tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/pan-africanist-congress-26388/articlesPan Africanist Congress – The Conversation2021-11-05T13:12:47Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1705962021-11-05T13:12:47Z2021-11-05T13:12:47ZSouth Africa’s liberation war veterans are angry: here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429948/original/file-20211103-23-o3k8nm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Umkhonto we Sizwe army veterans stand to attention during the 75th birthday celebrations of the governing ANC in 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Cornell Turiki</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The late 1950s was an era of growing resistance to the apartheid’s state’s application of discriminatory laws in South Africa. The resistance, led by the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), was met with harsh state suppression. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">massacre in 1960</a> of 69 black people protesting against being forced to carry identity documents that restricted their movement, was a turning point for both the ANC and PAC. It precipitated their move away from passive non-violent resistance towards the armed struggle.</p>
<p>In 1961, the ANC formed its armed wing, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582473.2018.1438882">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a> (MK) (Spear of the nation). And the PAC <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/submit/apla.htm">formed the Azanian People’ Liberation Army (APLA)</a>. The aim was to violently challenge white minority rule. Both embarked on campaigns of armed resistance against the state, including acts of sabotage and guerrilla warfare. </p>
<p>The most spectacular symbolic attacks on the apartheid state were the rocket attack on the fuels company, Sasol’s coal-to-oil refinery in Sasolburg; the Koeberg nuclear power station in 1982; and the South African Defence Force headquarters in Pretoria <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Umkhonto-Sizwe-ANCs-Armed-Struggle/dp/1770228411">in 1983</a>. </p>
<p>As state repression increased, especially after the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto uprisings of 1976 of schoolchildren </a> many young black South Africans flocked to join the liberation movements and their armed wings in exile.</p>
<p>It is estimated that the membership of the ANC and PAC’s military wings in the 1990s stood at between 8000 and 10 000 members. These numbers swelled during the transition to democracy to 23 000 by 1994, and later to <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Military-Making-Modern-South-Africa-Annette-Seegers/9781850436898">33 000 members</a>. </p>
<p>This last-minute spike raised eyebrows at the time, and in fact can be blamed in part for the unhappiness ensued. The numbers went up because it was felt necessary to boost the relatively small number of liberation fighters, compared to the apartheid-era South African Defence Force which had a total of <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-33734-6">67 5000 active duty force and 360 000 in the citizen forces in 1993</a>. </p>
<p>But the large signups were controversial, and created tensions that have simmered down the decades.</p>
<p>On top of this, the dismantling of these armed forces and that of the apartheid state was, in retrospect, managed badly. The result is that it left in its wake thousands of angry veterans who felt betrayed. In recent years they have come out vociferously against the ruling ANC. Most recently <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/state-ponders-adding-terrorism-charges-to-53-people-who-allegedly-held-ministers-hostage-20211018">53 veterans were charged with taking government ministers hostage</a> in an attempt to get the government to fulfil promises they claim were broken.</p>
<p>For decades sociologists have warned that military veterans would <a href="https://www.projecttopics.org/journals/140158-the-social-integration-of-demobilised-soldiers-in-contemporary-south-africa.html">use their skills to cause instability</a> if their needs weren’t addressed. Lephophotho Mashike, who has researched the subject extensively called them a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21528586.2004.10419108">‘a ticking time bomb’</a>.</p>
<h2>Demobilisation and compensation</h2>
<p>The end of the armed hostilities following the end of apartheid in 1994 meant the establishment of a new united military – the <a href="http://www.csvr.org.za/docs/militarisation/fromsadftosandf.pdf">South African National Defence Force</a>. The former guerrillas and armies of the former nominally independent states of Venda, Bophuthatswana, Ciskei and Transkei, were either integrated into the new defence force or demobilised. </p>
<p>When the integration process was finalised in 2001, 44 143 names appeared on the collective Non-Statutory Force Certified Personnel Register. Of these, 15 805 were integrated into the South African National Defence Force, 9 771 demobilised and 13 117 neither integrated or demobilised. </p>
<p>Those who were demobilised weren’t considered fit to serve in the new integrated army due to ill-health or age. Each <a href="https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/325/">received a gratuity</a> based on their years of service. They could choose to either receive a lump sum, or <a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030337339">monthly pension pay-out</a>. </p>
<p>Military veterans complained that the payments were inadequate. Many have <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10246029.2012.752396">remained destitute</a> due to poor education, lack of marketable skills, health problems and <a href="http://www.csvr.org.za/docs/militarisation/nowthatthewar.pdf">inability to reintegrate into society</a>.</p>
<p>A 2006 report titled <a href="https://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Only-Useful-Until-Democracy.pdf">“Only Useful Until Democracy”</a> found that 73% of the military veterans believed that South Africa’s post-apartheid leaders had forgotten them. Over 84% believed that their compensation was not <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/news/anti-apartheid-veterans-left-in-the-lurch-1.611906">adequate</a>, felt neglected and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10246029.2012.752396">abandoned by the ANC government</a>.</p>
<p>And a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10246029.2012.752396">study I conducted in 2012</a> with researcher Henrietta Bwalya found that military veterans were frustrated by slow payments. They were living in abject poverty, felt used, neglected and marginalised in the new political dispensation. </p>
<p>In 2007 they finally seemed to have attracted the earnest attention they had been seeking. This was at the ANC’s National Conference in Polokwane at which Jacob Zuma was elected President of the ANC.</p>
<p>The conference pledged to provide veterans with extensive welfare support, adopting <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/news/ramaphosa-blamed-for-military-vets-hostage-incident-54061ce5-71b7-4060-8ef8-43e7a646ee50">a resolution</a> that committed the ANC to taking direct interest in the welfare and reintegration of its former soldiers <a href="https://new.anc1912.org.za/resolutions-2/">into civilian life</a>. </p>
<p>Two years later, and after Zuma had become the president of the country, the <a href="http://www.dmv.gov.za/">Department of Military Veterans</a> was created. It was placed under the Department of Defence, with the remit of managing veterans’ affairs. </p>
<p>In 2011 the <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/military-veterans-act">Military Veterans Act</a> was promulgated. It obliged the state to provide military veterans access to healthcare, subsidised public transport, education, skills and job training as well as burial support. This was <a href="http://www.dmv.gov.za/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/The-Military-Veterans-Act-of-2011.pdf">subject to meeting a needs test</a>.</p>
<p>This raised the legitimate expectations of military veterans that they would now finally receive the benefits. But <a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030337339">discontent remained – and even grew –</a> as the Department of Military Veterans proved unable to <a href="https://www.defenceweb.co.za/featured/ministerial-hostage-incident-seen-as-another-intelligence-failure/">roll out the benefits</a> or even spend its allocated budget.</p>
<p>This has been largely attributed to the lack of capacity and poor administration in the department. This was <a href="https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/32465/">reflected in the deliberations</a> of Parliament’s Select Committee on Security and Justice, in March 2021.</p>
<p>The department has consistently under-performed in terms of meeting the needs of veterans. It’s plagued by mismanagement and corruption, including wasteful, <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-08-24-four-military-vets-department-managers-suspended-ahead-of-probe-into-r120m-irregular-expenditure/">irregular and fruitless expenditure</a>.</p>
<p>Discontent among military veterans took on an extreme turn in October. A group of them allegedly <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-10-15-military-vets-leader-who-took-two-ministers-and-a-deputy-minister-hostage-works-for-ethekwini-municipality/">held </a> two government ministers and a deputy minister hostage. They demanded government jobs, R4.2 million (US$285 000) compensation each, land for housing, and free <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/mabuza-to-meet-military-veterans-demanding-government-jobs-millions-in-gratuity-payments-20211014">education</a> for their dependants. </p>
<p>The group, calling itself the Liberation Struggle War Veterans, is made up of former members of Umkhonto we Sizwe, APLA and the Azanian National Liberation Army (Azanla) allied to the Black Consciousness Movement. This Azanian National Liberation Army was not officially disbanded during the negotiations to end apartheid as the Black Consciousness Movement boycotted the talks. They were therefore latecomers to the compensation process.</p>
<h2>What needs to be done</h2>
<p>Military veterans constitute a small but vocal constituency in the ANC and form a powerful political bloc <a href="https://irr.org.za/media/articles-authored-by-the-institute/the-dangerous-rise-of-jacob-zumas-private-army">that’s been closely aligned to Zuma</a>. </p>
<p>It’s neither sensible nor desirable that the maladministration that’s affected their lives is allowed to continue, as a recent <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/public-protector-finds-military-veterans-department-appointed-people-without-qualifications-and-experience-fccdcf81-73a1-45fc-89a4-8dee47fba21b">report by the public protector pointed out</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170596/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lindy Heinecken does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The dismantling of the liberation armies and that of the apartheid state was managed badly. It left in its wake thousands of angry veterans who felt betrayed.Lindy Heinecken, Vice-Dean Research, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1413162020-06-25T16:00:32Z2020-06-25T16:00:32ZSouth Africa’s Freedom Charter campaign holds lessons for the pursuit of a fairer society<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344092/original/file-20200625-33546-11z276w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Frédéric Soltan/Corbis via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>, the document that became the blueprint for a free South Africa, turns 65 this year. </p>
<p>It was adopted by the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/congress-people-kliptown-1955">Congress of the People</a> in Kliptown, Soweto, on 26 June 1955. The meeting brought together several organisations and individuals allied to the liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC). </p>
<p>Much has been written about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-south-africas-freedom-charter-60-years-later-43647">enduring significance of the document</a>. This includes its vision for a just social and economic order, its influence on South Africa’s widely celebrated <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03768350600556570">constitution</a>, and the degree to which changes in the country since the end of apartheid in 1994 have <a href="http://wwmp.org.za/images/pubs/60yrsofFreedomCharter-WEB.pdf">lived up to the ideals</a> of the charter.</p>
<p>Less attention has been devoted to the underlying process of collecting, collating and representing the voices of ordinary South Africans in preparing the Freedom Charter. This article briefly reflects on this process. </p>
<p>It argues that this exercise remains a pioneering effort directed at capturing mass opinion and using it as a broad framework to inform public policy. Every generation of South Africans has its own “Freedom Charter moment”, when fundamental questions are asked about the type of society desired, and the true meaning of freedom. </p>
<p>Today, the Freedom Charter campaign process holds lessons concerning the importance of inclusive, bottom-up governance and active citizenship as the basis for addressing the challenges, needs and aspirations of South Africans across gender, class, generational and other lines. </p>
<h2>Genesis of a vision</h2>
<p>The Congress of the People idea was put forward by <a href="http://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/4181">Professor ZK Matthews</a>, president of the ANC in the Cape, at a provincial conference of the organisation in August 1953. He maintained that <a href="http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/11808/Working%20Paper%20Number%208.pdf">the time had come for</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>convening a national convention, a congress of the people, representing all the people of this country irrespective of race or colour, to draw up a Freedom Charter for the democratic South Africa of the future. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This proposal was adopted, and subsequently endorsed by the ANC national conference in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/42nd-african-national-congress-conference-resolutions-20-december-1953">December 1953</a>. </p>
<p>Planning of the congress campaign was organised through the Congress Alliance, comprising the National Action Council of the ANC, <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03502.htm">South African Indian Congress</a>, <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03464.htm">South African Coloured People’s Organisation</a> and the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03466.htm">South African Congress of Democrats</a>. </p>
<p>The Congress of the People campaign process was mapped out at a meeting of the alliance in March 1954. This entailed the establishment of provincial committees, followed by committees at workplaces, villages and black urban residential areas, known as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/township-South-Africa">townships</a>.</p>
<p>At the heart of the process was the recruitment of a vast corps of “freedom volunteers” to inspire awareness of the Congress and to collect demands for incorporation into the charter.</p>
<h2>The will of all the people</h2>
<p>In the months that followed, a tide of rallies, meetings, and door-to-door canvassing took place. This led to thousands of public demands</p>
<blockquote>
<p>flooding in to COP headquarters, on sheets torn from school exercise books, on little dog-eared scraps of paper, on slips torn <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=GtWgrbO7CXEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">from COP leaflets</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The demands were written in multiple languages, and varied in style from pithy one-liners to wordier contributions, including the odd essay. Sadly, only a small set of the individual demands have been preserved in archives. </p>
<p>In April 1955, while final logistics for the Kliptown event were under way, the subcommittees of the National Action Committee sorted the multiplicity of demands thematically. A small drafting committee eventually used these materials to prepare the charter. </p>
<p>This document text was hurriedly prepared, primarily by Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein of the South African Congress of Democrats, with the ANC leadership seeing it only on the eve of the Congress of the People. Around 3,000 delegates assembled at the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/congress-people">two-day congress</a>, approving each clause in the charter with a show of hands. The charter was adopted before the apartheid police halted the proceedings. </p>
<p>The Freedom Charter campaign and document have been the subject of <a href="http://wwmp.org.za/images/pubs/60yrsofFreedomCharter-WEB.pdf">wide-ranging, ongoing theoretical and political debate</a>. This has touched on organisational and ideological foundations, interpretive differences on content, as well as the degree to which the public demands are reflected in the final drafting process. </p>
<p>It led to fierce debates between <a href="https://mistra.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Focus-on-the-Charter_M-Ndletyana.pdf">“Africanists” (African nationalists)</a> in the ANC Youth League and “Charterists”. The former rejected the ANC’s non-racialism and the Freedom Charter, with its assertion that</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white</a>. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This precipitated the breakaway that culminated in formation of the <a href="https://pac.org.za/about-us/">Pan Africanist Congress</a>, led by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-sobukwe">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a>. </p>
<p>The Freedom Charter, nonetheless, remained a programmatic vision for the ANC for more than 30 years, and continues to have a broad influence on the policies of government, such as those aimed at <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/broad-based-black-economic-empowerment-act">addressing past injustices</a> and <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/employment-equity-act">promoting equity</a>. </p>
<h2>Abiding relevance</h2>
<p>The Freedom Charter process was an imperfect but impressive attempt at capturing the will of the people and articulating an alternative vision to apartheid South Africa. The approach, scale and reach of the undertaking during exceptionally fraught times has relevance to contemporary debates about liberal democracy, public opinion and public policy. </p>
<p>From a democratic theory perspective, the Freedom Charter process has abiding relevance. It showcases the importance of ascertaining the pressing needs of citizens, as well as holding the elected to account in responding to the priorities inherent in this <a href="http://repository.hsrc.ac.za/bitstream/handle/20.500.11910/9562/9124.pdf">“public agenda”</a>.</p>
<p>It was ahead of its time: not just from a human rights perspective, but also in capturing the concerns and hopes of the public, and using this to inspire and mobilise for progressive change. </p>
<p>As the late anti-apartheid activist Denis Goldberg said in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/chapter-27-freedom-charter-explained">Freedom Fighter and Humanist</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Freedom Charter was drawn up after about 10,000 meetings with the people of South Africa. It is special because it was not drawn up by a small group of visionaries seeking to impose their ideals. It is an authentic reflection of the views of the mass of the people who wrote down and submitted their wishes for the future of their country… </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The process of preparing the charter resonates well with the unprecedented times South Africans find themselves in. The COVID-19 pandemic will worsen poverty, unemployment, inequality and indebtedness in the country. Now, more than ever, an urgent need exists for robust public engagement and debate around a vision and social compact that will shape the post-COVID society in South Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141316/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Roberts receives funding from various national and international funding institutions for a programme of research on understanding social attitudes in South Africa.</span></em></p>The Freedom Charter process was an imperfect but impressive attempt at capturing the will of the people and articulating an alternative vision to apartheid South Africa.Benjamin Roberts, Chief Research Specialist: Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES) research division, and Coordinator of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), Human Sciences Research CouncilLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1276312019-12-05T14:49:39Z2019-12-05T14:49:39ZMethodist Church Southern Africa enters new era as women take up top positions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305348/original/file-20191205-39023-1lvud7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Purity Malinga, the new Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Reverend Purity Malinga has just become the 100th Presiding Bishop to be elected by the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. She is the first woman in the church’s 200-year history to be elected to this position. As Rev Jennifer Samdaan, a prominent female minister in the church, <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-11-18-rev-purity-malinga-inducted-as-first-female-bishop-of-methodist-church-of-southern-africa/">points out</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There had been 99 men before her. For her to be chosen to lead us is wonderful.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Rev Madika Sibeko <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-11-18-rev-purity-malinga-inducted-as-first-female-bishop-of-methodist-church-of-southern-africa/">noted</a> in isiXhosa: <em>“zajiki’izinto”</em> (things are changing). Indeed, things are changing in the Methodist church. </p>
<p>The Methodist church is South Africa’s <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/hts/v73n2/01.pdf">largest</a> “mainline” Christian denomination, with its roots in the <a href="https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Wesleyan+revival">18th century Wesleyan revival</a>. Methodism quickly spread throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia and to Africa. In part this was because of the zeal of missionary societies, but also because of the spread of the British empire.</p>
<p>The Methodist Church of Southern Africa became an independent church in 1889. It is the largest Protestant Christian denomination in South Africa and has a predominantly black African membership.</p>
<p>Having a woman elected as the presiding bishop is of great significance to the denomination and the region. In this role Bishop Malinga will be the church’s most senior leader, with responsibility to guide the regional bishops and the ministry and mission of the church in the six southern African countries. These are South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Mozambique, Eswatini and Botswana. Her personality and inclusive style of leadership are likely to bring some important changes to the culture and identity of southern African Methodism. </p>
<p>She previously served as the first (and only) woman bishop of a regional synod, the Natal Coastal District (until 2008). She is a widely respected minister who first qualified as a teacher before entering the ministry and completing her theological studies at Harvard University in the US.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Methodist Church of Southern Africa has a history of challenging tradition, and being at the forefront of working for justice and the rights of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14769948.2018.1554328">oppressed people</a>. Among the other notable southern Africans who were Methodists are Nobel laureate <a href="http://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/14102">Nelson Mandela</a>, the first democratically elected president of South Africa, as well as <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2008-02-27-a-man-of-god-to-the-end/">Robert Sobukwe</a>, the respected Africanist. Another prominent Methodist is <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/graca-simbine-machel">Graça Machel</a>, the Mozambican and South African women’s rights campaigner. </p>
<p>Bishop Malinga’s induction heralds a new era in southern African Methodism, and indeed church leadership in the region. Her election as the first woman to the post coincided with three other women being elected as regional bishops in the six countries that the church serves. These women are Bishop Yvette Moses (Cape of Good Hope District), Bishop Faith Whitby (Central District, the largest district, covering parts of the Gauteng and North West provinces), and Bishop Charmaine Morgan (Namibia). </p>
<h2>The history</h2>
<p>Methodism first landed on South African shores in 1795 cloaked in the guise of colonialism and the empire. This date was just four years after the death of <a href="http://www.trentonunitedmethodistchurch.org/Wesley%20and%20Methodism.html">John Wesley</a>, the founder of the movement. This makes the Methodist Church of Southern Africa one of the oldest Methodist or Wesleyan churches in the world. </p>
<p>The first record of a Methodist in the region was in the Christian Magazine and Evangelical Repository (1802). The article tells of a British soldier named John Irwin who had been stationed at the Cape of Good Hope from 1795 to protect colonial interests in the region. It records that he hired a small room and began to hold prayer meetings and services. </p>
<p>The formal mission of the church began in 1816 under the leadership of Rev Barnabas Shaw. The Methodists of the Cape were entwined in colonialism, as were most missionary movements that emanated from Britain at the time. Nevertheless, they sought to minister not just to the colonisers, but to the indigenous people living in the area and to slaves. </p>
<p>This got them into trouble with the British colonial authorities. An example was the refusal by the governor of the Cape, Lord Charles Somerset, to let Rev Shaw establish a congregation at the Cape.</p>
<p>So began a history of civil disobedience. Rev Shaw’s response to <a href="https://cmm.org.za/missionaries-and-martyrs/">Somerset’s refusal was blistering</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Having received this answer I therefore left His Excellency and determined to commence preaching without it. My resolution is also fixed never again to ask any mere man’s permission to preach the glorious Gospel.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Methodist Church continued to show <a href="http://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/4511">great courage</a> in addressing social, political and structural injustice. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bishop Purity Malinga.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The church also failed in many instances. And there was often a gap between the ordinary members and local congregations, and the more progressive aims of the denomination’s leadership.</p>
<h2>New era</h2>
<p>It’s fair to ask why it’s taken almost 200 years for women to be elected to leadership positions in the church.</p>
<p>The most obvious reason is that Christianity in general remains a <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=n9_VqCYug5wC&printsec=frontcover&dq=men+in+the+pulpit+women+in+the+pew&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi42LfphIjmAhWSgVwKHaabBeQQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=men%20in%20the%20pulpit%20women%20in%20the%20pew&f=false">patriarchal religion</a>. The Methodist Church of Southern Africa is no different: men dominate the leadership and formal structures at almost every level.</p>
<p>The church first allowed women ordination 43 years ago. By 2016 only 17% of the clergy were women, only 4% of regional leaders (circuit superintendents) were women, and there were <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1017-04992016000100013">no women bishops</a>. </p>
<p>Some ascribe this to <a href="http://www.dionforster.com/blog/2019/6/14/worthy-women-sexual-bargaining-for-a-place-in-utopia-or-dyst.html">religious patriarchy</a>, and others to the dominance of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4066604#metadata_info_tab_contents">patriarchy in African cultures</a> of the region. There have been women in senior leadership roles in other regions of the world where Methodism is present, such as the United Kingdom and the United States. However, in many contexts, such as Africa and parts of Latin America, the denomination has been less progressive in recognising and appointing women to senior leadership.</p>
<p>In her address to the 130th annual conference of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa at which her election was confirmed, Rev Malinga echoed the words of <a href="https://methodist.org.za/download/presiding-bishop-elect-rev-purity-malingas-address-to-conference-2019/">Oliver Tambo</a>, the late anti-apartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress in exile, who said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No country can boast of being free unless its women are free. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her election, and those of Moses, Morgan and Whitby, bring South Africa a step closer to reaching that true freedom. </p>
<p><em>The article was updated to remove incorrect reference to Chief Albert Luthuli as having been a Methodist. Although he did study and teach at a Methodist institution, he was never a member of the church.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127631/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dion Forster is an ordained minister of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa.</span></em></p>Bishop Purity Malinga is the first woman to be appointed Presiding Bishop in the Methodist Church of Southern African in over 200 years.Dion Forster, Head of Department, Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology, Professor in Ethics and Public Theology, Director of the Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1252362019-10-17T07:24:36Z2019-10-17T07:24:36ZLiberalism in South Africa isn’t only for white people – or black people who want to be white<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297078/original/file-20191015-98678-1dkpish.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters of the Democratic Alliance in South Africa gather earlier this year to listen to the party's leaders.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Epa/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Liberalism is meant to be about freedom for all individuals, regardless of race. But linking liberalism to whiteness as is happening now is not new in South Africa. Most activists who fought for black freedom dismissed liberalism as a white ideology designed to tame black people, not to free them. </p>
<p>This was hardly surprising, since many white liberals spoke and acted as if liberalism was exactly that: the political philosopher Richard Turner <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/archive-files2/rejul72.8.pdf">wrote in the early 1970s</a> that white liberals believed that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>although blacks are not biologically inferior, they are culturally inferior. They may be educable, but they need whites to educate them. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>All of this implied that liberalism was not for black people who were proud to be black.</p>
<p>This background is essential if we want to understand the current conflict in South Africa’s official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA), and how it might have to end if liberalism is to survive and grow in the country’s democratic era.</p>
<h2>History of the Democratic Alliance</h2>
<p>The DA was originally a party for white, English-speaking, liberal suburbanites – it traces its ancestry back to the Progressive Party, formed in 1959 to contest elections at a time when only whites could vote. </p>
<p>After the 1999 general election, when it ran a campaign urging voters to “Fight Back” against the governing African National Congress (ANC), it picked up support from Afrikaans-speaking whites and those members of racial minorities (“Coloured” and Indian people) who feared the ANC.</p>
<p>Some years later, it began a campaign to recruit black African membership which was reasonably successful, although the party has never attracted many black African votes. According to a sympathetic estimate, it attracts <a href="https://www.news24.com/elections/news/da-claims-significant-shift-of-new-black-voters-to-the-party-but-numbers-suggest-otherwise-20190511">5% of the vote among the racial majority</a>. This culminated in the election of its current black leader, Mmusi Maimane, <a href="https://theconversation.com/first-black-leader-breathes-life-into-south-african-opposition-41275">in 2015</a>.</p>
<p>Few if any of its white leaders bargained for the likelihood that black members would, because of their differing experiences, see the DA’s role through different eyes. And so, they were shocked when black DA parliamentarians supported forms of race-based affirmative action which white liberals tend to oppose on the grounds that it violates the principle that jobs should be allocated by “merit”. </p>
<p>These tensions were hidden by the fact that the party was growing – until this year when it suffered setbacks in May’s general election which saw it <a href="https://www.biznews.com/leadership/2019/05/09/elections2019-national-vote-da-ff">lose five seats</a> in parliament. This was followed by <a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/da-by-election-losses-in-mpumalanga-bethal-october-2019/">severe losses</a> in municipal by-elections to its right and left. This has brought deep internal divisions into the public eye. </p>
<p>Race is the fault line. Prominent black DA figures label attempts to remove Maimane – plus the return of key white figures to important roles in the party – as an attempt by whites to force black members into a subordinate position. </p>
<p>This impression has been greatly enhanced by the fact that researchers at the South African Institute of Race Relations, a research organisation which has long been a fixture in the white liberal firmament, <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/think-tank-launches-campaign-to-save-das-direction-and-future-20191007">are campaigning</a> for Maimane’s replacement by a white leader on the grounds that this will show that the DA elects people on merit rather than race. </p>
<p>The claim that “merit” means choosing whites and that black incumbents always lack merit is a deeply rooted prejudice among many white South Africans.</p>
<h2>Liberalism debate</h2>
<p>Liberalism plays a core role in the dispute. This is because (mostly white) opponents of the party’s direction under Maimane claim it is now too close in worldview to the ANC and insist that the DA has strayed from its liberal roots and must rediscover them. The view was best summed up by former leader Helen Zille, who has emerged from retirement to contest a powerful position in the party. <a href="https://www.news24.com/Analysis/10-questions-to-helen-zille-its-a-fight-between-nationalists-and-liberalists-20191007">In her view</a>, the single and most important internal issue in the DA</p>
<blockquote>
<p>is the clash between racial nationalism and democratic liberalism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is not hard to see why that view appears to black DA supporters (and critics) as an expression of prejudice. Everyone knows that all the “racial nationalists” are black and that just about all the “democratic liberals” are white and so Zille’s understanding of liberalism seems to match Turner’s diagnosis.</p>
<p>“Racial nationalism” is wanting measures which will actively redress decades of legalised racial domination – “democratic liberalism” is expressing the view of the suburbs that black people should rely on hard work and the market, a convenient view from people who did so well out of legalised racial deprivation that they could afford to denounce it as someone else’s doing.</p>
<p>But aren’t Zille and her DA allies right to assume that liberalism is a (mainly) white view of the world? No. </p>
<p>South Africa has had, and still has, many black liberals; the problem for the white DA leadership is not that they are nationalists but that their liberalism is influenced by their experience as black South Africans.</p>
<h2>Black liberalism</h2>
<p>Black liberalism has deep roots in South Africa. During the 1950s, the short-lived Liberal Party boasted among its leadership black liberals such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/henry-selby-msimang">Selby Msimang</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jordan-kush-ngubane">Jordan Ngubane</a>, both of whom began political life in the ANC. Under their influence, its branches in Natal province rallied to the cause of black farmers who were forced off their land by apartheid. </p>
<p>This was a liberal issue – the denial of property rights on racial grounds. But it was also a burning issue for many black people in Natal because of its campaign, the party attracted a substantial black membership in the province.</p>
<p>The Liberal Party was divided – its Cape branch harboured many of the prejudices which Turner criticised. But its Natal and Transvaal branches’ support for votes for all adults (the Cape group wanted educational and property qualifications which would have denied most black people the vote) and its support for civil disobedience (and in some cases armed insurrection) to defeat apartheid showed that a liberalism which spoke to the black experience was possible in South Africa. </p>
<p>Strains of liberal thought could also be found within the historic liberation movements, the ANC and the Pan-Africanist Congress.</p>
<p>Today, a liberalism led by black people who do not wish to become white may be even more possible. The black professional and business class has grown substantially over the last quarter of a century. Many of its members don’t feel at home in any of the political parties. While many may find liberalism unappealing, a substantial number might endorse it enthusiastically as long as it does not confuse whiteness with liberalism.</p>
<h2>Opportunity amid travail</h2>
<p>The DA’s current travails may be an opportunity for South African liberalism. For some time, political gossip has had it that parts of its white rump want to break away and form a “liberal” party in which white suburbanites can feel at home. But a far more credible breakaway may be one led by its black members who could seek to link up to other liberal currents in black South Africa to form a party whose liberalism would reflect the black experience.</p>
<p>Whether that happens or not, black liberalism in South Africa is not a contradiction in terms. A party which expresses it could become an important fixture in the country’s politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125236/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Friedman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Race is the fault line. Prominent black DA figures label attempts to remove leader Mmusi Maimane as an attempt by whites to force black members into a subordinate position.Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1171292019-05-16T09:26:24Z2019-05-16T09:26:24ZSouth Africa’s Democratic Alliance at 60: big strategic questions lie ahead<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274629/original/file-20190515-60532-7moy05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Democratic Alliance has transformed itself from an overwhelmingly white party to a majority black party. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>At the one extreme, South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), celebrates every possible historic anniversary of its life and struggles. At the opposite extreme, the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) has so far not said one word that 2019 marks its diamond jubilee – its 60th anniversary.</p>
<p>The DA was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-general-elections-1961">founded in 1959</a> by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/helen-suzman">12 MPS as a breakaway </a> from the now deceased United Party. One of them was Helen Suzman, who became world famous for opposing apartheid, maximising the opportunities offered by Parliamentary question time. Its first name was the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Progressive-Party-political-party-South-Africa">Progressive Party</a> – one of five names it would call itself over the next six decades. </p>
<p>The DA has risen to become the official opposition. Following recent elections in the country it has 84 members of Parliament.</p>
<p>The DA seems to be the eighth-longest surviving party in Africa. It is a respected member of both the <a href="https://liberal-international.org/">Liberal International</a> and the <a href="https://www.africaliberalnetwork.org/">African Liberal Network</a>.</p>
<p>The DA has spent the last 60 years in opposition nationally. But it’s gained a toehold in local and provincial government. It has governed the Western Cape province for a decade, the City of Cape Town for 13 years, and more recently Tshwane, Johannesburg and Midvaal in Gauteng, the country’s economic hub, among other cities.</p>
<p>This remarkable history merits a snapshot. The DA is the only party from the apartheid parliament to survive – and indeed flourish – in the democratic parliament since 1994. Alongside the <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">South African Communist Party</a>, and the now deceased <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/liberal-party-south-africa-lpsa">Liberal Party of South Africa</a>, it is the only party to transform itself from an overwhelmingly white party into a majority black party.</p>
<h2>A short history</h2>
<p>After it was launched as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/democratic-alliance-da">Progressive Party in 1959</a>, the architect of apartheid and then Prime Minister <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hendrik-frensch-verwoerd">Hendrik Verwoerd </a>, called an early whites-only <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-general-elections-1961">election in 1961</a>. Only <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Helen-Suzman">Helen Suzman</a> retained her seat. </p>
<p>The “Progs”, as everyone called them, also included a few Coloured members since they were founded. (“Coloureds” is an apartheid-era term for mixed-race persons, plus Khoisan descendants). This so enraged the apartheid government that it passed the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/prohibition-of-political-interference-act%2C-act-no-51-of-1968">Prohibition of Political Interference Act</a> in 1968, which forced parties to be segregated. The Liberal Party dissolved; the Progs’ few Coloured members resigned. When the law was repealed in 1985, some rejoined.</p>
<p>In 1974 the Progs won six seats in Parliament, changed their name in 1975 to the Progressive Reform Party, then to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Progressive-Federal-Party">Progressive Federal Party</a> in 1977. In that year they also modernised their policy to advocate universal franchise and went on to win seats in Parliament. They became the official opposition until 1987, when the racist <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03198.htm">Konservatiewe Party</a> (to the right of the apartheid regime) overtook them in numbers of MPs. </p>
<p>In 1989 the Progressive Federal Party changed its name to the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/democratic-party-dp">Democratic Party</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274635/original/file-20190515-60554-qusuad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274635/original/file-20190515-60554-qusuad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274635/original/file-20190515-60554-qusuad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274635/original/file-20190515-60554-qusuad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274635/original/file-20190515-60554-qusuad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274635/original/file-20190515-60554-qusuad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274635/original/file-20190515-60554-qusuad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Helen Suzman was a lone liberal voice in the apartheid Parliament.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Attila Kisbenedek</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout these decades Suzman used Parliament to relentlessly expose the atrocities of apartheid, and did whatever she could to ameliorate the plight of political prisoners from the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan Africanist Congress(PAC), Liberal Party, and Azanian People’s Organisation (<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/azanian-peoples-organization-azapo">Azapo</a>). </p>
<p>During the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">Codesa</a>) negotiations to establish democracy, which started in December 1991, the party played an important role in ensuring that the rule of law, human rights, and other democratic prerequisites were entrenched in the country’s new constitution.</p>
<p>The party again increased its votes under Tony Leon’s leadership to become the official opposition in 1999. In 2003 it adopted its fifth name, the <a href="https://www.da.org.za/why-the-da/history">Democratic Alliance</a>, or DA.</p>
<p>In 2007 the DA negotiated a coalition that replaced the ANC in governing the City of Cape Town. In the general 2009 elections the party won the Western Cape province. In 2016, it negotiated a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africans-come-off-second-best-as-politicians-play-havoc-with-coalitions-102671">tactical voting alliance</a> with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) which enabled it to appoint the mayors of Tshwane (the executive capital) and Johannesburg, the largest city. </p>
<p>The DA, led by Mmusi Maimane, peaked in the 2016 municipal elections, winning <a href="https://www.elections.org.za/lgedashboard2016/leaderboard.aspx">26.9% of the vote</a>.</p>
<p>The DA won 20.8% of the 2019 general election – a 2 percentage point drop compared with the <a href="https://www.enca.com/news/official-election-2019-results-announced">last national poll</a>. It has been allocated 84 seats in Parliament’s National Assembly. The provincial election result saw it retain control of the Western Cape province. </p>
<h2>Changes</h2>
<p>Over the last decade the party has transformed its leadership and elected representatives that are a much better reflection of the country’s demographic make up. </p>
<p>In policy terms the DA is a mix of liberal and social democratic. On the one hand, it has a reputation as being anti trade unions and its <a href="https://cdn.da.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/22160849/A4-Manifesto-Booklet-Digital.pdf">2019 election manifesto</a> effectively called for halving sectoral minimum wages. </p>
<p>On the other hand, it has proposed leaving social grants in place as well as doubling the child care grant to R800 a month. It claims its research indicates that mothers with child grants have a better record of getting jobs than those without. It also proposes paid state internships for unemployed school-leavers. </p>
<p>Like all modern political parties, the DA has a youth wing, <a href="https://www.da.org.za/get-involved/da-youth">DAY</a>, and a womens’ wing, <a href="https://www.da.org.za/dawn">DAWN</a>.</p>
<h2>Policies and challenges</h2>
<p>The DA’s drop in the latest election suggests it has lost some Afrikaner voters to the Vryheid Front Plus, a party on the right of the political spectrum which totally opposes land expropriation without compensation, and fights for “the white and coloured victims of affirmative action”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-who-why-and-what-of-south-africas-minority-afrikaner-party-116913">The who, why and what of South Africa's minority Afrikaner party</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The DA needs to debate strategic choices. Should it adopt policies like those of the 1990s Tony Leon to win back Afrikaner voters? Or should it adopt policies and strategies which will win over bigger numbers of black voters?</p>
<p>Under apartheid, the party’s racist opponents jeered that the acronym PFP stood for “Packing for Perth” when many white South Africans emigrated to Australia. The DA turned that on its head by founding <a href="https://www.da.org.za/get-involved/da-abroad">DA Abroad</a> to enrol members among South Africa’s diaspora.</p>
<p>But despite its endurance, the DA still hasn’t found a firm foothold to grow its votes in South Africa’s changing political landscape.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117129/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member, but writes this article in his professional capacity as a political scientist and historian.</span></em></p>Despite its endurance, the Democratic Alliance still hasn’t found a firm foothold to grow the votes in South Africa’s changing political landscape.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1124392019-03-04T13:33:49Z2019-03-04T13:33:49ZLetters reveal Africanist hero Robert Sobukwe’s moral courage, and pain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262378/original/file-20190306-48438-1ny6tjw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Between 1963 and 1969 Robert Sobukwe spent six years of near-complete solitary confinement on Robben Island.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Book cover</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>On 21 March 1960 the apartheid police <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">opened fire on unarmed marchers</a> protesting against a law that forced black people to carry identity documents. Over 200 were injured and 69 killed. The following edited excerpt is from a new book featuring the prison letters of Robert Sobukwe, who organised and led the march.</em></p>
<p>In a letter of condolence written on 5 August 1974 to Nell Marquard, a friend who he had been corresponding with since his time on Robben Island, South African pan-Africanist leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a> made a telling observation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I learnt some time ago that one cannot put oneself in another’s position. We may express sympathy, feel it and even imagine the pain. But we cannot feel it as the one who suffers it. They have a saying in Xhosa that the toothache is felt by the one whose tooth is aching.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sobukwe, who clearly knew about suffering, loneliness and the impossibility of ever fully communicating one’s pain to another, was writing just after the death of Nell’s husband, the noted Cape liberal, author and historian, Leo Marquard. Given that Leo was a prominent liberal, and that white liberals had not always been friendly to the aims and agendas of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) – the organisation that Sobukwe led from 1959 until his arrest in 1960 – one might have expected coolness from Sobukwe. Not at all. He, as always, was gracious:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am thankful that I was able to talk to you two years before Leo’s death and more thankful that he died knowing how much his contribution had been appreciated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Touching as this acknowledgement of his contribution would have been for Marquard, the real poignancy of Sobukwe’s letter comes a little further on, when he starts speaking of the myriad difficulties he has faced since leaving <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/916">Robben Island</a>, where most of South Africa’s liberation struggle leaders were jailed. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It has not been a good year for me. I had planned to leave [from Kimberley] … by car on the 31st May and make straight for Cape Town. But these boys [apartheid security police] beat me to it. They came on the 30th May, 1974 to serve the fresh lot of bureaucratic output. Well it’s good to know that our security is entrusted to such alert people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite the fact that he makes light of it, one senses in Sobukwe’s letter that the constant surveillance and harassment of the security police was taking its toll. Behind the ironic salute to the astuteness of the police, there is also a disturbing foreshadowing. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a>, in many respects Sobukwe’s most direct political heir, would be stopped and arrested on a not dissimilar road trip from Cape Town four years later, an event which would lead directly to his death at the hands of the Security Police. Sobukwe continues: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Veronica (Sobukwe’s wife) has had a major operation as you probably read in the papers. She should have had this operation last year, but did not and the condition got worse. She has made a remarkable recovery, thanks to my very efficient and tender nursing, and has now gone back to Joh’burg for a check up. From there she will be in Durban to spend a week or so with her sister before proceeding to Swaziland to see the children.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Between May 1963 and May 1969 Sobukwe was to spend six years of near-complete solitary confinement on Robben Island.</p>
<p>These circumstances had their origins in a momentous historical event organised by Sobukwe himself. On 21 March 1960, he had led the Pan Africanist Congress in what he called a “positive action” campaign, protesting against the oppressive pass laws that governed the movements – and indeed the lives – of black South Africans. </p>
<p>This mass action resulted in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> later that same day, in which at least 69 people were killed when the South African police opened fire on a crowd of protesters. This event, which drew international attention to the injustices and brutality of apartheid, was a watershed moment in the history of South Africa. It led to a three-year jail sentence for Sobukwe for inciting people to protest against the laws of the country.</p>
<p>Not content that by 3 May 1963 Sobukwe would have served his sentence, the apartheid government passed an amendment to the General Law Amendment Act, the notorious <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-mangaliso-sobukwe">“Sobukwe Clause”</a>, which enabled the Minister of Justice to prolong the detention of any political prisoner year after year.</p>
<p>He was then relocated to Robben Island, and kept apart from other prisoners, where he remained for six years. The clause – never used to detain anyone else – was renewed annually by the Minister of Justice.</p>
<p>Sobukwe, in a very significant sense, was never a free man again after his 1960 imprisonment. The apartheid government unleashed a series of bureaucratic cruelties upon him after his May 1969 release from Robben Island. They forced him to live in the geographically remote town of Kimberley – far removed from any friends, family or associates. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The house where Sobukwe was held on Robben Island .</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flcker/Daniel Mouton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They insisted he take on a low-ranking job that would have made him complicit in the apartheid policies that he went to jail protesting. He refused. They repeatedly refused to allow him to leave the country to take up job offers he had received from the United States; and they obstructed his attempts to get the medical treatments that he needed, and that would have extended his life (he died of lung cancer on 27 February 1978).</p>
<p>This then is the background to the consolations that Sobukwe sought to offer Nell Marquard in his 1974 letter. It’s only on the last page of that letter that he seemed to finally find the words that suited both his emotions and the note of commiseration that he wished to convey to Nell:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Xhosa have standard words of condolence. They say
<em>Akuhlanga lungehlanga lala ngenxeba</em> (There has not occurred what has not occurred before … lie on your wound).
God bless you. Affectionately, Robert.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This resonant phrase – which also appears in Sobukwe’s letters to his friend Benjamin Pogrund – applies equally, if not more so, to Sobukwe himself. “Lie on your wound(s)” is a call to bide one’s time, to heal, and to reconstitute one’s self despite evident suffering. It is a call to have courage, to bear the moral burden of pain, and it provides an apt title for what was the most difficult period of Sobukwe’s life, namely his time on Robben Island, which the selection of letters collected in this <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/lie-on-your-wounds-2/">book</a>, published by Wits <a href="http://witspress.co.za/">University Press</a>, represents.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112439/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek Hook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A collection of prison letters provides a peek into the suffering of South African liberation hero, Robert Sobukwe.Derek Hook, Associate professor of Psychology, Duquesne University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1052262018-10-30T14:13:30Z2018-10-30T14:13:30ZApartheid, guns and money: book lifts the lid on Cold War secrets<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241410/original/file-20181019-105770-1cfs0bj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A London bus displays anti-apartheid message at the height of South Africa's isolation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/rahuldlucca</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s not very often that a book really reshapes our perception of an issue, but Hennie van Vuuren’s <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/apartheid-guns-and-money/">“Apartheid, Guns and Money: a tale of profit”</a> is one. It is a massive work: over 600 pages and the result of a decade of meticulous, painstaking work. </p>
<p>From a modest office in a rundown suburb of Cape Town, Van Vuuren has been beavering away to probe into the stories that could never be told during the apartheid years. Formerly director at the Institute for Security Studies, he now runs <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org.za/">Open Secrets</a>, which peers into economic and human rights violations. This volume, first published in South African in 2017, is the result.</p>
<p>The extraordinary tale that Van Vuuren tells is how – as the South African state gradually became an international pariah and as the truth about apartheid became internationally known – it moved from a normal member of the world community to a covert operator. It began working in shady ways, through even more shady operators. </p>
<p>To ensure that it had access to arms and oil, Pretoria moved from legitimate to illegitimate trade; from overt to covert deals and from legal to illegal transactions. This was supported (or at least connived at) by many western powers. That the US, Britain and France did this has been known, or at least suspected, for many years. Van Vuuren fills in the blanks and gives us plenty of new information on this. Although shocking this is less than astonishing.</p>
<p>What is really novel is that he uncovers a completely new set of actors: the Chinese and the Soviet Union. In the past it has been assumed that, for the most part, they were completely wedded to the liberation movements. The support from Moscow and Beijing for the African National Congress and – to a lesser extent – the Pan Africanist Congress, was so <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/union-soviet-socialist-republic-ussr-and-anti-apartheid-struggle">widely reported</a> that few suspected there might be less than total solidarity between the communist powers and the liberation movements. </p>
<p>Yes, there were the odd stories about the South African diamond giant – De Beers – being spotted at the ballet in Moscow doing deals with Russian <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=REPrk1NxXTQC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=Oppenheimer+de+beers+moscow+ballet&source=bl&ots=JUuiSHyaTg&sig=6JZFhQ9mZ3v8ZocMZJF2r8rPDGw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwijv8HEjpDeAhVOtVMKHZm8B60Q6AEwDnoECAAQAQ#v=onepage&q=Oppenheimer%20de%20beers%20moscow%20ballet&f=false">diamond companies</a>, but this was seen as a small aberration. After all, both countries wanted to keep up the prices of diamonds on international markets, so some kind of arrangement was perhaps inevitable.</p>
<p>But – if Van Vuuren is right – these relationships went far, far beyond the odd contact.</p>
<h2>Mind-boggling complexity</h2>
<p>Take one example: the voyage of the Pia Vesta, now a rusting hulk, lying off the coast of Venezuela. This vessel was, says Van Vuuren</p>
<blockquote>
<p>once at the centre of one of the greatest arms heists of the 1980s involving socialist East Germany, South Africa, Peru, Panama, probably the CIA and a crafty French arms dealer by the name of Georges Starckmann.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The tale begins with a top secret minute of a meeting between the head of the South African Defence Force, Jannie Geldenhuys, and his senior officials in connection with operation “Daisy”. This was an attempt to recover $20 million that Starckmann had allegedly swindled out of the South Africans.</p>
<p>The story is of mind-boggling complexity, but involves Starckmann doing a deal with an East German firm called IMES, run by the East German deputy foreign minister with Stasi employees – members of the East German secret service. The result was an arrangement which involved 60 shipments of weapons to South Africa via a Danish shipping company. The shipments were to be trailed half way around the world to disguise their final destination. </p>
<p>These shipments were for vital military equipment, including 1,400 anti-tank missiles. The weapons, which had Peruvian end-user certificates, ended up off the coast of Panama where the ruler, General Noriega, had apparently given the green light for the operation. In the end the dictator reneged on the deal. When the Pia Vesta arrived in Panama on 14 June 1986 its crew was arrested and the vessel impounded. In 1989 General Noriega was ousted by the Americans.</p>
<p>How the ship ended up sunk off Venezuela is a bit of a mystery, but then, as Van Vuuren points out, so is much of this story. He concludes that South Africa’s state arms dealer, Armscor, was involved:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But for all the smoke and mirrors, one thing is as clear as day. There is more than sufficient evidence that Armscor bought arms from IMES, a Stasi-run East German company operating behind the Iron Curtain. During the Cold War, much was not as it seemed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nor was this an isolated incident. Van Vuuren says he has evidence that Armscor had a team of military experts working inside the Soviet Union with an office in Leningrad. So close was the relationship that when the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster took place in 1986, the Russians turned to South Africa for medical support.</p>
<h2>The relationship with China</h2>
<p>The relationship that the book portrays between South Africa and the Chinese is just as complex. It involves purchases of Chinese military equipment – everything from machine guns to missiles and rocket launchers – using Congolese companies as a front. Sometimes the shipments were destined for South Africa’s Angolan allies, UNITA, sometimes not.</p>
<p>Overall the book is a compelling and convincing narrative: our understanding of apartheid’s global supporters has been transformed.</p>
<p><em>“Apartheid, Guns and Money: a tale of profit” will be published by Hurst, 1 November 2018, Hardback: £25. pp. 620</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105226/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Plaut is affiliated with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London</span></em></p>As South Africa became an international pariah, it began working in shady ways through even more shady operators, including getting arms from the Soviet Union and China.Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/847062017-10-02T16:49:32Z2017-10-02T16:49:32ZWhy the dream of a prosperous, united nation continues to elude South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187576/original/file-20170926-19571-1we1vpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Violent service delivery riot near Soweto, Johannesburg.Millions of poor South Africans live in shacks.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The goal of one united South African nation living prosperously under a constitutional democracy remains elusive. This is in spite of the constitution boldly <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-preamble">declaring that</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>South Africa belongs to all who live in it, both black and white, united in our diversity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The central issue raised by the struggle against <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">racial injustice</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-slavery-and-early-colonisation-south-africa">colonialism</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/imperialism-and-socialism-context-africa">imperialism</a> – what is referred to in South Africa as the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/national-question-post-94-south-africa-discussion-paper-preparation-50th-national-conference">National Question</a> - reemerged dramatically three years ago. It started as a demand for the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/the-real-meaning-of-rhodes-must-fall">removal of the statue</a> of arch imperialist and colonialist, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes">Cecil John Rhodes</a>, from a prominent position at the University of Cape Town. It rapidly grew into a powerful movement in support of <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/decolonisation-17372">decolonisation</a>. The National Question, it appears, remains highly relevant and unresolved.</p>
<p>In a new book, <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-unresolved-national-question-in-south-africa/">The Unresolved National Question: left thought under apartheid</a> a number of authors set out the multifaceted origins of the idea.</p>
<h2>Political traditions</h2>
<p>Four main contested political traditions have shaped this debate. </p>
<p>The first is the <a href="https://marxistleninist.wordpress.com/study-guide/">Marxist-Leninist</a> tradition, which goes back to the <a href="http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Soviet_Union">Soviet Union</a> in the 1920s and the debates between <a href="http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lenin-Vladimir.html">Lenin</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Stalin">Stalin</a> and <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/roy/index.htm">Manabendra Nath Roy of India</a>. </p>
<p>At the centre of these debates was the idea of two distinct stages in the struggle for national liberation, a <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03005/06lv03132/07lv03140/08lv03145.htm">national democratic stage</a> and then a <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/31.htm">socialist stage</a>. This strategic approach was <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2638">adopted</a> by the Communist Party of South Africa - now the South African Communist Party (SACP), in 1928/1929. It later developed into the idea of South Africa as a <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/apartheid-south-africa-colonialism-special-type">colonialism of a special type</a>.</p>
<p>The second is the Congress tradition, associated with the African National Congress <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/african-national-congress-anc">(ANC)</a> and its iconic leaders, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/chief-albert-john-mvumbi-luthuli">Albert Luthuli</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-kaizana-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a> and <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>. At the heart of this tradition is the idea of one <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-origins-of-non-racialism/">non-racial nation</a>. Historian Luli Callinicos shows how Mandela and Tambo steadily widened their concept of the nation to include all races.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Life-long friends and ANC leaders Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Professor Robbie van Niekerk, a South African expert on social policy, traces the roots of the ANC’s economic and social thought to the 1943 <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/africans-claims-south-africa-adopted-anc-1943-annual-conference">Bill of Rights of African Claims</a> and the 1955 <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>. In these documents “the nation” can only be fully realised through the universal extension and provision of public goods by a democratic state. Or, as Luthuli <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-unresolved-national-question-in-south-africa/">put it</a>, the new government should have as its objective the creation of a democratic welfare state with redistributive social policies in health, education and welfare.</p>
<p>The third is the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/65974.Leon_Trotsky">Trotskyite</a> tradition. This goes back to the thirties in the Western and Eastern Cape and is associated with the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/non-european-unity-movement-neum">Unity Movement</a>. This approach is developed in the book by the late Marxist historian and then activist <a href="http://www.historicalstudies.uct.ac.za/hst/news/martin-legassick-has-passed-away">Martin Leggasick</a>. Leggasick and his colleagues were to form the <a href="https://eng.ichacha.net/zaoju/marxist%20workers%20tendency%20of%20the%20anc.html">Marxist Worker Tendency</a> of the ANC developing Trotsky’s notion of the <a href="http://www.redletterpress.org/Permanent%20Revolution.html">“permanent revolution”</a>. Revolution, they argued, developed continuously and unevenly on a world scale, rather than proceeding through discrete chronological stages. Legassick was eventually expelled from the ANC.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/DC/Acn1964.0001.9976.000.019.Oct1964.7/Acn1964.0001.9976.000.019.Oct1964.7.pdf">Africanist tradition</a> identified with <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Sobukwe</a> and the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pan-africanism">(PAC)</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sobukwe, founder of the Pan Africanist Congress.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As political scientist Siphamandla Zondi makes clear, Africanism is a much broader tradition than the PAC. For the Africanists, the nation state is a product of Western modernity and colonialism. At the centre of the tradition is the notion of “epistemic disobedience”. The decolonisation of knowledge and its production are seen as a “rebellion against the neocolonised order of things”</p>
<h2>Continuity and rupture</h2>
<p>In the book, we discuss the debates that emerged after the banning of South Africa’s national liberation movements in 1960. We suggest that a process of continuity and rupture takes place. On the one hand, movements emerge that attempt to break with the past. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the ethnic nationalism promoted by the apartheid government through its <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/first-bantustans-or-homelands-comes-existence-when-transkei-regional-authority-institute">Bantustan policy</a>, </p></li>
<li><p>the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/definition-black-consciousness-bantu-stephen-biko-december-1971-south-africa">black consciousness movement</a> associated with Steve Biko, </p></li>
<li><p>the emergence of a strong feminist movement, </p></li>
<li><p>the creation of a powerful workers’ movement with an emphasis on the primacy of the working class, and</p></li>
<li><p>a surprising outcome of the national democratic struggle - a “liberal” constitution. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>But in spite of these new ideologies and movements, there is a great deal of continuity with past political traditions. Two examples illustrate this process of continuity and rupture. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Steve Biko, leader of the Black Consciousness Movement.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first one is the championing of ethnic nationalism and the endorsement of traditional <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-7">Bantustan</a> leaders after 1994. </p>
<p>We introduce the idea of the ethnic nation in the book through a chapter by Dunbar Moodie. He examines the debates that took place in the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03190.htm">Afrikaner Broederbond</a>. These show how liberal Afrikaner nationalist intellectuals, such as <a href="http://www.tafelberg.com/authors/330">NP Van Wyk Louw</a>, argued that Afrikaners cannot deny Africans what they claim for themselves, namely the right to self determination. Hence apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd envisioned the idea of the Bantustans culminating in a federation of “independent ethnic nations” in southern Africa.</p>
<p>The chiefs and tribal authorities that were created by apartheid were authoritarian, deeply undemocratic, and often corrupt. Yet they survived into the post-apartheid era. </p>
<p>The second example is the constitution and its Bill of Rights. There are those who believe that these rights, especially the socio-economic rights, such as the right to education and housing, provide the key to resolving the National Question.</p>
<p>Indeed, Jeremy Cronin and Alex Mashile, from the SACP, argue that under Thabo Mbeki the National Question was reduced to the deracialisation of monopoly capitalism. The goal of the national democratic revolution became the consolidation of a capitalist democracy by opening up South Africa to global markets and promoting a black capitalist class.</p>
<h2>Resolving the National Question</h2>
<p>What became clear in our conversations about the book that the National Question cannot be resolved solely through the country’s constitution. Much as it contains the potential for a far more radical transformative project than traditional liberalism, it cannot resolve the National Question.</p>
<p>The resolution of the National Question will require the resolution of what has been called the “social question”. This is a historic demand for the redistribution of wealth and the right of all citizens to education, health and welfare. Without addressing the legacy of land dispossession, economic exclusion, long term unemployment and racialised inequality, the National Question will remain unresolved.</p>
<p><em>The article is drawn from a recently published volume of research based essays titled <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-unresolved-national-question-in-south-africa/">The Unresolved National Question: left thought under apartheid</a>. It was edited by Edward Webster and Karin Pampallis and published by Wits University Press</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Webster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The National Question cannot be resolved solely through South Africa’s constitution. There’s potential for a far more radical transformative project than traditional liberalism.Edward Webster, Professor Emeritus, Society, Work and Development Institute, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/673892016-10-20T15:29:34Z2016-10-20T15:29:34ZWhat must fall: fees or the South African state?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142515/original/image-20161020-8862-1x1eefy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The polarising effects of <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/feesmustfall-21801">#FeesMustFall</a> are now pervasive in the academy, and probably beyond. Academics turn on each other, as do their schools and faculties. </p>
<p>Whole universities are pitted against one another – the <a href="http://www.thedailyvox.co.za/tactics-future-feesmustfall-wits/">“Wits option”</a> vs the <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/comment/the-degradation-of-uct">“UCT option”</a>. Some academics are accused of being blindly supportive of “the innocent students” and parading their colours as the immaculate left; while others are <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/493499504144839/">seen</a> as blindly securocrat, unreconstructed racists, or terminally bewildered.</p>
<p>So let’s (try to) agree on a modicum of common ground. Remarkably, there is a lot of it about. No-one can reasonably argue that universities are not underfunded. No-one can reasonably argue that the impact of underfunding has been transferred to fee increases, and that in turn, black (primarily African and coloured) students bear the burden. Given the failure of the post-apartheid economy to sufficiently redistribute wealth and the abject failure of trickle-down economics, <a href="http://www.thedailyvox.co.za/a-letter-to-white-people/">“black debt”</a> is a reality. </p>
<p>Let’s also accept that for many students, much of the academy is an alienating, overwhelmingly white, Eurocentric space and experience. Students arrive and are expected to meet imported norms, seminar room sarcasm, unknown customs, foreign authors, hard marking and plain hard slog of tertiary education, while being young and going through their own life transitions, and doing so in “othered” spaces, out of vernacular, and so on.</p>
<p>Let us also agree that virtually no university or further education college has genuinely grappled (institutionally, not at the level of the individual) with what it means to <a href="https://theconversation.com/decolonise-more-than-just-curriculum-content-change-the-structure-too-44480">decolonise</a>, beyond (at best) looking around quickly for some black/African authors. This is not true at school level, where many advances have been made – but these are islands in an ocean. Students swim in the ocean.</p>
<p>Let’s also accept the dangers of commodified knowledge and universities, and the fact that the system is slowly becoming a sausage machine for lawyers, accountants, MBAs and others deemed economically necessary for the economy. Those schools and faculties seen to add no “dollar value” are discriminated against locally and globally. </p>
<p>I say “let’s agree” because these issues have all been <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/general-news/2016/feesmustfall2016/statements/draft-pledge-on-access-to-higher-education.html">agreed</a> to by both protesters and university management. There may be quibbles over the severity of this or that issue in this or that part of the sector, but the central issues are undisputed.</p>
<h2>Divided we fall</h2>
<p>So what divides us, and with such vehemence? For the immaculate left, it is ultimately a capitalist state that has no interest in the poor emerging from poverty; overlapping with black people in a society dominated by whiteliness; creating an unreconstructed racial capitalism that needs to be toppled. Students in this view lack agency, and are in every context victims of external forces. Every action is the response of victim to oppressor. </p>
<p>“Senior management” is seen to lead with security, follow up with more security, and have no interest in negotiation or compromise. Students just want a free, decolonised education in a transformed institution and are shot for daring to ask for it – and they remain innocent, brutalised “black bodies”.</p>
<p>For those who are not in this group, there is a basic commitment to teach, and to getting students to complete the academic year. They are disregarded as <a href="https://theconversation.com/navigating-south-africas-loaded-political-lexicon-42791">“liberals”</a>, the ultimate South African insult. Security is regarded as a necessary evil – but since many academics have personally been assaulted and/or abused and/or disrupted, and many targeted for hiding students desperate to learn and/or shielding them from protesters, security seems a basic necessity. The pleas from students for support to finish the year have been incessant.</p>
<h2>Returning to class</h2>
<p>What is at fault with all these views is the assumption that if protesters win enough compromises – such as sector-wide agreement on free, quality, decolonised education and the need to plan, design and cost it so that it can be an implementable reality not a slogan (being self-evidently not swiftly realised) – they will return to class. And they will do so as victors. We know that the vast majority of non-protesters also want to be back in class - and a great many are there already. But this core assumption is wrong.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142520/original/image-20161020-8862-1ps4wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142520/original/image-20161020-8862-1ps4wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142520/original/image-20161020-8862-1ps4wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142520/original/image-20161020-8862-1ps4wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142520/original/image-20161020-8862-1ps4wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142520/original/image-20161020-8862-1ps4wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142520/original/image-20161020-8862-1ps4wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students use shields belonging to private security during clashes with police at Wits University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is increasingly difficult to retreat from the notion that this is an incipient insurrection. While some protesters are undoubtedly idealistic and brave fighters for free quality education, the movement of 2015 has been colonised by political parties and anarchist movements in 2016. A movement without prominent leaders of 2015 has become leaderless in 2016. </p>
<p>Acts of bravery and camaraderie in 2015 have become acts of racist abuse and thuggish violence in 2016. Burning has replaced marching; destruction of university infrastructure is a key goal. This is no longer #FeesMustFall as we knew it – it has become #StateMustFall. </p>
<p>Universities are being used for testing the potential for broader insurrection –- if you can bring down universities you can bring down cities, if you can bring down cities, you can collapse and take control of the state. No compromise will get the core protesters back into class, or satisfy their academic or political mentors, because their goal is so much larger: state capture. It has allegedly been <a href="http://f3magazine.unicri.it/?p=402">done</a> once under democracy, so why not again?</p>
<h2>Who is to blame?</h2>
<p>Politics hates a vacuum, more than nature. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) is <a href="http://city-press.news24.com/News/an-illegitimate-morally-and-politically-compromised-president-malema-doesnt-hold-back-20160217">morally compromised</a> on every front. Seemingly all courts in the land are packed with lawyers attempting to stop good governance and allow uninterrupted <a href="http://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/why-is-corruption-getting-worse-in-south-africa/">bingeing</a> at the trough. The brazen moves to cover various political derrieres are breathtaking – but create space for any other party to claim the moral high ground. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976</a> during the Soweto youth uprising, protesting students were given political education by mainly the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/black-consciousness-movement">Black Consciousness Movement</a>.
Those students went into exile got their education from the liberation movement organisations, the ANC and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). Whether they were <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/origins-formation-sharpeville-and-banning-1959-1960">Africanist</a> – closer to the PAC – or <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/DC/theooct90a/theooct90a.pdf">Charterist</a> – aligned with the ANC – they were taught about the democratic state that had to be built and the principles on which it was to be built. Who now provides political education for protesting students?</p>
<p>The ANC is utterly compromised and cannot claim the moral authority to “lead”. The Democratic Alliance and ANC student wings, <a href="https://www.da.org.za/get-involved/da-youth/">DASO</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/south-african-students-congress-sasco">Sasco</a> respectively, were loud in proclaiming their various Student Representative Council victories earlier in the year but have vanished from the scene. The prominence of <a href="http://effighters.org.za/">Economic Freedom Fighters</a> leaders – at national and student level – may or may not be relevant. So too the various incarnations of <a href="http://blf.org.za/">Black First Land First</a>, pan-Africanist student movements and others. We are reduced to using student leaders of the 1980s as <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/if-sa-wanted-to-it-would-have-free-education-mpofu-20161008">mediators</a>, still on the faulty assumption that protesters want to return to class. They don’t. They are far more ambitious than that.</p>
<p>We have to call the bluff of those who keep moving the goalposts. Universities have agreed to free, quality, decolonised education in a transformed institution. Exam dates have been changed. Exam content is being modified to accommodate lost classes. But then the <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2016/10/09/Wits-will-remain-shut-until-our-demands-are-met-%E2%80%93-student-leader">demands shift</a> – we want this fully legislated now, or we won’t return to class. Or, we want amnesty for students suspended after due process regardless of what they did. Or, we want students arrested by police released. And so on and so on. These are patently not demands that the academy has the legal mandate to meet, even if we assume it had the will so to do.</p>
<p>If we do not call this for what it is, we face the danger of realising apartheid architect <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hendrik-frensch-verwoerd">Hendrik Verwoerd’s</a> dream – the man who <a href="http://www.azquotes.com/quote/727563">advised</a> us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour … What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>If, as seems likely, for the second year in a row, university students in South Africa are going to complete only part of their annual curriculum, and will be examined on only part of their curriculum, the result is that every subsequent year is divided between “catching up” on what was missed and squeezing a year of teaching into less time – we face the danger of ensuring that no student will receive even a quality colonised education (an oxymoron for some, of course). We are not educating our students to compete locally or globally. We are crippling them. They are being sacrificed for the few who see state capture as tantalisingly close.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67389/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Everatt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>University authorities in South Africa have agreed to most fees protesters’ demands. Yet, the protesters keep moving the goalposts. Do they want more than fees to fall?David Everatt, Head of Wits School of Governance, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/572562016-04-07T04:33:48Z2016-04-07T04:33:48ZCan the ANC survive the end of South Africa’s heroic epoch?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117728/original/image-20160406-28970-1ahuksm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Posters depicting the ANC in happier times.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s governing African National Congress <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/index.php">(ANC)</a> has gone through episodic crises in its century of existence. Right now, the media and commentariat are seized with debate about whether or not it is <a href="http://www.heraldlive.co.za/anc-crisis-talks-zuma/">in a crisis</a> and whether it is as serious as any other.</p>
<p>The party has survived tumultuous times, including a major split that resulted in the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/pan-africanist-congress-pac">Pan Africanist Congress</a> (PAC) in 1959 as well as friction in the post-democratic era. The <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/carolus-kasrils-and-others-join-call-for-zuma-to-step-down-20160406">present crisis</a> differs because the party has governed the country for more than 20 years and faces different threats such as clientelism and patronage.</p>
<p>History should serve as a sombre warning to the ANC of what might happen if it does not manage leadership rivalries within its ranks. Though the party has won between <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2014-05-11-the-partys-over-anc-sees-decline-in-support">62% and 68% of votes</a> cast in every election since 1994, history does not guarantee any party predestination to govern for ever.</p>
<h2>The tumultuous 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s</h2>
<p>During the 1920s, ANC members were demoralised and dropped out when <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/african-national-congress-timeline-1910-1919">their delegations</a> to the British government and <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/paris-peace">Conference of Versailles</a> elicited no support for their opposition to the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01646/05lv01745.htm">Natives Land Act</a> and other racist laws. So big was the loss in numbers that the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/industrial-and-commercial-workers-union-icu">Industrial and Commercial Workers Union</a> overtook it as the largest black organisation in the country.</p>
<p>But by the end of the 1920s the ANC had again became the largest as administrative incompetence and corruption, as much as repression, saw the union collapse.</p>
<p>The publication of the draft <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01646/05lv01784.htm">Native Trust and Land bill</a> in the mid-1930s saw the ANC’s fortunes again take a turn for the worse. The <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/world-and-african-history/all-africa-convention">All-African Convention (AAC)</a> swiftly grew in size to outnumber the ANC. The rump of the AAC constituted itself in the 1940s as the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/non-european-unity-movement-neum">Non-European Unity Movement</a>. But it alienated and expelled many in repeated dogmatic schisms.</p>
<p>During the 1940s the ANC rejuvenated itself organisationally when it founded its <a href="http://www.ancyl.org.za/">Youth League</a>. It also got a new lease on life ideologically with its <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=4474">African Claims</a> manifesto. It peaked with 100,000 members during the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/defiance-campaign-1952">Defiance Campaign of 1952</a>. After that, state repression started to gradually grind it down, though it remained the largest black political party.</p>
<p>A split over ideology and tactics saw the formation of the PAC in 1959. This split was perhaps the most serious in ANC history; the PAC attracted crowds perhaps one-third the size of those attending ANC meetings, until both parties suffered banning and repression in the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/state-emergency-declared-after-sharpeville-massacre">1960 State of Emergency</a>. </p>
<p>During the harrowing decades of underground and exile only a few small cells of ANC and PAC veterans managed to evade and survive within South Africa. <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/current-affairs-a-history/the-anc-underground-in-south-africa-detail">In exile</a>, the ANC maintained pre-eminence, with solidarity support from communist parties, western socialists, trade unions and liberals, plus the <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-anc-and-the-soviets">Soviet-led</a> bloc of communist governments, and many African governments.</p>
<p>By contrast, the banned PAC enjoyed US support for only four years, then <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03214.htm">Chinese support</a> on a small scale. It also won some support from a minority of black power activists abroad, some tiny western Trotskyist circles, and only Libya and Iran.</p>
<p>Exile is usually a harsh environment for political parties, few of whom can remain viable longer than a decade or two. The ANC however remained organisationally intact.</p>
<p>By contrast the PAC was torn asunder in exile by perpetual <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hf-4CN94vmsJ:www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/webpages/DC/slapr93.4/slapr93.4.pdf+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=za">splits and schisms</a> until it lost any organisational coherence. The <a href="http://azapo.org.za/azapohistory/azapo-and-bcma-historical-background/">Black Consciousness Movement of Azania</a> in exile remained marginal in number.</p>
<h2>Democracy heralds a sea change</h2>
<p>Democracy resulted in a sea change in the ANC. Before its <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/fw-de-klerk-announces-release-nelson-mandela-and-unbans-political-organisations">unbanning in 1990</a> no-one could expect any personal gain from joining the ANC. To the contrary, members could only expect victimisation at work, harassment from the municipal authorities, and banning orders, house arrest, detention without trial, torture or assassination. As a result only highly committed idealists joined the ANC.</p>
<p>Today the heroic epoch is over. Many idealists remain, but they sit alongside careerists, floor crossers and <a href="http://www.gov.za/tenderpreneurship-stuff-crooked-cadres-fighters">tenderpreneurs</a> – businesspeople who enrich themselves through government tenders, often dubiously. In short, the ANC has become a normal political party. One consequence is that splits and factions are today less connected with policy ideals than with the system of <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-why-economic-freedom-is-proving-to-be-the-ancs-undoing-48339">patronage</a> and clientelism.</p>
<p>Mobilisation is usually aimed not at any policy, but at getting a patron elected who will try to divert tenders to political donors. This is at its bloodiest in municipal politics, where <a href="http://www.rdm.co.za/politics/2016/02/29/political-assassinations-are-on-the-rise">assassinations number in the dozens</a>, especially in the KwaZulu-Natal province. The stakes are indeed high. A ward councillor is paid ten times the average wage in a township.</p>
<p>For example, policy divergence was an escalating symptom, rather than the cause, of the expulsion of <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2012-02-29-julius-malema-expelled">Julius Malema</a> from the ANC Youth League and his subsequent launch of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/founding-economic-freedom-fighters-eff">Economic Freedom Fighters</a>. The mutual accusations of corruption between Zuma and the pre-expulsion Malema underscore the stark facts of their political patronage networks.</p>
<p>The current media debate on the probability of Zuma not lasting out his term of office as ANC leader until 2017 and as South African president until 2019 is flawed by one methodological failing. South Africans and their media are prone to either canonise a politician as a saint, such as Nelson Mandela, or demonise him as a monster, as Zuma. Leadership counts big-time, but such over-personalisation of politics fails to spot the system of patronage and clientelism.</p>
<p>Removing Zuma and replacing him with another is unlikely to replace the spoils system of inappropriate cadre deployment, nor tenderpreneurship. Replacing Thabo Mbeki with Zuma did not end these problems. Zuma’s successor as president will be hard pressed to face down those demanding payback. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117735/original/image-20160406-28950-v1wntj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117735/original/image-20160406-28950-v1wntj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117735/original/image-20160406-28950-v1wntj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117735/original/image-20160406-28950-v1wntj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117735/original/image-20160406-28950-v1wntj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117735/original/image-20160406-28950-v1wntj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117735/original/image-20160406-28950-v1wntj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Patronage and corruption have become rampant under President Jacob Zuma.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What now?</h2>
<p>So far Zuma’s supporters have outvoted his rivals in the ANC, and often purged them from executive structures. One consequence could be larger numbers of abstentions from former ANC voters in the coming <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/pebble.asp?relid=21869">municipal elections</a>.</p>
<p>ANC membership numbers tend to peak during election campaigns (up to one million) and slump between elections. Whether this pattern will hold remains to be seen. The ANC nevertheless remains by far the largest political party in the country. There is not yet any sign of a seismic shift in this balance of power.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there are flashing red lights that the ANC party bureaucracy has deteriorated to the level where it battles to perform even the simplest of everyday tasks, such as issuing membership cards. And there is growing anger at appointments driven by <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2012-07-12-anc-cadre-deployment">cronyism</a> that lead to dysfunctional schools and sewage treatment plants.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member. He writes this in his professional capacity as a political scientist. </span></em></p>Democracy resulted in a sea change in the governing ANC. In the past, only highly committed idealists joined the party. Today’s splits and factions are about patronage and clientelism.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.