africa. Wolpe spent a year working for the liberation movement, and another reading sociology at the London School of Economics (LSE) as a Nuffield Foundation Sociological Scholar in 1964–65. Not long after his escape from South Africa, he attended Ralph Miliband’s LSE seminars as a graduate student.8 He joined the University of Bradford and the North London Polytechnic (now the University of North London), where he lectured from 1970 to 1974. He then joined the University of Essex’s sociology department, where he obtained a doctorate, served for a period as the head of the sociology department, and was promoted to reader, the equivalent of associate professor. He was denied promotion to full professor, probably because of his notoriety as a political activist and apartheid fugitive. Wolpe stayed at the University of Essex until he returned to South Africa in 1990.9 In England, Wolpe played a central role in the initiation of new journals in the 1970s, including Economy and Society, Capital and Class, Critique of Anthropology, Radical Philosophy and The Journal of Peasant Studies. For instance, he was a founding editor of Economy and Society, and was the editor of a collection of its most influential articles while contributing other notable articles as well. He also communicated his ideas on visits to the University of Dar es Salaam, the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, the University of California at Berkeley, and elsewhere. Wolpe, together with Shula Marks, Stanley Trapido and Martin Legassick, was a founder of the ‘revisionist’ or ‘neo-Marxist’ school.10 This school developed from a critique of the classical neo-liberal argument that apartheid was incompatible with capitalist development. The revisionist school sought to ‘demonstrate the centrality of capitalism and capitalist interests to the evolution of racial policy’, and argued that ‘if capitalism was complicit in the construction of segregation and apartheid then the struggle against apartheid necessarily involved a struggle

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against capitalism’.11 Academics that would later become prominent in this group include Dave Kaplan, Dan O’Meara, Stephen Gelb and Duncan Innes, who were responsible for making Marxism a dominant school of thought in the social sciences in South Africa and for inspiring a generation of radical students.12 Many of these students would later become prominent leaders in the independent trade union movement in the country. Wolpe maintained contact with the liberation movement and Africa in several ways during the time he was in England. One of these was the time he spent in Mozambique in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when he worked at the University of Eduardo Mondlane’s Centre for African Studies until Ruth First’s assassination in 1982.13 At the time, several leading figures of the ANC and SACP, including Slovo, Ronnie Kasrils and Jacob Zuma, were based in Maputo. As Wolpe was a key member of the ANC’s London Education Committee and its National Education Council, he became involved in discussions about, and undertook several visits to, the ANC’s Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College (SOMAFCO) in Morogoro, Tanzania. At Essex, he initiated a project on research in education in South Africa in 1986, and edited two multi-author books on educational reform after the demise of apartheid. In 1977, he spent his sabbatical leave as guest of the Faculty of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where the ANC had a strong presence at the time. When the Wolpe family returned to South Africa soon after the unbanning of organisations in 1990, he was appointed the director of the University of the Western Cape’s (UWC) Education Policy Unit (EPU) and chair of the forum that coordinated the work of five similar units at the national level.14 Under his direction, the EPU at UWC established an unrivalled reputation for policy research in higher education. The EPU provided Wolpe with the opportunity to contribute to the reconstruction of the country’s higher education system, and explore ‘problems such as the tension between equity and development, and short- and long-term transformation that were left obscure in official programmes’. The EPU conducted a range of studies for the ANC, the new government and other clients; and Wolpe piloted a course in the unit in which empirical findings were underpinned by theoretical readings.15 Wolpe is widely recognised for a 1972 journal article16 in which he developed a theory of apartheid, describing it as ‘a specification of the historical conjuncture between ideology, political practice and the mode of production’.17 In addition to offering a Marxist explanation of apartheid and racism, Wolpe’s revisionist approach challenged the notion in the SACP’s ‘colonialism of a special type’ thesis that apartheid was ‘little more than segregation by another name’.18 According to Wolpe, under apartheid, instead of the major contradiction being the relations between distinct modes of production, the major contradiction under this system was the relations of production within capitalism. ‘Whereas Segregation provided the political structure appropriate to the earlier period, apartheid represents the attempt to maintain the rate of surplus value and accumulation in the face of the disintegration of the pre-capitalist economy.’19 The article has been termed ‘probably the most path-breaking theoretical statement in South African Marxism in the apartheid period’, and ‘probably the most influential and widely cited theoretical text ever written on South Africa’.20

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Wolpe made a series of other significant contributions such as, as noted above, a critique of the ‘internal colonialism’ thesis of the Communist Party; the analysis of the implications of ‘class formation within the black population, especially of the black petty bourgeoisie’, for political strategy; and the seminal book Race, Class and the Apartheid State.21 Above all else, however, Wolpe held to the dictum he had articulated in an article he published in 1985,22 in which he argued that social research should take as its point of departure the priorities of the liberation movement. On 19 January 1996 Harold Wolpe died ‘with his boots on’ when he had a heart attack while working on an overview report for the democratic government on behalf of his EPU task group. Notes 1 H. Wolpe, ‘Capitalism and Cheap Labour-Power in South Africa: From Segregation to

Apartheid’, Economy and Society 1:4 (1972), pp. 425–456. 2 H. Wolpe, ‘The Liberation Struggle and Research’, Review of African Political Economy 32

(1985), pp. 72–78. 3 C. Bundy, ‘He Died with his Boots On: Obituary – Harold Wolpe’, Mail & Guardian,

26 January 1996. Accessed November 2018, https://mg.co.za/article/1996-01-26-he-diedwith-his-boots-on. 4 D. Pinnock, Voices of Liberation: Ruth First. (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2012), pp. 9–10. 5 P. Alexander, ‘History, Internationalism and Intellectuals: The Case of Harold Wolpe’,

Transformation 63 (2007), pp. 109–110. 6 Alexander, ‘History, Internationalism and Intellectuals’, p. 110. 7 E. Sisulu, Walter and Elinor Sisulu: In Our Lifetime. (Cape Town: David Philip, 2002),

pp. 232–233. 8 J. Saul, ‘The Transition in South Africa: Choice, Fate…or Recolonisation?’, Journal of

Critical Arts 26:4 (2012), pp. 588–605. 9 M. Burawoy, ‘From Liberation to Reconstruction: Theory and Practice in the Life of

Harold Wolpe’, Review of African Political Economy 102 (2004), p. 2. 10 D. O’Meara, ‘The Political Economy of Social Change in South Africa: The Engaged

Intellectual and the Struggle for a Democratic South Africa – The Life and Work of Harold Wolpe’, 1997. Address to the Inaugural Conference of the Harold Wolpe Memorial Trust. Accessed January 2019, https://www.wolpetrust.org.za/obituary.pdfwww.uct.ac.za. 11 O’Meara, ‘The Political Economy’, pp. 8–9. 12 B. Fogel, ‘Book Review: Race, Class and Power: Harold Wolpe and the Radical Critique of

Apartheid’, Journal of Asian and African Studies 51:1 (2016), p. 126. 13 Burawoy, ‘From Liberation to Reconstruction’ p. 661. 14 L. Chisholm, A. Motala and S. Vally, South African Education Policy Review, 1993–2000.

(Johannesburg: Heinemann Publishers, 2003) p. 265. 15 Bundy, ‘He Died with His Boots on’. 16 Wolpe, ‘Capitalism and Cheap Labour-Power’. 17 Wolpe, ‘Capitalism and Cheap Labour-Power’, pp. 426–427.

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa 18 Wolpe, ‘Capitalism and Cheap Labour-Power’, p. 425. Cited in Fogel, ‘Book Review’,

p. 128. 19 Wolpe, ‘Capitalism and Cheap Labour-Power’, pp. 432–433. Cited in Fogel, ‘Book Review’,

p. 128. 20 O’Meara, ‘The Political Economy’, p. 7. 21 H. Wolpe, Race, Class and the Apartheid State. (London: James Currey, and Paris: Unesco,

1988). 22 H. Wolpe, ‘The Liberation Struggle’.

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Jakes Gerwel: A university of the left

Jakes Gerwel: A university of the left Gregory Houston

1946–2012

Gert Johannes ‘Jakes’ Gerwel is recognised for his role in transforming the University of the Western Cape (UWC) from a ‘bush university’ for coloureds into the non-racial ‘intellectual home of the left’ during the seven years he spent as rector there in the 1980s.1 He succeeded in getting several prominent academics to join the university, demanded academic excellence, and provided new ways of preventing the apartheid education system from standing in the way of students’ development.2 The seventh of ten children of labourers on a sheep farm, Gerwel attended a church-run farm school, and then Dower College in Uitenhage for part of his secondary schooling. He matriculated at Paterson High School in Port Elizabeth. He then registered for a Bachelor of Arts degree at UWC in 1965, majoring in Afrikaans en Nederlands. He earned a reputation for brilliance, completing a BA (Honours) degree in 1968. In 1971, he was awarded a scholarship to study in Belgium, where he completed a master’s degree in Germanic philology and a PhD in literature and philosophy at the Free University of Brussels in 1979.3 Gerwel lectured for several years at Hewat Teacher Training College in Cape  Town before joining the Departement  van  Afrikaans en Nederlands at UWC as a lecturer. At the time he was one of only two black lecturers at the university. A prolific author, he rose rapidly in the department, and was appointed to senior positions in the university. In 1980, he became a professor, and in 1982, he was appointed dean of the Faculty of Arts. Gerwel was one of the few UWC academics who openly supported student struggles for democracy, and was detained during the course of the 1980 student uprising in the Cape. In 1987, at the age of 41, he was appointed rector and vice-chancellor of UWC. Gerwel revolutionised UWC by introducing an academic development programme that provided ‘epistemological access’ and a ‘lottery system’ to create equal opportunities for poor students

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to enter the university. The lottery system was open for a percentage of first-year places at the university, which Gerwel introduced because ‘he felt matric was not a true indicator of people’s potential’.4 Gerwel stated in his inaugural address as rector: If I plead and work for this university to provide an intellectual home for the left, it is not merely out of managerial expedience, thinking it would be good for the university’s orderly functioning…While our university may never have a corporate opinion, our university, at least, can never condone or live comfortably with apartheid in any of its mutations.5 Gerwel declared that UWC faced ‘the historical imperative to respond to the democratic left’, to ‘develop a critical alignment with the democratic movement’ and to ‘educate towards and for a changed society’. He said that he could not ‘educate or lead education towards the reproduction and maintenance of a social order which is undemocratic, discriminatory, exploitative and repressive’. Universities, instead, had to promote ‘through example, a democratic culture’. Gerwel stated that a university can never compromise its ‘essential identity as “disinterested” searchers after truth’.6 Through his efforts, the university committed itself to the ideals of ‘nonracialism, non-sexism and social justice’ that mirrored the ideals of the liberation movement, as well as ‘the development of the Third World communities in South Africa’. Admission was opened to all South Africans in contravention of apartheid legislation, and the university was no longer recognised as a ‘coloured’ and ‘bush’ university. UWC became an exhilarating space for academics who were socially dedicated and active, and intellectual debate flourished on the campus. Space was provided for many black intellectuals and scholars by Gerwel’s bold leadership and the stimulating intellectual environment that flourished at the university because of him.7 By the early 1990s, the university had become internationally recognised as a key institution for policy research that supported a future democratic South Africa. The scholars that Gerwel brought into the university worked on a range of projects on ‘higher education, constitutional, economic, trade, health and other policy issues’. Here they debated ‘on issues such as the meaning of policy, and the context of policy formation and implementation’. Several of these scholars later became Cabinet ministers and leaders of institutions after the first democratic elections in 1994.8 When Nelson Mandela became president after the first democratic elections in April 1994, he appointed Gerwel as the director general in the Presidency. Gerwel recalled that he served as ‘Secretary of the Cabinet’.9 He stepped down from this office at the end of Mandela’s term of office in 1999. He subsequently served as chair of the Nelson Mandela Foundation as well as the Mandela Rhodes Foundation. Gerwel was the chancellor of Rhodes University for 13 years from 1999 to 2012. He also served on many commissions, boards of public and private corporations and non-governmental organisations. He was the chairperson of the Aurecon Group and the Life Healthcare Group, a non-executive director of Naspers, and the chair of the Human Sciences Research Council, among numerous others. He was awarded several honorary

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doctorates by South African and international universities. He was awarded the Order of the Southern Cross, one of the old National Orders, by Nelson Mandela in 1999. Gerwel’s farming roots stayed with him throughout his life. In 2011, together with Jeanne Viall and Wilmot James, he published a book, Grape: Stories of the Vineyards in South Africa – an account of the working conditions on grape farms in the Western Cape. However, his primary intellectual preoccupation as an academic was to engage critically with Afrikaans and the meaning of ‘Black Afrikaans’, the concept of the nation through language, Afrikaans literature, and the racist construction of ‘coloured’ identity in this literature.10 The latter is evident in his 1983 book, Literatuur en Apartheid, which examined how Afrikaans novels published before 1948 portrayed coloured people. Other publications include Keer-Punt and Stroomversnelling. He also participated in the debate about the future of Afrikaans after the democratic transition. He felt that there was no danger to the language because it is one of the most widely spoken languages in the country. His ultimate goal was to make Afrikaans attractive to non-Afrikaans speakers and young people of all backgrounds.11 Notes 1 S. Badat, ‘Jakes Gerwel (1946–2012): Humble Intellectual, Scholar and Leader’, South

African Journal of Science 109:1/2 (2013), pp. 1–2. 2 N. Tolsi, ‘Jakes Gerwel: The Epitome of Integrity and Courage’, Mail & Guardian,

30 November 2012. Accessed November 2018, https://mg.co.za/article/2012-11-30-00-jakesgerwel-the-epitome-of-integrity-and-courage. 3 Badat, ‘Jakes Gerwell’, p. 1. 4 Tolsi, ‘The Epitome’. 5 C. Soudien, ‘Becoming UWC: Reflections, Pathways and Unmaking Apartheid’s Legacy’.

Social Dynamics 38:2 (2012), p. 56. 6 Badat, ‘Jakes Gerwell’, p. 1. 7 Badat, ‘Jakes Gerwell’, p. 1. 8 Badat, ‘Jakes Gerwell’, p. 2. 9 J. Higgins, ‘Living out Our Differences: Reflections on Mandela, Marx and My Country:

An Interview with Jakes Gerwel’, Thesis Eleven 115:1 (2013), p. 13. 10 Tolsi, ‘The Epitome’. 11 P. Duvenage, ‘Multilingualism, Afrikaans and Normative Political Theory’, Acta Academica

Supplementum 2 (2006), pp. 85–86.

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Olive Shisana: Change through science Narnia Bohler-Muller

b. 1950

It is not often that one finds a woman with such commitment to research-based policy-making. As a black female scientist, Olive Shisana has made substantial contributions to healthcare research and practice in South Africa within a system that remains male-dominated. Shisana was 17 when she and her family were forcibly removed from their ancestral land at Makotopong, outside Pietersburg (Polokwane). At the time she and her husband, William Shisana, a wellknown industrial psychologist and former lecturer, were forced to leave the country as a young couple.1 Dr Shisana graduated with a BA from the then University of the North (now the University of Limpopo), shortly before she and her family went into exile in the USA.2 While in exile, she obtained a master’s degree in clinical psychology (1979) and a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health (1984). Her scholarly expertise encompasses epidemiology and risk factors associated with HIV/AIDS. Upon returning to South Africa in 1991, shortly before the dawn of democracy, she was a specialist at the South African Medical Research Council (1991–1994), before being appointed as a special advisor to the minister of health (1994–1995). From 1995 to 1998, she served as the Department of Health’s director general in the first democratic administration under the late president Nelson Mandela. As director general, she conducted a departmental investigation into the actions of officials involved in the controversy surrounding Sarafina II.3 From 2001 to 2005, Shisana worked for the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). She made significant contributions to the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa by founding and serving as executive director of the HSRC’s Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS and Health (SAHA) programme. Dr  Shisana headed the Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS and Health Research Alliance (SAHARA), a national and continental network. It was also during this period

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that she was appointed as the first black female chief executive officer (CEO) of the HSRC in 2005.4 It is during her 10 years at the HSRC that she made a substantial impact on health policy in South Africa from a scientific perspective, when she courageously tackled the HIV and AIDS pandemic despite the fact that the then president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, was an AIDS denialist. Her wealth of experience in research, management and policy development can be traced back to her history as a public health professional. Her experience of working both locally and internationally, including at the World Health Organization (WHO), has shaped what has been an extraordinary 30-year career. In the higher education sector, she has been a professor and head of the Department of Health Systems Management and Policy at the Medical University of Southern Africa. She established the postgraduate diploma on the management of HIV and AIDS in the world of work (2001) and was instrumental in the establishment of the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape, which has been in operation since 1993. She is an honorary professor at the University of Cape Town, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Monash University, and led the development of the new university, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, in her last years at the HSRC.5 Shisana’s research contributions can be seen in the numerous reports she has authored emanating from extensive research. Included in her literary accomplishments are various book chapters, scientific journal articles and discussions. Her substantial contributions include articles on the social epidemiology of HIV and national health insurance (NHI). She was principal or coprincipal investigator in various innovative studies that transformed society’s knowledge of HIV/AIDS.  These include the Nelson Mandela/HSRC study of HIV/AIDS, the impact of HIV/ AIDS on the health sector, the health of educators, women in HIV prevention, HIV exposure, and research interventions for vulnerable children.6 As chairperson of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on the NHI, she highlighted the importance of equal and accessible healthcare for all. Shisana became president-elect of the International Social Science Council (ISSC) in 2010 and is a panel member of the Unesco director general’s High-Level Panel for Science and Technology for Development.7 She also served on the South African National Aids Council (SANAC) and the Nelson Mandela 46664 board. In October 2013, Shisana received accolades from the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) for her contributions to understanding and containing HIV/AIDS.8 Each year, the academy awards ASSAf Science-for-Society Gold Medals for outstanding achievement in scientific thinking. She was recognised for her expertise in HIV surveillance and for founding of the South African National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, as well as the Maternal and Child Mortality Survey at the HSRC.9 In 2017, she was awarded the Presidential Order of the Baobab in Bronze for her ‘outstanding contribution to the field of science and community service, particularly her tireless work in researching solutions to the scourges of HIV and AIDS’.10

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Shisana has received several other awards. In 2009, she won CEO Magazine’s award for South Africa’s Most Influential Woman in Business and Government (Public and Utilities Sector). In 2013, she was named as one of the 100 World Class South Africans by City Press alongside former president Thabo Mbeki, former deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, and former minister of finance Trevor Manuel.11 She won the 11th Standard Bank’s Top Female Public Sector Leader Award for the work done as CEO of the Human Science Research Council in 2014.12 Under the leadership of Dr Shisana, the HSRC achieved the highest financial turnover, R247.8  million, in its history.13 When she left the HSRC in 2015, tributes were paid to her at a farewell function.14 minister Naledi Pandor, at that time the minister of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) under which the HSRC was situated as a science council, had high praise for Shisana’s scientific independence as the leader of a science council: She leads by example, playing a strong role in ensuring that the HSRC’s policy advice to government was based on research, on evidence, and not on her political affiliations. She led the HSRC to focus on the wider issues in social sciences, broadening our understanding on how to respond in legislation and public policy.15 Professor Dan Ncayiyana, advisor to Shisana when she served as the CEO, said: She has an absolute loyalty to the HSRC and an incorruptible sense of fairness, but does not suffer fools gladly. You have to know what you’re on about if you want Olive’s attention and respect. She is a perfectionist and can cause discomfort for some, yet has a big heart and is caring and considerate.16 In July 2016, Shisana co-chaired the 21st International Aids Conference at the Durban International Convention Centre with the main theme of ‘Access Equity Rights Now’. The then deputy president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, opened the event that was attended by Mr  Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations at the time. The conference brought together some 18 000 delegates from 183 countries to work to strengthen HIV treatment, prevention, care and support programmes, and also to commit to evidenceinformed HIV research, overcome the marginalisation of vulnerable populations, challenge discriminatory laws, and champion a community-centred and rights-based response to HIV.17 Shisana, as a leading health expert, showed foresight, courage and dedication during the HIV/ AIDS pandemic at a time when marginalisation was not only the norm, but expected. Shisana is currently the president and CEO of Evidence Based Solutions (Pty) Ltd, a company that provides research and technological support to African countries in the areas of public health and information and communications technology for health.18 She has continued to serve her country through her membership of the high-level panel appointed by the South African Parliament to examine the impact of legislation on the transformation of South African society,19 as well as driving the conclusion of the 2017 White Paper on NHI.20 

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In 2017, she was appointed to the board of directors of the Africa Health Research Institute21 and was appointed as an advisor to President Ramaphosa in July 2018, during which time she revived the NHI working groups to ensure implementation, a lifelong passion. She continues to support the Presidency with her expertise and experience as South Africa faces the challenge of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Notes 1 McLarin, K, ‘Cape Town Journal; After Apartheid, Home at Last: A Family Adjusts’, The

New York Times 6 July 1995. Accessed July 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/06/ world/cape-town-journal-after-apartheid-home-at-last-a-family-adjusts.html. 2 Prabook, ‘Olive Shisana’. (n.d.) Accessed April 2020 https://prabook.com/web/olive.

shisana/340099. 3 Office of the Public Protector, ‘Investigation concerning the Sarafina II Donor, Special

Report No. 2 (11 September 1996). Accessed June 2019, https://www.gov.za/documents/ investigation-concerning-sarafina-ii-donor-public-protector-report. 4 Human Sciences Research Council, ‘Send off for Olive Shisana’, (2015). Accessed June

2019, http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/review/hsrc-review-july-to-sept-2015/send-off-for-oliveshisana. 5 The Presidency, ‘Olive Shisana: The Order of Baobab in Bronze’, (2017). Accessed April

2019, http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/prof-olive-shisana. 6 Human Sciences Research Council, ‘Olive Shisana Biography’, (2009). Accessed June 2019,

http://www.hsrc.ac.za/uploads/pageDownloads/26/Olive%20Shisana%20Biography.pdf. 7 The Presidency, ‘Olive Shisana’. 8 International Social Science Institute, ‘Prof Olive Shisana receives ASSAF gold medal’,

13 October 2013. Accessed April 2019, http://www.worldsocialscience.org/2013/10/profolive-shisana-receives-assaf-gold-medal/. 9  Pretoria News Staff Reporter, ‘Top Award for Shisana’, 25 October 2013. Accessed July 2019,

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/pretoria-news/20131025/281732677227059. 10 The Presidency, ‘Olive Shisana’. 11  City Press, ‘100 World Class South Africans: Olive Shisana’, 20 August 2014. Accessed April

2019, https://www.news24.com/Archives/City-Press/100-World-Class-South-AfricansOlive-Shisana-20150429. 12 Issuu, ‘Top Women in Business and Government’, 2 March 2015. Accessed June 2019,

https://issuu.com/topcomedia/docs/top_women_11th-publication. 13  Mail & Guardian Staff Reporter, ‘HSRC reports Highest Financial Turnover’, 23 October

2007. Accessed April 2019, https://mg.co.za/article/2007-10-23-hsrc-reports-highestfinancial-turnover. 14 Human Sciences Research Council, ‘Send-off for Olive Shisana’, (2015). http://www.hsrc.

ac.za/en/review/hsrc-review-july-to-sept-2015/send-off-for-olive-shisana. 15 Human Sciences Research Council, ‘Send-off’. 16 Human Sciences Research Council, ‘Send-off’.

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa 17 UNAIDS, ‘21st International AIDS Conference Opens in Durban’ (19 July 2016).

Accessed April 2019, https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2016/ july/20160718_AIDS2016_opening. 18 Evidence-Based Solutions (Pty) Ltd, ‘About Us’. (n.d.) Accessed April 2019, https://

evidencebsol.com/about-us/. 19 S. Mokoena, ‘High Level Panel holds Roundtable Discussion with Business Sector’, 27 July

2017. Accessed July 2019, https://www.parliament.gov.za/news/high-level-panel-holdsroundtable-discussion-business-sector/. The full report of the High Level Panel can be accessed at https://www.parliament.gov.za/high-level-panel. 20 Department of Health, ‘National Health Insurance Fund’, 28 June 2017. Accessed June

2019, http://www.health.gov.za/index.php/nhi. 21 Africa Health Research Institute Board, ‘Olive Shisana and Peter Piot appointed to Africa

Health Research Institute Board’, (2017). Accessed July 2019, at http://www.k-rith.org/oliveshisana-peter-piot-appointed-africa-health-research-institute-board/.

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Malegapuru Makgoba: An agent of transformation

Malegapuru Makgoba: An agent of transformation Francois Gilles de Pelichy

b. 1952

Malegapuru William Makgoba is a world-renowned immunologist, public health advocate and former vice-chancellor and principal of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. As an eminent academic, he played a pioneering role in the transforming the country’s higher education sector. Moreover, Makgoba was instrumental in the development of South Africa’s AIDS strategy and the SA AIDS Vaccine Initiative.1 Makgoba is the great-grandson of Chief Makgoba, who confronted the Boers at Magoebaskloof in the late nineteenth century during the wars of resistance against the Afrikaners in the northern Boer republics.2 From being a rural shepherd boy in the hills of Limpopo, Makgoba rose to become a prominent leader in immunology.3 Studying at the University of Natal Medical School (UNMS) during the era of the Black Consciousness Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was greatly affected by the institutional racism of the apartheid regime.4 UNMS was a centre of resistance, an institution where many young anti-apartheid activists such as Steve Biko, who was a classmate at the university, Mamphela Ramphele, Nkosazana DlaminiZuma and Aubrey Mokoape were educated. As he would later recall: ‘At that time, UNMS was a hive of political activity. You couldn’t ignore it, it was always in your face; your classmates and other comrades were involved in it.’ By the time Makgoba completed his MBChB degree with merit in 1976,5 his politicisation stirred in him a lifelong mission to transform the country to embrace equality at all levels of society, especially within higher education institutions.6 For the next 15 years, Makgoba worked as a researcher, first at Oxford University, where he completed his DPhil degree in human immunogenetics in 1983, then at the Royal College of Physicians. Sir Raymond Hoffenberg, then president of the Royal College of Physicians, would describe his research as ‘unquestionably outstanding’. As an internationally recognised immunologist, Makgoba’s research made seminal contributions to the understanding of the human immune system. From 1986 to 1988, Makgoba worked for the National Cancer Institute

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in the United States, where he and his colleagues identified cell surface proteins that help immune system cells stick to and signal one another. The research he and his team produced during that period was so groundbreaking that some studies have been cited over a thousand times.7 Following his time in the US, Makgoba was approached by the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London to lead a research team. Accepting the challenge, he led his team in finding that the proteins he had identified in the United States could also be used to detect inflammatory diseases such as cancer.8 Makgoba met Nelson Mandela shortly after his release from prison.9 Acceding to Mandela’s advice, Makgoba decided to return to South Africa and, in 1993, he accepted the position of deputy vice-chancellor at the University of the Witwatersrand – the first black academic to hold the position.10 For the next 22 years, Makgoba occupied leadership positions in higher education.11 As a committed pan-Africanist and champion of the African Renaissance, he edited a collection titled African Renaissance: The New Struggle,12 and pushed for higher education institutions to transform.13 It was in this role that he encountered a major challenge from a group of white academics at the University of the Witwatersrand after he was appointed its deputy vice-chancellor in 1995. Among others, Makgoba challenged the university’s dominant Eurocentrism, and advocated for the introduction of African languages as part of the core curriculum.14 In a book he wrote on the incident at Wits, he captures the essence of the challenge he posed to white privilege at the university as follows: Wits must realise that the cultural ethos which apparently served the institution so well in the past must change to accommodate other cultural values. The curricula have to change fundamentally, as the University comes to terms with the reality that it is educating all South Africans in Africa. Africans in particular do not come to university to escape or erase the Africanness, but to confirm and articulate their roots.15 In 2002, Makgoba became the vice-chancellor of the former University of Natal, and oversaw its merger with the University of Durban Westville into the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). Under his leadership, UKZN became the most transformed institution in the country.16 However, Makgoba believed further efforts were still needed. As he put it, ‘I want to see South African research transformed in a very meaningful and substantial way, such that we give all those with potential the opportunity to succeed. Their success is our success as a nation.’17 As chair of the first Transformation Oversight Committee of Public Universities in 2012 and 2013, Makgoba focused on the transformation of higher education.18 During the late 1990s and early 2000s, as president of the Medical Research Council and the National Science and Technology Forum, Makgoba called for transformation of South Africa’s

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science councils.19 In taking a leading role in the fight against AIDS denialism and the right for the freedom of scientific enquiry, he was one of the most prominent black leaders contradicting then president Mbeki’s AIDS denialism.20 As he would later recall: ‘I’ve never felt that  I was more needed to save the lives and dignity of people than during that period of AIDS denial.’21 Mbeki responded with anger to Makgoba’s criticism of his policy, marking a sharp break in a relationship with one of the then president’s favourite scientists.22 In June 2000, Makgoba added his name to the Nairobi Declaration that aimed to ‘accelerate the development and future availability of HIV vaccines for Africa’.23 In July 2000, Makgoba co-edited the Durban Declaration on HIV and AIDS, a declaration against AIDS denialism signed by 11 Nobel Prize winners and 5 000 physicians and scientists, which clearly stated that ‘the evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clear-cut, exhaustive and unambiguous, meeting the highest standards of science’.24 The declaration was written to address growing concerns over HIV/AIDS denialism. Moreover, Makgoba served as the founding chair of the UNAIDS/WHO African Aids Vaccine Programme, and as a founding member of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise. In addition, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Africa Centre and the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV which, along with the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), are among the world’s largest HIV research efforts.25 Celebrated among his peers, Makgoba has received numerous awards and honours, including fellowships at both the Imperial College Faculty of Medicine and the Royal College of Physicians of London. Makgoba was the first recipient of the South African German Science Award in the category of top researcher in 2012. Makgoba was appointed the first Health Ombudsman under the presidency of Jacob Zuma in 2016.26 In the first few months of his appointment, he released the Life Esidimeni report that investigated the circumstances and fatalities that resulted from Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu’s decision to terminate the Gauteng provincial contract with Life Esidimeni hospital.27 According to Makgoba, the transfer of mental health patients from a licensed institution to unlicensed facilities operated by NGOs resulted in the death of more than a hundred patients from dehydration and malnutrition.28 Along with the findings of the Life Esidimeni arbitration hearings, Makgoba recommended a South African Human Rights Commission investigation into the state of the national mental healthcare system.29 In 2013, Makgoba was awarded the Order of Mapungubwe (Silver) for his contribution to the fields of science and medicine, his herculean efforts at institutional transformation, and his contribution to the building of democracy in South Africa.30 He continues as South Africa’s Health Ombud and, in 2020, he was appointed interim chair of the Eskom Board.31 Notes 1 A. Hogg, ‘SA National Planning Committee Directors – Profiles of all the Members’,

Biznews, 18 September 2015. Accessed April 2020, https://www.biznews.com/ leadership/2015/09/18/sa-national-planning-committee-directors-profiles-of-all-themembers.

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa 2 M. Gevisser, ‘Makegapuru William Makgoba, Former Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Wits

University: The Don who wants and Ebony Tower’, In M. Gevisser, Portraits of Power in a Changing South Africa. (Claremont: David Philip, 1996), p. 5. 3 Office of the Health Ombudsman, ‘Meet the Health Ombudsman: Prof Makegapuru

William Makgoba’. (2016). Accessed April 2020, http://healthombud.org.za/meet-thehealth-ombud/. 4 Gevisser, ‘Makegapuru William Makgoba’, p. 5; Office of the Health Ombudsman, ‘Meet

the Health Ombudsman’. 5 Office of the Health Ombudsman, ‘Meet the Health Ombudsman’. 6 Office of the Health Ombudsman, ‘Meet the Health Ombudsman’; Makgoba MW,

‘South African Universities in Transformation: An Opportunity to Africanise Education’. Perspectives in Education 17(1): (1996), pp. 175–186. 7 Office of the Health Ombudsman, ‘Meet the Health Ombudsman’. 8 Office of the Health Ombudsman, ‘Meet the Health Ombudsman’. 9 Office of the Health Ombudsman, ‘Meet the Health Ombudsman’. 10 W. Saunderson-Meyer, ‘Eskom’s Board Chair Prof Makgoba is a Complicated Figure

in our Public Life’, IOL, 1 February 2020a. Accessed April 2020, https://www.iol.co.za/ ios/opinion/eskoms-board-chair-prof-makgoba-is-a-complicated-figure-in-our-publiclife-41867072. 11 Office of the Health Ombudsman, ‘Meet the Health Ombudsman’. 12 M.W. Makgoba, (ed), African Renaissance: The New Struggle. (Sandton and Cape Town:

Mafube, 1997). 13 N. Lekgotla, ‘The African Vision has Lost its Focus’, Mail & Guardian, 6 February 2015.

Accessed April 2020, https://mg.co.za/article/2015-02-06-the-african-vision-has-lost-itsfocus/. 14 Gevisser, ‘Makegapuru William Makgoba’; Lekgotla, ‘The African Vision’. 15 M.W. Makgoba, Mokoko – The Makgoba Affair: A Reflection on Transformation. (Florida

Hills: Vivlia Publications, 1997a), pp. 76–7. See also M. Mamdani, ‘Makgoba: Victim of the ‘Racialised Power’ entrenched at Wits’, Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies 23:2 (2008), pp. 1–5. 16 M.W. Makgoba and J.C. Mubangizi, The Creation of the University of KwaZulu-Natal:

Reflections on a Merger and Transformation Experience. (New Delhi: Excel Books, 2010). 17 Office of the Health Ombudsman, ‘Meet the Health Ombudsman’. 18 Office of the Health Ombudsman, ‘Meet the Health Ombudsman’. 19 M.W. Makgoba, ‘The South African Medical Research Council: Africanizing Health

Research’, Nature Medicine 5 (1999), pp. 367–370. 20 Saunderson-Meyer, ‘Eskom’s Board Chair’; B. Madondo, Hot Types: Icons, Artists and God-

Figures. (Johannesburg: Picador, 2007), pp. 115ff. 21 Office of the Health Ombudsman, ‘Meet the Health Ombudsman’. 22 W. Gumede, Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC. (Cape Town: Zebra Press,

2004), p. 294.

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Malegapuru Makgoba: An agent of transformation 23 UNAIDS, ‘The Nairobi Declaration: An African Appeal for an AIDS Vaccine’. (2000).

Accessed April 2020, http://data.unaids.org/publications/irc-pub05/jc469-nairobideclar_ en.pdf. 24 PubMed, ‘Durban Declaration on HIV and AIDS’. (2000) Accessed April 2020, https://www.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12170978. 25 Office of the Health Ombudsman, ‘Meet the Health Ombudsman’. 26 S. Ngubane, ‘New Post for Former UKZN Head’, IOL, 12 May 2016. Accessed April 2020,

https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/new-post-for-former-ukzn-head-2020928. 27 K. De Freytas-Tamura, ‘94 Psychiatric Patients in South Africa Died of Negligence,

Report Finds’, New York Times, 2 February 2017. Accessed April 2020, https://www.nytimes. com/2017/02/02/world/africa/south-africa-mental-health-patients.html. 28 De Freytas-Tamura, ’94 Psychiatric Patients’. 29 A. Mthethwa, ‘SA “Riddled with Mental Health Issues – and We Live in Denial”  ’,

Daily Maverick 29 March 2019. Accessed April 2020, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/ article/2019-03-29-sa-riddled-with-mental-health-issues-and-we-live-in-denial/. 30 The Presidency, ‘National Orders Booklet’ (2013). Accessed July 2020, http://www.

thepresidency.gov.za/content/national-orders-booklet-2013. 31  IOL, ‘Professor Malegapuru Makgoba appointed Eskom Interim Chair’, 15 January 2020.

Accessed July 2020, https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/professor-malegapuru-makgobaappointed-eskom-interim-chair-40645808.

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Naledi Pandor: A life of continuous learning Thobekile Zikhali

b. 1953

Grace Naledi Mandisa Pandor has taken on a wide range of parliamentary roles since she was first appointed to Parliament in 1994. She has served as the ANC caucus whip and the National Council of Provinces chairperson. She was part of the Portfolio Committee on Education, and has been part of the ANC national executive committee since 2002. She has been in Cabinet since 2004 and, on several occasions, has served as acting president, but she is clearly more interested in the work than in the status. She likes to do her own shopping at Pick n Pay, and she regularly gives her bodyguards the slip to walk alone on the beach.1 Considering her family background, Pandor’s academic and political career is not a surprise. Her father, Joe Matthews, and grandfather, Z.K. Matthews, were both academics and political activists. Her grandfather was involved in the drafting of the Freedom Charter, and both her father and grandfather were amongst the 156 political activists who were charged in the 1956 Treason Trial.2 In 1982, she converted to Islam and married Sharif Joseph Pandor, and was given the Muslim name Nadia. Although her family were staunch Christians, they accepted her marrying a Muslim. ‘I think the values in both Christianity and Islam are very closely related,’ she says, ‘but there are aspects that are stressed in Islam that resonated with me, such as aspects of haram [forbidden].’3 The couple has four children, namely Aisha, Suraya, Haroon and Fazlur, and – to date – three grandchildren. Pandor has held several ministerial positions including minister of higher education and training (2018–2019), minister of science and technology (2014–2018), minister of home affairs (2012–2014), minister of science and technology (2009–2012), and minister of education (2004–2009).

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As minister of science and technology, Pandor played an influential role in securing the right to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Project4 in the Karoo, stating: I recall when I was being reminded that I must pay more attention to science in agriculture than to astronomy science, I refused to get off the path of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA)…we now see with the young people we have here that indeed science – astronomy – can change communities, can change lives, can create opportunity, and can build new human capital in areas never imagined.5 SKA has also given bursaries to several students in the field of science, technology and mathematics. This has brought hope to previously marginalised students in small communities like Carnarvon in Northern Cape.6 In May 2019, Naledi Pandor appointed a ministerial task team to assist in fighting genderbased violence and sexual harassment at South African universities. As a result, the Department of Education and Training produced a gender-based violence policy framework that has been shared for public comment.7 Commenting on this initiative, she said: ‘Addressing sexual harassment and gender-based harm decisively will allow for a focus on “fundamental academic questions” and restore “academic cultures that respect freedom and citizenship of all”.’8 The contributions of Pandor to the ongoing concerns about gender-based violence and sexual harassment are timely in a society in which freedom is limited by a culture of rape and violence. Most of Pandor’s education has been outside of South Africa, in Botswana and abroad in exile. She has studied and taught at numerous universities not only in South Africa, but also across the continent, as well as abroad in the USA and the UK. At the age of 61, she enrolled at the University of Pretoria to do a PhD in education. The topic of her thesis was ‘The contested meaning of transformation in higher education in post-apartheid South Africa’. What stands out about Naledi Pandor is her humbleness. As her supervisor for her doctoral studies, she chose Professor Chika Sehoole, who had been a chief director in her department when she was minister of education from 2004 to 2009. About their academic relationship, Sehoole says: After I agreed to be her supervisor, she said, ‘From now onwards you must call me Naledi and I will call you my professor. You are my professor and I’m your student. This is how it’s going to be from now on.’ The ministers are revered and when they step into a room everything comes to a standstill. Now, here is a minister asking me to call her by name. She was so humble and willing to learn. She always inquired and asked for guidance.9 On graduating, Pandor stated that she is ‘a firm advocate of continuous learning’,10 which is borne out by her undertaking a PhD in her sixties, while working full time as a Cabinet minister. Pandor’s achievement encourages older people not to be afraid of pursuing their dreams.

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When asked about her choice of education as the field of study for her PhD, Pandor explained: ‘It is the discipline I have always had an interest in understanding further. I am a teacher by early training and am fascinated by education. I learnt that there is a vast amount of absolutely fascinating education information that we need to tap into much more than we do today.’11 Her dedication to learning resonates with John F.  Kennedy’s statement that ‘Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other’.12 As a leader, she is indeed leading by example. Pandor’s passion for education has played out in her long history of working in the field. She taught in London at Ernest Bevin School, at the University of Cape Town and in Botswana. She lectured at the University of Bophuthatswana (now known as North-West University) and Taung College of Education, also in North West. In 2000 she was the chancellor of Cape Technikon and a council member of the University of Fort Hare. Before that, she was part of the Tertiary Education Fund of South Africa (TEFSA) as both a deputy chairperson and chairperson. Naledi Pandor is currently the minister of international relations and co-operation, having inherited a portfolio ‘that has been demoralised by several major foreign policy failures’.13 This is ‘an important position [that] requires someone who has gravitas’.14 But commentators believe she is up to the task because ‘she is a widely respected politician with excellent academic and political credentials – she is, after all, the granddaughter of the legendary Dr Z.K. Matthews’.15 Finally, Naledi Pandor is one of a handful of politicians who emerge after long-standing public service with intact reputations. Notes 1 P. Govender, ‘Humble and Willing to Learn: Naledi Pandor is Leading by Example’, Sunday

Times 19 May 2019. Accessed 25 June 2020, https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/ news/2019-05-19-humble-and-willing-to-learn-naledi-pandor-is-leading-by-example/. 2 The Treason Trial was the arrest in Johannesburg of 156 anti-apartheid activists,

including Nelson Mandela, who were accused of criminal disloyalty against the state. 3 Govender, ‘Humble and Willing to Learn’. 4 The SKA project is ‘an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope,

with a square kilometre (one million square metres) of collecting area’ (see http://www.ska. ac.za/about/the-project/). 5 eNCA, ‘Pandor Reveals First Section of MeerKAT Telescope’, 16 July 2016. Accessed May

2019, https://www.enca.com/technology/pando-unveils-meerkat-telescope. 6 eNCA, ‘Pandor Reveals First Section of MeerKAT Telescope’. 7 C. Retief, ‘Naledi Pandor Appoints Task Team to Tackle Gender-Based Violence, Sexual

Harassment on Campuses’, Daily Maverick 27 May 2019. Accessed June 2019, https://www. dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-05-27-naledi-pandor-appoints-task-team-to-tacklegender-based-violence-sexual-harassment-on-campuses/. 8  South African Government News Agency ‘Task Team to Advise on Sexual Harassment in

Universities’, 28 May 2019. Accessed June 2019, https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/ task-team-advise-sexual-harassment-universities. 9 Govender, ‘Humble and Willing to Learn’.

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Naledi Pandor: A life of continuous learning 10  University of Pretoria News, ‘Minister of Higher Education and Training Naledi Pandor

Gets PhD from UP’, 16 April 2019. Accessed May 2019, https://www.up.ac.za/news/ post_2804162-minister-of-higher-education-and-training-naledi-pandor-gets-phd-fromup. 11  University of Pretoria News, ‘Minister of Higher Education and Training Naledi Pandor

Gets PhD’. 12 See https://humanities.blogs.ie.edu/2008/02/leadership-and-learning-are-indispensable-to-

each-other-jfk.html. 13  Mail & Guardian, ‘Cabinet Report Cards 2019’. Accessed 24 June 2020, https://cabinet.

mg.co.za/naledi-pandor/. 14 K. Mokgatlhe, ‘Pandor Is Just the Right Person for Diplomatic Duties’, Mail & Guardian

6 June 2019. Accessed 24 June 2020, https://mg.co.za/article/2019-06-06-00-pandor-is-justthe-right-person-for-diplomatic-duties/. 15 Mokgatlhe, ‘Pandor Is Just the Right Person’.

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PART PART44

Organic Public Intellectuals Organic Public Intellectuals

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Organic public intellectuals: Introduction

Introduction Vasu Reddy

‘Organic intellectuals’ is a category often elided in discussions about public intellectuals. Its foundational ideas originate with Antonio Gramsci,1 who built on Marxist dialectical revolutionary theory of industrial capitalism as responsible for the social polarisation that creates ‘worker’ and ‘capitalist’ classes leading to personal, social and economic behaviours that shape the architecture of society, and socio-historical relations. A major effect of capitalism, following Marx, is the exploitation of workers in order to maximise profits. Gramsci takes these ideas further, with a stronger emphasis on culture. Gramsci believed that ideas were not simply factors of production, but had the force of causal and political effect. In other words, he was interested in the role the intellectual played in interpreting the relationship between the base (the economic foundations of society which are the forces and relations of production) and its connection to the superstructure (the ideological structures and values such as religion, family and politics that influence the way people behave). In Gramsci’s terms, intellectual activity is important because it can help us understand how social relations produce wealth, and by extension, also knowledge and ideas. For Gramsci, all people are intellectuals who, irrespective of their social class, are products of historical and political contexts. Intellectuals in the Gramscian model are fundamentally social agents who organise culture (such as scholars and artists) or who may be functionaries with technical and directive capacities (such as administrators, bureaucrats, industrial managers and politicians). Intellectuals, in his view, have a status that is recognised as a consequence of accumulated ideas and theoretical abstraction (such as lawyers, doctors, teachers, philosophers, mathematicians, and so on). Of course, intellectuals are much more than specialised professionals. When Gramsci wrote about intellectuals he was not referring solely to academics and the professional strata, though he recognised that they have a role to play in broader society. His conceptualisation differed in that he recognised a new strata of intellectuals representing the rich diversity of society in ways that had much to do with their class of origin. Organic and traditional intellectuals in the Gramscian framework come into being because of shifts,

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changes and transformations in culture and, as a result, they do not always remain organically linked to their class of origin. This is a point Bhabha emphasises: I want to take my stand on the shifting margins of cultural displacement – that confounds any profound or ‘authentic’ sense of a ‘national’ culture or an ‘organic’ intellectual – and ask what the function of a committed theoretical perspective might be, once the cultural and historical hybridity of the postcolonial world is taken as the paradigmatic place of departure.2 According to Gramsci, ‘intellectuals must be understood not as those strata commonly described by this term, but in general the entire social stratum which exercises an organisational function in the wide sense whether in the field of production, or in that of culture, or in that of political administration’.3 He sought to conceive the organisation of labour in its broadest dimensions. A worker, for example, does not merely perform manual labour, and similarly, the capitalist’s labour is not limited to the exercise of power and hiring practices; mental labour is central to the identity of both worker and capitalist, and by extension therefore, intellectual labour too. It is in this sense that Gramsci purports that ‘all men are intellectuals…but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals’.4 One of the key distinctions he draws is that between traditional and organic intellectuals. Traditional intellectuals usually represent a class of people not directly connected to the base (the economic structure of society) but perhaps more dominantly to the superstructure (ideology), such as the clergy, and who are organically connected to the ruling aristocracy as well as philosophers, who form part of a historical intellectual tradition because they constitute a governing elite, and who in Gramsci’s view are agents of a dominant group.5 Traditional intellectuals have specialised roles and to an extent a stable socio-economic status, and are to a degree also partisan in that they represent a dominant social order. For Gramsci, the value of the organic intellectual is that they interpret and intervene in complex social problems within hegemonic conceptions of the world. Organic intellectuals are instrumental in particular class struggles; it is they who fulfil the technical and organisational needs that are more directly linked to the dominant mode of production: Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields. The capitalist entrepreneur creates alongside himself the industrial technician – the specialist in political economy, the organizers of a new culture, of a new legal system, etc. It should be noted that the entrepreneur himself represents a higher level of social elaboration, already characterised by a certain directive and technical (i.e. intellectual) capacity: he must have a certain technical capacity not only in the limited sphere of his activity and initiative

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but in other spheres as well, at least in those which are closest to economic production. He must be an organiser of masses of men; he must be an organiser of the ‘confidence’ of investors in his business, of the customers for his product, etc.6 In other words, Gramsci’s ideal of the organic intellectual is one who is the hegemon (representing class alliance) of the people, leading them to new ways of conceiving life that challenges hegemonic power (dominant economic and political leadership) while the traditional intellectual is representative of dominant and ruling elites. Organic intellectuals are those individuals (revolutionary, militant and in the service of the subaltern) who emerge in response to political pressures and attend to, in their labour, the contradictions and tensions prevalent in marginalised and oppressed groups. It would seem that organicity emanates from a commitment to and active participation in the formulation of ideas that enable political actions that are counter-hegemonic. In this section we frame key individuals who are by no means fully representative of this category, but who offer, through their writing, action and thought, a body of knowledge in various domains that are not exclusive to this section of the volume: critical solidarity (Heyns); language rights and multilingualism (Alexander); moral liberation (Jordan); incarceration (Cronin); gender, sexuality, HIV and social justice (Achmat, Sisulu); youth struggles (Nxumalo); policy changes (Netshithenzhe); visual activism (Zapiro); environmental justice (Naidoo); land reform (Plaatje); law and justice (Goldstone, Mokgoro and Ngcobo); media freedom (Nakasa); witness to history (Pogrund, Qoboza). It is possible that our readers may ascribe other domains that better describe their thinking and association to particular struggles. The organic public intellectuals included here have been grouped in sub-categories based on the role they played in articulating key ideas or drawing attention to significant issues as journalists (Sol Plaatje, Benjamin Pogrund, Nat Nakasa and Percy Qoboza); as cartoonist (Zapiro); as theologian (Johan Heyns); as judges (Richard Goldstone, Yvonne Mokgoro and Sandile Ngcobo); as leading figures linked to sectors of the liberation movement (Neville Alexander, Pallo Jordan, Jeremy Cronin, Jabulani ‘Mzala’ Nxumalo and Joel Netshitenzhe) and as social activists (Elinor Sisulu, Zackie Achmat and Kumi Naidoo). Notes 1 A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Q. Hoare and

G.N. Smith (London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd, 1971). 2 H.K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 21. 3 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 97. 4 Gramsci Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 9. 5 Gramsci Selections from the Prison Notebooks. 6 Gramsci Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 10.

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Solomon Plaatje: Confronting native life in South Africa Gavaza Maluleke

1876–1932

Solomon ‘Sol’ Tshekiso Plaatje (1876–1932) is celebrated as one of South Africa’s most accomplished political and literary figures. A pioneer in the history of the black press, he was the editor of several newspapers, and one of the founders of the ANC in 1912, and he twice travelled overseas to represent the interests of his people.1 Sol Plaatje was born on 9 October 1876 on Boskop farm in the Boshof district in what was then the Orange River Colony and is today the Free State. He was the fourteenth child of Kethanecwe Botsingwe and her husband, Kushumane Johannes Plaatje Mogodi.2 Around 1886, Plaatje’s parents converted to Christianity soon after coming into contact with Berlin missionaries in Philippolis. By then he had been instructed in Tswana history and language by his mother and grandmother.3 He attended the primary school at the Pniel mission station near Barkly West, which was run by the Reverend G.E. Westphal of the Lutheran Berlin Mission Society. At 13 years of age, he completed Standard four (today Grade six), which was as far as the school could take him, and then for the next three years worked as a pupil-teacher while receiving private lessons from Reverend Westphal and his wife.4 In 1894, at the age of 18, Plaatje moved to Kimberley and started working as a postman for the Kimberley Post Office while studying privately. He soon obtained his Cape civil service certificate in typewriting, Dutch and several other languages, heading the list of successful candidates in each case. Fluent in eight languages and with a working knowledge of several more, he started working as a court interpreter in the court of summary jurisdiction, and as a magistrate’s clerk for the British authorities during the  Siege of Mafeking. Plaatje became confidential clerk to Mr C.G.H. Bell, who administered native affairs during the siege, and drew up weekly reports on the ‘native situation’.5 His diary of this period was published posthumously.6 In 1898 he married Elizabeth M’belle, a school teacher. They had two girls and three boys.

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After the war, he launched and edited two successive newspapers, Koranta ea Becoana (Bechuana Gazette) and Tsala ea Becoana (The Friend of the Bechuana), both published in Setswana and English.7 With this format, he was able to reach the country’s small minority of missioneducated Africans, giving this group a voice while exposing them to current affairs. As a result, the newspapers confronted unjust laws and racial discrimination in the Cape Colony, and later the Union of South Africa. He did not confine his writing to a black audience, however; he also wrote very widely in English-medium newspapers like the Diamond Fields Advertiser and The Star in an attempt to educate their white readerships about black experiences and perspectives.8 He was described as follows in an editorial in an edition of the Pretoria News in 1910: Had it not been for the colour bar, Mr Plaatje, in all probability, would have been holding an important position in the Department of Native Affairs…He is devoted to his own people, and notes with ever-increasing regret the lack of understanding and knowledge of those people, which is so palpable in the vast majority of the letters and leading articles written on the native question. As an educated native with liberal ideas he rather resents the power and authority of the uneducated native chiefs who govern by virtue of their birth alone, and he writes and speaks for an entirely new school of native thought. The opinion of such a man ought to carry weight when native affairs are being discussed…It is in the hope of enlightening an otherwise barren controversy that we shall publish from time to time Mr. Plaatje’s letters, commending them always to the more thoughtful and practical of our readers.9 Plaatje’s work as a journalist brought him to the public’s attention, which led to his selection as the general secretary of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) which later became the ANC.  The SANNC was a response to the white-dominated Union of 1910, and it united Africans across tribal, regional and language divisions. Plaatje became one of the international representatives of the congress, travelling to England to campaign against the Natives Land Act of 1913.10 Although the delegation was unsuccessful, he also used his time in England to produce several books, including the well-known Native Life in South Africa: Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion (1916), which covered his reason for having travelled to England. The book is an angry condemnation of the Natives Land Act with the first sentence in the book perhaps being one of the hardest-hitting political statements in South African history:  Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African Native found himself, not a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth.11 The Birmingham Post stated at the time that this was ‘a book which makes the native agitation intelligible and may conceivably have an influence on future events in South Africa’; South Africa felt that ‘it is all to the good that South African publicists should have the advantage of reading the opinions of a native observer when dealing with legislation affecting his race’; while the Yorkshire Observer saw the book as ‘really interesting, and will come as a great surprise to

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many English people who know little about the South African Native as an educated, thinking human being, and will certainly excite sympathy with his precarious state under colonial laws’.12 Plaatje was very persuasive in certain circles. In 1910, he visited Abraham Fischer and obtained a promise from him to introduce a Bill into the Parliament of the Orange River Colony that would ameliorate the position of the ‘natives’ in the colony, who were denied ownership of land.13 He befriended the white advocate and government minister Henry Burton, who proved to be an instrumental ally to Plaatje. He also made links with several members of the British suffragette and Christian brotherhood movements, and it was through their help that Plaatje was able to convince the British public that a crisis was taking place in South Africa.14 Even with his influence and his ability to secure the sympathy of people in power, Plaatje could not manage to change the British colonial tradition of supporting racial oppression and segregation. He used his sojourn in England to publish two more books in his home language: Sechana Proverbs with Literal Translations and their European Equivalents/ Diane tsa Secoana le maele a sekgooa a a Dumalanang naco (1916) and, with Daniel Jones of London University, A Sechuana Reader: An International Orthography with English Translations.15 After his return to South Africa he focused attention on the establishment of the Brotherhood movement in Kimberley, as well as the creation of a ‘Native Institute’. The Brotherhood movement aimed at the establishment of an ‘organic, Christian society that effectively diffused class conflict’, while the Institute was to function as a meeting place for members of the movement.16 In 1918, he persuaded the De Beers Mining Company to donate an old tram shed and funding to renovate it for use as a meeting place for the Brotherhood and the Institute. The opening ceremony of what became known as the Brotherhood Institute was attended by the governor general of South Africa, Viscount Sydney Lord Buxton.17 In 1919 he was back in Britain on a second deputation to once again challenge the Native Land Act, only this time he travelled to France with Josiah Gumede and Selopa Thema to attend the Versailles Peace Conference. This visit was also deemed unsuccessful, so he then travelled to Canada and the United States of America where he gave talks on the experiences of the ‘natives’ in South Africa.18 While there, he wrote and published The Mote and the Beam: An Epic of SexRelationship ’twixt White and Black in British South Africa (1921), in which he exposes the hypocrisy of white miscegenation with the story of a female domestic worker.19 Although both campaigns in London were unsuccessful, they laid the foundation for the later anti-apartheid movement. Plaatje returned from his travels dejected by the failure of the campaigns to enact change and, having slowly accumulated debt, he resumed his journalism. He travelled across the country showing films to African audiences, who had never seen such technology before, highlighting the progress that had been made by African Americans in politics and education in an effort to educate and connect people. However, in a rapidly urbanising and industrialising South Africa, Plaatje’s messages of educational self-help and moral improvement no longer resonated.20 Nevertheless, his writings on events in South Africa

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reached a wide audience, as indicated by the following excerpt from an article he wrote in 1919 for the London-based African World: During the past year or so Mr. Msane became very unpopular among the younger native workers on the Reef. The cause was rather extraordinary. A small band of white men, the Industrial Workers of the World, boldly and openly sympathised with the natives in the long hours they have to work and on the niggardly pay as well as the bad housing conditions on the Witwatersrand. Naturally, their programme appealed to the native labourers.21 Plaatje focused on themes that drew attention to the plight of black workers and black Africans in general, including a newspaper article with a graphic description of the wretched conditions of Lichtenburg miners, published in the Daily Dispatch on 7 May 1927, and a critique of the Native Service Contract Bill, which he described as aimed at making farm labourers ‘virtually’ the property of ‘the European landowner’ and an attempt to extend the ‘tot’ system of farm-worker payment to remove ‘any obligation to pay African labourers’, in a series of articles published in Ikwizi le Afrika on 9  January 1932, and Umteteli wa Bantu on 9  January, 13  February and 27 February 1932.22 He also participated in actions in support of workers, such as the evidence he provided to the Native Economic Commission of 1931 that focused on workers and the landless. He told the all-white commissioners that even urban Africans in regular employment had ‘no money at all’ in times of poor harvests. He drew attention to the situation of diamond labourers, whom he saw as being driven by white diggers to become ‘wanderers…content to do casual jobs…for the price of “a bellyfull of skoff”’. Plaatje informed the Commission about the effects of the Great Depression on black South Africans, and pointed out that many black people naturally sought higher wages than those offered on farms. He urged the commissioners to recommend a minimum wage for black Africans, and made a plea for aged ex-workers on the mines and phthisis victims to receive land compensation.23 Besides editing and writing much for English, Afrikaans, Setswana, isiXhosa and Sesotho newspapers, he produced political works, and his first novel in English, Mhudi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago,24 which was written over 1919 and 1920, was published at Lovedale. It was the first English-language novel published by a black South African, and addresses the social issues of alcohol prohibition and the oppression of black workers on the diamond fields. Mhudi also captured Plaatje’s fascination with African history, folklore and proverbs that paid homage to Setswana culture and oral tradition – knowledge gained from his mother, grandmother and aunts. In his later years, he worked on various publications and authored the book Diposho-posho, which was published in 1930. He also wrote Mabolelo a ga Tsikinya-Chaka: The Sayings of William Shakespeare in 1935, and made several translations of Shakespeare’s plays into Setswana: The Comedy of Errors and Julius Caesar were published posthumously, in 1937. His other two Shakespeare translations, and ‘Monkey Voodoo’ (a selection of Sechuana folktales), were not published.

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Several assessments have been made of Plaatje’s literary and political contribution. The Bantu World of 1932 saw him as a ‘thorn in the flesh of the oppressors and exploiters’.25 In one view, he ‘tried to articulate the views of “voiceless” Africans. This reflected not just his opinions but also the undercurrent of movements and ideas integral to the ANC and the diverse social classes supporting it.’26 Others saw him ‘as the spokesman par excellence in new arenas’ for a wide ‘African social spectrum’ as both ‘an articulate writer and public speaker’ which talents he used to publicise in any possible situation the plight of his people.27 He died of pneumonia in Pimville, Johannesburg, on 19 June 1932, during a visit there, and was buried in Kimberley. He was awarded an honorary doctorate posthumously by the University of the North West in 1998, and several schools and buildings of the national education department are named after him. Both his Kimberley home and his grave are national monuments; his role as a South African wartime author has been honoured by postage stamps; and several films have been made about him.28 In recent years, South Africa has honoured Sol Plaatje’s memory by opening a university named after him in his hometown of Kimberley, not far from his house at 32 Angel Street. For a man who treasured education and learning so profoundly, there is no greater honour than this. Notes 1 B. Willan, Sol Plaatje: A Life of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje, 1876–1932 (Johannesburg: Jacana

Media, 2018); B. Willan, Sol Plaatje: A Biography (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1984); Jacana Media, ‘Celebrating One of South Africa’s Most Accomplished Political and Literary Figures’ (2018). Accessed May 2019, https://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/biography-amemoir/sol-plaatje-a-life-of-solomon-tshekisho-plaatje-1876-1932-detail. 2 Willan, Sol Plaatje; The Journalist, ‘Sol Plaatje: 1876 to 1932’, 27 January 2016. Accessed

June 2019, http://www.thejournalist.org.za/pioneers/sol-plaatje-1876-to-1932. 3 Willan, Sol Plaatje; J. Starfied, The Lore and the Proverbs: Sol Plaatje as Historian. African

Studies Institute Seminar Paper, University of the Witwatersrand, 26 August 1991, p. 1. 4 Willan, Sol Plaatje; Editorial, ‘Pretoria News, September 1910’ in S.T. Plaatje, Native Life

in South Africa: Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion, third edition (London: P.S. King & Son Ltd, 1916), p. 9. 5 Willan, Sol Plaatje; Editorial, ‘Pretoria News, September 1910’, p. 10. 6 S.T. Plaatje, The Mafeking Diary of Sol T. Plaatje, edited by J. Comaroff and B. Willan,

centenary edition (Cape Town: David Philip, 1999). 7 P. Limb, ‘Sol Plaatje Reconsidered: Rethinking Plaatje’s Attitudes to Class, Nation,

Gender, and Empire 1’, African Studies 62:1 (2003), p. 33–52. 8 P. Rule, ‘Remembering Sol Plaatje as South Africa’s Original Public Educator’, The

Conversation, 5 October 2016. Accessed June 2019, https://theconversation.com/ remembering-sol-plaatje-as-south-africas-original-public-educator-65979. 9 Editorial, ‘Pretoria News, September 1910’, p. 10. 10 Willan, Sol Plaatje. 11 S.T. Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa: Before and Since the European War and the Boer

Rebellion, third edition (London: P.S. King & Son Ltd, 1916), p. 17.

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12 Cited in Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa, pp. 528–530. 13 Editorial, ‘Pretoria News, September 1910’, p. 10. 14 M. Blackman, ‘A New Biography Gives the Real Sol Plaatje’, Mail & Guardian 20 September

2018. Accessed May 2019, https://mg.co.za/article/2018-09-28-00-a-new-biography-givesthe-real-sol-plaatje. 15 Limb, ‘Sol Plaatje Reconsidered’, p. 34. 16 B. Willan, ‘Sol Plaatje, De Beers and an Old Tram Shed: Class Relations and Social

Control in a South African Town, 1918–1919’, Journal of Southern African Studies 4:2 (1978), p. 214. 17 Willan, ‘Sol Plaatje, De Beers and an Old Tram Shed’. 18 Willan, Sol Plaatje. 19 S.T. Plaatje, The Mote and the Beam (New York: Youngs, 1921), pp. 86–91. 20 Rule, ‘Remembering Sol Plaatje’. 21 S.T. Plaatje, ‘Mr Saul Msane: Death of a Rand Native Leader’, African World 25 October

1919. Cited in Willan, ‘Sol Plaatje, De Beers and an Old Tram Shed’, p. 207. 22 Refer to Limb, ‘Sol Plaatje Reconsidered’, p. 44. 23 Refer to Limb, ‘Sol Plaatje Reconsidered’, p. 44. 24 S.T. Plaatje, Mhudi: An Epic of South African Life a Hundred Years Ago (Lovedale: Lovedale

Press, 1930). 25 Cited in Limb, ‘Sol Plaatje Reconsidered’, p. 42. 26 Limb, ‘Sol Plaatje Reconsidered’, p. 46. 27 T. Couzens and B. Willan, ‘Solomon T. Plaatje 1876–1932: An Introduction’, English in

Africa 3:2 (1976), pp. 1–2. 28 Limb, ‘Sol Plaatje Reconsidered’, p. 47.

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Benjamin Pogrund: White witness of township life Gregory Houston

b. 1933

Acclaimed South African–born journalist and author Benjamin Pogrund is widely known for covering the lives of black South Africans, including the Sharpeville massacre and the views of African leaders on political issues, and reporting on conditions in white prisons.1 He is described in his police file as ‘one of the strongest and most effective critics of the South African government’.2 Born in Cape  Town, Pogrund is the son of orthodox Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. He obtained a Master of Arts and a Bachelor of Social Sciences degree from the University of Cape  Town between 1950 and 1956, and a Bachelor of Arts in African studies from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1971. He worked from 1958 to 1985 for the Rand Daily Mail in a number of capacities, including as African affairs reporter, night editor and deputy editor. Pogrund, who was a liberal at the time, resigned from the Liberal Party shortly before he began working for the Mail. Pogrund was one of the Mail’s reporters who was instrumental in making it the only Englishlanguage newspaper in South Africa that aggressively stood against apartheid. His articles on South Africa also appeared in newspapers such as the Boston Globe, The Economist, Today, the New Republic, and the Sunday Times of London. He also published several books, including a biography of Robert Sobukwe, and a book on the history of the Rand Daily Mail. Pogrund experienced imprisonment, was harassed by members of the South African security forces and was spied upon by some of his colleagues. He left South Africa for London in 1986, after the closure of the Mail in 1985, and worked for several newspapers. He moved to the United States in the 1990s, where he lived for a short while before settling in Israel, where, in 1997, he established the Yakar Centre for Social Concern, which strived to promote harmonious Israeli– Arab relations.3

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Pogrund reported on many important political and social events in the African townships and in South Africa in general, and was known to almost all the crucial black figures in the country for many years. As he stated: ‘The scope of my beat, covering black existence, grew apace, spreading from the Johannesburg area to the rural “reserves” for blacks, plus the three territories then under British colonial rule that adjoined South Africa.’4 At the time when Pogrund began reporting on issues affecting Africans regularly in the Rand Daily Mail in 1958, most of what occurred in the townships and tribal ‘homelands’, where most African people lived, was ignored by the country’s mainstream white-run press. He thus had many ‘scoops’. For instance, one of his major scoops was his report that Nelson Mandela believed that it was futile to talk about non-violence in light of the South African government’s recalcitrant use of force and intimidation. In 1961, Mandela told him that the ANC, discouraged by the failure of its peaceful general strike against the declaration of a Republic in that year, might take up armed struggle.5 Among the most significant scoops was his reporting on the Sharpeville massacre. He was in the township on that Monday, 21 March 1960, when supporters of the Pan Africanist Congress marched to the police station in protest against the pass laws. When the police fired on the crowd using live rounds, killing 69 and wounding 158 people, the majority were shot in the back. Pogrund’s articles gave a vivid account of the events as they actually happened, which was not the way that the police wanted them to be reported. At times, his forthright reporting got him into more serious trouble than usual. In July 1961, he was jailed for eight days when he refused to give the police the name of a source he had used for a story revealing that the ‘dastardly plot’ to disrupt a public holiday that the police had uncovered was in fact a joke. He was released on appeal only after the source had given Pogrund’s lawyer permission to reveal his name. Pogrund was able to write these stories because he had credibility among black people, including enjoying the confidence of Robert Sobukwe and Nelson Mandela. He was able to write what none of the readers of a white-owned newspaper with an overwhelmingly Englishspeaking readership was ready to read, much less believe – that the liberation movements were already making plans to bring about the end of apartheid. Pogrund was responsible for covering the stories of about 70 per cent of South Africa’s population, as well as the majority of people living in present-day Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland.6 He also had credibility with whites who participated in the struggle against apartheid, which was evident in the Rand Daily Mail’s exposure of prison conditions in South Africa.7 The details of conditions in the prisons that appeared in a series of articles in 1965 were drawn from interviews Pogrund conducted with Harold Strachan, who had been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in 1962 for conspiring to carry out acts of sabotage after attempting to blow up a small electrical sub-station in Port Elizabeth. Excerpts from the articles were later published in a journal article.8 Strachan informed Pogrund first about the Port Elizabeth North End prison for whites, where prisoners were required to wash and brush their teeth using water from the toilets in the cells. The prisoners were not allowed to use one bathroom because it was kept clean for inspection purposes only. They showered twice a week using cold water in a smaller shower. The thin and worn-out blankets were covered in semen and smelt of sweat. Strachan

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then provided Pogrund with an account of the conditions in Pretoria Central Prison and what he had witnessed of the treatment of black prisoners in Pretoria Local Prison from the window of his cell. He spoke about acts of torture, constant beatings of prisoners, and between 60 and 80 prisoners at a time standing naked in the hospital yard under his window, waiting to be examined by a doctor. The publication of the articles led to the so-called Prisons Trials, in which Pogrund and the editor of the Mail, Laurence Gandar, were brought to trial. Pogrund and Gandar were found guilty under section 44(F) of the Prisons Act for publishing information about prisons that was false because they had not taken reasonable steps to verify the information. Gandar was given a fine of R100 or three months on each of two counts, while Pogrund was given a three-month suspended sentence on each of the two counts. By this time Pogrund had been marked for harassment by the apartheid security forces. Two years later, on 29  November 1971, Pogrund was charged with theft and possession of documents that were banned under the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950. He was working on a PhD on South African nationalism, and had in his possession documents that were 20 years old and had been recently banned, and some notes on the ANC.9 He reveals in his book on the history of the Mail, War of Words: Memoir of a South African Journalist, that several people working at the newspaper were spying on him, while the security police had placed microphones in the offices. Pogrund, like all reporters dealing with similar topics, also had to deal with the draconian press restrictions.10 Pogrund’s Memoir is one among two of his well-known works. He is probably best known in South Africa for his biography of Robert Sobukwe, which includes quite a bit of his own biographical detail, including his relationship with Sobukwe, whom he had met in 1957. Pogrund is a recipient of the 2005–2006 Dr Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award. He was awarded the National Order of Ikhamanga in Silver, which was bestowed on him on 25 April 2019 ‘for his excellent contribution to the field of journalism and to scholarship on the liberation struggle. His informative writing shone the light on our country during some of the darkest days in our history. He defied those who would deceive the world.’11 Notes 1 Centre for Research Libraries, The Benjamin Pogrund Collection of Southern African

Materials, (n.d.). Accessed November 2018, https://www.crl.edu/sites/default/files/d6/ attachments/pages/pogrund.pdf. 2 V. Belling, ‘The Price They Paid: A Bibliographical Survey of the Memoirs of the Jews in

the Struggle for Democracy and Human Rights in South Africa’. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Convention of the Association of Jewish Libraries, Denver, CO, 23–26 June 2002, p. 7. 3 Centre for Research Libraries, The Benjamin Pogrund Collection; Belling, ‘The Price

They Paid’, p. 7. 4 Cited in D.G. McNeil Jr, ‘Fear and Surprise’, The New York Times 11 February 2001.

Accessed June 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/11/books/fear-and-surprise.html.

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Benjamin Pogrund: White witness of township life

5 D. Cruywagen, ‘A Story of Courage in South African Journalism’, Nieman Reports 54:3

(2000), p. 78; McNeil Jr, ‘Fear and Surprise’. 6 Cruywagen, ‘A Story of Courage’, p. 78; McNeil Jr, ‘Fear and Surprise’. 7 Cruywagen, ‘A Story of Courage’, p. 78. 8 H. Strachan, ‘Behind Apartheid Bars’, Africa Today 12:6 (1965), pp. 5–7. 9 K. Martin, Chronology of Some Pointers to the History of the Media in South Africa (O’Malley

Archives, 1997). Accessed November 2018, https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/ index.php/site/q/03lv02167/04lv02264/05lv02303/06lv02329/07lv02330.htm. 10 B. Pogrund, War of Words: Memoir of a South African Journalist (New York: Seven Stories

Press, 2000). 11 South African Government, ‘Director-General Cassius Lubisi Announces 2019 National

Orders Recipients’ (2 April 2019). Accessed July 2020, https://www.gov.za/af/node/788179.

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Nat Nakasa: A courageous journalist Gavaza Maluleke

1937–1965

Ndazana Nathaniel ‘Nat’ Nakasa was young when he died; at 28 he was no longer a boy, but also not yet a man. He was in the process of becoming. Nakasa fell to his death on 14 July 1965 by jumping from a window of a high-rise building in New York. He had travelled to the United States on an exit permit, as a recipient of the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 1964. He had applied for a passport, but the apartheid government refused to give him one so an exit permit was the only option.1 In his own words, in A Native of Nowhere, he writes: Sometime next week, with my exit permit in my bag, I shall cross the borders of the Republic and immediately part company with my South African citizenship… according to reliable sources, I shall be classed as a prohibited immigrant if I ever try to return to South Africa. What this means is that self-confessed Europeans are in a position to declare me, an African, a prohibited immigrant, bang on African soil. Nothing intrigues me more. And the story does not end there. Once out I shall apparently become a stateless person, a wanderer, unless I can find a country to take me in.2 After a year in the US, and with the prospect of his returning to South Africa looking slim, he committed suicide. For those who knew him, ‘his naiveté around race issues came to the fore when he reached America and found the bastion of freedom being nothing more than a seriously racist state that oppressed black people’.3 At the time, any attempts by his friends to bring him back home yielded no fruit, and thus he was buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in upstate New York.4 Nat Nakasa was born on 12 May 1937 in Chesterville, Durban, as the second of three children of Chamberlain Nakasa and his wife, Alvina Nakasa. His family had moved to Durban in the early 1930s to take their place among the small but growing urban African middle class. His mother, Alvina,

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worked as a teacher; his father, Chamberlain, as a typesetter and writer.5 Nakasa was forced by poverty to leave school in 1954 without matriculating, and started working as a messenger. This job lasted a year before he got a job making tea in the offices of the local newspaper, Ilanga (Natal Sun) published in isiZulu and English.6 Before long, he was writing stories and, after a year, he moved to Johannesburg to work for a major South African newspaper, the Post, and its sister publication, Drum. There he worked alongside a number of great journalists, such as Can Themba and Bloke Modisane.7 Nakasa became assistant editor of Drum, and founded The Classic literary magazine (with contributors ranging from Doris Lessing to Leopold Senghor). The magazine was named after the Classic Shebeen, a place Nat and his friends frequented for dancing and drinking.8 His move to Johannesburg, although great for his journalistic career, had its downside. Writing about his experiences in the article titled ‘Johannesburg, Johannesburg’, he lamented: ‘After work I often slept on a desk at the office or stayed overnight when friends invited me to dinner in their homes. This was not because of a Bohemian bent in me. Far from it. According to the law, “native” bachelors have to live in hostels in Johannesburg, ten or more strange men to a room. I chose to be a wanderer.’9 His refusal to stay in a designated township manifested as a form of defiance against the system. However, this same defiance also emerged in dealing with race issues. Hugh Masekela, an acquaintance of Nakasa while living in Johannesburg, put it like this: ‘He was the darling of the white activist community.’10 It was through his popularity with the white community, particularly liberals, that he got the opportunity to write a column for the  Rand Daily Mail, a liberal white Johannesburg newspaper – the first such column by an African. Allister Sparks, then the editorial page editor, told Nakasa that the Rand Daily Mail was looking to employ a black columnist. They felt that Nakasa’s writing would be able to convey the African experience to their readership; his was one of those rare voices that could reach across racial lines and would not alienate their white readers with radical politics.11 Some in the Drum community did not receive this ‘ability’ by Nakasa to reach across racial lines very well; journalists like Wally Serote, for example, said, ‘Nat tommed, he tommed while we were rat-racing for survival’.12 There were other views. Can Themba had this to say about Nakasa’s ‘voice’ upon his death: The bitterest commentary on South Africa is typified by Nat. All those Africans who wanted to be loyal, hardworking, intelligent citizens of the country are crowded out. They do not want to bleach themselves, but they want to participate and contribute to the wonder that the country can become. They do not want to be fossilised into tribal inventions that are no more real to them than they would have been real to their forefathers. Nat was such a voice. Sobukwe’s is that of protest and resistance. Casey Motsisi’s that of derisive laughter. Bloke Modisane’s that of implacable hatred. Ezekiel Mphahlele’s that of intellectual contempt. Nimrod Mkele’s that of patient explanation to be patient. Mine, that

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of self-corrosive cynicism. But Nat told us: ‘There must be humans on the other side of the fence; it’s only we haven’t learned how to talk.’ We replied: ‘Humans? Not enough.’13 Soon after he started his column ‘As I See It’ on the Rand Daily Mail, Nakasa was offered the scholarship to Harvard.14 Defiant again, he left on exit permit to become a wanderer in the world. Upon arrival in the US in October, Nakasa was interviewed by the Harvard Crimson and told the reporter, ‘It’s a little bewildering to have people treat you like a human being. There aren’t any policemen around asking you questions, and there aren’t any restrictions.’15 However, his positive impressions were not to last. During a trip to Harlem, while working on an article for the New York Times magazine, he got hold of a copy of the Civil Rights Movement photoessay collection The Movement. There was one picture that caught his attention: it showed the burned body of a Negro lynching victim lying on a pile of embers while a crowd of grinning white faces leered out of the darkness.16 This picture seriously upset Nat and he said: ‘I had never known such personal fear, not even in South Africa.’17 Soon after his death, Nakasa’s writings were compiled into a book  titled The World of Nat Nakasa. In 1998, the Print Media Association, the South African Nieman Alumni, and the South African National Editors’ Forum established an annual award for courageous journalism, which is named after him.18 In 2007 he was posthumously awarded the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver, a category of awards reserved for excellence in the fields of arts, culture, literature, music, journalism and sport, joining other luminaries such as Alf Kumalo and Henry Nxumalo.19 Following the quest to return the  exiled writer’s remains to South Africa, which had been ongoing since his death, in 2012 the Department of Arts and Culture sent a delegation to the United States to embark on a fact-finding mission, seeking to investigate the viability of Nakasa’s reburial on home soil. This effort was not in vain, and the Supreme Court for the State of New York granted the South African team its request for permission to exhume and repatriate Nakasa’s remains. When the process was finalised, Nakasa was buried at Heroes’ Acre in Chesterville on 13 September 2014.20 Notes 1 R.L. Brown, ‘A Native of Nowhere: The Life of South African Journalist Nat Nakasa,

1937–1965’, Kronos 37:1 (2011), p. 41; W. Marais, ‘Nat Nakasa as Existential Journalist’, PhD thesis, University of Free State, 2016. 2 N. Nakasa, The World of Nat Nakasa, edited by Essop Patel (Johannesburg: Ravan Press,

1995), p. 169. 3 T. Makube, ‘Nat Nkakasa: Writing to the Beat of a Different Drum’, Mail & Guardian

27 June 2014. Accessed June 2019, https://mg.co.za/article/2014-06-26-nat-nakasa-writingto-the-beat-of-a-different-drum. 4 Marais, ‘Nat Nakasa as Existential Journalist’, p. 77.

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5 Brown, ‘A Native of Nowhere’, p. 43; Marais, ‘Nat Nakasa as Existential Journalist’,

pp. 35–36. 6 Brown, ‘A Native of Nowhere’, p. 44; Marais, ‘Nat Nakasa as Existential Journalist’,

pp. 37–39. 7 Brown, ‘A Native of Nowhere’, p. 44; Marais, ‘Nat Nakasa as Existential Journalist’,

pp. 39–42. 8 B. Simon, ‘My Years with The Classic: A Note’, English in Africa 6:8 (1980), p. 75; Brown,

‘A Native of Nowhere’, p. 48. 9 J.D. Gerhart, ‘Nathaniel Nakasa: Silhouette’, The Harvard Crimson, 31 March 1965.

Accessed May 2019, https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1965/3/31/nathaniel-nakasa-pthefirst-time-i/. 10 Brown, ‘A Native of Nowhere’, p. 51. 11 Brown, ‘A Native of Nowhere’, p. 51; Marais, ‘Nat Nakasa as Existential Journalist’, p. 72. 12 Brown, ‘A Native of Nowhere’, p. 51. 13 C. Themba, ‘The Boy with the Tennis Racquet’, The Classic 2:1 (1966), p. 9. Accessed

July 2019, http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/index.php?inventory_enhanced/U/ Collections&c=264704/R/A2696-C. 14 Simon, ‘My Years with The Classic’, p. 76. 15 Gerhart, ‘Nathaniel Nakasa: Silhouette’. 16 Gerhart, ‘Nathaniel Nakasa: Silhouette’. 17 Gerhart, ‘Nathaniel Nakasa: Silhouette’. 18 SANEF, ‘The Nata Nakasa Award’ (n.d.). Accessed April 2020, https://sanef.org.za/awards/. 19 H.M. Acott, ‘Tactics of the Habitat: The Elusive Identity of Nat Nakasa’, MA dissertation,

University of South Africa, 2008, p. 46. 20 Marais, ‘Nat Nakasa as Existential Journalist’, p. xiii.

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Percy Qoboza: Armed with a pen Austin Pinkerton

1938–1988

When Percy Tseliso Peter Qoboza was 14, he and his family were forcibly removed from their home1 when Sophiatown was destroyed and redeveloped into the white suburb Triomf.2 His parents were devout Christians, and he had, until then, lived all his life in a tightly knit community setting, so, despite the disruption and blatant persecution, the young Qoboza decided to become a priest.3 He studied theology in Basutoland (now Lesotho) at Roma University Seminary,4 where he actively involved himself in the Young Christian Workers (YCW) organisation – a Christian cohort workers’ union.5 He frequently attended religious camps, using the platform for spirited conversation on the plight of black South Africans and current affairs.6 After two years, he abandoned his studies to care for his two younger sisters and his father, who had suffered a stroke. Working as a clerk in the Johannesburg municipality,7 Qoboza started to appreciate the injustices of apartheid’s policies, and the ignorance of the ‘good people’ that chose not to respond to it. In 1960, he left his position as a clerk to join the white English-speaking liberal Progressive Party8 – the official opposition to the ruling Afrikaner Nationalist Party. Qoboza was the only black member of the all-white group, despite the laws that prohibited black membership, and worked as an assistant and full-time organiser.9 He left the party10 to become a journalist in 1963, establishing himself as the de facto voice of black South Africans in the media. He started writing as a freelancer for The World, a whiteowned liberal publication that targeted black readers. By 1967, Qoboza was promoted to the position of news editor, and became the newspaper’s editor-in-chief in 1974.11 He would go on to establish The World as the largest daily black newspaper, documenting the tortured lived experiences of black South Africans, and criticising the government’s segregationist policies

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that had disenfranchised black South Africans. Qoboza would become revered as a vanguard of black interests, and an avowed enemy of the apartheid government.12 In 1975, Qoboza was selected for the Harvard University’s Nieman Fellowship – a prestigious and transformative academic programme offered for one year to select journalists in ‘print, broadcast, digital and audio-visual media’.13 Aubrey Sussens, the conference convenor and a fellow recipient, recognised him as a bright scholar, ‘but his easy-going personality, his integrity and, above all, his sense of humour won the day’.14 The fellowship introduced Qoboza to the Western world, one in which freedom and human dignity was afforded to all. This was a stark contrast to the inequality, subjugation and dehumanisation he experienced in South Africa, and fuelled his desire to explicate the concerns of black South Africans, through The World, to the world.15 Following the 1976 Soweto uprising, The World gave an unfettered and condemning report of the events, and published Sam Nzima’s iconic photograph of Hector Pieterson. Qoboza’s scathing critical stance saw him interrogated by the South African police.16 A year later, in May 1977, Qoboza visited the United States again, together with John Barrat, director of the South African Institute of Race Relations, and Ton Vosloo, editor of the Afrikaans newspaper Beeld, under the auspices of the United States/South Africa Leader Exchange Programme. There they held discussions about South African developments and American policies on South Africa with a wide range of leading Americans in the business, media, political and government fields, as well as in the black community. On their return to South Africa they participated in a panel discussion organised by the Institute of Race Relations, the transcript of which was subsequently published by the Institute, and serves as a reflection of Qoboza’s grasp of a wide range of critical issues facing the country at the time.17 In 1977, Qoboza wrote about the festering wounds caused by the gruesome and lonely death of the late Stephen Bantu Biko. ‘Stop these senseless attacks,’  18 he wrote in his column ‘Percy’s Pitch’, in which he called out members of the Cabinet on their laughing dismissal of Biko’s death.19 His level-headed approach united suppressed views on the unsolicited brutality. However, Qoboza had established himself as an enemy of the state, as well as the messiah of pragmatic black journalism. This came with grave consequence – a week after Biko’s death a bomb exploded outside Qoboza’s home,20 and The World and the Weekend World, along with 19 Black Consciousness organisations, were declared illegal. Qoboza was detained, and jailed21 for six months at Modderbee Prison in Benoni without probable cause.22 Due to international pressure, Qoboza was released in March 1978, and became editor of the Daily Post and Sunday Post, which would emulate the same critical journalistic integrity that had been seen in the banned The World and Weekend World.23 That same year, Qoboza was the joint recipient of the Golden Pen of Freedom awarded by the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers24 for his continued struggle for press freedom, and his opposition to the repressive government. He also was awarded the Ethical Humanist Award from the New York Society

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for Ethical Culture for his ‘pursuit of justice and human rights on behalf of the oppressed peoples of South Africa’.25 The award is given to individuals who have acted with exemplary moral drive in the face of oppression and persecution, and whose resulting actions have had a lasting humanising effect.26 Qoboza also used other media to voice criticism of the apartheid government’s policies, including contributing to academic books.27 He is acknowledged as the editor of The World newspaper who initiated the Free Mandela Campaign in 1980, which rapidly grew into a national and international campaign for the release of Nelson Mandela.28 In the same year he addressed a largely white audience at the University of the Witwatersrand in which he stated that ‘Africans would not accept collaborationist leaders imposed on them by whites; they wanted genuine democracy, and they were tired of waiting for it’.29 Qoboza was still a de facto enemy of the state, and he faced mounting political pressure.30 So he moved to the United States to assume the role of guest editorin-residence of the Washington Star from 1980 to 1981.31 With access to a global and more unified audience, he continued to write vehemently on the subjugation of black people in South Africa, and the country’s vicious government in publications such as UN Affairs and Third World.32 In 1985, he returned to South Africa, and began his tenure as an associate editor of City Press. Initially owned by Jim Bailey, the publisher of Drum magazine,33 City Press was sold to Nasionale Pers, an Afrikaans, pro-government press group.34 Remarkably, Qoboza, whose journalistic reputation preceded him both locally and abroad, was allowed an open editorial space to write what he saw as relevant. This is evident in the following heart-wrenching words: If it is true that a people’s wealth is its children, then South Africa is bitterly, tragically, poor. If it is true that a nation’s future is in its children, we have no future, and deserve none. We are a nation at war with its future. For we have turned our children into a generation of fighters, battle-hardened soldiers, who will never know the carefree joy of childhood. What we are witnessing is the growth of a generation that has the courage to reject the cowardice of its parents.35 In 1986, he became the editor of City Press, and subsequently grew the reader base by more than 200 000.36 On 17 January 1988 – his 50th birthday – Percy Qoboza died from a heart attack at the Rand Clinic in Johannesburg.37 He is survived by his wife, Ann, four daughters and a son.38 Among the many accolades that showcase his prolific career, Qoboza received two honorary doctorates in human letters, one from Amherst College and one from Tufts University, in the United States.39 He was awarded the South African Society of Journalists’ Pringle Award, and, on 27  April 2010, the prestigious Order of Ikhamanga in Silver was posthumously conferred upon Qoboza for ‘[his] excellent contribution to the field of journalism and the struggle for a free and democratic South Africa’.40 Today, the Percy Qoboza Award honours a foreign journalist ‘who [has] done extraordinary work – while overcoming tremendous obstacles – that contributes to the enrichment, understanding

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or advancement of people or issues in the African diaspora in the United States of America’.41 The National Association of Black Journalists in the US named the award in his honour, to commemorate his groundbreaking work in journalism. Percy Qoboza is immortalised in South African history not only as a fearless, transparent and honest journalist, but as one of the most authoritative black political voices in the liberation struggle. His career was built out of apartheid,42 and while so many ‘good people’ hid behind a veil of ignorance, Qoboza persevered and used his newspapers to mould young and emerging rebels. His writing, especially in Percy’s Pitch and Percy’s Itch, was highly influential. Notes 1 D. Panther, ‘In Memoriam: Percy Qoboza’, Nieman Reports 53:1 (1999). Accessed July 2020,

https://nieman.harvard.edu/articles/1988-in-memoriam-percy-qoboza/. 2 P. Knevel, ‘Sophiatown as Lieu de Mémoire’, African Studies 74:1 (2015), pp. 63–64. 3 Dictionary of African Christian Biography, ‘Qoboza, Percy’ (n.d.). Accessed April 2020,

https://dacb.org/stories/southafrica/qoboza-percy/. 4 Dictionary of African Christian Biography, ‘Qoboza’. 5 S.C. Bate, ‘The YCW Moves into Soweto and Other Black Townships: 1952 to 1965’, Studia

Historiae Ecclesiasticae 43:3 (2017), pp. 1–25. 6  The Journalist, ‘A Soldier Armed with a Pen’, 15 October 2014. Accessed April 2020, https://

www.thejournalist.org.za/pioneers/soldier-armed-pen. 7 Panther, ‘In Memoriam’. 8 Dictionary of African Christian Biography, ‘Qoboza’. 9 Dictionary of African Christian Biography, ‘Qoboza’. 10  The Journalist, ‘A Soldier Armed with a Pen’. 11 The Presidency, ‘Percy Tseliso Peter Qoboza : The Order of Ikhamanga in Silver’ (2010).

Accessed April 2020, http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/percytseliso-peter-qoboza-1938. 12 T. de Vente-Bijker, ‘Percy Qoboza: Apartheid’S Journalistic Nemesis’, Independent Online

19 October 2018. Accessed April 2020, https://www.iol.co.za/pretoria-news/percy-qobozaapartheids-journalistic-nemesis-17550657. 13 Nieman Foundation. ‘Fellowships’ (2020). Accessed April 2020, https://nieman.harvard.edu/

fellowships/. 14 Panther, ‘In Memoriam’. 15 De Vente-Bijker, ‘Percy Qoboza: Apartheid’S Journalistic Nemesis’. 16 Panther, ‘In Memoriam’. 17 P. Qoboza, T. Barrat and T. Vosloo, The United States and South Africa: Three South African

Perspectives (Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1977). 18 P. Qoboza, ‘Stop These Senseless Attacks’, World 21 September 1977. Accessed

April 2020, https://reference-sabinet-co-za.uplib.idm.oclc.org/webx/access/samedia/ Image4/1977/032/3219771576.pdf. 19 Qoboza, ‘Stop These Senseless Attacks’.

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20 H. Mashabela, A People on the Boil: Reflections on June 16, 1976 and Beyond (Johannebsurg:

Skotaville Publishers, 1987), p. 152. 21 P. van der Merwe, “Journalists Must Decode” – Percy Qoboza Remembered (24 October 2018).

Accessed April 2020, https://www.unisa.ac.za/sites/corporate/default/Colleges/HumanSciences/News-&-events/Articles/Journalists-must-decode-Percy-Qoboza-remembered. 22  Sunday Independent, ‘Remembering Qoboza’s Sense of Duty’, 20 October 2013. Accessed

April 2020, https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/remembering-qobozas-sense-ofduty-1594527. 23 Panther, ‘In Memoriam’. 24 World Association of News Publishers, ‘About The Golden Pen of Freedom’, WAN-IFRA

24 March 2011. Accessed April 2020, https://www.wan-ifra.org/articles/2011/03/24/aboutthe-golden-pen-of-freedom. 25 The New York Society For Ethical Culture, ‘Ethical NYC History’ (2020). Accessed April

2020, https://ethical.nyc/awards/. 26 The New York Society For Ethical Culture, ‘Ethical NYC History’. 27 See, for instance, P. Qoboza, ‘South Africa: A Black Viewpoint’ in N. Rhoode (ed.),

Intergroup Accommodation in Plural Societies: A Selection of Conference Papers with Specific Reference to South Africa (London and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1978). 28 T. Lodge, Mandela: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 155. 29 G.M. Gerhart and C. Glaser, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African

Politics in South Africa, 1982–1990 Volume 6, Challenge and Victory, 1980–1990 (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), p. 7. 30 De Vente-Bijker, ‘Percy Qoboza: Apartheid’s Journalistic Nemesis’. 31 Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Percy Qoboza: South African Journalist’ (2020). Accessed April

2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Percy-Qoboza. 32 The Presidency, ‘Percy Tseliso Peter Qoboza’. 33  The Journalist, ‘A Soldier Armed with a Pen’. 34 The Presidency, ‘Percy Tseliso Peter Qoboza’. 35 P. Qoboza, City Press 20 April 1986. Cited in G. Straker, ‘Past, Present and Future

Perspectives’ in C.R. Stones (ed.), Socio-Political and Psychological Perspectives on South Africa (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2001), p. 41. 36  The Journalist, ‘A Soldier Armed with a Pen’. 37  The Journalist, ‘A Soldier Armed with a Pen’; Panther, ‘In Memoriam’. 38  Los Angeles Times, ‘Jailed For Activities in Opposition to Apartheid and Censorship:

Editor Percy Qoboza, Foe of S. African Regime, Dies’, 18 January 1988. Accessed April 2020, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-01-18-mn-24338-story.html. 39  The New York Times, ‘Percy Qoboza, 50, a Black Journalist from South Africa’, 18 January

1988. Accessed April 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/18/obituaries/percy-qoboza50-a-black-journalist-from-south-africa.html. 40 The Presidency, ‘Percy Tseliso Peter Qoboza’. 41 National Association of Black Journalists Global Journalism, ‘Qoboza Award’ (2020).

Accessed April 2020, http://nabjglobal.com/the-percy-qoboza-award/. 42 De Vente-Bijker, ‘Percy Qoboza: Apartheid’s Journalistic Nemesis’.

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Zapiro: The sword of satire

Zapiro: The sword of satire Joleen Steyn Kotze

b. 1958

With 27 books, a number of exhibitions and esteemed awards behind his name, Jonathan Shapiro  ‘Zapiro’ uses satire to create awareness and engage in advocacy towards change and a better society. He has won multiple awards and gained many accolades for his work as a cartoonist, and as a social and political commentator through his cartoons. He was voted as one of the top ten cartoonists in the world in 2016.1 For Shapiro, cartooning is the art of social commentary that creatively combines drawing and writing with political knowledge and awareness, ‘taking the readers’ eye for a walk’.2 Growing up in Cape Town, Jonathan Shapiro, the person behind renowned cartoonist Zapiro, had what he describes as a ‘comfortable, a white childhood’.3 He wanted to become a cartoonist from around the age of eight.4 Inspired by cartoons such as Giles, Tintin and Peanuts, he dreamed that he would assist the creators of the cartoons, but then thought he could become a cartoonist in his own right.5 Publishing under the name of Zap, his first stint using cartoon and satire for social commentary was a regular slot in his school newspaper, where ‘Preppie’, a character he created, would comment on what was happening in the school.6 It was only in 1984, after his girlfriend (now his wife) commented that his signature was ‘lightweight…for that heavy stuff’, that he changed it to Zapiro.7 Shapiro was conscious of the autocracies of the apartheid regime from a very young age. His mother, a refugee from Nazi Germany, was influential in shaping his social consciousness. He reminisces: ‘By the time I was eight years old when Verwoerd died, I understood that this was a bad guy. I didn’t understand much about it, but I understood he was oppressing black people.’8 In the late 1960s, a primary school teacher, Alan Kenyon, whom he described as having an ‘enlightening attitude’, allowed Shapiro to explore cartooning as a medium of social commentary.9 Alan Kenyon also shaped Shapiro’s social consciousness through both meaningful and deep literature and light stories, which he refers to as ‘comic doggerel’.10 For Zapiro, this

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experience and engagement with Kenyon proved valuable in his political awakening: ‘At a time when politics was forbidden in the classroom he was clearly a political progressive, always promoting tolerance and humanity. He helped me open my mind and for that I am deeply grateful’.11 Zapiro studied architecture at the University of Cape Town because cartooning did not seem like a realistic career, and he felt ‘I needed a profession and I needed to stay out of the army’.12 But, in his fourth year, he travelled to Europe, where meeting famous cartoonists catapulted him into the world of social commentary through cartooning and satire – and a decision to give up his architectural studies in pursuit of his childhood dream of cartooning. This came at a cost, however. No sooner had he returned from Europe and changed from architecture to graphic design studies than he was conscripted to the then South African National Defence Force.13 Shapiro’s political activism in his youth can be described as tepid, given that he ‘felt disaffected but also had a comfortable upbringing’.14 It was during his years of military conscription that he became vocal and politically active. Upon joining the army, Shapiro, along with about 700 other conscripts, refused to carry a gun.15 He saw himself as a proverbial activist, living in two different realities during this time: ‘because I was now in the navy…in my brown uniform during the day and my UDF clothes whenever I could. Sticking up Free Mandela stickers inside the army. It was completely crazy.’16 For Shapiro, this period represented a sort of ‘big break’ into activism. By the time his period of military service was over, he had developed ‘a fervent opposition to the apartheid state, became an organiser for the End Conscription Campaign, and turned his pen to struggle pamphlets’.17 In 1986 he made his first political statement in support of South Africa’s liberation struggle through a cartoon that portrayed the struggle in a calendar poster.18 It was this action that drew the attention of the South African security forces (who wanted to arrest him) as well as that of the UDF (who wanted to use the cartoon).19 Shapiro was very active in the End Conscription Campaign and also designed the logo.20 He was detained briefly by the South African security forces before leaving to study in the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship.21 Shapiro started working with the Mail & Guardian in 1994 as an editorial cartoonist, and soon joined the Sowetan.22 He considered this an honour as he was ‘able to take part in the New South Africa through these cartoons’.23 He was also disillusioned with the manner in which the country’s democratic journey was unfolding at that time, most notably the disbanding of the United Democratic Front. It was under the Mbeki presidency that Shapiro became more vocal around socio-political issues that plagued South Africa, most notably economic stagnation, the Arms Deal, HIV/AIDS, and Mbeki’s policy of ‘quiet diplomacy’ towards Zimbabwe. Through his cartooning, Zapiro became increasingly critical of both Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, and through his critical social commentary, he felt that former struggle heroes who now occupied political and government positions saw critics increasingly as the ‘enemy’.24

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Advocacy through cartoons is the foundation of Shapiro’s satirical commentary. His lampoon is often decidedly sharp, eliciting criticism and creating controversy. The most notable example of this is perhaps the cartoon in which former president Jacob Zuma is depicted as preparing to rape Lady Justice. An interview with Change Exchange reveals a deep commitment to advocacy and activism as well as social consciousness: I made a very conscious decision there that I’m going to go for broke…But the weird thing was when I came up with that idea for that cartoon…I wrote down: ‘What the hell is Zuma doing? Zuma is raping justice.’ And then the right brain just exploded, because I suddenly realised justice is a woman. Metaphorically it’s Lady Justice. And I suddenly drew – I started the first little rough of that image, and I promise you – I’m not making this up. I went: ‘Ah!’…He [my editor] phoned me and he said – he always says: ‘Yo, yo, yo, eish Comrade, that’s tough, but it’s what needs to be said.’ Then I got cold feet. I got cold feet – not because of Zuma or the politicians or the repercussions, but I suddenly thought how would women see that cartoon. A gang rape situation, or potential gang rape and so I then showed my wife, and she was also absolutely shocked…But she understood what I was trying to do, but we decided that the best thing would be to send it round to some female journalist colleagues…Ja, and we sent it to a couple of them and they all told me that it knocked the breath out of them and then they looked at it for a minute, and they said: ‘But it’s right.’ And when the cartoon was published – apart from all the heavy reaction – one of the best things was that on the talk shows where I was getting savaged by people politically and supported as well, but there were women who phoned up and said: ‘I’m a rape survivor.’ Some said: ‘I’m a gang rape survivor. And initially I was utterly shocked and I saw that was my experience.’ So there was this other level of what happens in this country, the patriarchy, and as it happened, Zuma is a huge icon of that kind of patriarchy. And also, as it happens, had been through a rape case himself and he of course was acquitted, and the cartoon is metaphorical, so it’s not about his rape case. It’s about a metaphorical figure of justice. But it was a massive moment for me, of course.25 The iconic Lady Justice cartoon saw Jacob Zuma suing Shapiro for R7 million.26 This was not the first time former president Jacob Zuma tried to silence Shapiro. In 2006, 2007 and 2008, Zuma demanded R10 million for reputational damage; in 2007, the ANC proposed censorship of his cartoons; and in 2008, Zuma’s claim of R7 million was for defamation.27 Shapiro remains committed to his principles, values and work. He portrays a strong commitment to progressive politics and freedom of expression, but also a sense of justice.28 Indeed, in 2019 Shapiro received Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters) from French president Emmanuel Macron, one of the highest honours in France for art.29 Shapiro hopes that he will be remembered for his progressive stance in the manner he recorded South Africa’s democratic journey, and that he may have ‘changed a few things here

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and there’.30 His legacy, however, will also embody a commitment to freedom of expression, and standing firm against censorship and intimidation by political elites. Notes 1 B. Lindeque, Zapiro Tops the List as One of the World’s Top 10 Cartoonists, The Good Things

Guy 6 June 2016. Accessed June 2019, https://www.goodthingsguy.com/people/zapiro/. 2 Zapiro, Interview for French-speaking website www.lafriquedusud.com and Cape Town

Decouvertes Magazine, (n.d.). Accessed June 2019, https://www.zapiro.com/e-store/contactus/interviews/55-interview-for-french-speaking-website-www-lafriquedusud-com-andcape-town-decouvertes-magazine-director-and-editor-in-chief-stephane. 3 N. Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’, MoneyWeb 29 November 2017. Accessed

June 2019, https://www.zapiro.com/e-store/contact-us/interviews/178-a-discussion-withjonathan-shapiro. 4 Zapiro, Interview for French-speaking website. 5 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 6 Zapiro, Submission in response to a request from Struik Publishers and the Amy Biehl

Foundation Foundation Trust for the publication ‘All That I Am’ compiled by Leyla Haidarian, 4 October 2004. Accessed June 2019, https://www.zapiro.com/e-store/contactus/interviews/118-all-that-i-am-by-leyla-haidarian. 7 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 8 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 9 Zapiro, Submission in response to a request. 10 Zapiro, Submission in response to a request. 11 Zapiro, Submission in response to a request. 12 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 13 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 14 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 15 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 16 A. Hogg, ‘SA’s Most Popular Cartoonist: Zapiro Getting under Govt’s Skin’, BizNews

3 August 2015. Accessed June 2019, https://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2015/08/03/ sa-most-popular-cartoonist-zapiro-getting-under-govts-skin. 17 C. Amato, Zapiro: Tooning the Odds (31 October 2005). Accessed July 2020,

http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/1786/03Chapter3.pdf. 18 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 19 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 20 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 21 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 22 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 23 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 24 A. Hogg, ‘SA’s Most Popular Cartoonist’. 25 A. Hogg, ‘SA’s Most Popular Cartoonist’. 26 Zapiro, Interview for French-speaking website. 27 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’.

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28 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’. 29 T.L. Vivier, Cartoonist Zapiro for Arts from French President, The Good Things Guy 15

November 2019. Accessed April 2020, https://www.goodthingsguy.com/people/zapirohighest-honour/. 30 Arendse, ‘A Discussion with Jonathan Shapiro’.

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Johan Heyns: Prophet of critical solidarity Gerard Hagg

1928–1994

Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) dominee Johan Adam Heyns ministered to, among others, Hendrik Verwoerd, John Vorster and P.W.  Botha, but he always trod a fine line between adherence to his Christian faith – and a sense of biblical social justice – and his identity as an Afrikaner. While he was highly critical of apartheid, he tried to reconcile ‘White fear and Black aspirations’,1 and always retained what he called a ‘critical solidarity’ with the Afrikaner community.2 While Heyns was at high school, his family moved from Tweeling in the Free State to Potchefstroom. The young Heyns had a talent for debate and was known for his independent thinking. He completed his undergraduate studies, in preparation for theological training, at the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education. Here he developed a lasting friendship with Calvinistic lecturer and philosopher Hendrik G.  Stoker. Stoker’s reasoning, based on the work of the Dutch church leader Abraham Kuyper, influenced the rest of Heyns’s academic and ecclesiastical career.3 Heyns completed his studies for the ministry at the University of Pretoria, and then enrolled at the Free University in the Netherlands. In 1953 he received a PhD with the famous theologian Gerrit Berkouwer as his supervisor. His thesis was titled ‘Die Grondstruktuur van die Modalistiese Triniteitsbeskouing’ (The Basis of the Modalistic Trinity View). In 1954, after he had completed his theological studies, Heyns entered the ministry at the Ysterplaat congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in Cape  Town. In 1960 he accepted a call to Rondebosch, where several Afrikaner politicians were members of the congregation, amongst them Hendrik Verwoerd, John Vorster and Pieter Willem (P.W.) Botha. The following year, he was conferred a second PhD, in philosophy, for which Stoker was his supervisor. This thesis was titled ‘Die Teologiese Antropologie van Karl Barth vanuit Wysgerig-Antropologiese Oriëntering’ (The Theological Anthropology of Karl Barth from a Philosophical-Anthropological Orientation).4

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Shortly after Heyns’s arrival at Rondebosch, the Cottesloe Consultation took place in response to the Sharpeville massacre. Organised by the South African member churches of the World Council of Churches, their Cottesloe Statement rejected discriminatory laws and practices, and included a number of resolutions about religious freedom, oppressive migrant work and the possibility of black people obtaining government positions. Although Heyns, like the official response from the DRC, rejected the statement, he would later in his life acknowledge the validity of the grievances that were expressed. Heyns joined the University of Stellenbosch as a lecturer in dogmatics – nowadays usually referred to as systematic theology – in 1966. In 1971 the University of Pretoria appointed him as professor, a position that he kept until he retired in 1993. During this period he served as a member of several DRC synod committees. Although his liberal standpoint was at variance with dominant DRC thought, he became a moderator of the DRC in 1986. This is the highest leadership position in the church, a position that he retained for many years. This enabled him to direct church policy, particularly in relation to apartheid and political developments. Adherence to his Afrikaner identity remained an important influence on Heyns’s thinking and actions throughout his life. In primary school, he organised youth meetings for the antiBritish Ossewabrandwag (ox-wagon sentry) movement. His father was a leading member of the local branch of the Nationalist Party, but Johan Heyns never joined the party. His beliefs were characterised by unique critical views that would later become a hallmark of his work. Strauss describes this as deriving from Heyns’s attitude of ‘critical solidarity’, which characterised his leading role in the DRC and the Afrikaner community, especially in the social and ecclesiastical domain.5 Heyns expressed this critical solidarity with both the Afrikaners he served and society at large. He tried to bridge his belief in Afrikaner identity – linked to his Calvinist theological views – with that of emerging or contrasting beliefs and desires for biblical social justice. The tension between the two resulted in a continuous inner struggle – both personally and in his DRC functions – for a reconciliation between a justification of separateness in development at a local church level, and biblical justice in South African society at large. Typical of this approach was Heyns’s continued solidarity with the majority of his people on the one hand, and respect for multi-ethnic unification on the other hand. He summarised this as the challenge to reconcile ‘White fear and Black aspirations’.6 He believed that ‘the right moment’ of change, for which Afrikaners would be ready, would come. This led to a delicate strategic approach, which sometimes found its basis in pragmatism rather than principles. Heyns’s most significant contribution to theology was his development of a contemporary reformed theological system that was based on neo-Calvinism, and that provided the foundation for the traditional thought that true Afrikaners have a strong identity. This shared identity ultimately developed into a nationalist ideology that served as the driving force of the so-called Afrikaner volk (nation). It is this development of a volksteologie (national theology) from the 1940s onwards that provided the biblical grounds for apartheid, and raised ethnicity (volkskap) to an ontological level that set it off from other social bonds.7 Heyns supported this view in his contribution to the 1974 DRC Report ‘Human Relations and the South African Scene in the

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Light of Scripture’ (Ras, Volk en Nasie en Volkereverhoudinge in die Lig van die Skrif).8 At that stage he had also joined the Afrikaner Broederbond. Part of his Calvinist approach was the strong belief that change should be in the form of ‘reform’ – not revolution – which should always come from within, and be based on normative thinking.9 Heyns believed that such reform should always be based on biblical principles, not humanist ones; he referred to his calling as that of a prophet, rather than a changer.10 From the late 1970s Heyns found himself, as a reformed theologian and church leader, in conflict with apartheid as the product of nationalist ideology, and particularly the practices of apartheid that privileged whites over Africans. Heyns’s realisation of the injustices of apartheid practices, what he called ‘apartism’, grew over the years as he participated in international ecclesiastical exchanges, and was exposed to intra-church conflicts in South Africa. For example, he referred to his studies in Amsterdam together with African co-students who sometimes outperformed whites, and the celebration of Holy Communion with African believers in Switzerland.11 Furthermore, his views changed during the debates around the decision of the World Council of Churches, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the more conservative and smaller Reformed Ecumenical Synod, and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands to sever ties with the Afrikaner churches, a process that developed throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. These international church leaders succeeded in showing the fallacy of the biblical grounds for apartheid – for example, as legislated in the 1949 Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, which Heyns referred to as ‘a monster’ of a policy.12 Increasingly Heyns shared these international views on the church as a place of reconciliation, including across cultural lines. Such a view of the church in relation to society was also shared by some close friends and colleagues, such as Professor Willie Jonker of the University of Stellenbosch’s Theological Faculty. In the 1980s, Heyns developed into one of the most important leaders in the DRC.  By that time two opposing groups had developed, the conservatives and the verligtes (enlightened). Both groups needed Heyns. The conservatives wanted Heyns to represent them at meetings with the Uniting Reformed Church and the Reformed Church of Africa and the ecumenical partners. For example, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches – of which Rev. Allan Boesak had become chair in 1982 – had suspended the DRC’s membership in 1982, to much regret by conservative members of the DRC.13 The verligtes realised that they would not succeed without Heyns at General Synod meetings. In 1982 he guided the General Synod to acknowledge the apparent powerlessness of the institutionalised church in South Africa to carry out its divine calling of reconciliation.14 This led to a revision of the ‘Ras, Volk en Nasie’ document towards the more irenic ‘Church and Society’ statement, compiled under the leadership of Heyns.15 With regard to the DRC position on apartheid, Heyns has probably succeeded more than any other theologian to bring about change in church policy and practice, although within the context of his concept of ‘critical solidarity’. In 1982 Heyns publicly rejected the church position that apartheid was biblically correct, and received serious disapproval from the synod

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during the same year, when he openly condoned multiracial marriages. Throughout his life, he tried to reconcile opposing parties. For example, when the P.W. Botha government declared a state of emergency in 1985, Heyns pleaded for black and white to come together and resolve conflicts through biblical love.16 After staying out of favour with the church hierarchy for some years, he re-emerged in 1986 to become moderator of the synod, until 1990. During that time he made serious efforts to persuade members and leaders of the church that apartheid could not be justified from scripture. Synod adopted resolutions that ‘membership of the Dutch Reformed Church is open’, and thus ‘public worship and other gatherings’ were ‘open to all visitors who desire to listen to the Word in fellowship with other believers’.17 Furthermore, he used his sermons at Afrikaner public events – such as celebrations of the Day of the Covenant (16 December) at the Voortrekker Monument – to proclaim biblical truths and their consequences for life and politics, increasingly rejecting apartheid.18 His approach brought about significant change in the DRC.  The ‘Church and Society’ statement was amended, and apartheid was eventually rejected in 1990.19 Heyns’s clear expression of his change in opinion on apartheid, and the need for an integrated South African society, resulted in much animosity towards him, and the departure of several thousand DRC members to form the Afrikaanse Protestante Kerk (Afrikaner Protestant Church). Heyns expected such animosity, stating: ‘Ek wou ’n brugbouer wees, en ’n brug moet gewillig wees dat ’n mens op hom trap’ (I wanted to be a bridge builder – and a bridge must be willing to accept that people will trample on him).20 In September 1989, when the government indiscriminately subdued political protest marches, the leadership of the Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK), under Heyns, persuaded the government to allow peaceful protests. This concession by the state was considered to be an important signal of a new policy that would move away from an armed struggle to a strategy of non-violent opposition. Dr Kenneth Kaunda, president of Zambia, invited Heyns and colleagues to Lusaka in order to discuss the political situation in South Africa. After his visit Heyns reported back to F.W. de Klerk, inter alia about Kaunda’s willingness to mediate between the South African government and the ANC.21 Heyns’s reconciliatory work came to fruition at the summit of churches in Rustenburg in 1990, which was attended by 230 representatives from 80 churches and 40 Christian organisations. The Rustenburg Declaration included resolutions on apartheid as a sin, and on restitution. Churches were encouraged to influence owners of expropriated land to restore ownership to the original owners. The first Convention for a Democratic South Africa took place on 20  December 1991. At the opening ceremony several religious leaders spoke. Heyns was asked to pray on behalf of Christians. At the 1994 DRC synod, Dr Beyers Naudé – director of the Christian Institute who was forced to leave the DRC after protesting against its support of apartheid – and his wife, as well as Ben Marais – an early critic of the DRC’s political stance – were welcomed back, reconciled with the church.

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Over the more than two decades that Heyns served the NGK, he wielded a very strong influence on the decision-making processes within the church. He published several books and dozens of articles; he was appointed to several leading positions in the church; and ultimately he became known as the leading theologian in the DRC.  In 1996 the ANC renamed the Vanderbijlpark provincial hospital as the Johan Heyns Hospital. Heyns was the archetypical agent for change from inside the church as a biblically grounded organisation – the prophet who appeals against tradition – but his call for change while so many members showed resistance came at a huge price. In 1994 he was assassinated by a sniper while at home with his grandchildren. The person or people responsible have never been found, but it is generally accepted that a far-right individual and/or organisation killed Heyns to avenge his ‘betrayal’ of the Afrikaner people. Notes 1 A. Heyns, Dr. Johan Heyns: Exorcist of Apartheid. Documentary, 2019. Accessed March 2019,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNVO6E7fFqc. 2 P.J. Strauss, ‘Johan Heyns and Critique in the Dutch Reformed Church against Apartheid:

The Moderator a Prophet?’, HTS Theological Studies 74:3 (2018), p. 6. Accessed March 2019, https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/49656. 3 T.D. Moodie, Confessing to Remorse about the Evils of Apartheid: The Dutch Reformed Church

in the Nineteen-Eighties (Johannesburg: WISER, 2018), p. 21. 4 H.H. Willams, ‘J.A. Heyns en die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk en Apartheid’,

PhD thesis, University of the Free State, 2006, p. 274. 5 Strauss, ‘Johan Heyns and Critique’, p. 6. 6 Heyns, Dr. Johan Heyns: Exorcist of Apartheid. 7 Moodie, Confessing to Remorse, p. 9. 8 Willams, ‘J.A. Heyns en die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk’, p. 104. 9 Strauss, ‘Johan Heyns and Critique’, p. 3. 10 Strauss, ‘Johan Heyns and Critique’, p. 6. 11 Willams, ‘J.A. Heyns en die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk’, p. 32. 12 Heyns, Dr. Johan Heyns: Exorcist of Apartheid. 13 Moodie, Confessing to Remorse, p. 17. 14 J.H.P. Serfontein, Apartheid, Change and the NG Kerk (Johannesburg: Taurus Publishing,

1982), p. 2. 15 Moodie, Confessing to Remorse, p. 29. 16 Willams, ‘J.A. Heyns en die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk’, p. 202. 17 Willams, ‘J.A. Heyns en die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk’, p. 202. 18 Heyns, Dr. Johan Heyns: Exorcist of Apartheid. 19 Willams, ‘J.A. Heyns en die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk’, p. 285. 20 Willams, ‘J.A. Heyns en die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk’, p. 401. 21 Willams, ‘J.A. Heyns en die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk’, p. 275.

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Richard Goldstone: Fine balancer of the scales

Richard Goldstone: Fine balancer of the scales Michael Cosser

b. 1938

It was not an easy decision to make, but I decided that I could execute the daunting task [of chairing the UN Human Rights Council inquiry into the Gaza conflict] in an even-handed and impartial manner, giving it the same attention that I have given to situations in my own country…I accepted the appointment because of my deep concern for peace in the Middle East and my concern for victims on all sides in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Richard Goldstone, cited in C. Villa-Vicencio and M. Soko, Conversations in Transition Even-handedness and impartiality are the defining qualities of Judge Richard Goldstone, former justice of the Constitutional Court. Tellingly, his concern ‘for victims on all sides of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict’ (emphasis added) is – however unwittingly – non-binary: the victims are not merely Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters, but civilians – the families of people who had lost their lives, the citizens of Israel and the people of Palestine, the peoples of the region, and ultimately, in a globalised multipolar world, peoples across the globe. The biography of Richard Goldstone provided by the Constitutional Court website1 is parsimonious about his personal life and education (he was born on 26  October 1938, is married and has two daughters and four grandsons, and graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a BA LLB cum laude in 1962), more forthcoming about his career, and effusive about his ‘Other activities’ – largely, one suspects, because of their number, range and impact. Goldstone began his professional career practising as an advocate at the Johannesburg Bar. In 1976 he was appointed senior counsel, and was made a judge of the Transvaal Supreme Court in 1980. In 1989 he was appointed to the Appellate Division. From 1991 to 1994 he served as the chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, which came to be known as the Goldstone Commission.

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From 15 August 1994 to September 1996, Goldstone served as the chief prosecutor of the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In 2009, he was appointed chair of the UN Human Rights Council inquiry into the Gaza conflict alluded to above. On his return to South Africa, Goldstone took up his place on the bench of the Constitutional Court (having been appointed justice before his appointment to head the Gaza conflict inquiry). He was one of four Supreme Court of Appeal judges (along with Lourens Ackermann, Tholie Madala and Ismail Mohamed) who had been appointed by President Mandela to the first bench of the Constitutional Court. Goldstone served as a judge of the Court for ten years (1994 to 2003), until his retirement. Goldstone’s judicial career can be divided into three parts: apartheid-era judge, international judge and Constitutional Court judge. One of Goldstone’s major successes as an apartheid-era judge was his judgment in S v Govender (1986 (3) SA 969 (T)). His ruling in favour of a Mrs Govender, who had been accused of living unlawfully with her children and grandchildren in rented accommodation in a residential area reserved for whites, ‘effectively ended the enforcement of the Group Areas Act, and it heralded the end of residential segregation’.2 Besides this case, three high-profile investigations reinforced Goldstone’s reputation as a fair-minded yet forthright judge: the death by hanging of an Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) soldier, Clayton Sizwe Sithole, in John Vorster Square police station in Johannesburg; the so-called Sebokeng massacre in 1990, in which the police were found to have acted unlawfully by firing on a crowd with live ammunition; and the Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation (the socalled Goldstone Commission), which found that there was ‘third force’ involvement in the violence.3 As then secretary general of the ANC Cyril Ramaphosa wrote: The recommendations of the United Nations secretary-general to the UN Security Council helped to place extra international pressure on the De Klerk regime. That, and the findings of the Goldstone Commission, vindicated the demands of our Campaign for Peace and Democracy.4 That the ANC credited the work of the UN and the Goldstone Commission as having reopened the way to the Convention for a Democratic South Africa negotiations is testimony to Goldstone’s impact on the transition to democracy. It was the very reputation for impartiality and forthrightness manifested in Goldstone’s apartheid judicial career that influenced his appointments to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1994, and later in the same year to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Success breeding success, this appointment led to several more. As chief prosecutor of the ICTY and ICTR, as chairperson of the International Independent Inquiry on Kosovo (1999–2001), as co-chairperson of the

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International Task Force on Terrorism (2001), as a member of the independent committee to investigate the Iraqi oil-for-food programme (the Volcker Committee, 2004), and as chair of the Advisory Committee on the Archiving of the Documents and Records of the ICTY and ICTR (2007), Goldstone had established a reputation for fairness at the highest international level. His bittersweet crowning achievement was arguably his chairing of the inquiry into the Gaza conflict – bittersweet because both Israel and Hamas rejected his report, which apportioned blame for civilian-targeted activities to both parties. Goldstone later retracted some of his findings,5 possibly because of his uncertainty about them in the face of intense Israeli pressure. Goldstone’s majority author judgments in the Constitutional Court are testimony to the continuation of his apartheid-era commitment to balance and justice. For example, in President of the Republic of South Africa and Another v Hugo, the issue concerned the single father of a child under 12 having challenged the constitutionality of a presidential pardon granted to mothers in prison with minor children under 12. The father claimed that the pardon unfairly discriminated against him and his son on the grounds of sex or gender. Goldstone’s ruling was that, although the pardon may have denied men an opportunity it afforded women, it could not be said that it fundamentally impaired their sense of dignity and equal worth. The judgment balanced the president’s right to pardon offenders, the fundamental dignity and worth of men whose children are imprisoned, and the right of men to apply directly to the president for ‘remission of sentence on an individual basis’. In Harksen v Lane NO and Others, the Court was asked to rule on whether certain provisions of the Insolvency Act of 1936 violated the equality clause in the Constitution. The sequestration of the estate of one of two spouses led to the property of the spouse whose estate had not been sequestrated being vested in the master or trustee – which, it was argued, constituted unequal treatment of solvent spouses, discriminating unfairly against them. Goldstone’s ruling was that while the close relationship of solvent spouses to insolvent spouses had the potential to diminish human dignity, solvent spouses were not a vulnerable group which had suffered discrimination in the past. The inconvenience and potential prejudice that could result for the solvent spouses did not therefore compromise their fundamental dignity. Goldstone as majority author balanced the potential of the close relationship of the solvent spouse with the insolvent spouse and the usual cohabitation of spouses to ‘demean persons in their human dignity’ against the notion that solvent spouses are not a ‘vulnerable group which has suffered discrimination in the past’ – as required by the equality clause (sec 9) in the Constitution. A further example is the case Minister for Welfare and Population Development v Fitzpatrick and Others, in which the minister sought clarity on a finding by the Cape high court that the prohibition on the adoption of a South African–born child by non–South Africans was unconstitutional. As majority author and unanimously supported by the full bench, Goldstone ruled that the rights of the child were paramount and, notwithstanding the threat of an increase in child trafficking which the striking down of the prohibition legislation might issue, ruled that the prohibition should in fact be set aside. Goldstone’s judgment paved the way for non–

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South Africans to adopt South African–born children in cases where such adoption would be in the best interests of the child. In Van der Walt v Metcash Trading Limited, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) on two successive days had refused leave to appeal to one applicant and granted leave to appeal to another. The key facts and grounds for appeal in both applications were substantially identical. In his majority judgment, Goldstone maintained that although it was hardly desirable that contrary orders should be issued by the SCA in substantially identical cases, the constitutional right of the applicant who had been refused leave to appeal by the SCA had not been violated. Neither of the two SCA orders was arbitrary: the judicial panels had to decide whether the appeal granted would have any chance of success. In handing down this judgment, Goldstone balanced the rights of the applicant against the rights of the SCA to issue contrary orders – thereby seeking justice for the applicant in terms of the Constitution and for the judicial system. Other critical judgments that significantly advanced South Africa’s jurisprudence include Democratic Party v Minister of Home Affairs and Another, in which he protected the right of persons who had been disenfranchised under apartheid to vote on an equal playing field; in S v T and Another, he ruled in the best interests of the child, thereby protecting the child against the possible harm caused by one or both parents; and in Carmichele v Minister of Safety and Security, he upheld the right of a woman attacked by an alleged rapist to appeal the lower-court judgments. However, what makes a high-profile judge like Goldstone a public intellectual is not the sum of his experience as judge in three different contexts, but his self-reflection on this collective experience. Two of the primary sources of this self-reflection are an interview he gave to VillaVicencio and Soko6 and the 1993 publication of his address Do Judges Speak Out? to the South African Institute of Race Relations.7 In Villa-Vicencio and Soko, he speaks of three priorities that ‘have formed the basis of my private and professional life: human rights values as entrenched in international law, rational thought as a basis for honest and strategic decision-making, and an unreserved commitment to execute a task before me with integrity and dedication’.8 Significantly, the principles by which he behaves in public are no different from those by which he lives at home. In Do Judges Speak Out? Goldstone opines extensively about the role of a judge vis-à-vis the legislation he is supposed to uphold. He claims that no ‘South African judge speaking out against unjust or immoral laws whether in or out of Court, has made himself unfit to sit on the Bench. Indeed…judges who did so tended to preserve the integrity of the South African Bench.’9 The integrity he speaks of here not only resonates with his own principle mentioned above, but alludes to the use of the term in the Constitution, where ‘institutional integrity’ is enjoined upon all spheres of government and organs of state10 – integrity in the sense of ‘the quality or state of being complete or undivided’ (from the Latin integer, ‘entire’).11 Speaking out against unjust or immoral laws therefore preserves the wholeness of the judicial process and the officers entrusted with it.

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A third source of insight into Goldstone’s thought comes in an interview given to the Human Sciences Research Council as part of the Constitutional Justice Project.12 In this interview, Goldstone highlighted the importance of consensus as a Constitutional Court practice, showing that in the South African context, in contradistinction to the American practice, the Constitutional Court met not once but repeatedly until the justices had reached consensus: ‘it’s so valuable. I mean, you know, I can’t tell you how many judges have changed their minds in the course of those discussions.’13 Consensus-reaching is a key philosophy underpinning Goldstone’s approach to striking a balance. There is not sufficient space in this chapter to adequately convey the fine sense of balance for which Goldstone has aimed in his life and in his work. His even-handedness and impartiality, his level-headedness with decisiveness, his humility in retracting certain Gaza conflict report findings because of a lack of complete information, his balancing (in Constitutional Court judgments) of the rights of opposing parties, his capacity for introspection, and his quest for consensus are just some of the manifestations of this sense of balance alluded to here. But arguably the image in Western representations of the Roman goddess Iustitia (Lady Justice) of the pair of scales weighing up evidence best captures this quintessential Goldstonian quality. The pair of scales was apparently first recorded not in Ancient Greece but in the Ancient Egyptian myth of the weighing of the heart. As The Westologist explains: In Ancient Egyptian culture, Maat was the goddess of truth, justice and order. When someone died, it was believed that their heart was weighed by the god Anubis against the feather that Maat always wore in her hair, an ostrich feather representing truth and justice. If the person had committed a crime, their heart would be heavier than the feather and Ammit, the demon with the head of a crocodile, would eat the heart, dooming the person’s soul to stay forever in the underworld and never find rest.14 While the moderate Goldstone would no doubt find this image macabre and not a little excessive, the notions of balancing the heart and the feather and of goodness being equated with a lightness of heart epitomise Goldstone’s fine balancing of the scales in the pursuit of justice and truth – a pursuit which ultimately engenders lightness of heart in the balancer also. Notes Unless otherwise stated, much of the material here is drawn from M. Cosser, A Mensch on the Bench: The Place of the Sacred in the Secular Jurisprudence of Justice Richard Goldstone in N. Bohler-Muller, M. Cosser and G. Pienaar (eds), Making the Road by Walking: The Evolution of the South African Constitution (Pretoria: Pretoria University Law Press, 2018). 1 Constitutional Court of South Africa, ‘Justice Richard Goldstone’ (n.d.). Accessed May

2019, https://www.concourt.org.za/index.php/judges/former-judges/11-former-judges/58justice-richard-goldstone.

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2 C. Villa-Vicencio and M. Soko, Conversations in Transition: Leading South African Voices

(Cape Town: David Philip, 2012), p. 180. 3 Villa-Vicencio and Soko, Conversations in Transition, p. 185. 4 African National Congress, ANC Secretary General’s Report to ANC 49th Annual Conference

(1994). Accessed April 2019, http://www.anc.org.za/content/49th-national-confrencesecrecretary-generals-report. 5 R. Goldstone, ‘Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and War Crimes’, The

Washington Post 1 April 2011. Accessed May 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ opinions/reconsidering-the-goldstone-report-on-israel-and-war-crimes/2011/04/01/ AFg111JC_story.html?noredirect=onandutm_term=.c9008b0af336. 6 Villa-Vicencio and Soko, Conversations in Transition. 7 R. Goldstone, Do Judges Speak Out? (Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race

Relations, 1993). 8 Villa-Vicencio and Soko, Conversations in Transition, p. 192. 9 Goldstone, Do Judges Speak Out?, p. 25. 10 The Constitution, s 41(1)(g). 11 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, n.d. 12 G. Pienaar, Interview with Justice Richard Goldstone, Pretoria, Constitutional Justice

Project, Human Sciences Research Council, 2014. 13 Pienaar, Interview with Justice Richard Goldstone, pp. 35–36. 14 P. Assier, ‘The Scales of Justice’, The Westologist, 24 March 2014. Accessed June 2019,

https://thewestologist.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/the-scales-of-justice/.

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Yvonne Mokgoro: A woman of substance

Yvonne Mokgoro: A woman of substance Narnia Bohler-Muller

b. 1950

Appointed in 1994 as a judge of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of South Africa, now retired, Justice Yvonne Mokgoro was not only the first black woman to be appointed to the Constitutional Court bench, but also one of only two women, the other being Justice Kate O’Regan. She was also one of the youngest judges to ascend to the Constitutional Court bench. Mokgoro served as judge for 15 years, until the end of her term in 2009.1 Mokgoro, the second child of working-class parents, was born in 1950 in Galeshewe, a township on the outskirts of Kimberley in the Northern Cape. After matriculating in 1970 at St Boniface High School, a local Catholic mission school, she enrolled for an education degree to become a teacher, which she later abandoned. During her youth she met Robert Sobukwe, founder of the Pan Africanist Congress and one of the few African lawyers in South Africa at that time, who instilled in her a passion for law. After her arrest for protesting against the ill-treatment of a man by the police, her family asked Sobukwe to represent her in court. Mokgoro recounts that she expressed her frustration to Sobukwe about the small number of African lawyers and subsequently enrolled for a law degree herself.2 Justice Mokgoro studied mostly part-time from 1982 to 1987 at the erstwhile University of Bophuthatswana, where she obtained BLuris, LLB and LLM degrees and subsequently received a second LLM degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. She specialised in the field of human rights, customary law and the effect of the law on society, particularly on women and children. Entering the job market, Mokgoro worked as a nursing assistant and a salesperson before being appointed as a clerk in Bophuthatswana’s Department of Justice. Upon obtaining her LLB degree she was employed as a maintenance officer and public prosecutor in the former Mmabatho magistrate’s court. During the period 1984 to 1991, she worked at the University

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of Bophuthatswana’s Department of Jurisprudence, first as lecturer and later as associate professor, whereafter she was appointed as associate professor at the University of the Western Cape for a period of one year.3 Mokgoro also worked at the Human Sciences Research Council, specialising in human rights (2000), and also lectured part time at the University of Pretoria before being appointed as judge to the Constitutional Court’s first bench. She experienced her time with the Court as antithetical to her experiences under the oppressive system of apartheid, and her jurisprudence was informed by her understanding of ubuntu as an African way of living. During an interview in 2011 for the Constitutional Court Trust Oral History Project, she commented on the meaning of ubuntu: [I]t can mean so many different things, values…It’s just the basic value of life where human beings share a space and show respect for each other based on the fact that they are human…you don’t have to earn to be treated with Ubuntu. You’re treated with Ubuntu because you are a human being.4 Justice Mokgoro was an engaged member of the bench and contributed to many areas of constitutional jurisprudence, but is best known for her remarkable contribution towards utilising and developing ubuntu as a constitutional value and interpretative tool that stemmed from her wish for the ‘dignification’ of South African post-apartheid law and jurisprudence and that led to far-reaching decisions and outcomes. In paying close attention to Yvonne Mokgoro’s vision of a just and caring community, it becomes clear that it is a radical position that serves in its own way to decolonise the law and contribute to the African Renaissance.5 After retiring from the bench, Yvonne Mokgoro continued to be active in the legal space by occupying several influential positions. She has taught a number of legal courses, which include constitutional law, human rights law jurisprudence, criminal law, customary law and private law, at universities in the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and South Africa. As a skilled writer and speaker, she has written and presented papers and participated in a number of conferences, seminars and workshops both nationally and internationally, where she has focused mainly on themes pertaining to sociological jurisprudence, human rights, customary law, and the impact of law on society in general and on women and children in particular.6 In recognition of her contributions to the judiciary and the field of law in general, the South African universities of North West, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Pretoria and the Witwatersrand, as well as the University of Toledo and the University of Pennsylvania in the USA, have awarded her with honorary doctorates of law. Justice Mokgoro served as chairperson of the South African Law (Reform) Commission for a period of 16 years until the end of her third term in 2011. From 2011 until 2013, she served in the Office of the Chief Justice (OCJ), where she was responsible for overseeing the administration of the Office, and the implementation of its mandate to promote the independence of the South African judiciary.7

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Of note is the fact that Justice Mokgoro has made significant contributions both in South Africa and internationally to non-governmental and community-based organisations. She holds a number of memberships of prestigious institutions, such as the International Women’s Association (Washington DC), the International Federation of Women Lawyers, the International Association of Women Judges and the South African Women Lawyers Association.8 In her role as chairperson of the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s Social Cohesion Reference Group, Yvonne Mokgoro supported a forum that managed to diffuse tension around the ‘fees must fall’ student protest in 2016. It is not widely publicised that this forum entered into highly sensitive talks with student leaders, university managements and government, and played a vital role in dissolving the violence and tensions on campuses across the country.9 Justice Mokgoro has been vocal on a number of matters in the media and other public spaces since leaving the Constitutional Court. Speaking in Midrand, the former Constitutional Court justice commented, when opening a two-day ethics conference, that the ethical situation in South Africa is dire. She also lamented the ethos of corruption that is eroding the fabric of society and added that the Constitution must serve as the basic ethos of all South Africans and a guide for all their actions. She further added that the long-term stability of the country and the progressive realisation of the rights and values of the Constitution are dependent on the maintenance of key institutions and promotion of the rule of law.10 In 2018 President Ramaphosa appointed Mokgoro to investigate the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). In April 2019 she handed over the report to the president. She recommended that Advocate Nomgcobo Jiba should be removed from office as deputy national director of Public Prosecutions and that Advocate Lawrence Mrwebi be removed from office as special director of Public Prosecutions, since both were unfit for office and had caused great damage to the operations of the NPA.11 At the conclusion of her report, Mokgoro urged the president never to allow this situation to happen again: Where officials are mired in controversy and are consistently being taken on review for irrational decision-making, and being found wanting by the Courts, it damages the public confidence. The NPA must instil a strong sense of constitutional values and belief in the rule of law. When these values are internalised and fought for vociferously from within the NPA, only then will the institution enjoy the confidence of the citizenry and become the prosecuting authority that South Africans deserve.12 Justice Mokgoro began her journey with an insight and a resultant goal that was unpopular at the time. Her choice to voluntarily march into a system where she was guaranteed to face opposition, and discouragement, made her the staunch advocate for human rights that she is today. Even after her tenure in the highest court of South Africa, she continues to exhibit the role of a public intellectual of substance through her unwavering service.

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Notes 1  Duke Law News, ‘The Honorable Yvonne Mokgoro, Justice of the South African

Constitutional Court’, 15 April 2009. Accessed June 2019, https://law.duke.edu/news/ honorable-yvonnemokgoro-justice-south-african-constitutional-court/. 2 N. Bohler-Muller, M. Wentzel and J. Viljoen, ‘Breaking the Chains of Discrimination and

Forging New Bonds: The Extraordinary Journey of Justice Yvonne Mokgoro’, in N. BohlerMuller, M. Cosser and G. Pienaar (eds), Making the Road by Walking: The Evolution of the South African Constitution (Pretoria: Pretoria University Law Press, 2018), p. 104. 3 Bohler-Muller, Wentzel and Viljoen, ‘Breaking the Chains’. 4 Constitutional Court of South Africa, ‘Interview with Yvonne Mokgoro’, Constitutional

Court Oral History Project, 24 November 2011, p. 21. Accessed November 2017, http:// www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdfo/AG3368/AG3368-M60-001-jpeg.pdf. 5 N. Bohler-Muller, ‘Developing a New Jurisprudence of Gender Equality in South Africa’,

unpublished LLD thesis, University of Pretoria, 2006. 6 Bohler-Muller, Wentzel and Viljoen, ‘Breaking the Chains’. 7 Constitutional Court of South Africa, ‘Yvonne Mokgoro’. 8 Bohler-Muller, Wentzel and Viljoen, ‘Breaking the Chains’. 9 Nelson Mandela Foundation, ‘Concerned Citizens Offer Services to Help Universities’

(26 February 2016). Accessed July 2019, https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/ concerned-citizens-offer-services-to-help-universities. 10 C. Manyathela, ‘Justice Yvonne Mokgoro: Ethical Issues in SA have Become Dire’,

Eyewitness News 28 February 2016. Accessed July 2019, https://ewn.co.za/2016/09/15/JusticeYvonne-Mokgoro-Ethical-issues-in-SA-have-become-dire-1. 11 C. Mailovich, ‘Mokgoro Inquiry Finds Jiba and Mrwebi Unfit for NPA’, Businesslive

25 March 2019. Accessed April 2019, https://www. businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2019-0425-mokgoro-inquiry-finds-jiba-and-mrwebi-unfit-for-npa/. 12 Y. Mokgoro, Mokgoro Commission of Inquiry Report (2019), p. 337. The full report can be

found at http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/content/mokgoro-commission-enquiry-report.

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Sandile Ngcobo: Empowering the people

Sandile Ngcobo: Empowering the people Michael Cosser

b. 1953

Retired chief justice Sandile Ngcobo had an illustrious career as a lawyer, a judge and a chief justice spanning over four decades, up to (and beyond) his formal retirement in 2011. At a joint sitting of Parliament held to bid farewell to Ngcobo as the chief justice, Luwellyn Landers MP remarked: It is said that a Constitution is only as strong as the character of those charged with upholding it. That our Constitution is thriving today, despite pressure on it from some quarters, is testament to the characters of chief justices Chaskalson, Langa and Ngcobo.1 During his tenure as chief justice, Ngcobo, like his predecessors, was committed ‘to broker[ing] compromise and to do[ing] a great deal to preserve the intellectual integrity and collegial unity of the court’.2 His style and strengths were of course different from those of his predecessors. Tolsi wrote that Ngcobo demonstrated ‘an “imperial demeanour”, “excellent administrative skills” and an “incredibly intimidating” presence in court’; indeed, Ngcobo was, by most accounts, a departure from the ‘“egalitarian”…Chaskalson and…Langa.”3 Ngcobo began his tertiary education at the University of Zululand, graduating in 1975 with a BProc degree, obtaining distinctions in constitutional law, mercantile law and accounting.4 After completing this degree he was detained for his political activism, until July 1977. Later in the same year he took up employment at Maphumulo magistrate’s office; then, in the following year, he joined the Durban-based black-owned law firm Mthiyane and Company, where he served his articles of clerkship and later practised as an associate attorney. In 1982 he worked as an attorney at law for the Legal Resources Centre in Durban, where he handled public-interest and civil cases such as those concerning unlawful evictions.

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From 1983 to 1985 he was enrolled for an LLB at the University of Natal, Durban. In 1985 he took an orientation course on the US legal system, offered by the International Law Institute at the Georgetown Law Centre in Washington DC, and from 1985 to 1986 he studied at Harvard Law School towards an LLM focusing on constitutional law, labour law, international legal processes and international human rights. His education in the US was funded through the award of a Fulbright Scholarship and a Harvard Law School Human Rights Fellowship. Ngcobo spent several years in the democratic era as a high court judge in the Cape and also in the labour appeal court. He was appointed a justice of the Constitutional Court in 1999 by President Nelson Mandela.5 In October 2009, President Jacob Zuma appointed him to the position of chief justice, a position he occupied for only two and a half years. Adam Habib described Ngcobo as an ideal candidate for the chief justice post: ‘His reserved demeanour and dignity in office triumphed over the colourful and controversial characteristics of other candidates – particularly Judge Hlophe…[A] candidate that appealed to multiple audiences won over those with narrower appeals.’6 The transformation of South Africa’s judicial system and the promotion of access to justice served as key focal points of Ngcobo’s short tenure as chief justice of South Africa. He paid specific attention to financial efficiency and improving judicial governance and administration. Calland describes this mission: Ngcobo’s first goal as chief justice was to create space for the independent leadership that he believed was essential if the judicial branch of government was to flourish and to operate in the way that the Constitution envisages. Hence, his first objective was to establish the OCJ [Office of the Chief Justice], from which he would be able to lead the reform of the administration of the judiciary and the building of a strong judicial branch of government.7 Because he felt strongly that there was a need to enhance court administration systems in South Africa, Ngcobo argued for financial independence: At a conceptual level, one cannot talk about the judiciary as a genuinely independent and autonomous branch of government if it is substantially dependent upon the executive branch not only for its funding but also for many features of its day-to-day functions and operations.8 The ‘independent leadership’ of which Calland speaks, coupled with Ngcobo’s arguments for ‘a genuinely independent and autonomous branch of government’, were practical manifestations of Ngcobo’s views on the doctrine of the separation of powers. President Zuma attempted to reappoint Ngcobo as chief justice in 2011 – an action that led to a number of civil society organisations filing several cases challenging the appointment, primarily on the grounds that the statute in terms of which his period in office was extended was unconstitutional. A legal and political wrangle ensued, and in the end Ngcobo declined the

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appointment, not wanting to ‘appear to be trying to retain office – on the back of a faulty legal provision that could then be challenged’.9 The doctrine of the separation of powers has been central to Ngcobo’s work as a judge, and to his reflections on the doctrine. In a Faculty of Law Human Rights Lecture at the University of Stellenbosch in 2010, he quoted a passage from De Lange v Smuts NO and Others (1998 (3) SA 785(CC)) about the separation of powers, highlighting the Court’s statement that ‘over time our courts will develop a distinctively South African model of separation of powers’ (emphasis added).10 In Ngcobo’s view, the Constitution ‘does not require an absolute, categorical division of institutions, powers and functions. It contemplates that there will be some encroachment upon one branch by another branch or branches, resulting in the lines between the branches being blurred at times.’11 Part of the order in Ngcobo’s majority author judgment in Doctors for Life International v Speaker of the National Assembly and Others (2006 (6) SA 416 (CC)) – a case hailed as groundbreaking for highlighting the importance of public participation in the law-making process – reads: The order declaring invalid the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Amendment Act, 2004 and the Traditional Health Practitioners Act, 2004 is suspended for a period of 18 months to enable Parliament to re-enact these statutes in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution (para. 117). In allowing Parliament 18 months to align the legislation in question with the Constitution, Ngcobo was giving effect to the separation of powers doctrine he subsequently spelled out in his University of Stellenbosch Faculty of Law Human Rights Lecture in 2010. The paradoxical nature of the relationship between the judiciary, the executive and the legislature is described by Ngcobo as ‘all of the branches [working] independently and collectively towards giving effect to the provisions of the Constitution…[the branches being] bound together in an ongoing and shared endeavour’ (emphasis added).12 Sandile Ngcobo had a special edition of the Southern African Public Law journal dedicated to him in 2017.13 Aside from his jurisprudence on the separation of powers doctrine, contributors recognised him for, inter alia, his judicial leadership (Richard Calland), his views on public/ citizen participation (Elizabeth Brundige, Ziyad Motala, Itumeleng Tshoose, Jonathan Klaaren), his development of a jurisprudence on procedural fairness (Gilbert Marcus and Max du Plessis), and his commitment to democracy at the sub-national level (Victoria Bronstein). Ngcobo’s unique contribution to South African jurisprudence has been in relation to the doctrine of the separation of powers: his promotion of collaboration among the judiciary, the executive, and the legislature in the governance of the state. But an excerpt from a public address he gave in 2016 shows that his conception of ‘constitutional conversation’14 goes beyond collaboration among the three branches of the state:

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Within the limits of legality as determined by the courts, the appropriate solution to most political, economic or social problems can only be found through the political process. These problems are usually complex and they involve many conflicting interests and may involve the use and allocation of limited resources. It is only through the process of give and take of the political process after consultation and dialogue that a viable solution may be found [emphasis added].15 Ngcobo’s ability to hold the independent and the collective in harmonious tension, in effect to balance state power through promoting dialogue as a way to resolve differences, is his unique contribution to South African jurisprudence. But what defines his public intellectualism is not his jurisprudence alone, but his promotion of public participation – in effect his interpretation of ‘the political process’. In Doctors for Life International v Speaker of the National Assembly & Others (2006 (6) SA 416 (CC)), which concerned the interpretation of the provision in the Constitution that, when adopting legislation, Parliament should take reasonable steps to involve the public, Ngcobo took a view different from that of his colleagues on the bench. They had argued that the National Council of Provinces had acted correctly in offering but then, because of a timetable clash, withdrawing the opportunity for public consultation. But he made the case for an interpretation of public participation that went beyond the understanding hitherto, that public involvement could be achieved, as Sachs put it, ‘through publishing notices in advance to give the public the chance to comment, through allowing the public and the media to attend all debates and through enabling members of the public to intervene with specific recommendations when the portfolio committees were dealing with the text in the National Assembly’.16 The eventual majority judgment of the Court read that the South African constitution envisaged public consultation to mean ongoing interaction between Parliament and the people. Sachs deemed this ‘an important judgment with implications for democracy going well beyond South Africa and which could turn out to be influential in coming years’.17 Klaaren concurred, arguing that ‘Ngcobo’s jurisprudential contributions recognise and articulate the public-spiritedness that the Republic of South Africa demands of each of its citizens’,18 while Motala located this notion of public participation within an age-old legal tradition: Ngcobo J’s conception of democracy is more in keeping with the ancient understanding, found in the Athenian city-state, traditional African societies and the writings of Karl Marx. The traditional conception, affirmed by Rousseau, requires the direct participation of the population in the decision-making processes that affect their lives [emphasis added].19 It is this insistence on direct public participation in affairs of state and in matters concerning ordinary people that marks Ngcobo’s singular contribution to public intellectualism. As Sachs has put it so eloquently, ‘And maybe, just as some people are born gifted with a capacity to

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paint, to sing, to design buildings, [Sandile Ngcobo] was born with a capacity to handle the abstractions of legal logic as triggered by the experiences of daily life.’20 Notes 1 Parliamentary Monitoring Group, (2011) ‘Joint Sitting: Farewell to Chief Justice Sandile

Ngcobo and Welcoming of Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng’, Hansard 1 November 2011. Accessed June 2019, https://pmg.org.za/hansard/18193/. 2 R. Calland, The Zuma Years: South Africa’s Changing Face of Power (Cape Town: Zebra Press,

2013). 3 N. Tolsi, ‘Sandile Ngcobo: “Emperor” True to his Green Robes’, Mail & Guardian 5 August

2011. Accessed June 2019, https://mg.co.za/article/2011-08-05-sandile-ngcobo-emperortrue-to-his-green-robes. 4 The account from here on, unless otherwise indicated, is taken from Constitutional Court

of South Africa, ‘Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo’ (n.d.). Accessed July 2019, https://www. concourt.org.za/index.php/judges/former-judges/11-former-judges/66-chief-justice-sandilengcobo. 5 Prior to this, Ngcobo had served in various capacities in the lower courts and then in the

Supreme Court. 6 A. Habib, ‘The State of the Nation and Its Public Service in Contemporary South Africa:

A Critical Reflection’, Administratio Publica 18:3 (2010), p. 6. 7 Calland, The Zuma Years, p. 274. 8 S. Ngcobo, ‘Delivery of Justice: Agenda for Change’, South African Law Journal 120:4 (2003),

p. 688. 9 Calland, The Zuma Years, p. 276. 10 S. Ngcobo, ‘South Africa’s Transformative Constitution: Towards an Appropriate Doctrine

of Separation of Powers’, Stellenbosch Law Review 22:1 (2011), p. 38. 11 Ngcobo, ‘South Africa’s Transformative Constitution’, p. 38. 12 Ngcobo, ‘South Africa’s Transformative Constitution’, p. 40. 13 N. Dyani-Mhango (ed.), Twenty-First Century Constitutional Jurisprudence of South

Africa: The Contribution of Former Chief Justice S. Sandile Ngcobo’, Southern African Public Law 32:1&2 (2017). 14 Ngcobo, ‘South Africa’s Transformative Constitution’, p. 42. 15 S. Ngcobo, ‘Why Does the Constitution Matter?’ Public lecture series, Human Sciences

Research Council, Gallagher Estate, 30 June 2016, p. 24. Accessed July 2020, http://www. hsrc.ac.za/en/events/events/public-lecture-chief-justice-sandile-ngcobo-june-2016. 16  A. Sachs, ‘Recalibrator of Axioms: A Tribute to Justice Sandile Ngcobo’, Special issue,

‘Twenty-first Century Constitutional Jurisprudence of South Africa: The Contribution of Former Chief Justice S. Sandile Ngcobo’, Southern African Public Law 32:1&2 (2017), p. 6. 17 Sachs, ‘Recalibrator of Axioms’, p. 6. 18 J. Klaaren, ‘Towards Republican Citizenship: A Reflection on the Jurisprudence of

Former Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo’, Special issue, ‘Twenty-first Century Constitutional Jurisprudence of South Africa: The Contribution of Former Chief Justice S. Sandile Ngcobo’, Southern African Public Law 32:1&2 (2017).

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19 Z. Motala, ‘Brexit, the Election of Donald Trump and Activism in South Africa, Lessons

for Democracy: The Contribution of Justice Sandile Ngcobo’, Special issue, ‘Twenty-first Century Constitutional Jurisprudence of South Africa: The Contribution of Former Chief Justice S. Sandile Ngcobo’, Southern African Public Law 32:1&2 (2017). 20 Sachs, ‘Recalibrator of Axioms’, p. 7.

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Neville Alexander: Champion of multilingualism

Neville Alexander: Champion of multilingualism Gregory Houston

1936–2012

Neville Edward Alexander was a prominent revolutionary, Robben Island prisoner, linguistic activist, theorist and educationalist who strongly advocated multilingualism in post-apartheid South Africa. In his many publications, he explored the multiplicity of concepts related to nation building, such as ‘race,’ ‘nation’, ‘national group’, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘separatism,’ because ‘it should be stressed that my approach has been motivated throughout by the desire to facilitate the unification of the national liberation movement by fomenting a discussion on the basis of national unity and on the political-strategic implications of ideas about who constitutes the South African nation’ (emphasis in the original).1 He was the first of six children of carpenter David James Alexander and primary school teacher Dimbiti Bisho Alexander. His maternal grandmother, Bisho Jarsa, was an Ethiopian who had been rescued by the British while on her way to a life of slavery in Saudi Arabia. He was deeply influenced by his parents in his early life, acquiring Christian values and respect for others from his mother and a strong anti-white sentiment from his father, who instilled in him the belief that all whites were oppressors. But it was his mother’s strong religious convictions that shaped Alexander’s education: he attended the Dominican Holy Rosary Convent in Cradock until he matriculated in 1952.2 In 1953, he registered for a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Cape Town (UCT), with German and history as his major subjects. In Cape Town he was influenced by the politics of Ronnie Brittan, a friend of his mother, who was a member of the Teacher’s League of South Africa, which was affiliated to the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM). Alexander became a founding member of the Cape Peninsula Students’ Union, also affiliated to the NEUM. After completing his BA, he went on to complete honours and master’s degrees at UCT.  He then completed a PhD in philosophy at the University of Tübingen in then West Germany in 1961 on an Alexander Humboldt Stiftung scholarship.3

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He returned to South Africa in 1961 to take up a post as a teacher at Livingstone High School in Cape Town. South Africa had changed radically. The Sharpeville massacre had occurred while he was abroad, and he returned to a country in which political organisations had been banned, a state of emergency had been declared, and thousands of political leaders and activists were either in detention or hiding from the apartheid security forces. It was a militant atmosphere that suited him, and he immediately joined the African People’s Democratic Union of Southern Africa, a militant affiliate of the NEUM that had been established in 1960. The mood of militancy in the country became increasingly evident after the turn to armed struggle by the ANC, the Pan Africanist Congress and the National Liberation Committee (later renamed the African Resistance Movement) in 1961. This inspired Alexander to initiate discussions on the formation of an armed wing of the NEUM, but he was suspended by the organisation for proposing these ideas.4 He subsequently established a militant organisation, the Yu Chi Chan Club (YCCC), together with Dulcie September, Andreas Shipanga, Fikile Bam and activists Kenneth and Ottilie Abraham from the South West African People’s Organisation, to promote guerrilla warfare. In 1962, the YCCC’s name was changed to the National Liberation Front (NLF).5 A year later, Alexander and several other members of the NLF were arrested after the security forces had intercepted communications between them. He was convicted when he was 27 years old, in 1964, together with 10 other members of the NLF, of conspiring to commit sabotage. Alexander and four other convicted members of the organisation were sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. He spent the 10 years on Robben Island, where he was able to complete an honours degree in history, and teach history to other political prisoners clandestinely.6 After his release in 1974, despite being banned for five years and placed under house arrest thereafter, his experience on Robben Island inspired him to become much more involved in the struggle for socialism and to write more about it.7 He used the period of restriction to work on his first book, One Azania, One Nation: The National Question in South Africa, which he published under the pseudonym No Sizwe. When his ban ended in 1979, Alexander took up a part-time lecturing position in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cape Town. In the same year, he became active in the South African Committee on Higher Education (SACHED), an organisation which provided alternative education to black school students, including many whose education had been disrupted by the 1976 Soweto uprising. He became Cape Town director of SACHED in 1980.8 In 1983, Alexander became involved in the National Forum, an organisation established by Black Consciousness–inclined organisations in response to the introduction of a new constitution that denied political rights to black Africans. In 1986, he became the secretary of the Health, Education and Welfare Society of South Africa, which funded community projects that empowered the oppressed. He was also a coordinator of the National Languages Project in South Africa in the same year.

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In 1989, Alexander co-led, together with the UCT’s Institute for the Study of Public Policy, a controversial study on South African languages. The study concluded that, despite the emergence of English as the primary means of communication at a national level in postapartheid South Africa, the country would remain a multilingual society.9 After the unbanning of political organisations in February 1990, he released a book titled Education and the Struggle for National Liberation in South Africa, in which his central argument was that education would play a significant role in the liberation struggle.10 In the same year he became the leader of the Workers’ Organisation of South Africa, a Trotskyite organisation that advocated for black working-class leadership, was rabidly anti-imperialist and anti-racist, and demanded universal franchise in a non-racial, unitary country. In 1993, he was appointed director of the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa  (PRAESA), an independent research development unit housed in the Faculty of Humanities at UCT. In 1995, he became active in the Language Plan Task Group  (LANGTAG), which had been established to advise the then minister of arts, culture, science and technology on a national language plan for South Africa. In 2001, Alexander was appointed to the inaugural Interim Board of the African Academy of Languages, the official language policy and planning agency of the African Union. In 2004, he was the co-chair of a steering committee for the implementation of the Language Plan of Action for Africa in Yaoundé, Cameroon.11 Alexander was a prolific writer of books and articles on a wide range of socio-political issues. In his first book, One Azania, One Nation,12 he begins to deal with issues such as racial identity, citizenship and nation building – issues he was to tackle repeatedly for the rest of his life. Other publications of his that deal with this topic include ‘Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism in Social Science in Southern Africa’,13 ‘Nation and Ethnicity in South Africa’,14 ‘Approaches to the National Question in South Africa’,15 An Ordinary Country: Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa,16 and ‘The Unresolved National Question in South Africa’.17 One central issue he dealt with is that of ‘race and the persistence of racial identities in postapartheid South Africa’, as he did, for example, in the journal article titled ‘Affirmative Action and the Perpetuation of Racial Identities in Post-Apartheid South Africa’.18 Another central question dealt with in some of his publications is the issue of how to build national unity. Alexander identifies several steps, such as ‘the identification and realisation of significant national projects about which there is national consensus (jobs, AIDS, housing, for example)’. Several of his other publications deal with these topics, including the journal article titled ‘The State of Nation-Building in the New South Africa’.19 However, it is his publications on language and language policy that set Alexander apart from others. Beginning with the 1989 book Language Policy and National Unity in South Africa/Azania,20 he spent most of the next two decades writing on language. To a large extent, his writings dealt with the question of multilingualism and ‘the dialectical relationship between one or a few world languages on the one hand, and the death or extinction of numerous local and national languages on the other’.21 Alexander argued strongly against establishing hegemony for one language in South Africa, in particular a language of a former colonising country. ‘Above all,

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however,’ he writes, ‘there is the simple truth that no people, however small, can ever be content to transact their most important and most intimate business in a language which they do not command intuitively.’22 He commended the language policy in South Africa that was committed ‘to an additive bilingualism approach as the desirable norm in all South African schools’.23 He has several other publications on this topic, including the journal articles and lectures titled ‘Language Policy and Planning in the New South Africa’,24 ‘The Politics of Language Planning in Post-Apartheid South Africa’,25 and ‘Language, Class and Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa’.26 He died in 2012, a few years before the emergence in 2015 of student movements protesting the language of instruction at mainly Afrikaans-speaking universities. While these succeeded in eliminating Afrikaans as the only language of instruction at these universities, Alexander’s multilingualism remains a distant dream, and there appears to be little that can be done to dent the dominance of English in so many sectors of South African society. Alexander was awarded the Order of the Disa, a provincial honour granted to him by the then Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool, for his ‘long commitment to socio-political issues and education’ in 2004. In 2008, he was awarded the Linguapax Prize for his ‘contributions to linguistic diversity and multilingual education’ at a Mother Language Day ceremony during the Intercultural Week organised by the Ramon Llull University in Spain. A building at UCT has also been named after him. During the final years of his life, Alexander dealt extensively with the direction post-apartheid South Africa was taking. For instance, in the fourth Strini Moodley Annual Memorial Lecture, which he delivered at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on 13  May 2010, he points to the disillusionment felt by most South Africans with the outcome of the transition to democracy. In this lecture, he sets out in great detail the evidence of the failure of the democratic government to achieve the ‘programmatic demands’ that served to guide all sections of the liberation movement during the struggle for liberation. For Alexander, the outcome of the democratic transition has been the stabilisation of ‘the capitalist state and system in South Africa’ and the creation of ‘the conditions for its expansion as a profitable venture’. Instead, what needs to be done, he argued, is ‘to find the ideological and organisational means to build the countersociety that insulates the oppressed and exploited from the undermining and disempowering values and practices of bourgeois society’.27 Notes 1 No Sizwe, One Azania, One Nation: The National Question in South Africa (London: Zed

Press, 1979), p. viii. 2 B. Busch, L. Busch and K. Press (eds), Interviews with Neville Alexander: The Power of

Languages against the Language of Power (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2014); R. Mesthrie, ‘Book Review: Neville Alexander: History, Politics and the Language Question’, South African Journal of Science 111:7/8 (2015). Accessed February 2019, http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/sajs/v111n7-8/03.pdf.

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3 Busch, Busch and Press, Interviews with Neville Alexander; N. Dollie, ‘Dialectical Narratives:

Reading Neville Alexander’s Writings’, DLitt et Phil thesis, University of South Africa, 2015, p. 24. 4 Busch, Busch and Press, Interviews with Neville Alexander, p. 25. 5 Busch, Busch and Press, Interviews with Neville Alexander; Dollie, ‘Dialectical Narratives’,

p. 25. 6 Busch, Busch and Press, Interviews with Neville Alexander. 7 Busch, Busch and Press, Interviews with Neville Alexander. 8 Busch, Busch and Press, Interviews with Neville Alexander. 9 Busch, Busch and Press, Interviews with Neville Alexander. 10 N. Alexander, Education and the Struggle for National Liberation in South Africa: Essays and

Speeches by Neville Alexander, (1985–1989) (Johannesburg: Skotaville Publishers, 1990). 11 Busch, Busch and Press, Interviews with Neville Alexander. 12 No Sizwe, One Azania. 13 N. Alexander, Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism in Social Science in Southern Africa. Paper

delivered at the 15th annual conference of ASSA at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 3 July 1984. 14 N. Alexander, ‘Nation and Ethnicity in South Africa’, in N. Alexander (ed.), Sow The Wind

(Johannesburg: Skotaville Publishers, 1985). 15 N. Alexander, ‘Approaches to the National Question in South Africa’, Transformation 1

(1986), pp. 63–95. 16 N. Alexander, An Ordinary Country: Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in

South Africa (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2002). 17 N. Alexander, ‘The Unresolved National Question in South Africa’, in N. Jeenah (ed.),

Pretending Democracy – Israel, an Ethnocratic State (Johannesburg: Afro-Middle East Centre, 2012). 18 N. Alexander, Affirmative Action and the Perpetuation of Racial Identities in Post-Apartheid

South Africa. Edited version of a lecture originally delivered at the East London campus of the University of Fort Hare, 25 March 2006. Accessed October 2018, https://www. researchgate.net/publication/236770474_ Affirmative_action_and_the_perpetuation_of_ racial_identities_in_post-apartheid_South_Africa_Transformation_Critical_Perspectives_ on_Southern_Africa_63_92-108. 19 N. Alexander, ‘The State of Nation-Building in the New South Africa’, Pretexts: Literary and

Cultural Studies 10:1 (2001), p. 90. 20 N. Alexander, Language Policy and National Unity in South Africa/Azania (Cape Town: Buchu

Books, 1989). 21 N. Alexander, English Unassailable but Unattainable: The Dilemma of Language Policy in South

African Education. (PRAESA Occasional Paper No. 3, University of Cape Town, 1999). 22 Alexander, English Unassailable, p. 14. 23 Alexander, English Unassailable, p. 15. 24 N. Alexander, ‘Language Policy and Planning in the New South Africa’, African Sociological

Review 1:1 (1997), pp. 82–98.

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25 N. Alexander, ‘The Politics of Language Planning in Post-Apartheid South Africa’,

Language Problems & Language Planning 28:2 (2004), pp. 113–130. 26 N. Alexander, Language, Class and Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Harold Wolpe

Memorial Trust open dialogue event, Iziko Museum, Cape Town, 27 October 2005. 27 N. Alexander, ‘South Africa: An Unfinished Revolution?’ Fourth Strini Moodley Annual

Memorial Lecture, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 13 May 2010. Accessed October 2018, https://www.marxists.org/archive/alexander/2010-unfinished-revolution.pdf.

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Pallo Jordan: ‘Unapologetic moral guardian’

Pallo Jordan: ‘Unapologetic moral guardian’ Gregory Houston

b. 1942

ANC historian and theoretician Zweledinga Pallo Jordan grew up in a highly politicised family, and began his political involvement when he was seven years old by selling copies of the NonEuropean Unity Movement’s Torch newspaper. While in exile, he was responsible for political education, training and propaganda, and headed up Radio Freedom in Angola. He played a significant role in negotiations leading to the unbanning of the ANC, and the first democratic elections. But Jordan tempered his loyalty with reason. Considered by many to be one of South Africa’s leading intellectuals, he was not afraid to challenge popular views, or to criticise the ANC in government if he believed it necessary. Pallo Jordan’s father, Dr Archibald Campbell (A.C.) Jordan, was a novelist, linguist and academic, while his mother, Dr Phyllis Jordan (née Ntantala), was a teacher, researcher and academic. In 1945, after his father had been appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Bantu Languages at the University of Fort Hare, the Jordans, then with two children and expecting a third, moved from Kroonstad and settled in Alice in the Eastern Cape. However, the family did not stay long in Alice, and when A.C. Jordan, who had succeeded the famous Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu at the University of Fort Hare, was appointed a lecturer in Bantu languages at the University of Cape Town in 1946, the family moved to Cape Town.1 Pallo Jordan did all his schooling in Cape Town. The Jordan family initially took up residence in Moshesh Avenue in Langa township, but they later wrote to Governor General Brownlee to ask for permission to purchase land from a Mr Guttman in Lincoln Estate in Cape Town. The permission was granted, and they established their home, ‘Thabisano’ (a place of rejoicing), in Lincoln Street in Athlone. The children were sent to St Marks Church School in Athlone, and Rosmead Central Primary School and Livingstone High School for coloured students in Claremont, at a time when, in terms of the apartheid policies, coloured and African children were required to attend separate schools.2

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Between 1937 and 1942, A.C. Jordan served as vice-president of the Orange Free State African Teachers’ Association, and between 1943 and 1944, he served as the Association’s president. When he moved to Cape Town he became a member of the Cape African Teachers’ Association. The various African teachers’ associations were affiliated to the Non-European Unity Movement, and A.C.  Jordan’s role in this organisation included being a founding member of the Society of Young Africa. Because of this involvement, A.C. Jordan and his wife, Phyllis, were targeted by the apartheid security police. During the national state of emergency declared after the Sharpeville massacre and Langa protest of March 1960, A.C. Jordan was arrested and assaulted. The family decided to go abroad. In 1961, when A.C. Jordan was awarded the Carnegie Travel Grant to tour universities and colleges in the United States, the government refused to give him a passport to make the trip. So he left South Africa permanently on an exit permit with Pallo Jordan, then 19 years old, using the route via Botswana and Tanzania to London. The rest of the family met them in London, from where they went to the United States. A.C. Jordan lectured in African languages and literature at the Los Angeles campus of the University of California, and later he went on to teach at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.3 In 1963, after his father took up a post at the University of Wisconsin, Pallo Jordan registered at the university to study for a degree in history.4 However, the authorities in the United States rejected his application to renew his student visa because of his participation in student antiVietnam War protests. Jordan stayed in the United States for another three years, and then, without a degree, left for London in April 1967. He applied to study at Sussex University, as well as a few other universities, but did not get accepted. However, the period was one of political ferment among exiles in London, and, like many other young radicals, he would ‘drop in’ unnoticed at lectures and seminars at the University of London’s School of Economics and School of Oriental and African Studies. In London, Jordan and several other members of the newly formed ANC Youth absorbed the ideas of Mao Zedong and began to see themselves as ‘activists among the masses’ who despised ‘ivory towers’. Jordan did not continue with his studies. Instead, he got a job as a clerk at the Abbey Life insurance company that had been created by an exiled South African lawyer, Joel Joffe, and that provided jobs to South Africans living in exile in London. Jordan also did ‘odd jobs’ until the 1976 student uprising in South Africa dramatically boosted the fortunes of the liberation movement.5 Jordan then worked full time in the London office of the  ANC as a researcher in the ANC Department of Information and Publicity. In 1977, he was sent to Angola to head Radio Freedom after the opening of an ANC office in Luanda and military camps in the countryside. In the same year, he also helped to develop political education programmes for new recruits of the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, by compiling a syllabus for political training based on what he had learnt during his brief stint as a history student. In 1979, Oliver Tambo recommended his appointment as head of the ANC’s first internal mass propaganda campaign, ‘The Year of the Spear’, which marked the centenary of the Battle of Isandhlwana of 1879. Under his leadership, a number of innovative, multifaceted communication tools such as posters, postcards, floppy disks, cassette tapes, bumper stickers, T-shirts, comic books and news sheets were produced and widely distributed inside South Africa in an attempt to revive in popular

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memory the tradition of armed resistance against colonial penetration of the country. In the following year, Jordan was appointed to head the research unit of the ANC’s Department of Information and Publicity, and he relocated to the ANC’s headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia.6 He worked in this position until 1988, during which time he built up the ANC reference library and worked closely with Ruth First, who was based at the Centre for Southern African Studies at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. Jordan was in Mozambique in August 1982, and escaped death and serious injury when a letter bomb sent to First exploded in her office, killing her.7 After this ‘near-death experience’, Jordan returned to Lusaka, where, within a short space of time, he raised the ire of the ANC’s security agency, Mbokodo, after criticising their methods. He was arrested, held in an ANC detention centre outside Lusaka, and interrogated for six weeks for apparently exposing the Mbokodo informant network within the ANC’s Department of Information. Jordan apparently informed other members of the department to be careful of Mbokodo members that he had named. He was released when Oliver Tambo intervened after several senior ANC members had been informed about his detention.8 As head of research in the Department of Information, Jordan was the leader of a number of delegations of ANC researchers and scholars to conferences and seminars in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, the United States, Britain and the then Soviet Union. In 1985, he served on the ANC’s national preparatory committee for the Kabwe National Consultative Conference, where he was elected to the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC). He served as convenor on the NEC’s Strategy and Tactics Committee between 1985 and 1989, and also served on the NEC’s subcommittees on negotiations and on constitutional guidelines. In 1985, Jordan was a member of the delegation that included Oliver Tambo, Mac Maharaj, Chris Hani, Thabo Mbeki and James Stuart to a meeting with a delegation of white business leaders at the Mfuwe game reserve, Zambia. He was also a member of the ANC delegations at the Dakar (1987) and Paris (1989) conferences, which were initiated by the Institute for a Democratic Alternative in South Africa. He replaced Thabo Mbeki as the ANC’s director of information and publicity in 1989.9 Following the first democratic elections in 1994, Jordan was appointed the minister of posts, telecommunications and broadcasting in the government of national unity under Nelson Mandela. He served in this position until a Cabinet reshuffle in April 1996 led to his appointment as the minister of environmental affairs and tourism, a position he held until the end of the Mandela administration in 1999. He then served as chairperson of the foreign affairs committee in the National Assembly between 1999 and 2004. After the 2004 national elections, President Thabo Mbeki appointed Jordan minister of arts and culture, a post he held until May 2009. After the 2009 elections, he served as a member of Parliament. Jordan’s official biographies, as well as his official curriculum vitae, claimed that he had received a PhD and he presented himself under the title of Doctor for many years. However, in August 2014, the Sunday Times newspaper published an article revealing that Jordan had only 97 credits towards a degree at the University of Wisconsin, acquired between September 1963 and

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February 1964. There were no records of him completing a degree at the university, nor was there any record that he had completed a PhD at the London School of Economics or of any honorary doctorate having been awarded to him. Jordan later confessed to the deception, arguing that no one had questioned his false claims to have a doctorate. Jordan took the decision in 1982 not to reveal a mistake in a report of the newsletter Africa Confidential on the death of Ruth First that the ‘social scientist Dr Pallo Jordan’ had also suffered injuries as a result of the blast. From then onwards, he assumed the title of Doctor.10 In August 2014, Jordan resigned from Parliament, the national executive committee of the ANC and from the ANC, and apologised to the ruling party. The ANC refused to accept his resignation from the party. Despite the lack of formal qualifications, Jordan has made a significant intellectual contribution. His intellectual potential was evident in early publications such as a 1986 journal article in which he explored the relationship between socialist transformation and the ANC’s Freedom Charter. He attempts in the article to throw light on the ‘thorny problems of theory and revolutionary practice that confront our country and its people’ by examining various South African revolutionary traditions and their relationship to the writings of Marx and Engels on colonialism, the national question and the struggle for democracy.11 Jordan was to root many of his subsequent writings in a Marxist orientation and a historical analysis of the South African liberation struggle. Never averse to challenging popular views, he entered into a lengthy debate on the defects of communism and the character of the Soviet Union with the chairman of the South African Communist Party (SACP), Joe Slovo, in a 1990 article titled  ’The Crisis of Conscience in the SACP’. While acknowledging the ‘candour and honesty with which many of the problems of existing socialism are examined’, Jordan contended that Slovo failed to provide ‘a coherent account of what had gone wrong’ in the Soviet Union, leading to its disintegration in December 1990.12 He later took issue with Slovo again over the strategic direction of the negotiations process in 1993. In response to Slovo’s article ‘Negotiations: What Room for Compromise?’ in the African Communist, Jordan argued against the elevation of negotiations to a strategy, and the ‘deep-seated pessimism’ of the ANC.13 Jordan was an exception in the ANC: he never became a member of the SACP. In the democratic era, Jordan continued to make a significant contribution, including drafting discussion documents for ANC national conferences. For instance, in preparation for the ANC’s 50th national conference that was held in Mafikeng in December 1997, Jordan drafted a paper on one of the burning issues facing the ANC at the time. In ‘The National Question in Post 1994 South Africa’,14 Jordan argued that the ANC could solve the national question by consciously pursuing de-racialisation through policy with the same determination and tenacity as the racists pursued racism and division, and ‘give no quarter to any form of racial discrimination in schooling, employment, housing and recreation’. In 2004, he published an article that reviewed the changing character of the ANC from a liberation movement to a political party in power. One of the issues dealt with in the article is the changed ‘character of the ANC with the party now attracting those seeking a career and the perks of office, a consequence of which has been

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repeated allegations of the misuse of state funds levelled against ANC representatives’.15 He was drawing attention to an issue that was not openly discussed within the ANC at the time. With the coming to power of Jacob Zuma in 2009, Jordan’s criticisms of the ANC government, despite his being an ANC member of Parliament, became strident on a number of issues, including his support for media freedom – evident in his opposition to the Protection of State Information Bill in 2010. By late 2017, Jordan was openly criticising then president Jacob Zuma, stating that ‘Oliver Tambo can never be compared to the scandal-prone President Jacob Zuma’.16 In the aftermath of the disclosure about his false claim to academic qualifications in 2014, ANC veteran Ben Turok had the following to say about Jordan: In the past few years, he has concentrated like no one else on examining the way African opposition expressed itself under white rule. He has written extensively on the emergence of forces of opposition to that rule in the late 19th century and has sought to balance the respective roles of traditional leaders, African farmers and intellectuals in order to correct some misconceptions. His purpose was to provide some background of resistance politics before the emergence of the ANC and after the crushing of African military power in the mid-19th century. His research work also encompassed the subsequent period, after the formation of the ANC in 1912, when he continued to trace the differing social forces at work and the role of the outstanding personalities responsible for that event and their social origins and roles.17 The publisher’s advert for Jordan’s most recent book, a collection of his writings titled Letters to My Comrades (2017), contains some of the characteristics that best describe him: Z. Pallo Jordan has long been the unapologetic moral guardian of the liberation struggle. His writings are testament to the power of putting pen to paper and speaking the truth with forceful and eminently readable moral conviction.18 The book includes, among others, a critical diatribe against the ANC and the Marikana events in a speech titled ‘Remembering Bisho – and Marikana’, which Jordan delivered to the Eastern Cape legislature in September 2012, the tenth anniversary of the Bisho shootings and weeks after the Marikana massacre. Jordan commented on the ‘all too easy recourse to lethal violence on the part of the Police’ that ‘might have had the unfortunate consequence of encouraging the use of lethal force’ in the Marikana massacre. The ANC was criticised for presiding ‘over the first post-democracy massacre’.19 Arguably, Jordan’s deception about his qualifications has diminished his stature as a moral guardian of the liberation struggle. Despite this, there is still respect for the criticisms he levels against the ANC-led government, while recognition of his significant contribution to the historiography on oppression and resistance in South Africa is undiminished.

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Notes 1 P. Ntantala, A Life’s Mosaic: The Autobiography of Phyllis Ntantala (Berkeley, CA: University

of California Press, 1993); Cape Town Museum, ‘Mzolisa Archibald Campbell ‘AC’ Jordan’ (n.d.). Accessed November 2018, https://capetownmuseum.org.za/they-built-this-city/acjordan/; J.O. Orowosegbe, Claude Ake: The Making of an Organic Intellectual (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2018), p. 115; C. Van Gend, ‘Between the Lines’, Cape Librarian 51:Jan/Feb (2007), p. 2. 2 Ntantala, A Life’s Mosaic; Cape Town Museum, ‘Mzolisa Archibald Campbell ‘AC’ Jordan’;

Van Gend, ‘Between the Lines’, p. 2. 3 Ntantala, A Life’s Mosaic; Cape Town Museum, ‘Mzolisa Archibald Campbell ‘AC’ Jordan’;

Van Gend, ‘Between the Lines’, p. 2. 4 Refer to P. Jordan (ed.), Oliver Tambo Remembered (Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan, 2007),

p. 449. 5 T. Bell, ‘“Dr” Pallo Jordan: Why I Did It’, City Press 24 September 2014. Accessed October

2018, https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Pallo-Jordan-Why-I-did-it-20140824. 6 Jordan, Oliver Tambo Remembered, p. 449. 7 Bell, ‘“Dr” Pallo Jordan’. 8 Bell, ‘“Dr” Pallo Jordan’. 9 Jordan, Oliver Tambo Remembered, p. 449. 10 Bell, ‘“Dr” Pallo Jordan’. 11 P. Jordan, ‘Socialist Transformation and the Freedom Charter’, African Journal of Political

Economy/Revue Africaine d’Economie Politique 1:1 (1986), p. 142. 12 P. Jordan, ‘The Crisis of Conscience in the SACP’, Transformation 11 (1990), p. 75. 13 P. Jordan, ‘Strategic Debate in the ANC: A Response to Slovo’, African Communist 131

(Fourth Quarter 1992), p. 12. 14 P. Jordan, ‘The National Question in Post 1994 South Africa’. A discussion paper in

preparation for the ANC’s 50th National Conference, Cape Town, August 1997. 15 P. Jordan, ‘The African National Congress: From Illegality to the Corridors of Power’,

Review of African Political Economy 31:100 (2004), pp. 203–212; P. Jordan, Letters to My Comrades: Interventions and Excursions (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2017). 16  Timeslive, ‘Zuma Far Cry from Oliver Tambo, Says Pallo’, 6 October 2017. Accessed

November 2018, https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017-10-06-zuma-far-cry-from-olivertambo-says-pallo-jordan/. 17 B. Turok, ‘Pallo Jordan’s Strength Lies in His History’, Mail & Guardian 20 August 2014.

Accessed January 2019, https://mg.co.za/article/2014-08-20-pallo-jordan-outstandingintellectual. 18 Raru, ‘Description of Letters to My Comrades: Interventions and Excursions’ (n.d.). Accessed

January 2019, https://raru.co.za/books/5295983-letters-to-my-comrades-z-pallo-jordanpaperback. 19 Jordan, Letters to My Comrades.

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Jeremy Cronin: Tales of struggle

Jeremy Cronin: Tales of struggle Gregory Houston

b. 1949

The author of a collection of poems, Inside, Jeremy Patrick Cronin balanced the seemingly ethereal persona of philosopher-poet with the pragmatism of focused activism. He used his considerable intellect and talent to further the aims of the liberation struggle and the South African Communist Party (SACP), and has served as an MP and Cabinet minister. He was not afraid to speak out against the apartheid government, and he is equally not afraid to speak out against the ANC government when, guided by his intellect ethics, he feels it necessary. Cronin grew up in a middle-class, staunch Roman Catholic English-speaking family in Simonstown.1 His father, a naval officer, died when Jeremy was 10 years old. From then on he, his younger brother and his mother relied on his father’s naval pension and the salary of his mother, who worked as an administrative clerk at a local hospital. The single-parent family settled in Rondebosch, which was also the location of a Catholic school. Cronin schooled at a Marist Brothers school, St Joseph’s College, where he was introduced to the philosophy of St Augustine, St Aquinas and others, initiating a lifelong interest in philosophy.2 During his early adolescence, Cronin considered becoming a Catholic priest once he had completed his schooling. He also started writing poetry when he was about 15 or 16 years old, while the extra lessons he took in French outside of school instilled in him a love of the poetry of Rimbaud, Baudelaire and other French poets. After completing his schooling in 1966, he was called up for conscription and served nine months in the navy. In 1968 he enrolled at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he studied French, philosophy and English, completing an honours degree in philosophy in 1971. One lecturer who had a minor impact on him was Martin Versfeld, an eccentric Afrikaner intellectual who had converted to Catholicism. Professor of ethics at UCT, Versfeld taught courses on Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas and Descartes.3 

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At UCT, Cronin ‘slipped’ into atheism when he was about 18 or 19 years old – relatively easily since his staunch Catholic father was no longer alive. During his first year, a small student movement took root that was inspired by the 1968 events in Paris, Berlin, Prague and Mexico City. The first action this radical student group took was to occupy the administration building in protest against the university council’s failure to resist government pressure against the appointment of Archie Mafeje as a lecturer. Cronin initially resisted participation in student politics, and viewed himself as an intellectual with ambitions to be a poet or a lecturer, or both. However, he was introduced to politics by a fellow philosophy student at UCT and former student at St Joseph’s College, Bernard Holiday, who persuaded him to join the students occupying the administration building. He joined the Radical Student Society, becoming joint editor of the society’s journal, with Holiday. It is through this group that he met Rick Turner, a young philosophy lecturer who had studied in Paris. He began attending the seminars that Turner organised at Stellenbosch University.4 Bernard Holiday also introduced Cronin to his brother Anthony, a journalist working for the Rand Daily Mail who was already an underground member of the proscribed South African Communist Party. In 1968, Cronin joined the SACP underground. His task was to provide the names and addresses of students on campus to whom SACP propaganda material in the form of pamphlets, books and resources on the history of the SACP could be mailed. He was also instrumental in establishing a cell of the SACP in the Radical Student Society, which met weekly for a radical lecture.5 Cronin spent 1972 and 1973 studying towards a master’s degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he worked on the philosophy of Rousseau and, despite instructions from the SACP not to get close to the French Communist Party, also attended the party’s lectures.6 During the time he spent in France, Cronin managed to also spend time in London, where Ronnie Kasrils trained him in underground techniques. After completing his degree, he returned to South Africa to take up a lecturing post in UCT’s philosophy department.7 Cronin became part of an SACP underground propaganda unit, writing and distributing pamphlets. Within a year or two he began working with another underground propoganda unit constituted by David and Sue Rabkin.8 The propaganda unit was uncovered in 1976, and the three members arrested. They appeared in the Cape Town Supreme Court in September 1976 to face charges under the Terrorism and Internal Security Acts, including conspiring with members of the ANC and the SACP, and preparing and distributing propaganda pamphlets on behalf of the two organisations. Cronin pleaded guilty to all charges, and was given a sentence of seven years in prison that he served in Pretoria Local Prison.9 Cronin and David Rabkin served their prison sentence with Raymond Suttner, another member of the underground, who had been arrested a year earlier. Cronin used the time he spent in prison to write poetry, and engage in workshops and discussions on his writing with other prisoners. He also read extensively.10 During his imprisonment he wrote a book of poems, Inside, which was published after his release in 1983. His wife Anne Marie succumbed to a brain tumour while he was still in prison, and he was denied permission to attend her funeral.11

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After his release from prison in early 1983, Cronin wrote an education booklet on the history of the ANC-aligned South African Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu). Following the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in August 1983, he was appointed education officer of the Western Cape UDF, and editor of the national organisation’s theoretical journal, Isizwe (The Nation).12 His major responsibility in the UDF was political education, which meant that most of his activities revolved around writing discussion papers, preparing education materials about the history of the struggle and lecturing on these to various groups, such as workers’ groups, civics groups and women’s groups. In these lectures he used indigenous examples and indigenous wisdom to explain Marxist theories of class, and theories about dialectics, historical developments, transformation, and so on. However, Cronin also took time to read his poems at meetings in church halls, and at rallies in stadiums as ‘a way of communicating ideas and experiences and resistance and defiance and the history of our struggle’.13 A year and a half after his release from prison, Cronin was reintegrated into underground structures of the SACP, despite being under constant surveillance. He became a member of the Western Cape command structure, and played a role in providing logistical support to trained guerrillas infiltrating the country from abroad. However, his main activity was in the UDF, while also regularly attending meetings of the Western Cape MK Command that included Jenny Schreiner and Tony Yengeni. From the time of the declaration of the 1980s states of emergency, Cronin became a wanted man for the security police. He evaded arrest on two occasions by going underground for months. After the uncovering and arrest of members of the Western Cape command in 1987, he flew out of the country to the United Kingdom, using another person’s passport. He stayed in London for a year before moving to Lusaka, where he worked for the political headquarters of the ANC’s politico-military committee (PMC). The PMC was in overall charge of the political and military struggle, and the political headquarters was responsible for political mobilisation inside South Africa. Cronin worked closely with Joe Slovo, mainly in producing the party organ, Umsebenzi.14 He was elected to the SACP central committee at the party’s 1989 Havana conference. Cronin returned to South Africa in early 1990, and was deployed to help set up the legal SACP in what later became the Johannesburg office of the party. He served on its 22-member leadership committee as the official party spokesman, and later as an SACP delegate in the negotiations process. He also served as editor of the two party journals, the African Communist and Umsebenzi. He was elected deputy general secretary of the SACP in 1995. In 1999 he became an ANC member of Parliament, and in 2009 was appointed deputy minister of transport, and later deputy minister of public works. Cronin stepped down as first deputy general secretary of the party in 2017.

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Cronin co-authored 30 Years of the Freedom Charter in 198615 and 50 Years of the Freedom Charter in 2006,16 and has published numerous articles and three books of poems. His collection of poems written in prison includes the following characterisation of the experience: Overhead is mesh To one side the morgue To one side the gallows wing, this Is our yard Into which a raggedy By happenstance Butterfly has flown. Fluttering Halfway to panic Halfway to give a damn Springtime has come. The years flow into each other. The struggle goes on.17 One objective of the prison poetry, according to Cronin, ‘was to bear testament, to record the reality of prison, to give voice to the relatively unspeakable, to find words for what  I and, of course, millions of South Africans were (in one way or another) experiencing’.18 Most important, however, has been the role Cronin has played as an organic intellectual of the party. He has published numerous journal and newspaper articles, and has made a large number of speeches in which he presents an SACP perspective on a wide range of issues. His work includes an analysis of the relationship between the Freedom Charter and the national democratic revolution;19 a defence of the democratic transition in the early 1990s;20 an explication of the SACP’s opposition to privatisation21 and the SACP’s views of GEAR (the state’s economic plan);22 a critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission;23 a commentary on the role of revolutionary intellectuals;24 a discussion of the SACP’s views on nationalisation of the mines in post-apartheid South Africa;25 support for the government’s New Growth Path policy;26 and critical analyses of the crisis in COSATU27 and state capture.28 With regard to the latter, he wrote in 2016: It is critical in the immediate situation to hold the line against rampant corruption. If key state-owned corporations like Transnet and Eskom are pillaged then the ability of a democratically elected government to carry forward its popular mandate, including confronting private monopoly capital-in-general, will be seriously compromised. But the march against ‘state capture’ today, must

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not goose-step us backwards to the late-1990s neo-liberal heyday of GEAR, privatisation, and mindless market liberalisation.29 Cronin’s writings serve as a major conduit for the ideas and opinions of the SACP leadership on many issues. Notes 1 A. Parker and M. Willhardt (eds), Who’s Who in Twentieth Century World Poetry (London:

Routledge, 2002); Helena Sheehan, interview with Jeremy Cronin, Cape Town, 17 April 2001. Accessed October 2018, http://doras.dcu.ie/24014/1/Cronin-Sheehan%20 interviews%202001-2002.pdf; S. Gardner, Four South African Poets: Robert Berold, Jeremy Cronin, Douglas Reid Skinner, and Stephen Watson (Grahamstown: National English Literary Museum, 1986), p. 13ff. 2 Sheehan, interview with Jeremy Cronin; Gardner, Four South African Poets, p. 13ff. 3 Sheehan, interview with Jeremy Cronin; Gardner, Four South African Poets, p. 13ff. 4 Sheehan, interview with Jeremy Cronin; Gardner, Four South African Poets, p. 13ff. 5 Sheehan, interview with Jeremy Cronin; Gardner, Four South African Poets, p. 13ff. 6 Sheehan, interview with Jeremy Cronin; Gardner, Four South African Poets, p. 13ff. 7 Sheehan, interview with Jeremy Cronin; Gardner, Four South African Poets, p. 13ff. 8 Sheehan, interview with Jeremy Cronin. 9 Gardner, Four South African Poets, p. 13ff. 10 Sheehan, interview with Jeremy Cronin. 11 Sheehan, interview with Jeremy Cronin; Gardner, Four South African Poets, p. 13ff. 12 Gardner, Four South African Poets, p. 13ff. 13 Sheehan, interview with Jeremy Cronin; Gardner, Four South African Poets, p. 13ff. 14 Sheehan, interview with Jeremy Cronin. 15 R. Suttner and J. Cronin, 30 Years of the Freedom Charter (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986). 16 R. Suttner and J. Cronin, 50 Years of the Freedom Charter (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2006). 17 J. Cronin, Inside (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1983). Accessed November 2018, https://www.

sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/Inside%20-%20full%20book_0.pdf. 18 B. Harlow, ‘A Chapter in South African Verse: Interview with Jeremy Cronin’, Alif: Journal

of Comparative Poetics 21 (2001), p. 258. 19 J. Cronin, ‘National Democratic Struggle and the Question of Transformation’,

Transformation 2 (1986), pp. 73–78. 20 J. Cronin, Sell-Out, Or the Culminating Moment. Paper presented at the Democracy:

Popular Precedents, Practice, Culture History Workshop, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 13–15 July 1994. 21 J. Cronin, ‘Response to Chester Crocker’ in A. Hadley and G. Mills (eds), From Isolation to

Integration: The South African Economy in the 1990s (Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1996). 22 J. Cronin, ‘Why the SACP Won’t Jive to GEAR’, Mail & Guardian, 20 June 1997. Accessed

October 2018, https://mg.co.za/article/1997-06-20-why-the-sacp-wont-jive-to-gear.

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23 J. Cronin, A Luta Dis-Continua? The TRC Final Report and The Nation Building

Project. Paper presented at The TRC: Commissioning the Past? History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 11–14 June 1999. 24 J. Cronin, ‘The Role of Revolutionary Intellectuals’, Umrabulo 25 (May 2006). 25 J. Cronin, ‘Should We Nationalise the Mines?’, Politicsweb 18 November 2009. Accessed

October 2018, https://www.politicsweb.co.za/party/should-we-nationalise-the-mines-jeremy-cronin. 26 J. Cronin, ‘Lets Consolidate Support for the New Growth Path’, Umsebenzi 10:2

(2011), pp. 1–3. 27 J. Cronin, ‘What Lies Behind the Current Turmoil in COSATU?’, Politicsweb 27 November

2014. Accessed October 2018, https://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/what-lies-behind-thecurrent-turmoil-within-cosatu. 28 J. Cronin, ‘Corporate Capture, Money and Politics – Part Two’, Politicsweb 3 November

2016. Accessed October 2018, https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/money-and-politics. 29 Cronin, ‘Corporate Capture’.

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Jabulani ‘Mzala’ Nxumalo: Revolutionary intellectual

Jabulani ‘Mzala’ Nxumalo: Revolutionary intellectual Gregory Houston

1955–1991

Jabulani Nobelman ‘Mzala’ Nxumalo has been described as ‘one of the most outstanding revolutionary intellectuals of the 1976 generation’, who, through ‘his sharp mind and pen… left a legacy of intellectualism, writing about the revolutionary process in the country at the time’.1 Nxumalo died at the age of 35 in London on 2 February 1991, exactly a year to the day after the unbanning of the South African liberation movements. Despite his death at such a young age, Mzala, as Nxumalo was popularly known, made a significant contribution to South African revolutionary theory in several publications that are still the subject of debate among revolutionary theorists inside the country. Mzala was an organic intellectual whose theorising about the revolution was linked closely to his involvement in revolutionary activities. His intellectual activity was initiated through involvement in political activities inside the country as a youth during the early 1970s and in the 1976 Soweto uprising, and reached maturity in later years through his involvement in the activities of the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), in exile. Mzala became involved in politics at a very early age; in 1972, at the age of 15 years, he was detained without trial for his role in a boycott at the school he was attending at the time. The boycott took place during the year of a countrywide mass walk-out from universities in the aftermath of the expulsion of Black Consciousness (BC) student leader Abram Onkgopotse Tiro from the University of the North (Turfloop). A year later, Mzala was arrested for his part in student and worker strikes. The year 1973 saw the outbreak of a wave of worker strikes for higher wages and better working conditions in Durban that soon spread to major industrial centres in other parts of the country. Clearly, the young Nxumalo was a student leader who became involved in school boycotts that were linked to broader anti-apartheid and worker activities. After matriculating at a school he attended at KwaDlangezwa in Empangeni, he registered at the University of Zululand, Ongoye, to study for a law degree.

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At university, Mzala became active in the Black Consciousness Movement’s (BCM) South African Students’ Organisation, which had been established by Steve Biko and others in 1968. However, the student uprising in Soweto on 16 June 1976 interrupted his studies. As a student leader, he, like many other student leaders throughout the country, became a target of the South African security forces. He consequently left the country, going into exile that year, and joined the ANC’s military wing.2 After undergoing military training, first in ANC military camps in Angola in 1976, and then in the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Mzala rose rapidly in the ranks of MK.  In Angola, his leadership and intellectual capabilities were recognised, so he was appointed a political commissar. In the Soviet Union, he received training in politics and other specialised military subjects, and in 1980, he was sent for advanced ideological and political training in the GDR. The ANC deployed Mzala to the forward areas from 1983, first to Swaziland, where he conducted underground work disguised as a reporter for the Swaziland Observer. Here he established contact with ANC and MK cadres based in Natal and, on one occasion, infiltrated the country. However, when South Africa and Mozambique signed the Nkomati Accord in 1984, hundreds of ANC members were expelled from Mozambique, many of whom moved to Swaziland. This strained relations with the Swazi authorities, who began to arrest ANC members, including Mzala. He was deported to Tanzania, where he worked for the ANC’s Radio Freedom and Amandla Cultural Group. In 1987, he moved to London to work for the international committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP), which he had been invited to join soon after going into exile.3 Benjamin and Elsie Nxumalo, Mzala’s parents, were both teachers, and they instilled a love for books and education in him from an early age.4 Herein lies the foundation for his deep interest in books on revolutionary theory and prolific writing that began soon after his arrival in exile, when he began work on a book about Marxism-Leninism in Zulu in 1977. This was followed in 1980 by a paper titled ‘The Immediate Task of Our Revolution: Armed Struggle in South Africa’, in which he argued for the intensification of the armed struggle and interrogated the crucial relationship between political and military struggle, stating: ‘No matter how skilled or courageous our guerrilla units can be, the lack of mass support could mean their doom.’5 The armed struggle, he argued, was inadequate on its own to lead to a successful revolution. However, the armed struggle was vital for the building of popular support among the masses, which was a necessary condition for revolutionary success. In the same year, he published the article ‘Black Consciousness and the South African Revolution’, in which he critically analysed the BCM in the SACP’s African Communist under the pseudonym Khumalo Migwe.6 Mzala’s preoccupation with military strategy and tactics continued in 1981, when he published a journal article titled ‘Has the Time Come for the Arming of the Masses?’7 He pointed out that ‘retaliatory violence’ had become a spontaneous but permanent feature of the 1980 mass upsurge inside the country, led largely by youths and students. This raised the possibility of establishing internal units of a ‘revolutionary people’s army’ by recruiting, training and arming the masses. He argued that urban guerrilla warfare needed to be backed up by rural guerrilla

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operations because of the limited possibilities for guerrilla actions in the townships, which were far from city centres, deliberately isolated by the regime, and the inability to use ‘certain heavy weapons’ in townships. The need was to combine both urban and rural guerrilla warfare, and to leave it to ‘concrete reality to determine which one will play the primary role’.8 In 1983, Mzala wrote ‘The Freedom Charter and Its Relevance Today’ in commemoration of the Congress of the People, held in Kliptown in 1955, where the Charter was adopted.9 In this article, he provided a background to the Congress of the People, and described the Charter as a blueprint for a future democratic South Africa, although acknowledging that it was not a socialist document. The focus of the paper, however, was a critical comparison of the Charter with the Manifesto of the Azanian People that had been drafted by the newly formed BCinclined National Forum in that year. In the process, he embarked on a deep analysis of the Charter and its relevance during the period of exile and armed struggle. For Mzala, the Charter ‘is a revolutionary guide to a life free of misery and oppression’.10 Two years later, he turned his focus back to strategy and tactics in an article titled ‘Cooking the Rice Inside the Pot’, which was published in MK’s journal Dawn in 1985.11 The central argument here was that the revolutionary upsurge that had been taking place since the Vaal uprising the previous year – in response to rent hikes in African townships – was an indication that the masses inside the country were ready to overthrow the apartheid regime through revolutionary violence. In essence, he argued for the intensification of a ‘people’s war’ and the arming of the masses inside the country. Mzala’s main contribution to South African revolutionary theory lies, however, in his treatment of the ‘national question’ in South Africa. His first major publication on this topic appeared in 1984, and was written under the pseudonym Sisa Majola as a journal article titled ‘A Tale of Two Nations: The Presentation of the National Question in South Africa’.12 This was followed in 1988 by a book chapter titled ‘Revolutionary Theory on the National Question in South Africa’,13 a working paper written a year later titled ‘The National Question in the Writing of South African History – A Critical Survey of Some Major Tendencies’,14 and a journal article jointly written with John Hoffman in 1990 titled ‘“Non-Historic Nations” and the National Question: A South African Perspective’.15 At the risk of simplification, Mzala’s central argument was that liberation from apartheid would lead irrevocably towards integration of the different ‘nations’. He added, however, that the degree of ‘smoothness of this process will depend largely on the class at the head of the revolution, and whether or not the former oppressors infringe the former oppressed nation’s feeling of self-respect. It is actually the nationalism of the oppressor nation that is the principal obstacle to the creation of national unity in South Africa.’16 Mzala was a prolific writer. Among his main works are ‘Why We Are with the Communists’;17 ‘Nation and Class in the South African Revolution’;18 ‘The Beginnings of People’s Power: Discussion of the Theory of State and Revolution in South Africa’;19 ‘The Two Stages of Our

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Revolution’20 (all under the pseudonym Sisa Majola); and Gatsha Buthelezi: Chief with a Double Agenda.21 He also wrote a number of significant articles on revolutionary strategy for the ANC’s journal Sechaba. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Luthuli in 2010. Two and a half decades after liberation, however, the national question remains unresolved, and Mzala’s prediction that liberation from apartheid would lead irrevocably towards integration of the different ‘nations’ did not materialise. The breadth of Mzala’s impact is perhaps best captured in Percy Ngonyama’s interesting observation that ‘whilst it is predominantly organisations and individuals within the Tripartite Alliance who have been the main proponents of remembering, honouring and memorialising Mzala, there are others, outside of the Alliance and even antagonistic, who find inspiration in his radical world outlook, work and persona, and often use their memory of Mzala to critique the current political and economic conjuncture.’22 Notes 1

P. Ngonyama, Mzala: A Short Intellectual Biography. Seminar paper. Archive of the History and African Studies Seminar (2013). Accessed January 2019, http://www.kznhasshistory.net/files/seminars/Ngonyama2013.pdf, p. 1.

2

Ngonyama, A Short Intellectual Biography, p. 2; The Presidency, ‘Jabulani Nobleman Nxumalo: The Order of Luthuli in Silver’ (2010). Accessed November 2018, http://www. thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/jabulani-nobleman-nxumalo-1955-1991.

3

The Presidency, ‘Jabulani Nobleman Nxumalo’.

4

The Presidency, ‘Jabulani Nobleman Nxumalo’.

5

Comrade Mzala, ‘The Immediate Task of Our Revolution: Armed Struggle in South Africa’ (1980). Accessed October 2018, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/yclsa-eom-forum/ XrKZ4cUS0jw.

6

K. Migwe, ‘Black Consciousness and the South African Revolution: Letter to the Editor’, African Communist 83 (Fourth Quarter 1980), pp. 86–93.

7

Mzala, ‘Has the Time Come for the Arming of the Masses?’, African Communist 86 (Third Quarter 1981), pp. 83–94.

8

Mzala, ‘Has the Time Come?’, p. 91.

9

Mzala, ‘The Freedom Charter and its Relevance Today: Article written by Mzala on the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Freedom Charter’ (1983). Accessed January 2019, http:// amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/Comrade+Mzala.

10 Mzala, ‘The Freedom Charter’, p. 29; Ngonyama, A Short Intellectual Biography, pp. 4–5. 11 Mzala,‘Cooking the Rice inside the Pot: A Historical Call in Our Times’ (1985). Accessed

January 2019, http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/Comrade+Mzala. 12 S. Majola, ‘A Tale of Two Nations: The Presentation of the National Question in South

Africa’, African Communist 97 (Second Quarter 1984), pp. 40–52. 13 Mzala, ‘Revolutionary Theory on the National Question in South Africa’ in M. van Diepen

(ed.), The National Question in South Africa (London: Zed Books, 1988).

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14 Mzala, The National Question in the Writing of South African History – A Critical Survey of

Some Major Tendencies. (Working Paper 22, Development Policy and Practice, The Open University, Milton Keyes, 1989). 15 J. Hoffman and N. Mzala, ‘“Non-Historic Nations” and the National Question: A South

African Perspective’, Science & Society 54:4 (1990/1991), pp. 408–426. 16 Mzala, ‘Revolutionary Theory on the National Question’. 17 Mzala, ‘Why We Are with the Communists’, African Communist 93 (Second Quarter 1983),

pp. 66–73. 18 S. Majola, ‘Nation and Class in the South African Revolution’, African Communist 105

(Second Quarter 1986), pp. 40–48. 19 S. Majola, ‘The Beginnings of People’s Power: Discussion of the Theory of State and

Revolution in South Africa’, The African Communist 106 (Third Quarter 1986), pp. 55–66. 20 S. Majola, ‘The Two Stages of Our Revolution’, African Communist 110 (Third Quarter

1987), pp. 39–51. 21 Mzala, Gatsha Buthelezi: Chief with a Double Agenda (London: Zed Press, 1988). 22 P. Ngonyama, ‘“Comrade Mzala”: Memory Construction and Legacy Preservation’,

African Historical Review 49:2 (2017), pp. 72–101. Accessed 25 July 2020, DOI: 10.1080/17532523.2017.1415498.

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Joel Netshitenzhe: An economic policy colossus Ngqapheli Mchunu

b. 1956

A well-rounded technocrat with vast experience in both the private and public sector, Joel Khathutshelo ‘J.K.’ Netshitenzhe is one of the ANC’s finest cadres. Whether through consultation or direct involvement, the ANC has relied heavily on his wisdom and he continues to be actively involved the party’s leadership structures. Growing up under the apartheid government, JK, as he is affectionately known, became disillusioned with the oppressive nature of this government. As a result, he became a member of the ANC in his youth and, in time, came to hold key positions in the organisation. He holds a postgraduate diploma in economic principles and a Master of Science majoring in financial economics from the University of London, and a diploma in political science from the Institute of Social Sciences in Moscow, Russia.1 Prior to the 1994 democratic breakthrough, Netshitenzhe served on various committees within the ANC, and was also editor of Mayibuye, the ANC’s underground newsletter during the course of the liberation struggle.2 At the height of the struggle, Netshitenzhe was also the deputy head of the ANC’s information and publications department. Netshitenzhe, using the pseudonym Peter Ramakoa, was part of the ANC delegation that travelled abroad to meet with other delegations in the 1980s on at least two occasions: the meeting between a delegation which was led by Archbishop Denis Hurley, with Bishop Wilfrid Napier of Kokstad, Bishop Mansuet Biyase from Eshowe and Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, who was an influential leader of the United Democratic Front (UDF), and ANC leaders, including president Oliver Tambo, Mac Maharaj and Steve Tshwete, in Lusaka from 15 to 17 April 1986; and the meeting between 115 delegates from South Africa put together by the Five Freedoms Forum and 60 members of the national executive committee of the ANC from 29 June to 1 July 1989, also in Lusaka.3

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Between 1983 and 1985, Netshitenzhe served as a member of the political headquarters of the politico-military committee (PMC) of the ANC under John Motshabi. The PMC was formed in 1983 to replace the revolutionary council, and was charged with leading the ANC’s military and political struggle from abroad. The PMC drew together the top leadership of the ANC and allied organisations, representatives of the military headquarters, representatives of the political headquarters, the director of the information and publicity department (Thabo Mbeki), the head of the Department of Intelligence and Security (Mzwai Piliso), the president and general secretary of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (Stephen Dlamini and John Gaetsewe respectively), and members of the permanent secretariat of the PMC (Joe Nhlanhla, John Pule and Reg September).4 He subsequently served on the internal political committee, which replaced the political headquarters in 1985, until 1990. Some of the positions he has occupied in the public sector include being head of communications in former president Nelson Mandela’s office. In 1998, he was elected onto the national working committee of the ANC, and in the same year joined the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) as the chief executive officer. Whilst occupying this position, he was appointed as the head of Policy Coordination and Advisory Services (PCAS) in the Presidency in 2001. After stepping down as CEO of GCIS, he took over the position of the head of PCAS on a full-time basis in 2006. At this stage, he became widely considered as a candidate for the presidency of the ANC, and ultimately as president of the country. In 2009, he announced that he would be stepping down from this position in order to pursue other interests in the wake of the removal of President Mbeki from office, in 2007.5 Despite leaving the public sector altogether in 2009, Netshitenzhe has remained vocal about both the ANC as a ruling party and the ANC-led government. As mentioned above, he was very critical of corruption within the ranks, and spoke strongly against what he termed the ANC government’s ‘bureaucratic arrogance’ in not respecting the electorate who had voted it into power.6 He also voiced dissatisfaction with the reappointment of Brian Molefe as CEO of the power utility Eskom, arguing that Molefe’s actions are an indication that the ANC is no longer in control of the cadres it deploys, which compromises its ability not only to lead society but to lead itself as a governing party. In the build-up to the 54th national conference of the ANC, held in Nasrec in 2017, he served as a voice of reason in which he repeatedly spoke against factionalism and grandstanding and stressed the need for the ANC to self-reflect and selfcorrect in the period leading up to the 2019 elections.7 Having served in the public sector, Netshitenzhe has also occupied several positions in the private sector and has been a member of several boards, including that of Nedbank, as an independent non-executive director from August 2010. In November of the same year, he was appointed as a non-executive director in Life Healthcare Group Holdings Limited. In addition, he has served as a board member of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. His wide range of experience across the public and private sector has earned him a reputation of being one of South Africa’s most trusted and renowned technocrats.

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Beyond honing his impressive set of skills as a technocrat, Netshitenzhe has also contributed to academic and research development in South Africa. He has co-authored several books, including the 2014 release of Nation Formation and National Cohesion: An Enquiry into the Hopes and Aspirations of South Africans, which he co-authored with authors such as Yacoob Omar, Shepi Mati and Andries Oliphant. He has written extensively on matters of governance, democracy, and development in Africa. In addition, he is the current executive director of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA). MISTRA, under Netshitenzhe, has become a key role player in the social sciences community through its partnerships with tertiary institutions such as the University of Johannesburg. The research institution has published books and journals and hosts conferences which seek to contribute continually to scholarly growth and development in South Africa and in Africa at large. Joel Netshitenzhe remains an important figure in South African politics and academia. He continues to share wisdom and insight on matters of governance and political and bureaucratic leadership. In an article published in New Agenda: South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy, he pointed out that reducing income inequality remains South Africa’s single most important task in light of the continued income inequality and rising costs of living.8 In addition, he noted that as South Africa plans to become a developmental state, it is critical that the country is able to distinguish between the government and other leaders in the socioeconomic formation of the country at large.9 As a seasoned political and economic veteran, his insight and wisdom continue to benefit the ruling party. He remains one of the longest-serving national executive committee members of the ANC, having been a member since 1991.10 As such, it is widely believed that Netshitenzhe has been a major contributor to ANC policy documents that are debated prior to and during ANC policy conferences. He has thus been an influential figure in determining the direction the ANC-led government has taken the country for quite some time. His insights are evident in his analyses, among others, of the national democratic revolution and the quest for people’s power in the democratic dispensation in South Africa;11 the role of the media in supporting the national interest;12 the role of the state in the nationalisation of mines and overall influence in the economy;13 the failure of the ANC to adapt to changing circumstances;14 and the relationship between class formation and the post-apartheid state.15 For Netshitenzhe: The National Democratic Revolution is a process of struggle that seeks the transfer of power to the people. When we talk of power we mean political, social and economic control…The objectives of [the] NDR include the transformation of South Africa into a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and united South Africa where all organs of the state are controlled by the people. As a basic principle, the NDR looks…at removing the barriers that have been set by apartheid in terms of black people and Africans’ (in particular) access to the economy and services.16

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Notes 1 Bloomberg, ‘Executive Profile’ (2019). Accessed April 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/

research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=111484279&privcapId=877128. 2 A. Lisonni, J. Soske, N. Erlank, N. Nieftagodien and B. Omar, One Hundred Years of the

ANC (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2012). 3 M. Savage, Trekking Outward: A Chronology of Meetings between South Africans and the

ANC in Exile, 1983–2000 (2014). Accessed June 2019, https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/ handle/11427/6967/ savage_trekking_outward_2014-05.pdf?sequence=1. 4 V. Shubin, ANC: A View from Moscow (Bellivlle: Mayibuye Books, 2008), p. 249. 5 M. Roussouw, ‘Why Mbeki’s Right-Hand Man Quit’, Mail & Guardian 1 June 2009.

Accessed April 2019, https://mg.co.za/article/2009-10-23-why-mbekis-righthand-man-quit. 6 M. Gallens, ‘ANC Has Lost Control of Its Deployees – Netshitenzhe’, News24 12 May 2017.

Accessed April 2019, https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/anc-has-lost-control-ofits-deployees-netshitenzhe-20170512. 7 S. Cele, ‘Netshitenzhe Berates ANC Youth League’, City Press 10 June 2017. Accessed

April 2019, https://city-press.news24.com/News/netshitenzhe-berates-anc-youthleague-20170610. 8 J. Netshitenzhe, ‘Inequality Matters: South African Trends and Interventions: Socio-

Economic Performance’, New Agenda: South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy 53 (2014), p. 12. 9 J. Netshitenzhe, Class Dynamics and State Transformation in South Africa’, Journal of

Public Administration 50:3 (2015), p. 559. 10 African National Congress, ‘National Executive Committee’ (2019). Accessed April 2019,

https://www.anc1912.org.za/national-executive-committee. 11 J. Netshitenzhe, ‘The National Democratic Revolution: Is It Still on Track?’, Umrabulo 1:4

(1996). Accessed June 2019, http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/pubs/umrabulo/umrabulo1.html. 12 J. Netshitenzhe, The Role of the Media in Building the National Interest (2002). Accessed June

2019, http:// www.gcis.gov.za. 13 J. Netshitenzhe, ‘State Ownership and the NDR: Debating Nationalization’, Umrabulo 33

(2010). Accessed June 2019, http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=2832. 14 J. Netshitenzhe, A Continuing Search for an Identity: Carrying the Burden of History.

(Unpublished mimeo, 2011). 15 J. Netshitenzhe, ‘Competing Identities of a National Liberation Movement and the

Challenges of Incumbency’, ANC Today (June 2012), pp. 15–21. 16 Netshitenzhe, ‘The National Democratic Revolution’.

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Elinor Sisulu: Feminist and activist Thobekile Zikhali

b. 1958

Award-winning author, human rights activist, academic and political analyst Elinor Batesat Sisulu is an outstanding public intellectual who has contributed immensely to social justice issues both in South Africa and the country of her birth, Zimbabwe. She has been described as ‘a fierce intellectual hiding under her warm and sweet disposition towards people’1 and ‘is regarded by many as one of the pioneering African feminist thinkers’.2 However, she usually describes herself as ‘a Zimbabwean-born South African writer. But my main identity is that I’m a mother, I have four boys. I’m also a feminist and an activist.’3 She is married to Max Sisulu, the son of South African struggle icons Albertina and Walter Sisulu, whom she met in the Netherlands. She also lived in the United Kingdom and Zambia before coming to South Africa in 1991. Her areas of research include human rights, development studies, the economic status of women, the role of civil society organisations, and state institutions. She has a master’s degree in development studies from the International Institute of Social Studies at The Hague, Netherlands (1985); a bachelor’s degree in English and history from the University of Zimbabwe (1977–1979); and a diploma in economic planning and development from the United Nations Institute for Economic Planning and Development in Dakar, Senegal (1982). Recently, in 2019, the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria awarded her an honorary doctorate.4 As an author she has published a biography about her father- and mother-in-law titled Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime; a children’s book titled, The Day Gogo Went to Vote; and A Different Kind of Holocaust: A Personal Reflection on HIV/AIDS. In 2018, she co-authored a book with Sindiwe Magona about her late mother-in-law, titled Albertina Sisulu: Abridged Memoir. As a firm believer in a culture of reading amongst children, she founded the Puku Children’s Literature Foundation, and is the former chairperson of the Book Development Foundation.

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She warns that a culture of reading amongst children and youth is essential today, particularly in a world that is driven by information technology.5 Her work experiences include, inter alia, working for the Ministry of Labour in Zimbabwe as an economic researcher (1980–1987) and for the International Labour Organization in Zambia from 1987 to 1990. She was part of the team that founded the Crisis Coalition of Zimbabwe office in Johannesburg, where she was responsible for advocacy and mobilising resources for promoting democracy, peace and human rights in Zimbabwe.6 She also worked for the World Food Programme in 2004 as a consultant on HIV/AIDS, education and good nutrition in nine southern African countries.7 Today, her activism includes contemporary issues facing the country such as violence against women, gender inequality, xenophobia, and political and human rights. In order to win the war against social injustices, Sisulu recommends new ways of thinking and behaving, and new ideologies.8 For her, the most important characteristics that those new ways should possess are social accountability and responsible leadership. She criticises the anti-imperialism narrative adopted by most southern African liberation movements. She argues that these liberation movements are opportunistic and fail to live up to their people’s expectation of poverty alleviation and well-being.9 Sisulu has been critical about the political crisis in Zimbabwe, advocating for media reforms, and the respect for and protection of human rights. She was part of the team that worked on the 2007 Breaking the Silence Report – a report on the Gukurahundi human rights violations that occurred in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces in Zimbabwe.10 In South Africa, Sisulu has contributed to issues affecting women, such as HIV/AIDS, poverty, violence and rape. While she acknowledges the progressive legislation on gender equality in South Africa, she argues that more work is required to ameliorate the plight of women, such as responsible leadership and good governance.11 In the biography on Walter and Albertina Sisulu, she takes the readers beyond the challenges the two faced in their fight against apartheid.12 One of her main reasons for writing the biography is to keep the memory of the family alive for future generations to learn about and be inspired by their history. She also documents other struggle heroes, including women who were at the forefront of the 9 August 1956 march to the Union Buildings to protest against the apartheid system. This comes as an honour to the late Albertina Sisulu, who wanted the story of the unsung heroines of the 1956 march to be told.13 Such documentation enriches appreciation that the struggle against apartheid took the dedication of many extraordinary people, including many unknown heroes and heroines.14 Sisulu identifies a gap in existing biographies that normally focus on the public part of people’s lives, leaving out the private sphere, which to her is equally important in bringing a consolidated understanding of public figures.15 She argues that there is a need to focus on social history that will highlight the daily lived experiences of public figures. In her article ‘Mrs Sisulu’s Husband: Subversion of Gender Roles in an African Marriage’, Sisulu sheds light on how Walter Sisulu was not intimidated by playing second fiddle to his wife, Albertina. She notes that Walter was

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quite happy to be ‘Mrs Sisulu’s husband’, and Walter’s encouragement of Albertina’s political career and his consistent affirmations ‘made marriage an empowering and fulfilling experience for Albertina’.16 According to Sisulu, understanding this public space invites one into reflection on other social issues, such as gender dynamics and African feminism.17 Sisulu has received a number of awards, including the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition Human Rights Award and the NOMA Award for Publishing in Africa, for Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime. She has also sat on several boards since 1992. These include the boards of Orlando West Children’s Library Committee, the Speak Media Project, Siyaya Magazine Editorial, the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, the Open Society Initiative of SA, the National Arts Festival, and Thebe Resources Incubator. Sisulu has also sat on the panel of judges for the Africa Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. In 2003, the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa commissioned her to work on the Africa Conference on Elections, Democracy and Governance in Africa report.18 As the daughter-in-law of two respected icons, Sisulu has represented the family in a number of honorary events dedicated to the life of her much revered mother-in-law and father in-law. She has been a guest speaker at a number of events, including the Nelson Mandela Centenary in 2018 at the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in the United States of America.19 Sisulu is part of the Albertina Sisulu Leadership Programme in Health, whose main objective is to contribute to and strengthen the healthcare system in South Africa.20 The programme works in partnership with the University of Fort Hare, the University of Pretoria, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, South Africa Partners and the National Department of Health.21 Elinor Sisulu’s contribution in South Africa is diverse, as shown by some of her work highlighted above. During the graduation ceremony at which she received her honorary PhD, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria, Professor Vasu Reddy, described her work as interdisciplinary. According to Reddy, Sisulu’s work ‘embodies what the eminent sociologist C.  Wright Mills referred to when he argued for the need for the sociological imagination to connect private troubles with public issues’.22 This was apt, as Sisulu believes ‘the absence of curiosity spells the death of imagination. There has been much talk about putting up walls and closing borders. Sadly closing borders against others invariably means that borders will be closed against you. Tragically the physical borders all too often mirror the borders in the mind.’23 Notes 1 L. Kabwato, ‘Elinor Sisulu on Politics, Activism’, Zimbabwe Briefing 38, 10–16 August

2011, p. 1. Accessed June 2019, http://www.swradioafrica.com/Documents/Zimbabwe%20 Briefing%20Issue%2038.pdf. 2  University of Pretoria News, ‘Elinor Sisulu, Human Rights Activist and Author, Receives

UP Honorary Doctorate’, 15 April 2019. Accessed July 2019, https://www.up.ac.za/news/

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post_2803530-elinor-sisulu-human-rights-activist-and-author-receives-up-honorarydoctorate. 3 Kabwato, ‘Elinor Sisulu on Politics’, p. 1. 4  University of Pretoria News, ‘Elinor Sisulu, Human Rights Activist’; South Africa Partners,

‘Elinor Sisulu to Receive Honorary PhD from the University of Pretoria Department of Human Sciences’ (10 May 2019). Accessed June 2019, https://www.sapartners.org/articles/ elinor-sisulu-to-receive-honorary-phd-from-the-university-of-pretoria-department-ofhuman. 5 C. Kahla, ‘World Book Day: Five South African Women Driving Literacy Change’, The

South African 28 May 2019. Accessed June 2019, https://www.thesouthafrican.com/lifestyle/ five-south-african-women-driving-literacy-change/; SABC Digital News, Activist Elinor Sisulu on Human and Women’s Rights, 9 August 2018. Accessed May 2019, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=oJ_x0FsS6OE. 6 Africa Gender Institute, ‘African Feminist Thinkers: Our Voices. Elinor Sisulu’ (n.d.).

Accessed May 2019, http://www.agi.ac.za/agi/gender-studies/gws/african-feministresources-our-voices/elinor-sisulu. 7 Africa Gender Institute, ‘African Feminist Thinkers’. 8 Kabwato, ‘Elinor Sisulu on Politics’. 9 Kabwato, ‘Elinor Sisulu on Politics’. 10  University of Pretoria News, ‘Elinor Sisulu, Human Rights Activist’. 11 Kabwato, ‘Elinor Sisulu on Politics’; E. Sisulu, ‘The 50th Anniversary of the 1956 Women’s

March: A Personal Recollection’, Feminist Africa 6 (2006), pp. 73–76. 12 E. Sisulu, ‘“Mrs Sisulu’s Husband”: Subversion of Gender Roles in an African Marriage’,

Social Dynamics 30:1 (2004), p. 102. 13 SABC Digital News, Activist Elinor Sisulu. 14 SABC Digital News, Activist Elinor Sisulu; L. Tshangela, ‘MaSisulu Had the Courage of a

Lion’, SABC News Online, 18 May 2018. Accessed May 2019, http://www.sabcnews.com/ sabcnews/masisulu-had-the-courage-of-a-lion/. 15 Sisulu, ‘“Mrs Sisulu’s Husband”’. 16 Sisulu, ‘“Mrs Sisulu’s Husband”’, p. 102. 17 SABC Digital News, Activist Elinor Sisulu; Tshangela 2018. 18 Africa Gender Institute, ‘African Feminist Thinkers’. 19 See South Africa Partners, ‘Mandela Centenary Celebration in Partnership with the

JFK Library Foundation’ (17 June 2018). Accessed May 2019, https://www.sapartners.org/ articles/mandela-centenary-celebration. 20 South Africa Partners, ‘Elinor Sisulu to Receive Honorary PhD’. 21 South Africa Partners, ‘Elinor Sisulu to Receive Honorary PhD’. 22  University of Pretoria News, ‘Elinor Sisulu, Human Rights Activist’. 23  University of Pretoria News, ‘Elinor Sisulu, Human Rights Activist’.

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Zackie Achmat: Social movements activist Gregory Houston

b. 1962

How many people in the world would refuse a life-saving drug until it is available to all? Abdurrazack ‘Zackie’ Achmat came to the world’s attention when he refused to take antiretrovirals until they were freely available to everyone who needed them. He first participated in the 1976 student uprisings at the age of 14 and has been campaigning tirelessly for social justice ever since. Over the years, his focus has changed from the predominantly political issues of the 1970s and 1980s to more immediate, grassroots social justice issues. Achmat and his twin brother were one month old when they were placed in the care of his grandparents and his mother’s sister. The four Achmat children – including two sisters – moved from time to time between Johannesburg, where their parents lived, and Cape Town. Achmat had an Indian grandfather, an African grandmother, and an Irish grandmother, and also has Indonesian ancestors. The family essentially grew up as secular Indian Muslims in apartheid South Africa. His father was a storeman in a furniture factory, and his mother and aunt were garment workers. Achmat began schooling in Johannesburg, but did most of his early schooling at a Muslim primary school in Salt River, where the family rented a room in a house shared by several families. The house was adjacent to an open field where people would drink alcohol and, since residents in the house engaged in the illegal brewing of traditional beer, Achmat grew up in an environment where police often arrested people for drinking alcohol illegally in that open space.1 Early influences on Achmat were the emphasis placed on the importance of education and of respecting people irrespective of race, religion, culture and gender at the school he attended, as well as the history of the French Revolution. The teacher who taught them history in Standard Four focused on the revolutionary slogans ‘equality’ and ‘liberty’ in an effort to make the students understand their relevance in the context of South Africa at the time. Subsequent influences were the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in 1967, and the death in detention

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of political activist Imam Abdullah Haron in 1969. Achmat discovered that he was ‘gay’ when he was about 12 years old and attending the Wesley Methodist Practising School in Salt River. With a working-class background, he spoke Afrikaans exclusively as a child, but he attended an English-medium school with predominantly middle-class children. Another major influence on Achmat was his grandfather, who would discuss the political articles in the Cape Times and the Argus with him on a daily basis, including news on the Indo–Pakistan War of 1971 and the Israeli–Arab war of 1973. The defining event for him, however, was the 1976 Soweto uprising, of which he became aware through the evening news on the newly introduced South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) television network.2 When the uprising took root in Cape  Town in August 1976, the junior students at Wesley Methodist Practising School, including Achmat, met in early September and decided that they were going to boycott classes, as well as establish a student representative council (SRC). On that day, the first school day after the vacation, the senior students rounded up all the students and led them on a march to the town centre, where they were confronted by riot police in Adderley Street. A few of the students and teachers were arrested, and the students boycotted classes for several days, returning only to write examinations. In 1977, when he was 15 years old, Achmat was among the students at the school that began receiving and reading the banned literature of the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP), and became conscious of the armed struggle, the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) and other political organisations. In the same year, he met veteran political activist Jean Naidoo,3 who introduced him to a drama school that drew in members from several of the African high schools in Cape  Town. This interaction took him deep into political activity. His first significant political act was to set fire to the office of the principal at his school and, after a subsequent school demonstration in which he was part of the leadership, Achmat was arrested on 18 May 1977, and detained for two weeks. Bail was denied, and he was kept in a reformatory for four weeks until his trial. He was convicted of arson, and sentenced to six lashes. This incident thrust Achmat into the limelight, and he was drawn into networks of leading political activists in Cape Town at the time, such as Theresa Solomons, lawyer Dullah Omar, Jean Naidoo and others. He began reading more about political organisations, as well as participating in political activities such as addressing students at various schools. It was during this time that, because he was living on the streets, he turned to sex work. After hiding from the police for several months, he was arrested in early September, and held in detention under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act until December 1977.4 After a short stint at Livingstone High School in 1978, he decided to leave school and continue with his political activities. He played a leading role in organising school students to support the 1979 Fattis and Monis strike, and was once again detained and spent six months in Pollsmoor Prison. Thereafter he played a role in establishing advice offices in the Cape Flats, in the formation of the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) branches in schools in Cape Town, and in the 1980 school boycott, which led to another arrest. Achmat spent several months in detention, together with many of the leading student and political activists in Cape Town at the time. He became an adherent of the ANC, and spent the first few years of the

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1980s occupied fully in a wide variety of political activities, including mobilisation during local struggles against forced removals and rent and electricity hikes, organising youths to sell the Grassroots community newspaper, and participating in organisations supporting conscientious objectors to conscription. By 1985, however, he had shifted allegiance to the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC, which was established by ANC members who had played a leading role in the establishment of independent trade unions during the 1970s. This faction’s emphasis on the need for a worker organisation independent of the ANC, and their open criticism of the ANC leadership, led to the suspension in 1979 and expulsion of its leadership from the ANC in 1985.5 Despite the time spent on his political activities, Achmat did not lose sight of what he had learnt early in life: the importance of education. In 1992, he obtained his BA (Honours) degree from the University of the Western Cape, and later studied filmmaking at the Cape Town Film School. In 1994, he established the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality, which, in its early years, focused on ensuring protection for homosexuals in the new constitution, and facilitating legal action aimed at – and ultimately achieving – the decriminalisation of sodomy, as well as the granting of equal status to same-sex partners in the immigration process.6 In particular, negotiations leading up to the final constitution presented the opportunity to incorporate equality and other rights for lesbian and gay people. As director of Wits University’s AIDS Law Project, Achmat also became involved in legal matters related to the advocacy effort for the right to health of people living with AIDS.7 The AIDS Law Project successfully secured an interdict against police harassment of gay people on the grounds of sexual orientation in 1995. Soon thereafter, gay sex was decriminalised and same-sex couples were given the right to access the pension and medical aid benefits of their partners and the right to permanent residence.8 Achmat was a co-founder of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which rose to prominence after its launch on International Human Rights Day in 1998 because of its opposition to then president Thabo Mbeki’s controversial views on the causes of AIDS, and the state’s consequent refusal to provide conventional treatment through the public health system – despite the country’s high HIV-infection rate. In the same year, he announced his HIV-positive status, and refused to take antiretroviral drugs until they were accessible to all who needed them because he believed that there should be equal treatment for all. He kept his promise until 2003, when he was urged to begin antiretroviral treatment by the vote of a national congress of TAC activists. He decided to start treatment just prior to an announcement made by the government that it would make antiretroviral drugs available to HIV patients through the public health sector. This was followed by his participation in a group sit-in at provincial government offices in Cape Town in 2006 in support of a call to charge health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and correctional services minister Ngconde Balfour with culpable homicide after an HIVpositive inmate at Westville Prison in Durban died. A subsequent court decision arising from a case in which he was one of the plaintiffs ordered the government to provide antiretroviral drugs immediately to HIV-positive prisoners.9 The TAC then focused its efforts on getting cheaper drugs for the treatment of people living with AIDS.

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Zackie Achmat: Social movements activist

Achmat then focused on the establishment of several social movements, including the Social Justice Coalition (2008), which aimed at promoting the rights enshrined in South Africa’s constitution; the Centre for Law and Social Justice (later known as Ndifuna Ukwazi – Dare to Know) (2009), an activist organisation and law centre that brings together movement-building, research, and litigation in campaigns to advance urban land justice in Cape Town; and Reclaim the City (2015), which focuses on issues related to schools, policing, the provision of sanitation infrastructure and black people’s access to land in urban areas. He also took leadership positions in several other social movements, including serving as chair of Equal Education, a movement of students, parents, teachers and community members that works, through research and activism, for greater equality and improved quality in South African education.10 Each of the movements and campaigns Achmat has established is led by young black people, and represents his use of active political advocacy to overcome racism, sexism and social inequality. His advocacy goes beyond local issues, and includes international causes such as opposition to dictatorships on the African continent, homophobia in Africa and elsewhere, USled wars that contravene international law, and Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.11 He is, without any doubt, the leading campaigner in the country on several important human rights and other social issues. In the course of this activism, Achmat authored and co-authored several publications on themes at the centre of his campaigns: for instance, the journal articles ‘Commentary: Most South Africans Cannot Afford Anti­HIV Drugs’12 and ‘Combining Prevention, Treatment and Care: Lessons from South Africa’13; the monograph The Cover Provided for HICV/AIDS Benefits in Medical Aid Schemes14; and the draft policy paper titled ‘Steering the Storm: TB and HIV in South Africa: A policy paper of the Treatment Action Campaign’.15 Achmat’s remarkable efforts to honour a lifetime belief in the importance of ‘respecting people irrespective of race, religion, culture and gender’ have not gone unrecognised. He is the recipient of a trail of awards, including the Desmond Tutu Leadership Award (2001); the People in Need’s Homo Homini Award for human rights activism (2001); the National Press Club (South Africa) Newsmaker of the Year (2003); the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights (2003); and the Nelson Mandela Health and Human Rights Award (2003). He was elected as Ashoka Fellow (2003); named one of Time magazine’s European Heroes (2003); voted 61st in SABC3’s list of 100 Great South Africans (2004); nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Quaker humanitarian group American Friends Service Committee (2004); awarded an Open Society Fellowship (2009); awarded City of Cape Town Civic Honours (2011); and awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Cape Town (2017). Many of the things we take for granted today, such as same-sex marriage, rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) individuals, and access to antiretroviral therapy, did not just happen. They are the result of long, hard activism by people like Zackie Achmat – people who have, in many different ways, put their lives on the line.

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Notes 1 P. Das, ‘Zackie Achmat: Head of the Treatment Action Campaign’, interview with Zachie

Achmat, The Lancet Infectious Diseases 4:7 (2004), pp. 467–70; T. April, interview with Zackie Achmat, Cape Town, Sadet Oral History Project, 16 July 2001. 2 April, interview with Zackie Achmat. 3 April, interview with Zackie Achmat. 4 April, interview with Zackie Achmat. 5 April, interview with Zackie Achmat. 6 L.M. Surhone, M.T. Timpledon and S.F. Marseken, Zackie Achmat (Riga: VDM

Publications, 2010). 7 Surhone, Timpledon and Marseken, Zachie Achmat. 8 S. Power, ‘The AIDS Rebel Letter from South Africa’, The New Yorker 79:12 (2003), p. 4. 9 Surhone, Timpledon and Marseken, Zachie Achmat. 10 Surhone, Timpledon and Marseken, Zachie Achmat. 11  IOL, ‘UCT to Award Honorary Doctorate to Zackie Achmat’, 3 July 2017. Accessed

November 2018, https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/uct-to-award-honorary-doctorateto-zackie-achmat-10108435. 12 Z. Achmat, ‘Commentary: Most South Africans Cannot Afford Anti­HIV Drugs’, British

Medical Journal 324 (2002), pp. 217–218. 13 Z. Achmat and J. Simcock, ‘Combining Prevention, Treatment and Care: Lessons from

South Africa’, AIDS 21, suppl 4 (2007), S11–S20. 14 A. Stein, H. McLeod and Z. Achmat, The Cover Provided for HICV/AIDS Benefits in Medical

Aid Schemes. (Centre for Actuarial Research Monograph No. 10, University of Cape Town, 2002). 15 Z. Achmat and R.A. Roberts, Steering the Storm: TB and HIV in South Africa: A policy

paper of the Treatment Action Campaign. Draft policy paper, 2005. Accessed October 2018, http://www.tac.org.za/Documents/TBPaper for Conference1.pdf.

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Kumi Naidoo: The global activist

Kumi Naidoo: The global activist Gregory Houston

b. 1965

Global activist and civil society leader Kumi Naidoo has occupied the global stage on civic matters for many years – but not only in an administrative capacity. In June 2011, he was imprisoned for four days in Greenland after scaling an oil platform owned by Cairn Energy as part of Greenpeace’s ‘Go Beyond Oil’ campaigns. And, in 2012, he was one of a group of Greenpeace activists who occupied the Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the Pechora Sea in the Arctic to protest against oil drilling in the Arctic.1 Naidoo was born in 1965 in Bayview in Chatsworth, Durban, in a simple home with three siblings. He attended a government primary school in Bayview before attending Chatsworth Secondary School. In 1980, together with Lenny Naidu, Richard Vallihu, Kovin Naidoo, David Madurai and Jay Ramluckhan, he helped found Helping Hands, a Bayview-based youth group that focused on charitable and community work around issues of education and youth sports, and fund-raising for local charities such as the Cheshire Homes for the Disabled, the Aryan Benevolent Homes for the Aged, Lakehaven Children’s Home, and the KwaZulu-Natal Drought Fund. During this time, he also served as housefather at the Lakehaven Children’s Home, where he cared for orphaned youths.2 When he was 15, and two weeks after his mother had committed suicide, he was expelled from school for participating in a campaign against the 20th anniversary celebrations of the declaration of the Republic of South Africa on 31  May 1961.3 Nevertheless, he continued his studies at home, completed his matriculation examinations in 1982, and registered for study at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW) with the intention of completing a law degree. He served as president of the Student Representative Council at UDW for three years. While at university, Naidoo continued with his involvement in community activities. He was a founding member of the Bayview Residents’ Association, together with Devan Pillay, Siva

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Thumbiran, Saroj Pillay, Kovin Naidoo, Lenny Naidu, Clive Pillay, and Derek Naidoo. The association ran an advice office and addressed a variety of problems on such issues as pensions, rental arrears, and drawing up of wills. In the course of these activities, he linked up with Natal Indian Congress activists who were working within civic organisations to link local struggles to the broader political struggle. In 1987, four years after Naidoo began his university education, he fled South Africa after being hounded by the apartheid government. He had been working as a member of the political underground of the ANC inside the country in a unit established by Vijay Ramlakan, a medical doctor, in the Durban area. The network included a number of youths, of Indian descent in particular, who were constituted into units of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK – the ANC’s military wing) or units that provided infrastructural support to the MK unit.4 In 1986, Naidoo was arrested and, while awaiting trial for contravening provisions of the state of emergency in operation in the country, he applied for a Rhodes Scholarship. On the day he learnt that he had been granted the scholarship, the security police raided his home. He went into hiding for four months, and then into exile in England, where he took up the scholarship, and completed a doctorate in political sociology at Oxford.5 His thesis is titled ‘Class, Consciousness and Organisation: Indian Political Resistance in Durban, South Africa, 1979–1996’. At Oxford, Naidoo was instrumental in setting up the student organisation Rhodes Scholars Against Apartheid, and was active in the Oxford Coalition Against Apartheid. He participated in a hunger strike for seven days to raise money for the children of families living in exile.6 In the next few years, several events occurred in South Africa that had an impact on him. The most important were the detention of his younger brother, and the death in 1988 of his closest friend, Lenny Naidu, who was killed by an apartheid ‘special forces’ unit while making his way back into South Africa as a trained MK guerrilla. Naidoo credits the death of his friend as the main influence on his decision to dedicate his life to ‘the struggle for justice and to make the world a better place’.7 Naidoo returned to South Africa in 1990, and he was asked to head the ANC’s media production division in 1993. However, instead of working in the party or in the first democratic government, he decided to focus on civil society, beginning with organisations involved in implementing adult literacy programmes. He became director of the National Literacy Cooperation (NLC), and head of the Adult Literacy Campaign in South Africa.8 In 1994, Naidoo became one of the founding directors of the South African National Non-Governmental Coalition, and in 1998 he joined Civicus (the World Alliance for Citizen Participation) – an international non-profit organisation dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil society. He served as secretary general and chief executive officer of Civicus for a decade, until he left the organisation in 2008. During this period, in 2003, the UN secretary general appointed him onto the Panel of Eminent Persons on UN–Civil Society Relations.

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Naidoo has engaged in several dramatic actions to pressure the powerful into taking action. For instance, in 2008 he joined about 40 other public figures on a hunger strike in protest against the South African government’s position on Zimbabwe, to draw attention to the millions of Zimbabweans who were experiencing starvation virtually every day because of food shortages. They were demanding an end to the policy of quiet diplomacy on the issue of Zimbabwe pursued by the Southern African Development Community, the African Union and major political parties in the region; an urgent response to the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe by the United Nations and the international community; and an immediate end to the ‘abductions, torture and other sinister forms of intimidation against civil society and political activists’. Naidoo fasted for 21 days during this protest action.9 In the wake of the hunger strike, Naidoo joined international environmentalist group Greenpeace as its international executive director in 2009, becoming responsible for 1 500 staff in 28 offices worldwide, and a budget of €200m. He served in this position until the end of 2015, and then served as founding director of Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity in 2016. While working at Greenpeace, he was simultaneously chair of the Global Campaign for Climate Action and co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, which were among the largest coalition organisations in the environmental and development spheres respectively.10 He was also on the boards of several non-profit organisations, such as the Global Reporting Initiative, Food and Trees for Africa, Partnership for Transparency Fund and the Association for Women’s Rights in Development.11 In 2018, he was appointed secretary general of Amnesty International, becoming the first African to hold this position, which he still occupies. Amnesty International is the largest human rights movement‚ and has a global presence with offices in more than 70 countries‚ 2 600 staff and seven million members‚ volunteers and supporters worldwide. During the course of his leadership in various national and international organisations, Naidoo has expressed his opinion on several matters. As head of Civicus, Naidoo pointed out: Many in civil society are alarmed that the voices of ordinary citizens have either been ignored or insufficiently engaged…On the other hand, powerful interests from within the military and the larger military-industrial complex seem to exercise enormous influence, while helping to shape long-term visions. This trend will only exacerbate existing feelings of cynicism and alienation among average citizens who feel their views are not represented in existing political systems.12 In his capacity as international executive of Greenpeace he stated: We can turn the crisis of climate change into an opportunity. Climate change should bring humanity to its senses. We can use this challenge to break down the divisions between rich and poor nations, developed and developing, North and

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South. Since we either come together as a global family and seriously work for an energy revolution away from dirty brown fossil fuels based system to a clean, green, renewable energy system and secure all our children and grandchildren’s futures. [Or] if we get it wrong, none of us will ultimately be secure. Most importantly, by moving in a direction of a clean energy future, we can generate millions of new decent jobs, reduce poverty and ultimately avert catastrophic climate change. Our children expect no less.13 Naidoo is the author of several books, including Civil Society at the Millennium;14 Young People at the Centre: Participation and Social Change;15 and Boiling Point: Can Citizen Action Save the World?16 He is also the recipient of several awards, including an honorary doctorate in education awarded by the Durban University of Technology ‘in recognition of his outstanding contribution in the fight for human dignity for all, his community and student activism and his commitment to the eradication of poverty and injustice through multiple national, African and global movements’ (2017); and the Shared Interest’s Champion Award for People and Planet (2018). Naidoo is a shining example of a caring activist with a global perspective. From helping to found a neighbourhood benevolent organisation at the age of 15, his ‘constituency’ has grown to encompass the whole world – natural, political and social. His segue from heading Greenpeace to taking the helm of Amnesty International is a reflection of his holistic view – caring for the environment and caring for people are inextricably entwined. Notes 1 BBC News, Greenpeace Activists Board Russian Gazprom Oil Platform, 24 August 2012.

Accessed January 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-19365433. 2 A. Desai and G. Vahed (eds), Chatsworth: The Making of a South African Township

(Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2013), pp. 283–284. 3 Desai and Vahed, Chatsworth, p. 285. 4 Desai and Vahed, Chatsworth, p. 164. 5 Oxford Today, ‘Kumi Naidoo’ (2010). Accessed January 2019, http://www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.

uk/interviews/kumi-naidoo. 6 Oxford Today, Kumi Naidoo. 7 Oxford Today, Kumi Naidoo; Vahed and Desai, Chatsworth, p. 166; S. Moss, ‘Kumi Naidoo:

“History Teaches Us That the Only Time You Move Forward Is When Decent People Put Their Lives on the Line”’, The Guardian 30 November 2009. Accessed January 2019, https:// www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/nov/30/kumi-naidoo-greenpeace-copenhagen. 8 Moss, ‘Kumi Naidoo: “History Teaches Us”’. 9 K. Bloom, ‘Amnesty International’s Kumi Naidoo on Climate Change, Populism

and Xolobeni’, Daily Maverick 28 January 2019. Accessed October 2018, https://www. dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-01-28-amnesty-internationals-kumi-naidoo-on-climatechange-populism-and-xolobeni/.

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10  Timeslive, ‘Former Durbanite Kumi Naidoo to Lead Amnesty International’, 21 December

2017. Accessed January 2019, https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2017-12-21former-durbanite-kumi-naidoo-to-lead-amnesty-international/. 11 K. Naidoo, Boiling Point: Can Citizen Action Save the World? (New York: Dag Hammarskjöld

Foundation, 2010), p. 4. 12 K. Naidoo, ‘Civil Society at a Time of Global Uncertainty’, The OECD Observer 237 (2003),

p. 33. 13 K. Naidoo, Presentation to the Seminar to Address the Adverse Impacts of Climate

Change on the Full Enjoyment of Human Rights, Geneva, 23–24 February 2012, pp. 3–4. Accessed July 2020, https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/ClimateChange/ SpeechKumiNaidoo.pdf. 14 K. Naidoo, Civil Society at the Millennium (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1999). 15 J. Foster and K. Naidoo, Young People at the Centre: Participation and Social Change (London:

Commonwealth Secretariat, 2001). 16 Naidoo, Boiling Point.

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References 21 Icons. An Advocate: George Bizos. 21 Icons South Africa, A Journey to Democracy, Season 1, 2018. Accessed July 2019, http://21icons.com/george-bizos/. AAM Archives. Oliver Tambo 1917–1993. Accessed November 2018, https://www.aamarchives. org/images/Education/Tambo%20exhibition.pdf. Academy of Achievement. ‘Athol Fugard: Novelist and Playwright’ (n.d.). Accessed November 2018, https://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/. Achmat Z. ‘Commentary: Most South Africans Cannot Afford Anti­HIV Drugs’, British Medical Journal 324 (2002), pp. 217–218. Achmat Z. and Roberts R.A. Steering the Storm: TB and HIV in South Africa: A Policy Paper of the Treatment Action Campaign. Draft policy paper, 2005. Accessed October 2018, http:// www.tac.org.za/Documents/TBPaper for Conference1.pdf. Achmat Z. and Simcock J. ‘Combining Prevention, Treatment and Care: Lessons from South Africa’, AIDS 21, suppl. 4 (2007), S11–S20. Acott H.M. ‘Tactics of the Habitat: The Elusive Identity of Nat Nakasa’, MA dissertation, University of South Africa, 2008. Adedipe A. ‘Rembering South Africa’, CEC Journal 4 (n.d.). Accessed December 2019, https:// scalar.usc.edu/works/cec-journal-issue-4/adesoji. Adem S. (ed.). Public Intellectuals and the Politics of Global Africa: Comparative and Biographical Essays in Honour of Ali A.Mazrui (London: Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd, 2010). Adenekan S. ‘Mazisi Kunene: South African Poet Laureate and Key Player in the ANC’, The Guardian 17 October 2006. Accessed October 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/ news/2006/oct/17/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries1. Adhikari M. ‘From Manenberg to Soweto: Race and Coloured Identity in the Black Consciousness Poetry of James Matthews’, African Studies 62:2 (2003), pp. 171–186. Adler F.H. ‘South African Jews and Apartheid’, Macalester International 9 (2000), pp. 185–197. Africa Gender Institute. ‘African Feminist Thinkers: Our Voices. Elinor Sisulu’ (n.d.). Accessed May 2019, http://www.agi.ac.za/agi/gender-studies/gws/african-feminist-resources-ourvoices/elinor-sisulu. Africa Health Research Institute Board. ‘Olive Shisana and Peter Piot Appointed to Africa Health Research Institute Board’ (2017). Accessed July 2019, at http://www.k-rith.org/oliveshisana-peter-piot-appointed-africa-health-research-institute-board/. African Feminist Forum. ‘Charlotte Maxeke – South Africa’ (2016). Accessed April 2020, http:// www.africanfeministforum.com/charlotte-maxeke-south-africa/. African National Congress. ANC Secretary General’s Report to ANC 49th Annual Conference (1994). Accessed April 2019, http://www.anc.org.za/content/49th-national-conference-secretarygenerals-report.

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Picture credits

Picture credits 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Charlotte Maxeke Pixley ka Isaka Seme Albert Luthuli Dora Tamana Bram Fischer Govan Mbeki Walter Sisulu OR Tambo Ruth First Nelson Mandela Joe Slovo George Bizos Ben Turok Phyllis Naidoo Ahmed Kathrada Arthur Chaskalson Albie Sachs AP Mda Robert Sobukwe Cissie Gool Monty Naicker Trevor Huddleston Beyers Naudé Helen Suzman Olive Schreiner Alan Paton Es’kia Mphahlele Nadine Gordimer André Brink Eugene Marais NP Van Wyk Louw James Matthews Mazisi Kunene Ingrid Jonker Willie Kgositsile Athol Fugard

London Stereoscopic Company/Hulton/Gallo Images Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy/Gallo Images ANC Archive/Africa Media Online UWC-Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives Museum Africa/Africa Media Online Gille de Vlieg/Africa Media Online Paul Weinberg/Africa Media Online AFP/Gallo Images ANC Archive/Africa Media Online ©Photographer Sue Kramer Gisele Wulfsohn/Africa Media Online Lori Waselchuk/Africa Media Online Arena Holdings/Africa media Online Gisele Wulfsohn/Africa Media Online ANC Archive/Africa Media Online Gisele Wulfsohn/Gallo Images Jonathan Katzenellenbogen/Africa Media Online Bailey’s Áfrican History Archive/Africa Media Online Bailey’s Áfrican History Archive/Africa Media Online Bailey’s Áfrican History Archive/Africa Media Online ANC Archive/Africa Media Online Bailey’s Áfrican History Archive/Africa Media Online Paul Weinberg/Africa Media Online The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media/Gallo Images Realtime Images Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Gallo Images Photo by Jurgen Schadeberg Paul Weinberg/Africa Media Online Ulf Andersen/Getty Images/Gallo Images ©Heini.Kotze/Eugène Marais Foundation Media 24/Gallo Images George Hallett/Africa Media Online Ullstein Bild/Getty Images/Gallo Images Avusa/Gallo Images Media 24/Gallo Images Bettmann/Getty Images/Gallo Images

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38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

Bonisile John Kani Breyten Breytenbach Miriam Makeba Hugh Masekela Lady Skollie Pieter-Dirk Uys Deep fried man Loyiso Gola Trevor Noah Bernard Magubane Archie Mafeje David Webster Raymond Suttner Johan Jacobus Degenaar Phillip Tobias Fatima Meer Rick Turner Eddie Webster Harold Wolpe Jakes Gerwel Olive Shisana Malegapuru Makgoba Naledi Pandor Solomon Tshekiso Plaatje Benjamin Pogrund Nat Nakasa Percy Qoboza Zapiro Johan Adam Heyns Richard Goldstone Yvonne Mokgoro Sandile Ngcobo Neville Alexander Pallo Jordan Jeremy Cronin Jabulani ‘Mzala’ Nxumalo Joel Netshitenzhe Elinor Sisulu Zackie Achmat Kumi Naidoo

Reuters/Gallo Images Ulf Andersen/Gamma-Rapho/Gallo Images Realtime Images David Goldblatt/Africa Media Online The Times/Gallo Images ©Photographer Eric Miller Oupa Bupape/Gallo Images Sunday Times/Gallo Images Realtime Images Courtesy of HSRC archives Vuyi Mbalo (Neomedia Agency) ©Photographer Eric Miller Gisele Wulfsohn/Africa Media online Photo Marc Degenaar Graeme Williams/Africa Media Online Gisele Wulfsohn/Africa Media Online Courtesy of Turner family Courtesy of Wits University ©Photographer Sue Kramer ©Photographer Eric Miller Courtesy of HSRC archives Sunday Times/Gallo Images Rogan Ward/Africa Media online The History Collection/Alamy/Gallo Images Sunday Times/Gallo Images Bailey’s Áfrican History Archive/Africa Media Online ©Photographer Eric Miller ©Photographer Eric Miller Media 24/Gallo Images Arena Holdings/Africa Media Online Media 24/Gallo Images Sowetan/Gallo Images ©Photographer Eric Miller David Goldblatt/Africa Media Online David Goldblatt/Africa Media Online UWC-Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives ©Photographer Eric Miller George Hallett/Africa Media Online ©Photographer Eric Miller Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images/Gallo Images

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Contributors

Contributors Editors Narnia Bohler-Muller is the executive director of the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council. She is also adjunct professor of the Nelson R Mandela School of Law at the University of Fort Hare and a research fellow with the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies, University of the Free State. Gregory Houston is a chief research specialist in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council and a research fellow in the history department at the University of the Free State. Vasu Reddy is professor of sociology, and dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria. Maxi Schoeman is emeritus professor of political sciences, and a former head of the Department of Political Sciences and Governance and deputy dean of postgraduate studies and ethics in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria. Heather Thuynsma is a lecturer in political sciences and communications manager in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria.

Other contributors Chris Broodryk is the chair of the drama studies programme in the School of the Arts at the University of Pretoria. Marié-Heleen Coetzee is an associate professor in the drama studies programme in the School of the Arts at the University of Pretoria. Michael Cosser is a chief research specialist in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council. Francois Gilles de Pelichy is an assistant lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria. Hester du Plessis is a research associate in the Dean’s office, Faculty of Humanities, University of Pretoria, and a research fellow at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection. Gerard Hagg is a former chief research specialist in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council.

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Gavaza Maluleke is currently a lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Cape  Town and a former postdoctoral researcher in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council. Ngqapheli Mchunu is a PhD research trainee in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council. Samela Mtyingizane is a junior researcher in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council. Namhla Ngqwala is a masters intern in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council. Gary Pienaar is a senior research manager in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council. Austin Pinkerton is an Andrew W.  Mellon Foundation Scholarship holder based in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria. Joleen Steyn Kotze is a senior research specialist in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Gender and African Studies, University of the Free State. Marie Wentzel is a former chief researcher in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council. Thobekile Zikhali is a senior researcher the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council. Thobeka Zondi is a doctoral researcher in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division at the Human Sciences Research Council.

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Index

Index 1913 Native Land Act 20, 29, 38, 329, 330 1952 Defiance Campaign 34, 55, 90, 121, 287 1976 see Soweto uprising 90-day detention 69, 148 A academic development programmes 305–306 academics see intellectuals acculturation 260 Achmat, Zackie 404–407 detention 405 Action for Southern Africa 138 activism/activists vs art 234–235 intellectuals 256, 297, 298 see also social activism Adams College 28, 33–34, 169 adoption 359–360 African Americans 171 African language newspapers see newspapers African literature 170–171 African nationalism 115–116 African People’s Democratic Union of South Africa (Apdusa) 264, 374 African People’s Organisation 126 African perspective 260, 261 African Renaissance 30, 265, 314, 364 African Resistance Movement 291, 374 African Teachers Association 34 Africanist, The 116, 121 Africanist tradition 45, 114, 115–116, 121–122 Afrikaans 307 language 206–207 Language Movement (Second) 184 poetry 184–185, 186 publishing science in 182–183 at universities 376 Afrikan humanness 171 Afrikaner liberation 178 Afrikaner nationalism 188, 277 Afrikaner/s

against apartheid 43–44, 47, 201–202, 211, 278, 352–356 destitution 143 identity 353 rebels 43–44, 142 Afro−Asian Writers Conference 197 Afrocentrism 263, 265 Alexander, Neville 373–376 Alexander, Ray 39 and Cissie Gool 126 and Raymond Suttner 271 and SACP 78 All-African Convention 115, 120 All-Asia Conference 132 Amnesty International 411, 412 African National Congress Angola camps 64 arrogance 397 and CPSA 62–63 CPSA and non-Africans 120–121 early female members 23 erosion of the soul 91–92 external mission 61 founding as SANNC 24, 29 growth in 1950s 36 in exile 61–64, 67, 78–79, 90, 96–97, 109–110, 207 inclusiveness 62–63, 90 international delegations 56, 67, 78, 101, 132, 197, 329–330, 396 liberation movement vs political party 274, 382–383 London office 196–197 Morogoro Conference 78 negotiations with NP 64, 79–80, 355 and SACP 78 Women’s League 24, 25, 40, 286–287 ANC Youth League 60, 115 militant Programme of Action 116, 120 Robert Sobukwe 120 schism 121

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa Angola 61, 64, 78, 379, 380, 392 anthropology 259 African vs colonial 265 approach to Africa 260, 261 Manchester school 267 structural-functional approach 267 Anti-Apartheid Movement 61, 137–138, 196 events 197 see also Atlas/Okhela anti-pass campaign 24, 40, 50, 85, 119, 122, 123 anti-Semitism 76, 89, 148, 243, 250, 347 antiretroviral therapy 73, 404, 406, 407 apartheid 20 non-Christian 136, 143, 144 vs scripture 354, 355 a sin 355 Wolpe’s theory of 302 see also anti-apartheid; post-apartheid archaeology of knowledge see genealogy see also palaeontology armed struggle 51, 60–61, 72, 116, 301, 335, 374 launch 35 opposition to 130, 133 strategies 77, 79, 392–393 urban vs rural 392–393 see also Umkhonto we Sizwe atheism 263, 386 Atlas/Okhela, 212 awakening 173–174 B Bantu Education Act 50, 136, 169, 170 campaign against 101, 207 Bantu Women’s League see ANC Women’s League Bantu World 55 Basutoland see Lesotho Bechuanaland see Botswana Belgium 180, 226, 305 Bethal 1978 Trial 123 potato farms 68, 85 bi-racialism 126, 248, 286 see also coloured Biko, Steve 86, 283, 292, 293, 313, 343, 392 Bill of Rights 85, 111, 165 Bizos, George 45, 83–87 and apartheid 84 and Chaskalson 107 in loco parentis for Mandela 86–87 Blaauwvlei 39–40, 128

black consciousness/Black Consciousness 287, 293, 343, 374, 391 vs black pride 191, 192 Movement 292, 313, 392, 405 vs white hatred 171 black intellectuals 7, 306, 264 Black Panther 191, 192 Black Voices Shout! 194 black writers 208 Boer War see South African War Born a Crime 250 Botswana 30 boycotts 226 cultural/sport 137 economic 60, 196 potato 68 bread price protests 39 Breytenbach, Breyten 178, 184, 211–214 imprisonment 212 Bring Him Back Home 231 Brink, André 178–180 and Ingrid Jonker 202 influences 179–180 Broederbond 142, 143, 354 Bulhoek massacre 39 Burger’s Daughter 175 Bush University see University of the Western Cape C Cape Flats Distress Association 39 Cape liberal paradigm 115 Cape Passive Resistance Council 128 Cape Peninsula Students’ Union (CPSU) 264 cartoons 347–350 censorship 155–156, 201–202 assassination as 69 and Pieter-Dirk Uys 236–237 and Zapiro 349–350 see also self-censorship Centre for Law and Social Justice see Ndifuna Ukwazi Chaskalson, Arthur 45, 105–108 and Albie Sachs 109 death 106–107 chief justice/s 367 Arthur Chaskalson 105–108 office of 368 Pius Langa 106, 367 Sandile Ngcobo 367–371 children 344 and race 44 and reading 400–401 see also adoption Chomsky, Noam 7, 256

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Index Christian Institute 144–145 City Press 344 civil society 410 class 326–327, 387 and race 261 and The Brotherhood 330 post-apartheid 398 power and language 376 Class of 44 115 climate change 411–412 Codesa 85, 355, 358 gender balance 150 Codesria 265–266 collective action 54 collective decision making 63 Colonial Born and Settlers Indian Association 130–131 colonialism 30–31, 259 and anthropology 260 of a special type 302 resistance to 261 coloured/s 248 advancement 127 and Afrikaans 307 Labour Party 293 voters roll 128 Columbia University 28, 30–31 Come Back, Africa 225 communism/communists quoting listed 272 suppression act 77, 166 Communist Party 39, 76, 272, 392 and ANC 62–63, 78 internal colonialism 302, 303 open to all races 44 and Pallo Jordan 382 propaganda unit 386 and religion 115 and Walter Sisulu 56 underground 77–78, 300–301, 386, 387 Concerned Citizens’ Group (CCG) 288 Congress of Democrats 77, 89–90, 301 of South African Students (Cosas) 405 of South African Trade Unions see Cosatu Congress Alliance 90, 95–96, 301 racism 166 Congress of the People 77, 101 Albert Luthuli non-attendance 35 Monty Naicker non-attendance 133 Walter Sisulu non-attendance 56 conscription 348, 385 see also End Conscription campaign Constitution of South Africa and Constitutional Court 367

drafting 85, 90, 106, 109, 110 reclaiming 111 Constitutional Court 106–107, 109, 111, 357 and consensus 361 continuous learning 319 Convention for a Democratic South Africa see Codesa corporal punishment 163 corruption 26, 80, 92, 365, 388–389, 397 19th-century 183 Cosatu 293, 294, 387 Cottesloe Statement 144, 353 Council for Black Education and Research 171 Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa see Codesria counter-intelligence training 272 critical solidarity 352, 354 Cronin, Jeremy 385–389 in exile 387 Cry the Beloved Country 164 cultural intellectuals 155 influence 156–157 culture 220, 222 culture contact 260 D Dadoo, Yusuf 78, 100, 132 Dart, Raymond 281, 282, 283 De Klerk, F.W. 74, 355 de-racialisation 382 Deep Fried Man see Friedman Degenaar, Johan 276–279 and the DRC 276–277 publications and awards 278–279 Delmas Treason Trial 84, 86 democracy and poverty 265 and public participation 370 Democratic Alliance 150 Dertigers 186 detainees support groups 268–269 dialectics 292, 325, 387 Diepkloof Reformatory 163–164 dignity 24, 107, 359, 364 discourse 8–9 District Six 126 doctors’ pact 101 domestic abuse 39, 248 see also gender-based violence domestic workers sexual abuse 330 Drum 170, 192, 339, 344 Dube, John Langalibalele 28, 33–34 Dutch Reformed Church 142, 143–144, 352 vs Afrikaanse Protestante Kerk 355

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa and apartheid 353, 354–355 conflict with Johan Degenaar 276–277 expulsion from WCC 354 E Eden according to Schreiner 160 Eduardo Mondlane University 67, 109, 381 Education Policy Unit (EPU) 302 End Conscription Campaign (ECC) 269, 348 English language 206 epidemiology 308 equity 107, 110 Eswatini and MK 392 independence negotiations 30 ethics 89, 91, 283–284, 360 conference 365 and intellectual freedom 1–2 Eurocentricism 314 challenging 259, 264 Europeans vs white Africans 174 Evita Bezuidenhout 237–239 evolutionary psychology 184 existential guilt 218 existentialism 277, 278, 279, 291 experts 10, 257 F Fagan Commission 147–148 farm labour 68, 85, 331 fascism 127 Federation of South African Women 40 fees must fall 365 feminism 160 early 23, 24 see also gender First, Ruth 67–69 biopic 98 and Harold Wolpe 300 marriage 77 and Pallo Jordan 381, 382 publications 68–69 and SACP 78 and Trevor Huddleston 136, Fischer, Bram 43–47 fugitive 45–46 and SACP 78 sentence and death 46–47 Fischer, Molly 44, 45 Five Freedoms Forum (FFF) 269, 396 Fort Hare 33, 49, 51, 60, 71, 119–120, 263 Foucault, Michel 8–9 France 170, 178, 179 Breyten Breytenbach 211 Ingrid Jonker 202 Jeremy Cronin 386

Franchise Action Council 128 Freedom Charter 62 and Africanism 116, 121 campaign 60 not socialist 393 and Turok 90 Friedman, Daniel 242–243 Fugard, Athol 215–218 awards 217 and guilt and suffering 217–218 passport confiscation 216–217 G Gandhi M.K 130 and Cissie Gool 126 and satyagraha 130 gay 238, 405 activism 159 marriage 110, 407 rights 406, 407 gender 26 and art 234–235 discrimination 150 fathers’ rights 359 and Pieter-Dirk Uys 238 and race 25 and Schreiner 159, 161 see also feminism; gay; sex; women gender-based violence 85, 233, 235, 248 and domestic labour 330 at universities 319 genealogy 8–9 Germany 193, 293, 373 Gerwel, Jakes 305–307 awards 306–307 political office 306 Ghetto Act 128 globalisation 297, 298 Gola, Loyiso 245–247 Golden City Post 192 Goldreich, Arthur 77, 301 Goldstone Commission 358 Goldstone, Richard 357–361 principles 360 Gool, Cissie 126–128 Gool, Goolam 127 Gordimer, Nadine 173–176 banned books 175 gospel choirs 23–24 Graceland 226 Greenpeace 409, 411–412 Group Areas Act 136, 292, 358 guerrilla warfare see armed struggle H Harare Declaration 272

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Index Haron, Abdullah 404–405 Harvard University 151, 368 402 Nieman Fellowship 338, 340, 343 Healdtown 49, 71, 119, 263 healthcare 308–310, 313, 315, 402 accessible 110–111, 127, 309 apartheid-era 268 legislation 369 Life Esidimeni 315 research 308, 311 see also HIV/AIDS; National Health Insurance hegemony 325–327 Herzog Prize 180, 187, 188, 213 Heyns, Johan 352–356 assassination 356 HIV and Aids 308–309, 313–315, 348, 404 conference 310 denial 73, 239, 309, 315, 348, 406 and dignity 315 prisoners 406 vaccine 313, 315 see also antiretroviral therapy Hogan, Barbara 103, 268 homelessness 110–111 homophobia 407 homosexuality see gay Huddleston, Trevor 135–139 and George Bizos 84 honours 139 and Hugh Masekela 230 and Oliver Tambo 64 human evolution and race 282–283 human rights 73, 173, 360, 365 Humboldt fellowship 293, 373 I Ilanga 339 Immorality Act see Mixed Marriages immunology 313–314 Inanda mission station 28, 206, 289 incremental reform 297 Indian Passive Resistance Campaign see passive resistance Indian–African conflict and cooperation 103, 132 Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union 24, 49, 55 inequity see equity infant mortality 39 informal sector 268 Institute of Industrial Education (IIE) 292, 293 Institute of Race Relations 95, 145, 147–148, 343, 360

integrity 360 intellectual/intellectuals 1 academic 255–256 as activists see activist intellectuals autonomy 256 black 7–8 definition 325–326 freedom 1–2 influence 256 insiders vs outsiders 8 northern 5–6 organic see organic intellectuals political see political intellectuals public see public intellectuals responsibility of 3 universal 3 international law 407 Isandhlwana 380–381 Israeli–Palestinian conflict 357 Israelite sect 39 J jazz 224–225 Jewish public intellectuals 127 academics 271, 300 activists 67–69, 76, comedians 236, 242–243, 347 journalists 67–69, 347 politicians 89, 147–148 joining groups 191–192 Jonker, Ingrid 201–204 and André Brink 178, 180 legacy 203–204 Jordan, Pallo 379–383 academic qualifications 381–382, 383 detained by ANC 381 exile 380 and SACP 382 journalism 329 against apartheid 334 jubilee gospel singers 23–24 judiciary vs state 107, 360 Justice, scales of 361 K Kani, John 219–222 and Athol Fugard 217 attack on 219 awards 221–222 Kasrils, Ronnie 78, 268, 272, 302, 386 Kathrada, Ahmed 57, 100–103 books 102 detention 101 marriage 103 and MK 101–102 political career 103

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa Robben Island 102 Kenya 111, 171 fossils 282 Kgositsile, Keorapetse 206–209 kindness 173 Kliptown see Congress of the People Kongwa Camp 61 Kunene, Mazisi 195–199 ANC representative in exile 196 lecturing career 197 publications 198 L La Guma, James 127 labour activism 296–297 intellectual 326 see also farm labour Lady Justice cartoon 348–349 Lady Skollie 233–235 Land Bill/Act see 1913 Land Act Land en Volk 183 Langa, Pius 106, 367 language policy 375–376 language rights 187 Legal Resources Centre 86, 105, 367 Lembede, Anton 55, 60, 115 lesbian see gay Lesotho 342 exile 96, 117, 170 independence negotiations 28, 30 LGBTQI see gay Liberal Party of SA 164–165 banning 166 liberalism 165–166 liberation cultural and economic 288 vs revolution 80 liberation struggle 259 documenting history of 259–260, 273, 288 informing social research 300 and Indians 96–97 in rural areas 51–52 see also armed struggle Life Esidimeni 315 Lilliesleaf Farm 51, 57, 78, 102, 196, 301 literacy 291, 410 Livingstone High School 374, 379, 405 love, power of 165–166 Luthuli, Albert 33–36 banning 35 death 35–36 and Helen Suzman 149 and Monty Naicker 132

M M-plan 50 Machel, Graça 74, 227 Madikizela-Mandela, Winnie see Mandela, Winnie Mafeje, Archie 263–266 Mafeje, Archie publications 265 Magubane, Bernard 195, 259–262 Mail & Guardian 348 Majola, Sisa see Nxumalo, Jabulani Makeba, Miriam 224–227 in exile 225–226 and Hugh Masekela 230 legacy 227 passports 226 post-apartheid returns 227 United Nations 226 Makgoba, Malegapuru 313–315 Mandela, Nelson 57, 71–74, 102 ANCYL 115 and Benjamin Pogrund 335 and George Bizos 86–87 and Bram Fischer 45, 47 and Harold Wolpe 300 and Helen Suzman 148, 149 and Oliver Tambo 60, 72 and Trevor Huddleston 136, 137 and Walter Sisulu 55 law firm 72 post-presidential work 73 release 72 release campaign 138, 231, 344 Mandela, Winnie 72 and Fatima Meer 287 and George Bizos 84 and Helen Suzman 149 Marais, Eugène 182–185 Marikana 383 Market Theatre 220, 236 Marks, J.B. 78, 101, 120–121 marriage and race 136, 211, 144, 292, 354–355 same-sex 110, 407 see also Mixed Marriages Act Marxism 80, 263, 325, 382, 387 and Olive Schreiner 159 see also neo-Marxism Masekela, Hugh 230–232 awards 231 and Miriam Makeba 227, 230 and Trevor Huddleston 137, 139 Master Harold 215 Matthews, James 191–194 Matthews, Joe 120, 318 and SACP 78

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Index Matthews, Z.K. 116, 120, 318 and Albert Luthuli 33–34 Maxeke, Charlotte 23–26 Mayibuye 260, 396 Mbeki, Govan 49–52, 102 employment history 49–50 and MK 77 parliamentary career 51 publications 51–52 Mbeki, Thabo 63, 64, 259 and HIV/Aids 73, 239, 309, 315, 348, 406 and Robert Mugabe 151, 348 Mda, A.P. 60, 114–117 detention and exile 117 Meer, Fatima 286–289 banning 288 legacy 289 publications and awards 288–289 writings and cultural roles 288 Meer, Ismael 68, 100, 287 Mhlaba, Raymond 77, 78 middle road 80 migrant labour 267–268 mine work 54 Mixed Marriages Act 211, 354 and church 136, 144, 355 MK see Umkhonto we Sizwe Mokgoro, Yvonne 363–365 Mozambique 109, 268, 269, 301–302, 392 Mphahlele, Es’kia 169–172 awards 171–172 exile 170 multi-racial political parties 164–165 multilingualism 373 Mzala see Nxumalo, Jabulani N Naicker, Monty 130–133 and MK 130, 133 and SACP 78 Naidoo, Kumi 409–412 Naidoo, Phyllis 95–98 assassination attempts 96–97 banning 96 books 97–98 death of children 97 exile 96 practising law 96 Nakasa, Nat 338–340 Namibia 68–69 Natal Housing Ordinance 131 Natal Indian Association 131 Natal Indian Congress 96, 130–131, 286, 293 National Council of African Women (NCAW) 24

National Forum 374, 393 National Health Insurance (NHI) 309, 310–311 National Liberation Front 374 League 127 movements 20, 76 vs socialist revolution 79–80 National Party 143 1948 victory 164, 188, 287 National Prosecuting Authority 365 national question 393 National Union of South African Students see Nusas nationalism 353 African vs Afrikaner 44 dangers of 277–278 vs justice 188 native commissioner’s court 216 Native Institute 330 Native Life in South Africa 329–330 Natives Land Act see 1913 Land Act Naudé, Beyers 142–145 awards 145 defrocking 144–145 house arrest and banning 145 welcomed back to DRC 355 Naught for your Comfort 136, 137 Ndifuna Ukwazi 407 Negritude 192 neo-Calvinism 353 neo-Marxism 301–302 Netshitenzhe, Joel 396–398 NEUF see Non-European United Front NEUM see Non-European Unity Movement New Age 50, 170 newspapers 50, 80, 170, 183, 192 African language 24, 29–30, 55, 329, 339 Ngcobo, Sandile 367–371 and Jacob Zuma 368–369 NGK see Dutch Reformed Church Nigeria 170 No Easy Walk to Freedom 196 Noah, Trevor 248–251 influences 249 social media faux pas 250 Nobel Prize literature 171 Peace 33, 35, 73–74 Nokwe, Duma 56, 120 non-collaboration 120 Non-European United Front 101, 127–128 Non-European Unity Movement 127, 263–264, 287, 373–374 and Pallo Jordan 379

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa militance 374 non-racialism 143, 166, 273 non-violence 130–133 apartheid government 355 futility of 335 Alan Paton 165 Albert Luthuli 33, 35 Ntshona, Winston 217, 219 Nusas 291, 292, 300 Nxumalo, Jabulani 391–394 exile 392 O Ohlange Institute/School 33, 206 Operation Mayibuye 77 oral tradition 195 organic intellectuals 2, 325 Orlando Civic Association 55 Oxford University 44, 135, 272, 296, 313 African Students Union 28–29 Coalition Against Apartheid 410 P PAC see Pan Africanist Congress palaeontology 280–284 Palestine 357, 407 Palme, Olaf 64 Pan Africanist Congress 114 vs ANC 61 founding 116–117 in exile 117, 123 and LPSA 166 Poqo 117 see also anti-pass campaign Pan-African Writers Association 171 pan-Africanism 24, 266, 314 Pandor, Naledi 318–320 parliamentary privilege 148 passes/pass laws 55, 216 for women see women see also anti-pass campaign Passive Resistance 68, 95, 101, 128 Campaign 131–132, 286 Paton, Alan 163–167 faith 163, 165, 167 harassment 166 writing vs activism 164 patriarchy 349 pawpaws 233 peasants’ revolt 51–52 Pegging Act 131 personal and political 174–175 philosophy 278–279, 292 political 276–277 Pieterson, Hector 343 Plaatje, Sol 328–332

awards and legacy 332 lobbying 330 poems Eugene Marais 184–185 Ingrid Jonker 2204 James Matthews 192–193 Jeremy Cronin 388 Keorapetse Kgositsile 208 Mazisi Kunene 198, 199 poets Laureate 198, 208 role of 192–193 truth to power 208 see also praise poets Pogrund, Benjamin 334–336 arrest 335 harassment 336 leaving South African 334 Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa, The 261 political intellectuals 19 political philosophy see philosophy politico-military committee (PMC) 79, 387, 397 polygamy 34, 59 post-apartheid era 364 law and dignity 364 theatre 217, 220, 221 threats to democracy 20, 239, 273–274, 289, 297 post-modernism 278–279 potato boycott 68 Potchefstroom University 352 poverty 265 datum line 292 perceptions of 38 praise poets 195 Prayer for Africa 139 Prevention of Political Interference Act 166 prison conditions 335–336 privilege 156 and awakening 173–174 Progressive Federal Party 149 Progressive Party 148, 342 and Suppression of Communism Act 166 Protection of State Information Bill 91, 383 public health see healthcare public intellectuals 1 definition 2–5 vs intellectual public 9 legacy 20–21 political agendas 21 role in democracy 9 roles of 7, 20 vs thought leaders 4

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Index public participation and the political process 370 publics/publicness 6 Q Qoboza, Percy 342–345 quiet diplomacy see Mbeki, Thabo quoting listed communists 272 R race/racism and ANC 62–63 awareness of 95 and class 261 and comedy 243, 246, 248–249 and gender 25 and human evolution 282–283 identities 375 and marriage see marriage in the Northern Cape 100 overcoming 44–45 and the PAC 122 and sex 330 and suicide 289 in the USA 171, 249, 338, 340 see also black; non-racism; white Radio Freedom 56–57, 380, 392 Ramaphosa, Cyril and Send me 232 Rand Daily Mail 334, 339, 340, 386 rape 349, 360 Reclaim the City 407 reconciliation 72–73 reform vs revolution 354 Regeneration of Africa 30 revolutionary theory 393 revolutions, three 288 Rhodes scholars 44, 410 Rhodes University 179, 267 Jakes Gerwel 306 Rivonia Trial 196 Alan Paton 166 Bram Fischer 45 George Bizos 84–85 Govan Mbeki 51 if needs be 83, 84–85 Nelson Mandela 72 Walter Sisulu 57 Robben Island 85, 96, 97 Ahmed Kathrada 100, 102 Govan Mbeki 51, 52 Museum 103 Neville Alexander 374 Robert Sobukwe 122 ‘submarine attack’ 212 ‘university’ 57 Walter Sisulu 57

Roma University 342 Rugby World Cup 73 rule of law 85, 111, 148, 166, 365 rural lifestyle 38 rural struggle 51–52 S Sachs, Albie 109–112 assassination attempt 110 detention 109 on culture 220, 222 SACP see Communist Party sanctions see boycotts SANNC see ANC satire 236, 239, 242–243, 245, 246, 347 satyagraha see non-violence; passive resistance Schlebusch Commission 145 Schreiner, Olive 158–161 and Cecil Rhodes 160 and Cissie Gool 126 privilege 155, 156 publications 161 science councils transformation 314–315 Secrecy Bill see Protection of State Information Bill secularisation 277 segregation 19–20 in churches 144 see also apartheid self-censorship 176 Seme, Pixley ka Isaka 28–31 ANC president 30 speech 30–31 Send me 232 Senegal conference 212–213 separation of powers 107, 368–369 paradox 369 Sestigers, Die 178, 202 sex/sexual/sexuality 159–160 freedom 1960s 179, 202 harassment see gender-based violence inter-racial 211, 330 oppression see women orientation see gay work 405 see also gender Shapiro, Jonathan see Zapiro Sharpeville massacre 144 aftermath 175, 207, 287, 374, 380 scoop 335 Shisana, Olive 308–311 Simons, Jack 271–272 Sisulu, Elinor 400–402 Sisulu, Walter 54–57, 102

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa ANC secretary-general 55 ANCYL 115 estate agency 55, 60 gender equity 401–402 and Harold Wolpe 300 imprisonment and banning 55–56, 60 and MK 77 and Oliver Tambo 60 and SACP 78 and Sharpeville aftermath 56 underground 56 Slovo, Joe 76–81 detention 77 exile 78 and Harold Wolpe 300 and Jeremy Cronin 387 marriage 77 negotiations with NP 79–80 and Pallo Jordan 382 Sobukwe clause 122 Sobukwe, Robert 119–123 and A.P. Mda 115–116 banning 123 and Benjamin Pogrund 335, 336 imprisonment 117, 122 Robben Island 122 and Yvonne Mokgoro 363 social activism 20, 256–257 social critics 255, 256 Social Justice Coalition 407 Society of Young Africa (SOYA) 263–264, 380 Society, Work and Development Institute (Swop) 296 sociology 259 see also anthropology Sophiatown 101, 342 and Athol Fugard 216 and Trevor Huddleston 136–137, 139 South Africa 19–20 Union of see Union of South Africa South African Coloured People’s Congress 90 Committee on Higher Education (SACHED) 374 Council of Churches 145 Indian Congress 89–90, 286 Native National Congress see ANC Students Organisation (SASO) 293, 392 War 142, 159 South West Africa book by Ruth First 68–69 see also Namibia Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) 296 Southern views 5–6, 8

Sowetan 348 Soweto uprising 193, 265, 268, 343, 391, 392, 404, 405 aftermath 61, 287 Space Theatre 236 Sprocas 293 Square Kilometre Array 319 St Peter’s 59, 135, 137, 169 statelessness 338 Stellenbosch University 143, 276–277 Rick Turner 385 strikes 391 see also trade unions struggle see armed struggle; liberation struggle student politics/protests 120, 267, 305, 313, 386, 392 France 1960s 291, 292 USA 380 Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society see Sprocas suicide 289 Eugene Marais 184 Ingrid Jonker 202 Nat Nakasa 338 sunset clause 79–80 Suttner, Raymond 271–274 arrest and house arrest 272 and Jeremy Cronin 386 SACP training 272 Suzman, Helen 147–151 and Alan Paton 167 and ANC 150, 151 and John Vorster 149 awards 151 harassment 148–149 prison visits 149, 150 Swaziland see Eswatini T Tamana, Dora 38–41 banning and detention 40 childhood 38 passport 40 poetry 41 and Sharpeville aftermath 40 Tambo, Oliver 59–65 and Albie Sachs 109 ANCYL 115 banning and arrest 60 diplomacy 64 going into exile 60–61 law firm 72 and Mazisi Kunene 196 meeting style 63

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Index moral authority 62 negotiations with NP 64 and Pallo Jordan 381 and race 62–63 and Trevor Huddleston 136 Tang Prize 111 Tanzania 61, 90, 196, 302, 392 termites 182 Themba, Can 339–340 Tobias, Phillip 280–284 torture 122, 269, 336 tot system 331 trade unions 24, 49, 55, 76, 131, 292–293, 387, 405 and community struggle 268 limitations 296 Transvaal African Teachers Association 169 Transvaal Indian Congress 101 Treason Trial 60, 68, 77, 287 and Africanists in ANC 121–122 Defence Fund 166 Treatment Action Campaign 73, 406 tribal/tribalism 164, 260, 265, 339 and ANC 34 Triomf see Sophiatown Truth and Reconciliation Commission 86 truth to power 3, 6–7, 208, 256 Turner, Rick 291–294 Turok, Ben 89–93 arrest and exile 90 independence of thought 91–92 political career 91 and Sharpeville aftermath 90 Tutu, Desmond and Helen Suzman 150 and Trevor Huddleston 136–137, 138, 139 U ubuntu 364 UDF see United Democratic Front Umkhonto we Sizwe 72, 392 Albert Luthuli 35 fund-raising 197 guerrilla campaign 61–62 Harold Wolpe 301 Jeremy Cronin 387 Kumi Naidoo 410 launch 101–102 Monty Naicker opposition 130, 133 strategy 79 structure 77 training 380 Walter Sisulu 56 unbanning of organisations 62, 79–80, 217, 379, 391

Union of South Africa 19–20, 29 unions see trade unions United Democratic Front 269, 272, 387 disbanding 348 United Nations Civil Society Relations 410 resolutions 196 tribunals 357, 358–359 Unity Movement see Non-European Unity Movement universal suffrage 165 universities access to 306 gender-based violence 319 race restrictions 60, 83–84 University of Bophutatswana 363–364 University of Cape Town 89, 126–127, 128 A.C. Jordan 379 Archie Mafeje 263–264, 386 Jeremy Cronin 385–386 Lady Skollie 233 Ray Alexander 373, 374 Raymond Suttner 271–272 Rick Turner 291 University of Dar es Salaam 90, 207, 264, 301, 302 University of Durban-Westville 314, 409–410 University of Fort Hare see Fort Hare University of KwaZulu-Natal 313,314 University of Natal Alan Paton 163 Fatima Meer 287 Medical School 293, 313 merger with UDW 314 non-European section 96, 195 Raymond Suttner 272 Rick Turner 292 see also University of KwaZulu-Natal University of Pretoria 319 University of the Free State 25 University of the Western Cape (UWC) 302, 305–307 access to 306 University of the Witwatersrand 300 Ahmed Kathrada 101 AIDS law project 406 Arthur Chaskalson 105 David Webster 267–268 Eddie Webster 296 Es’kia Mphahlele 171 Eurocentricism 314 Fatima Meer 287 George Bizos 83–84, 86 Harold Wolpe 300 Helen Suzman 147

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The Fabric of Dissent: Public intellectuals in South Africa Joe Slovo 76–77, 300 Malegapuru Makgoba 314 Nelson Mandela 71, 86 Phillip Tobias 281–282 Raymond Suttner 272 Robert Sobukwe 121 Ruth First 68, 300 University of Zululand 391–392 Uys, Pieter-Dirk 236–239 V Van Wyk Louw, N.P 186–189 awards 188–189 and Johan Degenaar 276–277 privilege 156 Victoria Falls conference 212–213 Voice of Africa, The 169–170 votes see universal suffrage vulnerable groups 359

Z Zambia 97, 355, 381, 401 Zapiro 347–350 Zen Buddhism 212 Zimbabwe 85, 97, 401–402 human rights violations 401 hunger strike 411 quiet diplomacy 151, 348 Victoria Falls Conference 212–213 Zulu traditions 195 Zuma, Jacob and George Bizos 86 and Pallo Jordan 383 and Sandile Ngcobo 368–369 cartoons 348–349

W Waterberg 182 Webster, David 267–269 assassination 269 Webster, Eddie 296–298 Where do Whites fit in? 175 white/whiteness 236, 237–238, 243 Africans 174 fear and black aspirations 352, 353 wicked problems 6, 8, 19, 155, 156, 257 Windvogel, Laura see Lady Skollie Wits see University of the Witwatersrand Wolpe, Harold 300–303 women lawyers’ associations 365 oppression 161, 330 passes for 24, 40, 207 in science 24, 308 violence against see gender-based violence votes for 126–127 and war 159 workerism 294, 375 vs ANC 406 World Council of Churches 144, 353, 354 World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) 300 World War I 142, 159 World War II 131, 188 World, The 342–343, 344 X Xhosa 24 Xhosa singing 224–225 Y Year of the Spear 380 Young Communist League 68, 101

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