tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/oliver-tambo-29013/articlesOliver Tambo – The Conversation2023-07-26T14:31:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2104132023-07-26T14:31:46Z2023-07-26T14:31:46ZEssop Pahad: a diligent communist driven by an optimistic vision of a non-racial South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539332/original/file-20230725-17-w2ef8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Essop Pahad was a confidant of former president Thabo Mbeki.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bongani Mnguni/Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The death of South African freedom struggle stalwart <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/essop-goolam-pahad-mr">Essop Pahad</a> (84) <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2023-07-06-essop-pahad-close-confidant-of-thabo-mbeki-dies-aged-84/">on 6 July 2023</a> prompted <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/opinions/analysis/tribute-chirpy-and-thoughtful-essop-pahads-legacy-will-forever-be-remembered-in-sas-history-20230706">tributes</a> from his former comrades. There were also less respectful obituaries referring to him as Thabo Mbeki’s “<a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/obituaries/obituary-essop-pahad-mbekis-consigliere-would-fight-you-intellectually-too-20230707">consiglieri</a>”, because of his role as the former president’s “right-hand man”.</p>
<p>Any examination of Pahad’s full political record will take you back to the heroic phases of South Africa’s liberation history, when prospects for a democratic South African government seemed very remote. As a teenager in the 1950s he was busy in the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress. This was the equivalent of the youth league of the liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC), for Indian South Africans. In those days, reflecting apartheid’s distinctions, even radical resistance to it was racially differentiated.</p>
<p>He was one of a small group of activists who, in the 1950s and early 1960s, made a decisive contribution in pulling the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03465.htm">Congress Alliance</a> – a front of organisations allied to the ANC – leftwards, and encouraging an optimistic vision of a future non-racial South Africa.</p>
<p>In my own <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/red-road-to-freedom/">research</a> on the South African Communist Party’s history, groups like the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress were game-changers. They were influential despite their small organised followings. Understanding Pahad’s political ascent helps to illuminate the history of the South African left and the wider liberation movement in which it immersed itself. He belonged to a political network constituted as much by friendships as shared ideas.</p>
<p>At the congress’s annual general meeting in 1958 he proposed a resolution on sport. Sadly, that is all the meeting’s agenda tells us. I’d like to think it was about cricket and its segregation, a key preoccupation for young Indian activists at that time, for Pahad was a lifelong cricket fan.</p>
<p>In old age he was a regular visitor to the Long Room at the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/wanderers-cricket-stadium-johannesburg">Wanderers Cricket Stadium</a> in Johannesburg, one reward for becoming a notable that he would enjoy. As a student at Sussex University between 1965 and 1970, he once organised a party for the visiting West Indian test side. Inheriting a family ethic of generous hospitality, he provided such a warm reception for the visitors that the following day they were <a href="http://cricmash.com/society-and-politics/mbeki-pahad-and-the-1966-west-indians">so badly hungover they lost their match</a>.</p>
<h2>The early years</h2>
<p>Pahad’s childhood was politically configured. His parents Goolam and Amina Pahad belonged to the group that directed the Indian congresses in the mid-1940s into confrontation with a government seeking to dispossess Indian landowners. Goolam was a successful businessman and he owned property in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/destruction-sophiatown">Sophiatown</a>. Pahad employed ANC leader <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/sisulu-walter-1912-2003/">Walter Sisulu</a>, supporting his efforts to become an estate agent.</p>
<p>Through Sisulu, the Pahads became friendly with the angry young men who would become ANC leaders in 1949, often providing them with food and a place to sleep so they could avoid late <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">night pass law</a> arrests for being in town after the curfew.</p>
<p>Even without guests, the Pahads’ apartment would have been crowded. Goolam and Amina Pahad had moved to the inner city of Johannesburg shortly after Essop’s birth in 1939 in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/essop-goolam-pahad">Schweitzer-Reneke</a>, in today’s North West province. They wanted good schooling for their five sons.</p>
<p>Both Essop and his younger brother <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/aziz-goolam-hoosein-pahad-mr-0">Aziz</a> did well enough to obtain entry to the University of the Witwatersrand. This was despite or perhaps because of their participation in one of the Congress Alliance-sponsored “Cultural Clubs” that were set to protest the introduction of the inferior <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/anc-protest-bantu-education-act/">Bantu Education</a> for the black majority.</p>
<p>The clandestine Communist Party’s key theoretician <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/michael-alan-harmel-posthumous">Michael Harmel</a> led the club that they joined. Perhaps through his agency, Pahad joined the party. The Transvaal Indian Youth Congress was led by party members and its political affiliations were very evident in its journal, New Youth. Pahad remained politically animated as a university student, joining the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress’ executive.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-communists-have-shaped-south-africas-history-over-100-years-165556">How communists have shaped South Africa's history over 100 years</a>
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<p>In mid-1962 <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safricas-once-exiled-anti-apartheid-veteran-essop-pahad-dies-84-2023-07-06/">he was arrested</a> for trying to organise a strike, a contribution to the ANC’s continuing effort to secure a national constitutional convention. By this time he had formed a friendship with <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki-mr-0">Thabo Mbeki</a>, whom he got to know after they met at the Rand Youth Club, a key assembly point for activists, sponsored by Sisulu. Mbeki was then staying in Johannesburg, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/thabo-mbeki-1942-timeline">completing his A-levels through correspondence</a> after expulsion from Lovedale College for leading a class boycott.</p>
<h2>Exile years</h2>
<p>Pahad’s friendship with Mbeki deepened when he joined him in Britain after his departure from South Africa in 1964, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safricas-once-exiled-anti-apartheid-veteran-essop-pahad-dies-84-2023-07-06/">prompted by a banning order</a>. Mbeki was enrolled at Sussex University and he persuaded Pahad to register. Pahad would complete <a href="https://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/61351">an MA and a doctorate at Sussex </a> between 1965 and 1971, producing a workmanlike dissertation about the South African Indian Congresses.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Essop Pahad addresses a protest meeting in Amsterdam in 1985.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sepia Times/Universal Images Group/Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>Mbeki also <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/opinions/columnists/guestcolumn/excerpt-while-thabo-mbeki-moved-quietly-essop-pahad-would-stand-up-and-shout-20230707">introduced him to Meg Shorrock</a>, whom he married in 1966. That year with Mbeki he helped establish a non-racial ANC Youth and Student Section. He was immersed in campus student politics as well as organising Vietnam solidarity events. He spent a year in 1973 at the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02426/05lv02626.htm">Institute of Social Sciences</a> in Moscow.</p>
<p>Pahad’s most conspicuous activity during his exile was his deployment in Prague at the <a href="https://www.servantleader.co.za/essop">World Marxist Review</a>; acknowledgement by the Communist Party of his status as a reliable theoretician. He and Meg lived in Prague between 1975 and 1985, and their two daughters were born there, attending Czech schools. I interviewed them in 2018 because I was exploring the South African Communist Party’s Czech connections.</p>
<p>The Pahads remembered a happy period of their life. They found plenty to admire in post-Prague Spring Czechoslovakia, though they both perceived that the Czech party had lost public support. Back in London, Pahad would work closely with Mbeki, acting as an intermediary in the discreet diplomacy that Mbeki was conducting with South African officials and businessmen.</p>
<h2>Right-hand man</h2>
<p>Pahad would return to South Africa in 1990 following the unbanning of the liberation movements, making a new home for his family in Johannesburg. Unlike Mbeki, Pahad remained a communist. One view of his continuing affiliation is that he remained in the party at Mbeki’s behest to watch over its internal affairs, but there is no reason to doubt his continuing commitment to communism. At that time Mbeki’s future succession to the presidency was uncertain and the party was one key constituency. But it is true that Pahad’s subsequent political career would be defined by his status as Mbeki’s trusted friend, his best man as it were, a function he actually performed at Mbeki’s wedding <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/pahad-gives-his-perspective-418057">in 1974</a>.</p>
<p>So, during the <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">presidency of Nelson Mandela</a> (10 May 1994-16 June 1999) he served as Mbeki’s “parliamentary counsellor”. He was essentially responsible for keeping the ANC House of Assembly caucus in order, and after Mbeki’s accession to the presidency, Pahad became a <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/essop-goolam-pahad-mr">minister in the president’s office</a>. </p>
<p>These were not posts that would define him as a policymaker. Rather his reputation as a member of government was as an “enforcer” quelling rebellion. “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/23/mbeki.southafrica">Who the fuck do you think you are, questioning the integrity of the government, the ministers and the president?</a>”,
he admonished the ANC members of the Select Committee on Public Accounts who wanted a full inquiry into the corrupt 1999 <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4006895">multi-billion-rand arms contract</a>.</p>
<p>Subsequently he was a vigorous defender of Mbeki’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-mbekis-character-and-his-aids-denialism-are-intimately-linked-54766">positions on HIV and Aids</a>. Pahad himself believed that Mbeki was unfairly characterised as an Aids “denialist”.</p>
<h2>Diligent</h2>
<p>When Pahad was given a job, he did it efficiently. He surprised even his critics with the diligence with which he supported the offices placed under his authority as minister, for example urging municipalities to “mainstream” disability rights. </p>
<p>Characteristically loyal, he resigned when Mbeki was displaced <a href="https://www.gcis.gov.za/content/newsroom/events/pahad-briefs-media-cabinet-resignations-24-sep-08">in 2008</a>.</p>
<p>In retirement he presided over the <a href="http://www.sadet.co.za/">South African Democratic Education Trust</a>, the incubator of a remarkably non-partisan multi-volume history of the liberation struggle, founded his own journal, <a href="https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/The_Thinker/about/editorialTeam">The Thinker</a>, and remained actively engaged on the editorial board of <a href="https://print.media.co.za/new-age/">New Age</a>, the newspaper funded by the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-22513410">Gupta family</a>, which stands accused of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-itll-take-for-the-guptas-to-face-corruption-charges-in-south-africa-184952">orchestrating industrial scale corruption</a> under former president Jacob Zuma.</p>
<p>He had <a href="https://amabhungane.org/stories/guptaleaks-how-ajay-gupta-was-trusted-with-crafting-sas-global-image/">invited Ajay Gupta</a> to join the International Marketing Council in 2000, an appointment that he subsequently regretted. He may have had other personal regrets but unlike many of his comrades, he rarely spoke about his own political journey. </p>
<p>His life had its own integrity, defined by fixed loyalties and enduring friendships; not such a bad epitaph.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Lodge 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>When Essop Pahad was given a job, he did it efficiently. He surprised even his critics with his diligence.Tom Lodge, Emeritus Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of LimerickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2098832023-07-18T14:32:55Z2023-07-18T14:32:55ZNelson Mandela’s legacy is taking a battering because of the dismal state of South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538003/original/file-20230718-27-ey48jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nelson Mandela, the late first president of democratic South Africa, is credited with the relatively peaceful transition from apartheid rule.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The multiple concerns about the dismal state of South Africa – including a <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/06/15/cf-south-africas-economy-loses-momentum-amid-record-power-cuts">stagnant and failing economy</a>, a seemingly incapable state, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/state-capture-report-chronicles-extent-of-corruption-in-south-africa-but-will-action-follow-174441">massive corruption</a> – have led to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/rule-of-law-in-south-africa-protects-even-those-who-scorn-it-175533">questioning</a> of the political and economic settlement made in 1994 to end apartheid. The settlement is <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nelson-Mandela">strongly associated with Nelson Mandela</a>, who oversaw its progress to a successful conclusion. He subsequently underpinned it by promoting reconciliation with white people, especially Afrikaners, the former rulers.</p>
<p>The questioning of the 1994 settlement, and therefore Mandela’s legacy, has different dimensions, running through diverse narratives. One, associated with a faction of the governing African National Congress (ANC) that claims to stand for “<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-ret-and-what-does-it-want-the-radical-economic-transformation-faction-in-south-africa-explained-195949">radical economic transformation</a>”, is that the settlement was a “sell-out” to “<a href="https://theconversation.com/white-monopoly-capital-an-excuse-to-avoid-south-africas-real-problems-75143">white monopoly capital</a>”. Another is the inclination to lay the blame for state failure <a href="https://theconversation.com/rule-of-law-in-south-africa-protects-even-those-who-scorn-it-175533">on the constitution</a>, thereby deflecting responsibility for massive governance failures away from the ANC.</p>
<p>Yet another stems from the frustrations of recent black graduates and the mass of black unemployed for whom there are <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0211/Media%20release%20QLFS%20Q4%202022.pdf">no jobs</a>. There are also huge numbers of people without either <a href="https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/372/739">adequate shelter</a> or <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=16235#:%7E:text=More%20than%20half%20a%20million,high%20risk%20of%20acute%20malnutrition.">enough to eat</a>. South Africans want someone to blame. While their search regularly targets a wide range of usual suspects, it also leads to a questioning of what Mandela really left behind. </p>
<p>It does not help that Mandela continues to be lionised by many, if not most, white people, who despite much grumbling about the many inconveniences of life in South Africa have largely continued to prosper.</p>
<p>This means that those of us who are social scientists and long-term observers of South Africa’s politics and history need to think carefully about how we think critically about Mandela’s legacy.</p>
<h2>Questioning Mandela’s legacy</h2>
<p>From a historian’s view the questioning of Mandela’s legacy is normal. Historians are always asking new questions and reassessing the past to gain new insights about the role important political leaders play.</p>
<p>This has posed particular problems for Mandela’s biographers. Biography has always had a problematic relationship with history as a discipline. This partly stems from history’s reluctance to endorse “Great Men” versions of the past. Partly from the more generic problem of assessing individuals’ role in shaping wider developments. Thus it has been with Mandela. Nonetheless, the six or seven <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Mandela+biopgraphies&rlz=1C1GCEA_enZA1007ZA1007&oq=Mandela+biopgraphies&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQABgNGIAEMgkIAhAAGA0YgAQyCQgDEC4YDRiABDIJCAQQABgNGIAEMggIBRAAGA0YHjIICAYQABgNGB4yCAgHEAAYDRgeMggICBAAGA0YHjIKCAkQABgFGA0YHtIBCDQ5NjNqMWo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">significant biographies of Mandela</a> may be said to revolve around the following arguments.</p>
<p>First, Mandela played a critical role in preventing a descent into total civil war. It was brutal enough as it was. Narratives at the time often suggested that the period 1990-94 was a “<a href="https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2019-07-09-sas-transition-to-democracy-miracle-or-mediation">miracle</a>”, a difficult but “peaceful transition to democracy”. But this was misleading. <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02167/04lv02264/05lv02335/06lv02357/07lv02372/08lv02379.htm">Thousands died</a> in political violence during this time.</p>
<p>Mandela’s biographers argue that his initiating negotiations with the regime from jail, independently of the ANC, was crucial. Without his actions, the apartheid state would not have come to the party. This, even though by the time FW de Klerk, its last president, came to power, it was seeking a route to a settlement. </p>
<p>Second, Mandela played his cards carefully in steadily asserting his authority over the ANC. Although the ANC in exile had carefully choreographed the imprisoned Mandela as an icon around which international opposition to apartheid could be mobilised, there remained much questioning within the organisation following his release about his motivations and wisdom. Also whether he should replace the ailing <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a> as its leader. That he proceeded to convince his doubters by constantly proclaiming his loyalty to the ANC, its militant “line” and his subjection to its discipline while simultaneously edging it towards negotiations is said to have been key to his establishing his claim to leadership. This was necessary to convince his doubters within the ANC that it could not defeat the regime on the field of battle. Hence there was a need for compromise with the regime.</p>
<p>Third, Mandela is credited with successfully steering the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">negotiations which led to South Africa’s democracy</a>. That he played a limited part in negotiating much of the nitty-gritty of the new constitution is acknowledged. Yet, this is combined with recognition of his acute judgment of when to place pressure on the regime to secure concessions and when to adopt a more conciliatory line. Generally, it is agreed that the ANC outsmarted the apartheid government during the negotiations. Praise is correctly showered on Mandela for his role in bringing both the far right, under <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02426/05lv02691.htm">Constand Viljoen</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/buthelezis-retirement-wont-end-ethnic-traditionalism-in-south-africa-102213">Mangosuthu Buthelezi</a>’s quarrelsome Inkatha Freedom Movement <a href="https://successfulsocieties.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf5601/files/Policy_Note_ID137.pdf">into the 1994 election at the very last moment</a>, without which it would have lacked legitimacy.</p>
<p>Fourth, while today it is recognised that a narrative of the time – that South Africans had negotiated the finest constitution in the world – was overcooked, the negotiations resulted in the country becoming a constitutional democracy. </p>
<p>We now know, of course, that the ANC has subverted much of the intention of the constitution and undermined many of its safeguards. <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-ruling-party-has-favoured-loyalty-over-competence-now-cadre-deployment-has-come-back-to-bite-it-199208">Its cadre deployment policy</a> of appointing loyalists to key state institutions has severely diminished the independence of the state machinery. Furthermore, the ANC has merged party with state. Above all, it has severely weakened the capacity of parliament to <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-parliament-fails-to-hold-the-executive-to-account-history-shows-what-can-happen-192889">hold the president and ministers accountable</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">State Capture Commission</a> has laid bare the mechanics of all this in great detail. It has placed huge responsibility for this upon the ANC. Nonetheless, it is widely recognised by civil society that the constitution and the law still provide the fundamental basis for exacting political accountability. This is confirmed by the many judgments the Constitutional Court has <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-south-africas-constitutional-court-protecting-democracy-107443">rendered against the government</a>.</p>
<p>Fifth, while his critics often argue that Mandela leant over too far to appease whites, the counter-argument is that this grounded democracy. At the beginning of his <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/318431.Long_Walk_to_Freedom">autobiography</a>, Mandela presents the struggle in South Africa as a clash between Afrikaner and African nationalisms. His role during negotiations can be viewed through the prism of his conviction of the need to reconcile these, as one could not defeat the other. Without reconciliation, however imperfect, there could be no making of a new nation. After all, what was the alternative? </p>
<h2>Capturing Mandela’s legacy</h2>
<p>There is never going to be a final assessment of Mandela’s legacy. How it is regarded will continue to change, depending on the destination South Africa travels to. If it really does become a “<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-political-risk-profile-has-gone-up-a-few-notches-but-its-not-yet-a-failed-state-170653">failed state</a>”, as the doomsters predict, there will be much need for reexamination of whether this failure has its roots in the constitutional settlement which Mandela did so much to bring about. For the moment, however, Mandela continues to inspire South Africans who place their hopes in constitutional democracy. What other hopes do they have?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209883/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall 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>There is never going to be a final assessment of Mandela’s legacy. How it is regarded will continue to change, depending on the destination South Africa travels to.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2089972023-07-11T16:16:46Z2023-07-11T16:16:46ZPainted messages in Angola’s abandoned liberation army camps offer a rare historical record<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535493/original/file-20230704-16-1h6k37.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lilian Ngoyi, one of the leaders of the 1956 women’s march against apartheid, is immortalised on an abandoned building. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Justin Pearce</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Angola’s Malanje province, the buildings of Camalundu stand abandoned amid open fields. On one of them, the fragmented words “IAN NGOYI” recall a figure little-known in Angola but familiar to South Africans: anti-apartheid leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/lilian-ngoyi-an-heroic-south-african-woman-whose-story-hasnt-been-fully-told-188345">Lilian Ngoyi</a>. </p>
<p>These large letters partly hide some words that were painted previously. From the faded letters that are visible, I could make out some words apparently in Spanish. These layers of paint – texts of South Africa’s then liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC), on top of Cuban texts painted on Portuguese colonial buildings – illustrate the changing uses of the site over the years. </p>
<p>Over the past three years I have been part of a project called <a href="https://global-soldiers.web.ox.ac.uk/">Global Soldiers in the Cold War</a>. We study the international exchanges of ideas about soldiering and politics that resulted from the interlinked liberation struggles and civil conflicts across southern Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. As part of this <a href="https://www.sources-journal.org/917">research</a> I visited some of the sites where liberation soldiers were trained in Angola. </p>
<p>The sites provide a rare tangible record of the international solidarity that existed during the Cold War: solidarity that prompted Cuba to provide civilian and military expertise to Angola’s MPLA-led government and to liberation movements from Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The liberation movements looked not only to their own countries’ histories but to earlier struggles in Cuba and Vietnam for ideas and inspiration.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-narrative-unfolds-about-south-africas-protracted-war-in-angola-54575">A new narrative unfolds about South Africa's protracted war in Angola</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>After taking control of independent Angola in 1975, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/angolan-civil-war-1975-2002-brief-history">MPLA</a>) – still fighting a civil war against its rival, National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/UNITA">Unita</a>) – gave refuge to liberation fighters from Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. The apartheid regime in South Africa, determined to undermine the liberation movements, provided military support to Unita in order to weaken the MPLA. Both the MPLA and the exiled movements <a href="https://theconversation.com/fidel-in-africa-how-the-cuban-leader-played-a-key-role-in-taking-on-apartheid-69665">enjoyed the support of Cuban and Soviet military advisers</a>.</p>
<p>Camalundu, established by the colonial government as an agricultural training centre, was used by the MPLA first as a civilian and later as a military training centre, with Cuban personnel.</p>
<h2>Places of learning and solidarity</h2>
<p>Historians have viewed liberation guerrilla training camps as a particular kind of social and political environment. Host countries like Angola allowed exiled movements to act, to a certain extent, like enclave governments with state-like powers over their own members. </p>
<p>Guerrillas, already filled with idealism, absorbed ideas and experiences from their new environment. But they were also at the mercy of national and international strategic calculations, without the immediate prospect of returning home in triumph. </p>
<p>Camps were places where liberation fighters came into contact with officials and soldiers from their host countries, as well as trainers from Cuba and the Soviet Union. The slogans painted at Camalundu provide evidence of how people were taught that they were there as part of a global struggle.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536286/original/file-20230707-23-2owghu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536286/original/file-20230707-23-2owghu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536286/original/file-20230707-23-2owghu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536286/original/file-20230707-23-2owghu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536286/original/file-20230707-23-2owghu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536286/original/file-20230707-23-2owghu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536286/original/file-20230707-23-2owghu.jpeg?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 sixth congress of the Non-Aligned Movement, held in Havana in 1979, commemorated at Camalundu.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Justin Pearce</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Facing the building with Lilian Ngoyi’s name was another slogan in Spanish: “VI cumbre un paso mas en la unidade de los no-alineaos” (six completes another step in the unity of the non-aligned), a reference to the <a href="http://cns.miis.edu/nam/documents/Official_Document/6th_Summit_FD_Havana_Declaration_1979_Whole.pdf">sixth congress of the Non-Aligned Movement</a>, which was held in Havana in 1979. </p>
<h2>From King Cetshwayo to Ho Chi Minh</h2>
<p>South African history appears again with the name of Cetshwayo, the last Zulu monarch to resist the British Empire before conquest. His name was painted above the entrance of another now-abandoned building. This was likely painted in 1979, the<a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv02918/06lv02942.htm"> ANC’s “Year of the Spear”</a>, the centenary of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/anglo-zulu-wars-1879-1896">Battle of Isandlwana</a> when Cetshwayo’s army resisted the better-armed British. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535508/original/file-20230704-29-xeht2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535508/original/file-20230704-29-xeht2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535508/original/file-20230704-29-xeht2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535508/original/file-20230704-29-xeht2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535508/original/file-20230704-29-xeht2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535508/original/file-20230704-29-xeht2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535508/original/file-20230704-29-xeht2u.png?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">Zulu king Cetshwayo, defeated in 1879, commemorated a century later.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Justin Pearce</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On a similar building, the letters “…O C… MI…” point to the commemoration of the Vietnamese revolutionary leader <a href="https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/people/ho-chi-minh-ho-chi-minh">Ho Chi Minh</a>. On another building, the remains of his portrait are just about visible, above the English translation of a slogan associated with him:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/40928/nothing-is-more-precious-than-independence-and-freedom">Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence</a>. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>An ANC delegation <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/green-book-report-politico-military-strategy-commission-anc-national-executive-committee">visited Vietnam in 1978</a>, a visit that had a profound effect on its military strategy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535504/original/file-20230704-17-n6i00w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535504/original/file-20230704-17-n6i00w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535504/original/file-20230704-17-n6i00w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535504/original/file-20230704-17-n6i00w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535504/original/file-20230704-17-n6i00w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535504/original/file-20230704-17-n6i00w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535504/original/file-20230704-17-n6i00w.png?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">Fragments of the name of Ho Chi Minh, painted not long after the ANC sought strategic advice from Vietnam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Justin Pearce</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of the slogans at Camalundu seem to point to events between 1978 and 1980. Not long after that, the ANC presence there ended when its soldiers were moved to Caculama, further east. Caculama had housed a training camp established by the Zimbabwean African People’s Union (<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25065139">Zapu</a>), which became vacant after Zimbabwe became independent in 1980 and the Zimbabwean soldiers went home. </p>
<p>Around the same time, American president Ronald Reagan and South African prime minister <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/pieter-willem-botha">PW Botha</a> renewed their respective countries’ <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538933">commitment to supporting Unita</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-narrative-unfolds-about-south-africas-protracted-war-in-angola-54575">against the MPLA</a>. The Angolan ruling party had taken a firm stand against apartheid and Washington saw it as a bridgehead for communist influence. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/radio-as-a-form-of-struggle-scenes-from-late-colonial-angola-128019">Radio as a form of struggle: scenes from late colonial Angola</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The MPLA began to see the foreign liberation fighters it was hosting as a potentially useful military reserve. The former ANC soldier Luthando Dyasop recalls how ANC leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a> <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-08-16-luthando-dyasop-journey-of-a-disillusioned-comrade-during-apartheid-south-africa/">told</a> soldiers of the ANC’s army, Umkhonto we sizwe (MK), they needed to “bleed a little” in recognition of Angola’s support for the South African struggle. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535503/original/file-20230704-17-82gfc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535503/original/file-20230704-17-82gfc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535503/original/file-20230704-17-82gfc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535503/original/file-20230704-17-82gfc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535503/original/file-20230704-17-82gfc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535503/original/file-20230704-17-82gfc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535503/original/file-20230704-17-82gfc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The remains of bunkers and trenches speak to the defensive function of the camp at Caculama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Justin Pearce</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Southern Africa liberation movements and geopolitics</h2>
<p>Whereas Camalundu’s buildings stand in open countryside, Caculama is buried in thick bush. Trenches and the remains of underground bunkers remind us that this was the front line of the MPLA’s war against UNITA. Exiled movements were responsible for their own security within Angola. When the MPLA positioned ANC soldiers somewhere like Caculama, it knew that in defending its own camps, the ANC would also be part of the government’s defensive lines.</p>
<p>In their different ways, Camalundu and Caculama provide historians with evidence of liberation struggles and how they were entangled with the international politics of the time. </p>
<p>A Zimbabwean government delegation, I was told, had visited Caculama shortly before I was there – an acknowledgement at least of the site’s historical significance. Yet so far almost no attention has been given to preserving these sites.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.sources-journal.org/917">A longer article about the training sites with more photos was published by Sources journal</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Pearce received funding from The Leverhulme Trust. </span></em></p>The sites provide a rare tangible record of the international solidarity that existed during the Cold War.Justin Pearce, Senior lecturer, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2024482023-04-03T13:57:39Z2023-04-03T13:57:39ZTanzania-South Africa: deep ties evoke Africa’s sacrifices for freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517946/original/file-20230328-16-hrrcio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, left, hosts his Tanzanian counterpart during a state visit in March 2023.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan recently paid a <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/speeches/opening-remarks-president-cyril-ramaphosa-during-official-talks-state-visit-tanzanian-president-samia-suluhu-hassan%2C-union-buildings%2C-tshwane">state visit to South Africa</a> aimed at strengthening bilateral political and trade relations. As the South African presidency <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/press-statements/president-host-her-excellency-president-hassan-tanzania-state-visit">noted</a>, ties between the two nations date back to Tanzania’s solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle. </p>
<p>This history is an important reminder of the anti-colonial and pan-African bonds underpinning international solidarity with southern African liberation struggles. It’s also a reminder of the sacrifices many African countries made to realise continental freedom.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Tanganyika">Tanganyika</a>, as Tanzania was known before independence in 1961, was the first safe post for South Africans fleeing in the aftermath of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> on 21 March 1960, when apartheid police shot dead 69 peaceful protesters. The apartheid regime <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/origins-formation-sharpeville-and-banning-1959-1960">banned liberation movements</a> shortly thereafter. </p>
<p>Among those who left South Africa to rally international support for the liberation struggle were then African National Congress deputy president <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Reginald Tambo</a>, Communist Party and Indian Congress leader <a href="https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/people.php?kid=163-574-661">Yusuf Mohammed Dadoo</a>, and the Pan Africanist Congress’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nelson-nana-mahomo">Nana Mahomo</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/peter-hlaole-molotsi">Peter Molotsi</a>.</p>
<p>Not many people will know that on 26 June 1959 <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-128;jsessionid=5715EBDE3CC6DEEF837F2753FC3A4D39">Julius Nyerere</a>, the future president of Tanzania, was among the speakers at a meeting in London where the first boycott of South African goods in Britain was launched. Out of this campaign, the <a href="https://www.aamarchives.org/">British Anti-Apartheid Movement</a> was born a year later. It spearheaded the international solidarity movement in western countries over the next three decades.</p>
<h2>Liberation struggle bonds</h2>
<p>Tanzania’s support for South Africa’s liberation struggle needs to be understood as part of its broader opposition to colonialism, and commitment to the achievement of independence in the entire African continent. In 1958, Nyerere <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/panafrican-freedom-movement-of-east-and-central-africa-pafmeca/A08CAFDC63C736384E47D52AA94191E2">helped establish</a> the Pan African Freedom Movement of Eastern and Central Africa to coordinate activities in this regard. This was extended to the Pan African Freedom Movement of Eastern and Central and Southern Africa at a conference in Addis Ababa in 1962. Nelson Mandela <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/1962-nelson-mandela-address-conference-pan-african-freedom-movement-east-and-central-africa/">addressed the conference</a> with the aim of arranging support for the armed struggle in South Africa. These efforts eventually led to the creation of the <a href="https://www.africanunion-un.org/history">Organisation for African Unity (OAU) in 1963</a>.</p>
<p>In February 1961, James Hadebe for the ANC and Gaur Radebe for the PAC opened an office in Dar es Salaam representing the <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/sacp/1962/pac.html">South African United Front</a>. It was the first external structure set up by the two liberation movements. Their unity was short-lived. But, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital, grew into a centre of anti-colonial activity after independence from Britain in December 1961. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man with a serious look on his face rests his chin on his left shoulder. His watch shows." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The late Julius Nyerere was a staunch supporter of the movement for Africa’s independence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William F. Campbell/Getty Images)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At independence, Tanzania faced a shortage of nurses as British nurses left in droves rather than work for an African government. On President Nyerere’s request, Tambo arranged the underground recruitment of 20 South African nurses (“the 20 Nightingales”) to <a href="https://www.jamboafrica.online/clarence-kwinana-the-untold-story-of-the-20-nightingales-a-contribution-never-to-be-forgotten/">work in Tanzanian hospitals</a>. The remains of one of them, Kholeka Tunyiswa, who died on 5 March 2023 in Dar es Salaam, were repatriated to South Africa for reburial in <a href="https://www.citizen.co.za/news/remains-sa-nurse-tunyiswa-repatriated/">her home city of Gqeberha</a>, Eastern Cape.</p>
<p>In the early 1960s, Tanzania was the southernmost independent African country from which armed operations could be carried out into unliberated territories in southern Africa. Its capital was chosen as the operational base of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41394216">OAU’s Liberation Committee</a>. The committee provided financial and material assistance to liberation movements. Its archives remain in Tanzania. </p>
<p>In 1963, the ANC officially established its Tanzania mission, with headquarters in Dar es Salaam. A military camp for guerrillas of its armed wing, <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-1098?rskey=uSBACj&result=1">uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK)</a>
, who had returned from training in other African and socialist countries, was opened in Kongwa. The Tanzanian government donated the land. </p>
<p>Also stationed there were the armies of other southern African liberation movements – <a href="https://www.saha.org.za/collections/the_mafela_trust_collection_7.htm">ZAPU</a>, <a href="https://www.aluka.org/struggles/partner/XSTFRELIMO">Frelimo</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41502445">SWAPO</a> and the <a href="https://www.tchiweka.org/">MPLA</a>.</p>
<p>In 1964, the PAC also moved its external headquarters to Dar es Salaam after it was pushed out of Lesotho. It <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0018-229X2015000200002">established military camps</a> near Mbeya and later in Mgagao, and a settlement in Ruvu. Both the PAC and the ANC held important conferences in Tanzania, in Moshi in 1967 and in Morogoro in 1969, respectively. These led to internal reorganisation and new <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/anc/1969/strategy-tactics.htm">strategic positions</a>.</p>
<h2>Hitches in the relationship</h2>
<p>In spite of Tanzania’s support for the liberation movements, their relationship was not without its contradictions or moments of ambivalence. </p>
<p>In 1965, for example, the ANC had to move its headquarters from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro, a small upcountry town far from international connections. The Tanzanian government had decided that only four members of each liberation movement would be allowed to maintain an office in the capital. This reflected Tanzania’s anxiety over the growing numbers of revolutionaries and trained guerrillas it hosted. </p>
<p>In 1969 Tanzania, Zambia and 12 other African countries issued the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/45312264">Lusaka manifesto</a>, which was also adopted by the OAU. It expressed preference for a peaceful solution to the conflict in South Africa over armed struggle. There were also rumours of ANC involvement in an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1970/07/13/archives/tanzanian-treason-trial-entering-third-week.html">attempted coup against Nyerere</a>. In this climate, the ANC had to evacuate its entire army to the Soviet Union. Its soldiers were allowed back in the country a couple of years later.</p>
<h2>Lived spaces of solidarity</h2>
<p>In the 1970s, ANC headquarters moved to Lusaka, in Zambia, and uMkhonto we Sizwe operations <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-1098?rskey=uSBACj&result=1">moved</a> to newly independent Angola and Mozambique. But Tanzania remained a significant place of settlement for South African exiles. </p>
<p>In the late 1970s and 1980s, additional land donations from the Tanzanian government enabled the ANC to open a school and a vocational centre near Morogoro. The Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Mazimbu and the Dakawa Development Centre were set up <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/education-in-exile">to address the outflow of young people</a> from South Africa following the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">June 1976 Soweto uprising</a>. Its other aim was to counter the effects of <a href="https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/sidebar.php?kid=163-581-2">Bantu education</a>, a segregated and inferior education system for black South Africans. </p>
<p>These became unique spaces of lived solidarity between the ANC and its international supporters. They accommodated up to 5,000 South Africans. Some of them died before they could see a liberated South Africa. Their graves are in Mazimbu. Besides educational facilities, the camps included an hospital, a productive farm, workshops and factories. They were all developed with donor funding.</p>
<p>Tanzanians, too, contributed to these projects through their labour. Many Tanzanian women became entangled in South Africa’s liberation struggle through intimate relationships, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2014.886476">marriage and children</a>. Thanks to these everyday social interactions, Tanzania became “home” for many South African exiles. The ANC handed over the facilities at Somafco and Dakawa <a href="https://www.conas.sua.ac.tz/historical-sites">to the Tanzanian government</a> on the eve of the first democratic elections in 1994. But these personal and affective connections live on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arianna Lissoni 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>Ties between the two nations date back to Tanzania’s solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle.Arianna Lissoni, Researcher at History Workshop, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2014992023-03-10T12:41:33Z2023-03-10T12:41:33ZPeter Hain: Neil Aggett died fighting apartheid – South Africa’s rulers have betrayed the struggle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514634/original/file-20230310-17-6nwu0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anti-apartheid activist Neil Aggett (29) died in apartheid police detention in 1982.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Charcoal on paper by Dr Amitabh Mitra/Wiki Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dr-neil-hudson-aggett">Neil Aggett</a>, the trade unionist and anti-apartheid activist who died in detention at the hands of police 41 years ago, was one of very few white South Africans who actively fought apartheid. He was only 29 when he died. </p>
<p>He came from a community enjoying one of the most privileged existences on earth, with a black servant class attending to their every need. Yet he gave that all up because he believed every person – regardless of their “race”, religion, gender or sexuality – had the right to justice, the right to liberty, the right to equality of opportunity. </p>
<p>He was selfless, fighting for others. He lived according to <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/selected-quotes">Nelson Mandela’s guidance</a>:</p>
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<p>What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others.</p>
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<p>Neil was a role model, winning numerous awards and certificates at <a href="https://kingswoodcollege.com/">Kingswood College</a> in Makhanda, Eastern Cape, before studying at the University of Cape Town and completing his medical degree in 1976. </p>
<p>He became a doctor working mainly in overcrowded and desperately under-resourced hospitals reserved for black people across the country. At the same time, he was a champion of workers’ rights and workers’ health and safety. He became a volunteer organiser with the <a href="https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/15859">African Food and Canning Workers’ Union</a>, working without pay, taking additional weekend hospital night shifts to support himself. </p>
<p>But his passionate trade unionism proved fateful. It made him a target of a brutally repressive apartheid police state. He was arrested in late 1981, ending up in Johannesburg’s notorious police headquarters, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/john-vorster-square-police-station-or-johannesburg-central-police-station">John Vorster Square</a>. He emerged from there in a coffin. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ahmed-timol-inquest-why-uncovering-apartheid-crimes-remains-so-important-85761">Ahmed Timol inquest: why uncovering apartheid crimes remains so important</a>
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<p>The apartheid security police who had brutally interrogated Neil maintained he had “hung himself with a scarf” – just as they claimed others who died in prison had “slipped in the shower” or <a href="https://theconversation.com/ahmed-timol-the-quest-for-justice-for-people-murdered-in-apartheids-jails-116843">“fallen out of a window”</a>. He was the 51st person to die in detention under apartheid. The total later escalated to over 70. </p>
<p>He was the first and only white person to die in detention from torture. No one has ever been convicted for any of <a href="https://newafricabooks.com/products/no-one-to-blame-george-bizos?variant=32109551419428">those 70-plus murders</a>.</p>
<h2>Sacrifice and betrayal</h2>
<p>Today it is taken for granted that Nelson Mandela walked to freedom <a href="https://history.blog.gov.uk/2020/02/11/whats-the-context-the-release-of-nelson-mandela-11-february-1990/">in February 1990</a> after 27 years’ imprisonment, and four years later was elected president. Today it is taken for granted that, however serious South Africa’s problems of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-can-be-done-to-tackle-the-systemic-causes-of-poverty-in-south-africa-169866">poverty</a>, <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=15407">unemployment</a>, <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2019/06/Prof-Emeka-E-Obioha-Emeka-Obioha-ADDRESSING-HOMELESSNESS-THROUGH-PUBLIC-WORKS-PROGRAMMES-IN-SOUTH-AFRICA.pdf">homelessness</a>, <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">corruption</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/power-cuts-in-south-africa-are-playing-havoc-with-the-countrys-water-system-197952">power and water cuts</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/link-between-crime-and-politics-in-south-africa-raises-concerns-about-criminal-gangs-taking-over-198160">mafia-like crime</a>, each South African citizen has human rights protected by their <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a>.</p>
<p>But none of that was achieved without a bitter fight against merciless opponents. My family’s story was a small part of that. The apartheid security forces dispatched my parents, me, my brother and two small sisters <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/peter-gerald-hain">unwillingly into exile</a>.</p>
<p>Not because my mom and dad had committed the sort of “normal” crimes in democratic societies policed by the rule of law – such as theft, fraud, violence, rape or murder – but because they stood up and fought <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/apartheid">apartheid</a>: the most institutionalised system of racism the world has ever seen. </p>
<p>In exile, the apartheid security service tried to kill me in June 1972 with one of their specialities, a lethal letter bomb, sent to our family’s London address. It would have blown up our family and our home except for a <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/peter-gerald-hain">fault in the trigger mechanism</a>. </p>
<p>Other anti-apartheid campaigners weren’t as fortunate as I was. A letter bomb killed <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ruth-first">Ruth First</a> in Maputo in 1982 and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abram-ramothibi-onkgopotse-tiro">Abram Tiro</a> in Botswana in 1974. Neil Aggett also paid that ultimate price. In any civilised society he would have lived a full life, protecting people’s health as a doctor or protecting food workers’ rights as a trade unionist.</p>
<p>But today, tragically, the many thousands of freedom struggle activists like Neil have been betrayed by the governing African National Congress (ANC) <a href="https://twitter.com/CyrilRamaphosa/status/1297459045041868801/photo/1">politicians who have looted</a> and brought the country nearly to its knees. Similarly betrayed have been the heroes of the liberation struggle, the leaders such as <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Mandela</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/walter-ulyate-sisulu">Walter Sisulu</a>, <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/media/wits-university/news-and-events/images/documents/Citation_Ahmed%20Kathrada.pdf">Ahmed Kathrada</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Sobukwe</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-bikos-black-consciousness-philosophy-resonates-with-youth-today-46909">Steve Biko</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/lilian-masediba-ngoyi">Lilian Ngoyi</a> who gave up the prime of their lives to serve harsh jail sentences.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/multiparty-democracy-is-in-trouble-in-south-africa-collapsing-coalitions-are-a-sure-sign-192966">Multiparty democracy is in trouble in South Africa – collapsing coalitions are a sure sign</a>
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<p>South Africans from every walk of life, black and white, young and old, tell me they feel helpless, feel they cannot do anything about power cuts, water cuts, or about dysfunctional or non-existent <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/opinion/editorial/2022-12-07-editorial-the-post-office-doesnt-even-know-its-dead/">postal</a> or <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africans-are-revolting-against-inept-local-government-why-it-matters-155483">local municipal services</a>, feel politics doesn’t serve them anymore, feel their vote is worthless – even though it took a momentous fight to get it for everyone. </p>
<p>My message to them, my message to you all, is: learn from South Africa’s struggle history.</p>
<h2>Need for active citizenship</h2>
<p>The struggle giants, the Nelson Mandelas and Oliver Tambos, the Neil Aggetts and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/joe-slovo">Joe Slovos</a>, didn’t defeat apartheid on their own. They were leaders of a mass movement of many tens of thousands of ordinary people who, in the most oppressive of conditions, threw themselves into activism.</p>
<p>Many made sacrifices, some small, some big. Some did a little, others did a lot – but they all did something. And they each contributed in whatever way they could to one of the most successful movements for change ever in modern history. </p>
<p>They defeated a powerful police state. They refused to be subjugated by an economic system feeding profitably in a trough of racism. And they beat apartheid.</p>
<p>Back in the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, people said, people feared, that could never happen, might be impossible.</p>
<p>But it was made possible because enough ordinary citizens rose up together and campaigned, and struggled and fought for change. </p>
<p>Courageous school students in Soweto lit a fuse <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-epochal-1976-uprisings-shouldnt-be-reduced-to-a-symbolic-ritual-185073">in June 1976</a>. They were gunned down by police for protesting peacefully, but refused to be cowed, and their defiance triggered a fresh wave of resistance. </p>
<p>Today South Africa must be changed again – radically, and soon. But history teaches us that big change doesn’t normally come from the top. </p>
<h2>Looking forward</h2>
<p>I don’t know if the ANC can be saved from itself. I don’t know if the good people still in the ANC can fully reclaim it from the corrupt ones who riddle the party from top to bottom. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anc-in-crisis-south-africas-governing-party-is-fighting-to-stay-relevant-5-essential-reads-196580">ANC in crisis: South Africa's governing party is fighting to stay relevant - 5 essential reads</a>
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<p>But meanwhile, every South African can do their bit. First by doing your very best, driven by the vision of an inclusive and united South Africa propagated by democracy’s founding mothers and fathers. </p>
<p>And also saying “No!” to paying a bribe or a backhander for a contract, for a job, for a permit, for a licence, for starting a business, for building a home.
Often it’s very difficult to say “No!”. But until everyone unites to say “No!”, nothing will change. Until a mass uprising said “No!” to apartheid, it didn’t change, and never would have.</p>
<p>South Africans can join a popular uprising to say “No!” and demand change, and stop their beautiful, special country from becoming a failed state. </p>
<p><em>This is an edited version of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghUeVs1YzWI">Neil Aggett lecture</a> delivered at Kingswood College, Makhanda, on 7 March 2023.</em></p>
<p><em>Peter Hain’s <a href="https://www.jonathanball.co.za/component/virtuemart/a-pretoria-boy">memoir</a> A Pretoria Boy: South Africa’s ‘Public Enemy Number One’ is published by Jonathan Ball, as are his thrillers <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rhino-Conspiracy-Peter-Hain/dp/1916207715">The Rhino Conspiracy</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/63219017">The Elephant Conspiracy</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201499/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Hain is President of Britain's Action for Southern Africa and Chair of the Donald Woods Foundation, a charity based at Hobeni in the Transkei. A Labour member of the House of Lords since 2015, he was an MP for 24 years and government minister for 12 years.</span></em></p>Neil Agget’s passionate trade unionism proved fateful. It made him a target of a brutally repressive apartheid police state.Peter Hain, Visiting Adjunct Professor at Wits Business School, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1989022023-02-28T13:57:40Z2023-02-28T13:57:40ZGod and politics in South Africa: the ruling ANC’s winning strategy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510292/original/file-20230215-18-eroxa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pastors pray for former South African president and ANC leader Jacob Zuma.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rajesh Jantilal/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Religion shapes some of the most controversial decisions that governments need to make: access to abortion, same-sex marriage, the death penalty and the legal status of sex work. Indeed, it is likely that most voters across the world consider religion to be essential to their lives. </p>
<p>Yet research on religion and political parties remains surprisingly inexact. </p>
<p>Much of the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09637494.2022.2048489?journalCode=crss20">research</a> to date has been waylaid by the wrong question: is a political party fundamentally religious or secular? Yet the “essence” of a party resists definition. Is it its manifesto, rhetoric, membership or leadership? What if these contradict each other? What would it mean if religion was integral to officially secular parties?</p>
<p>The difficulty of this approach is clear when considering a party like the <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/">African National Congress (ANC)</a>, which has governed South Africa since 1994. From one angle, it is obviously not a religious party: it remains committed to a secular state and many of its policies (such as those on <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/the-ancs-approach-to-abortion--bathabile-dlamini">abortion</a> and <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2006-11-14-samesex-bill-gets-parliament-goahead/">civil unions</a>) have been <a href="https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/27434/">criticised</a> by religious groups.</p>
<p>Yet the ANC is also religious in important senses. In most of the country, you would struggle to find an ANC meeting that did not start and end with a prayer. Nearly all leaders in the past century have been devout. For many supporters, religion is the water in which the ANC swims. </p>
<p>Rather than asking whether a party is religious, we should look at how it engages with religion. I examined the issue in a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2022.2136820">recent article</a>. I sought to describe how contemporary parliamentary parties in South Africa had engaged with religion throughout their history, and how academics had analysed this.</p>
<p>It’s possible to learn a great deal about a political party by looking at how it uses religion. My study identified a consistent political strategy: the mix of religious rhetoric and a secular policy agenda by the ANC over the past century.</p>
<p>This strategy has been popular with the party, which has won every national election with a margin of at least <a href="https://results.elections.org.za/dashboards/npe/app/dashboard.html">34 percentage points</a> ahead of the second-largest party. It’s a strategy that works in countries that have the unusual combination of religious electorates and secular governments, such as <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/religious-authority-and-state-africa">Kenya and Senegal</a>.</p>
<p>Rather than being a <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-07-06-south-africas-creeping-christian-conservatism/">threat to secular democracy</a>, religious rhetoric may be important for ensuring a largely religious electorate feels politically at home in a secular state. </p>
<h2>Religion and political parties in South Africa</h2>
<p>My review of academic publications on religion and political parties in South Africa looked at three sets of rules governing party members: </p>
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<li><p>informal rules (such as what you can say at public events) </p></li>
<li><p>party rules (such as disciplinary codes and who makes decisions) </p></li>
<li><p>the kind of laws proposed by the party. </p></li>
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<p>I distinguished between the religious or secular emphasis in each of these, and noted whether this emphasis was inclusive of other beliefs. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-africans-are-prone-to-falling-for-charlatans-in-the-church-112879">Why South Africans are prone to falling for charlatans in the church</a>
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<p>The framework offered three key insights. </p>
<p>First, political parties engage with religion with nuance and ambiguity. This applies elsewhere in the world too: <a href="https://www.akparti.org.tr/en">Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi</a> in Turkey, for example, relies on a religious electorate for support. Yet it must navigate an officially and sometimes militantly secular state. However, in contrast to South Africa’s major political parties, it <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230106703_9">manages this tension</a> by insisting that it is an inclusive and non-religious party in its rhetoric, while simultaneously pursuing laws that privilege Sunni Islam.</p>
<p>Second, the ANC sometimes uses religious rhetoric while pursuing secular laws and party rules – a combination it has used for <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rise-African-Nationalism-South-Africa/dp/0520018109">most of its history</a>. </p>
<p>Third, this nuance might be important to voters in South Africa. Parties that pursue policies underpinned by religion do very poorly in elections. An example of this is the <a href="https://www.acdp.org.za/">African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP)</a>, which claims to offer policies based on the Bible.</p>
<p>About 78% of South Africans identified as Christian <a href="https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog/611">in 2016</a>. While estimates vary significantly, between <a href="https://theotherfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/ProgPrudes_Report_d5.pdf">45%</a> and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2010/04/15/executive-summary-islam-and-christianity-in-sub-saharan-africa/">74%</a> report being “very” or “highly religious”, and 76% <a href="https://theotherfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/ProgPrudes_Report_d5.pdf">agree that</a> </p>
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<p>God’s laws about abortion, pornography and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late.</p>
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<h2>The ANC and religion</h2>
<p>Christianity has been important to the ANC’s values and practices since the party’s <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/the-founders-the-origins-of-the-african-national-congress-and-the-struggle-for-democracy/">beginning in 1912</a>. In 1949, for example, it called for an annual <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rise-African-Nationalism-South-Africa/dp/0520018109">day of prayer</a> to remember</p>
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<p>Christ who is the Champion of Freedom.</p>
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<p>Many regions in the country that participated most actively in the 1952 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/defiance-campaign-1952">Defiance Campaign</a>, a large non-violent campaign of civil disobedience against apartheid, were led by <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/from-protest-to-challenge-volume-2-hope-and-challenge-1935-1952/">local churches</a>. ANC president Albert Luthuli, who led the organisation from 1952 to 1967, was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10282580902876514">famously vocal</a> about his religious convictions. This was also true of most presidents of the ANC before him, including <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/823310">Reverend John Langalibalele Dube</a> and <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.4102/hts.v74i1.4844">Reverend Zaccheus Richard Mahabane</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-the-anc-survive-the-end-of-south-africas-heroic-epoch-57256">Can the ANC survive the end of South Africa's heroic epoch?</a>
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<p>Yet the ANC has also always been an <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-anc-insists-its-still-a-political-vanguard-this-is-what-ails-democracy-in-south-africa-141938">ideologically diverse organisation</a>. It has included followers of other religions, communists, traditionalists and <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/502.html">Garveyites</a> who advocated transnational black nationalism. </p>
<p>In the 1960s the religious rhetoric of the ANC became more ambivalent. Within the context of the Cold War, the organisation worked more closely with the South African Communist Party and increasingly <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253332318/from-protest-to-challenge-volume-5/">espoused</a> a Marxist-Leninist ideology.</p>
<p>Yet even so, ANC president <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a>, who led the ANC in exile <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/oliver-reginald-kaizana-%E2%80%9Cor%E2%80%9D-tambo-posthumous">from 1967 to 1991</a>, continued to publicly espouse the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/we-must-take-sides">unbroken link</a> between the ANC and the church. </p>
<p>The ANC would call for days of prayer, establish a department of religion, publicly affirm liberation theology and issue joint communiqués with churches.
In the early 1990s, the ANC <a href="https://www.amazon.com/State-Secularism-Religion-Tradition-Democracy/dp/1776140575">advocated a secular state</a> in constitutional negotiations with the ruling <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Party-political-party-South-Africa">National Party</a>. Yet even in the 1994 election, the message was mixed. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520273085/wild-religion">ANC advertisements featured religious leaders</a> who argued that the manifesto that best represented “gospel values” was that of the ANC. Conversely, the ANC also promised improved access to abortion: a policy criticised by religious leaders. </p>
<p>This mix of secular laws and religious rhetoric extended into the post-apartheid era. Former ANC president Jacob Zuma’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15570274.2020.1753992">frequent references to religion</a>, for example, invited concern about the ANC’s “<a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-07-06-south-africas-creeping-christian-conservatism/">creeping Christian conservatism</a>”, while the party began exploring <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/650537/new-laws-to-decriminalise-sex-work-in-south-africa/">decriminalising sex work</a>. </p>
<h2>Religion and politics</h2>
<p>Perhaps the combination of religious rhetoric and secular laws is a winning electoral strategy. After all, parties that advocate religious laws have surprisingly little support from voters: the <a href="https://www.acdp.org.za/">ACDP</a> and <a href="https://www.aljama.co.za/">Al Jama-Ah</a>, a Muslim political party, have at most won <a href="https://www.eisa.org/wep/souresults2004.htm">1.6% (in 2004)</a> and <a href="https://results.elections.org.za/dashboards/npe/app/dashboard.html">0.18% (in 2019)</a> of the national vote, respectively. At their best, the ACDP has been the seventh-largest party and Al Jama-Ah the 14th. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/christians-in-nigeria-feel-under-attack-why-its-a-complicated-story-186853">Christians in Nigeria feel under attack: why it's a complicated story</a>
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<p>Conversely, parties that advocate secular laws but shy away from religious rhetoric, such as the main opposition Democratic Alliance, have also failed to win popular support, especially in rural areas. Of course, many other reasons contribute to this too. </p>
<p>In short, we can learn much about a political party by looking at how it uses religion. The ANC may have a winning strategy in its combination of religious rhetoric and a secular policy agenda.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Jeffery-Schwikkard receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in the United Kingdom through the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Programme. He is a member of the African National Congress but he does not receive any funding or renumeration from the ANC or represent the ANC in any capacity. </span></em></p>Perhaps the combination of religious rhetoric and secular laws is a winning electoral strategy.David Jeffery-Schwikkard, PhD Candidate (Theology and Religious Studies), King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1999972023-02-21T09:40:14Z2023-02-21T09:40:14ZSouth Africa and Israel: new memorial park in the Jewish state highlights complex history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510859/original/file-20230217-16-6qx4p0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An artist's impression of Gan Siyobonga memorial park in Israel.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied by author</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Israeli officials and Jewish South African activists <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-723790">inaugurated</a> a memorial park in Tel Mond, a city north of Tel Aviv, in November 2022. Gan Siyabonga (We Thank You Garden) commemorates several dozen Jewish South African anti-apartheid activists who had personal connections to Israel. </p>
<p>The main sponsors of Gan Siyabonga are the <a href="https://www.jnfsa.co.za/">Jewish National Fund South Africa</a> and <a href="https://www.sazf.org/">South African Zionist Federation</a>. The park’s creation is a milestone in the South African Jewish community’s decades-long introspection into its complex relations with the apartheid regime. </p>
<p>This memorial site is unique in Israel, where an <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-south-africa-home-white-colonialists">estimated</a> 20,000 South Africans live.</p>
<p>Gan Siyabonga is the first site in Israel to highlight the involvement of Jews in the anti-apartheid struggle. It is also unique because it calls attention to a group that was both anti-apartheid and pro-Zionist, or at least not anti-Zionist. The combination is considered unconventional today. That’s because <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism">Zionism</a>, the political ideology that favours a Jewish state, is largely associated in South Africa with collaboration with apartheid and the oppression of Palestinians. </p>
<p>Gan Siyabonga is a reminder that relations between Zionism and apartheid, and between Israel and South Africa, were complex and multilayered. In the last few years I have been working on a PhD dissertation that explores this complexity. Digging into archives and historical periodicals revealed a fascinating story that defies some assumptions. </p>
<h2>Israel’s troubled relations with apartheid</h2>
<p>Israel is commonly remembered as one of the last allies of apartheid South Africa. From the mid-1970s, the Israeli government maintained <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/unspoken-alliance-israels-secret-relationship-apartheid-south-africa-sasha-polakow-suransky">close relations</a> with the minority white regime in Pretoria. </p>
<p>It was one of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/09/17/israel-imposes-sanctions-on-south-africa/70cbb4f4-77b9-4898-8df7-dc39c2c5a500/">last countries</a> to enforce full sanctions on Pretoria. As a result, many anti-apartheid activists, including Jewish ones, held fierce anti-Zionist stances. These were amplified by the strong alliances South African liberation movements forged with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/history-may-explain-south-africas-refusal-to-condemn-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-178657">Soviet Union</a> and the <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220609-the-plo-at-58-and-the-anc-at-110-how-they-evolved-and-where-do-they-stand-today/">Palestinian Liberation Organisation</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-push-led-by-south-africa-to-revoke-israels-au-observer-status-is-misguided-168013">Why the push led by South Africa to revoke Israel’s AU observer status is misguided</a>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution">accusation</a> that Israel practises apartheid-like policies against Palestinians is another reason Israel hasn’t been seen as anti-apartheid. Recent anti-Zionist rhetoric by some Jewish veterans of the South African struggle, such as <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/05/17/how-stop-apartheid-israel">Ronnie Kasrils</a>, strengthened this feeling of unbridgeable contradiction between Israel and anti-apartheid values.</p>
<h2>Support for Israel</h2>
<p>But anti-apartheid activism and Zionism were not always in conflict. Up until the late 1960s, many radical anti-apartheid activists were sympathetic towards Israel and Zionism’s more progressive strands.</p>
<p>In 1948, most radical activists in South Africa supported the establishment of the State of Israel and its war against the invading Arab armies in Palestine. <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/362107/pdf">The Guardian</a>, the main radical weekly in South Africa at the time (linked to the <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">South African Communist Party</a>), rooted for an Israeli <a href="https://twitter.com/AfrIsrRel/status/1626615101770936322">victory</a>. </p>
<p>Young Israel was a symbol of opposition to racial persecution and fascism. Those two themes strongly resonated with South African anti-apartheid activists. They tended to see the Afrikaner <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Party-political-party-South-Africa">National Party</a> as an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582473.2021.2009014?tab=permissions&scroll=top">ideological relative</a> of the Nazis. </p>
<p>The initial <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/martinkramer/files/who_saved_israel_1947.pdf">Soviet support for Israel</a>, and a prominent socialist element within Zionism, also contributed to these feelings, especially among South African Marxists.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-search-of-advantages-israels-observer-status-in-the-african-union-165773">In search of advantages: Israel’s observer status in the African Union</a>
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<p>From the late 1950s, many anti-apartheid activists cherished Israel’s stances against South Africa <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/132/559/1440/4831456">at the United Nations</a>. Similarly its <a href="https://www.academia.edu/90295451/_We_Are_Returning_to_Africa_and_Africa_is_Coming_Back_to_Us_Israels_Evolving_Relations_With_Africa">support for decolonisation</a> in Africa. By the early 1960s, Israel had become the most anti-apartheid country in the “western” camp of the Cold War. In 1963, it <a href="https://www.jta.org/archive/south-african-premier-attacks-israel-for-recall-of-envoy-israel-mum">recalled its envoy</a> and supported international sanctions against South Africa. Israeli archives contain many <a href="https://twitter.com/AfrIsrRel/status/1524773424324923393">letters</a> from South African liberation movements <a href="https://www.archives.gov.il/archives/Archive/0b071706800399c8/File/0b071706804bc4fc">thanking Israel</a> for its support at the UN and elsewhere. </p>
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<img alt="An old typed letter signed by an ANC official praises Israel" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Letter from ANC officials praising Israel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Israel State Archive</span></span>
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<p>During the 1960s, Israel offered covert material support to anti-apartheid groups, perhaps even <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2013-12-20/ty-article/.premium/mandela-and-the-mossad/0000017f-e66d-dc7e-adff-f6eda1960000">to Nelson Mandela</a>. Israeli experiences inspired the early stages of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the African National Congress’ (ANC) military wing, for example through <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/arthur-goldreich">Arthur Goldreich</a>. It also had stable communication channels with the <a href="https://www.archives.gov.il/archives/Archive/0b0717068031bdef/File/0b0717068062f0ae">Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania</a>. </p>
<h2>Post-1967</h2>
<p>Sympathy towards Israel diminished considerably after the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4325413">Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973</a>. But relations between anti-apartheid activism and Zionism remained complicated.</p>
<p>Many Jewish individuals who joined the struggle against apartheid had been active in Zionist youth movements. The socialist-oriented <a href="https://habonim.org.za/">Habonim</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Shomrim_in_the_Land_of_Apartheid.html?id=ZMltAAAAMAAJ">Hashomer Hatzair</a> stand out. Those who joined the anti-apartheid struggle (such as <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Slovo_the_Unfinished_Autobiography.html?id=9QxzAAAAMAAJ">Joe Slovo</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Revolutions_in_My_Life.html?id=vQYwAQAAIAAJ">Baruch Hirson</a>) typically abandoned Zionism. But they acknowledged its role in forming their radical worldview.</p>
<p>Jewish South African individuals were prominent in the liberal strand of the anti-apartheid struggle too. They usually used their professional skills to challenge the apartheid regime. Lawyers like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/advocate-israel-isie-aaron-maisels">Isie Maisels</a>, parliamentarians like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/helen-suzman">Helen Suzman</a>, journalists like <a href="https://southafrica.co.za/benjamin-pogrund.html">Benjamin Pogrund</a>, and rabbis like <a href="https://www.sajr.co.za/rabbi-ben-isaacson-a-maverick-soul-finds-rest/">Ben Isaacson</a> were examples. Jewish liberal activists usually expressed support for Israel in various ways.</p>
<p>Developments since the mid-1970s have largely overshadowed the complex history of Zionism’s engagement with the apartheid regime. The anti-apartheid struggle became tightly associated with the Palestinian struggle. And, after its rise to power in 1994, the ANC reaffirmed its commitment to its Palestinian allies.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-and-russia-president-cyril-ramaphosas-foreign-policy-explained-198430">South Africa and Russia: President Cyril Ramaphosa's foreign policy explained</a>
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<p>Since then, relations with Israel have largely remained chilly. The ANC <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/news/s-africas-ruling-party-anc-reaffirms-boycott-israel-resolution">supports</a> the movement to boycott Israel and Pretoria <a href="https://thewire.in/external-affairs/south-africa-israel-anc">downgraded</a> its representation in the Jewish state. South African foreign affairs minister Naledi Pandor has <a href="https://www.jpost.com/bds-threat/article-713140">called</a> for Israel to be declared an “apartheid state”. </p>
<h2>A step in the right direction</h2>
<p>Israel and South Africa’s Jewish communities have a long and ambiguous history of entanglement with race politics. There were admirable moments in this history. But there were also periods of complicity with racism. In Israel, both sides of this history are largely forgotten.</p>
<p>Gan Siyabonga is an important first step in placing this history in the Israeli public sphere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asher Lubotzky 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>Gan Siyabonga is unique in Israel. It highlights a group that was both anti-apartheid and pro-Zionist.Asher Lubotzky, PhD Candidate, History, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1978512023-01-13T19:31:56Z2023-01-13T19:31:56ZFrene Ginwala remembered: trailblazing feminist and first speaker of South Africa’s democratic parliament<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504487/original/file-20230113-14-ka7h5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Frene Ginwala addressing the media in 2017, tireless in her fight for justice.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gulshan Khan/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Frene Ginwala, feisty feminist, astute political tactician and committed cadre of South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (<a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/">ANC</a>), has <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/president-cyril-ramaphosa-pays-tribute-%C2%A0dr-frene-ginwala-founding-speaker-parliament-13-jan">died at the age of 90</a>. In a country blessed with exceptional leaders, Ginwala must surely count among the best. Typically for her, but unusually for the ANC leadership, she will be laid to rest in a private ceremony. While she was modest about her achievements, she has left an indelible mark on South Africa’s constitution and democratic institutions.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/frene-noshir-ginwala-1932">Frene Noshir Ginwala</a> was born in 1932 in Johannesburg. Her <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dr-frene-noshir-ginwala">Parsee grandparents</a> immigrated from Mumbai in India in the 1800s and made a life for the family in Johannesburg. Ginwala left South Africa after high school, to pursue an LLB degree <a href="https://www.mandela.ac.za/Leadership-and-Governance/Honorary-Doctorates/Frene-Ginwala-2003">at the University of London</a>. She qualified as a barrister at the Inner Temple. Around this time her parents moved to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) in Mozambique. She returned to South Africa after graduating and moved to Durban where her sister, a medical doctor, had settled.</p>
<p>Although she supported the ANC, she was not politically active in any significant way until 1960, when the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville Massacre</a> set off a crisis for the ANC, and the <a href="https://pac.org.za/">Pan Africanist Congress of Azania</a>, both of which were banned and many of whose members went into exile. Ginwala’s family links to east Africa suddenly became a valuable resource, as did her political obscurity. </p>
<h2>Life in exile</h2>
<p>She was asked by ANC leader <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/walter-ulyate-sisulu">Walter Sisulu</a> to go to Mozambique to facilitate the exit of ANC members and supporters into exile. One of those exiles was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a> president of the ANC. Ginwala helped him get across the border into Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and into a safe house. It was the beginning of a long and important comradeship. Ginwala became assistant to Tambo, who went on to lead the exiled ANC <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">for 30 years</a>. She was instrumental in setting up the ANC office in Tanzania. </p>
<p>Ginwala’s work in creating a politically effective ANC in exile – arguably the most powerful exiled liberation movement in the world – was invaluable. She loved to point out the ANC had more missions abroad <a href="http://www.freedomcollection.org/interviews/frene_ginwala/">than the apartheid government had embassies</a>.</p>
<p>In the early 1960s, she created a newspaper, <a href="https://www.tambofoundation.org.za/trustees/frene-ginwala-acting-chairperson/">Spearhead</a>, wrote articles for a variety of international media outlets, wrote speeches for Tambo and gave speeches herself. Her time in Tanzania was interrupted when she was suddenly banned herself by the government of Tanzania for her critical commentary, and she left for the UK. President Julius Nyerere lifted her ban in 1967 and asked her to return to Dar es Salaam to establish a new national newspaper, <a href="https://www.tambofoundation.org.za/trustees/frene-ginwala-acting-chairperson/">The Standard</a>.</p>
<p>But her independent and forthright views – a hallmark for all of her life – got her into hot water and once again she was banned. This time she returned to the UK, where she registered for a <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/graduations/2022/dr-frene-ginwala-remembers-wits.html">PhD at Oxford University</a>. Her doctorate, awarded in 1976, was a sharp reading of the relationship between class, race and identity among Indian South Africans. She continued to build the ANC’s external profile. Her writing on the South African situation was prodigious, well-informed and hard to ignore. She was soon sought after by the United Nations to advise on peace-building globally. </p>
<h2>Return from exile</h2>
<p>When the ANC was unbanned <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/place-of-thorns/unbanning-of-the-anc-political-violence-and-civic-politics-19901995/505D6A37A01673DFB67D2458D4A71A44">in 1990</a>, Ginwala returned after an absence of 31 years. She became the first speaker in the National Assembly in 1994, creating the office as a democratic institution and ruling parliament with a firm, authoritative and fair hand for a decade. Later, she was the prime mover behind the formation of the <a href="https://au.int/en/pap">Pan-African Parliament</a> and one of the most prominent supporters of the <a href="https://www.advocacyinternational.co.uk/featured-project/jubilee-2000">Jubilee 2000 Campaign</a>, which successfully lobbied for the scrapping of the onerous debt incurred by the world’s poorest countries. </p>
<p>Others will write about her many contributions to the ANC and to her status within the liberation movement. My generation of feminists will remember her, above all, for her remarkable championing of the struggle against patriarchy. This began when she was in exile, when she worked with ANC Women’s Section to ensure that ANC principles included non-sexism. It was a long and conflictual process, but by the mid-1980s all ANC documents carried the commitment to a <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10566/5829/Non%20racialism%20and%20the%20African%20National%20Congress%20views%20from%20the%20branch.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">“nonracial, nonsexist democracy”</a>. This was so much more than a linguistic shift; it enabled feminists within the ANC to demand that the commitment be followed through in programmes and policies.</p>
<p>Ginwala was always somewhat impatient and to the left of the <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/anc-womens-league/">ANC Women’s League</a>. She feared that there was a conservative streak in the league that caved in to the patriarchal assumptions of the movement’s leaders. She was worried this made it ineffective in pushing for gender equality. She worked from the side – cajoling comrades (ANC activists), and when that did not work badgering them, into action. </p>
<p>She set up the <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/49th-national-conference-commission-on-emancipation-of-women/">ANC’s Emancipation Commission</a> in 1991, dedicated to advancing gender equality and combatting sexism in the movement. Although not intended to compete with the Women’s League, it did have strategic status that was ensured by placing it under the authority of then-ANC president Tambo. It was a base from which Ginwala could drive the demand for gender equality unconstrained by the Women’s League.</p>
<p>During the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">multiparty negotiations</a> to end apartheid in the 1990s, when it became apparent that gender concerns would sink to the bottom of the ANC’s list of priorities, she led the process of forming an independent women’s organisation – the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4066477">Women’s National Coalition</a> – that would unite women across political parties and ideological lines. She described it as a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40971570.pdf">“conspiracy of women”</a>. </p>
<p>It was a remarkable body that coalesced around two key demands: the inclusion of women in all decision-making about the shape of the post-apartheid state and constitution, and an end to violence against women.</p>
<h2>Impatience and integrity</h2>
<p>Ginwala understood power and politics better than most ANC leaders; her analysis of the balance of forces on any given issue was rapier-like. She knew that the transition process offered an opening to insert feminist principles into the new state, but understood that the window of time was fleeting. This made her impatient at times with other feminist leaders who wanted to build the Women’s National Coalition from the bottom up. </p>
<p>She was clear in her views and at times obstinate, but there was never any doubt about her integrity. Inevitably, there were bitter struggles over the pace of development of the flagship document of the Women’s National Coalition, the <a href="http://www.kznhealth.gov.za/womenscharter.pdf">Charter for Women’s Equality</a>. </p>
<p>Ginwala was concerned that the slow consultative processes preferred by the leaders of the charter process, <a href="https://www.pregsgovender.com/about">Pregs Govender</a> and <a href="https://www.apc.org/users/debbie">Debbie Budlender</a>, would mean the charter would not be ready to be included alongside the Bill of Rights in the constitution, and that the moment for greatest impact would lapse without any long-term gains.</p>
<p>Although the charter was only adopted after the main constitutional debates were concluded, the Women’s National Coalition ensured that gender equality was firmly embedded in the country’s final 1996 <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a>. </p>
<p>The contestations that took place in the drafting of the charter about the meaning of gender equality offer a rich and long-lasting archival resource for political activists as well as researchers.</p>
<p>Ginwala was passionately concerned about economic transformation and set up numerous study sessions on issues such as unpaid care. She wrote a <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/8766832.pdf">hard-hitting challenge</a> to the 50 male economists who crafted the ANC’s key economic policies as it took power. In conversations and seminars among feminists, she was insistent that political representation was only a lever for feminism, not its end goal. </p>
<p>As Speaker of the National Assembly, she took responsibility for establishing training programmes for women parliamentarians, drawing on her vast global network for funding and educational materials.</p>
<p>Hamba kahle, lala ngoxolo Comrade Frene. (Go well, rest in peace.)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with a hurtful clarity. (<a href="https://poems.com/poem/when-great-trees-fall-reprise/">Maya Angelou</a>)</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197851/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shireen Hassim receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada.</span></em></p>A younger generation of feminists will remember her, above all, for her remarkable championing of the struggle against patriarchy.Shireen Hassim, Canada150 Research Chair in Gender and African Politics and Visiting Professor, WiSER Wits University, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1964562022-12-15T14:32:09Z2022-12-15T14:32:09ZDear Comrade President: book highlights ANC leader Oliver Tambo’s role in preparing South Africa for democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501088/original/file-20221214-10567-5pwq8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">African National Congress leader Oliver Tambo during his exile in Botswana. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Campbell/Sygma via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than three decades have passed since the apartheid government in South Africa unbanned the African National Congress (ANC), the country’s leading liberation movement, and released its leader, Nelson Mandela, from prison. This launched four fraught <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230617278_7">years of negotiations</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-political-killings-have-taken-hold-again-in-south-africas-kwazulu-natal-143908">violence</a> that led to South Africa’s first-ever democratic elections.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/dear-comrade-president/9781776096688">book</a> Dear Comrade President: Oliver Tambo and the Foundations of South Africa’s Constitution, by South African historian Andre Odendaal, focuses on a dimension ignored in previous histories and memoirs of this period: the ANC’s constitution-framing process, which would help to shape the future democratic South Africa.</p>
<p>In the mid-1980s conditions for negotiations to end apartheid did not seem promising. President PW Botha’s government had shifted control away from the white parliament towards the military. A wave of assassinations, proxy terror killings and regular <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/list-sadf-raids-neigbouring-countries">raids on neighbouring states</a> was launched.</p>
<p>On the ANC side, most felt the route to power was armed revolution. Its main sources of support were the then Soviet Union, German Democratic Republic and Cuba. Much of its leadership was beholden to Marxism-Leninism. </p>
<p>Odendaal quotes former South African Communist Party
leader <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/joe-slovo">Joe Slovo</a> saying (in 1994) that the political content of the ANC was “moulded” in these three countries – content Slovo calls “very mechanical Stalinist concepts”. Slovo adds:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Thinking back on it now it horrifies me to remember the kind of things they were taught.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This 442-page book unpicks the process of adopting constitutional principles that included support for multiparty democracy and a bill of rights. This process was launched by the ANC leader Oliver Tambo in 1985. It involved a seven-person constitution committee which eventually came up with a document that proved hugely influential in negotiations with the apartheid government. </p>
<h2>Making of democratic South Africa’s constitution</h2>
<p>The committee set up by <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Tambo</a> drew up 14 drafts after many delays and much frustration. But it finally produced a document that was endorsed in 1988, and became the basis for the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/organisation-african-unity-oau">Organisation of African Unity</a> and <a href="https://www.un.org/en/our-work">United Nations</a> approach to South Africa. </p>
<p>This document guided the ANC’s stand in the negotiations under the umbrella of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa)</a>. Odendaal writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A feature of the negotiating process was the way in which the ANC, with its more than four years of focused pre-planning, outmanoeuvred opponents determined to block democracy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The most compelling bits of the book include profiles of the main players – Tambo and those on the committee, including <a href="https://ourconstitution.constitutionhill.org.za/harold-jack-simons/">Jack Simon</a>, <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/kader-asmal-1934">Kader Asmal</a>, <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/zola-sidney-themba-skweyiya-dr">Zola Skweyiya</a>, <a href="https://www.concourt.org.za/index.php/11-former-judges/65-justice-albie-sachs">Albie Sachs</a> and the man whose 1985 intervention set it in motion, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/zweledinga-pallo-jordan">Pallo Jordan</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500750/original/file-20221213-16533-lciae2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500750/original/file-20221213-16533-lciae2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500750/original/file-20221213-16533-lciae2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500750/original/file-20221213-16533-lciae2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500750/original/file-20221213-16533-lciae2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500750/original/file-20221213-16533-lciae2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500750/original/file-20221213-16533-lciae2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500750/original/file-20221213-16533-lciae2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin Random House</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jordan’s paper , The New Face of Counter-Revolution, went against prevailing revolutionary wisdom. It argued that the ANC should take the initiative through backing multiparty democracy with a bill of rights guaranteeing individual freedom. It should also win the support of the black middle class.</p>
<p>Some within the ANC had severe doubts, worried this was getting in the way of revolution.</p>
<h2>Challenging orthodoxy</h2>
<p>Odendaal counters <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50013048">the view</a> that it was the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 – marking the unravelling of the Soviet Union, the main backer of the ANC’s armed struggle – that nudged the ANC towards multiparty democracy. He shows it had already endorsed these principles more than three years earlier. </p>
<p>The collapse of the Soviet Union had “little impact on the ANC’s immediate thinking and strategy in relation to negotiations”, Odendaal adds. (In my view, it certainly had a longer-term impact, helping open the way for one-time Marxists to become multi-millionaires.) </p>
<p>Odendaal’s account also challenges the claim by some analysts, including <a href="https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Niel_Barnard">Niel Barnard</a>, the former head of the apartheid government’s National Intelligence Service, that the fall of communism allowed the government to negotiate. Odendaal acknowledges the collapse of the communist bloc made it easier for the government to unban the ANC. It also meant the government</p>
<blockquote>
<p>could no longer rely on support from Western countries as a bastion against the supposed spread of communism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the process leading to negotiations was already unstoppable by then. The secret “Consgold talks”, aimed at easing the way towards negotiations, started in 1986. They were between the ANC and Afrikaner academics led by the Stellenbosch University philosophy professor Willie Esterhuyse, and backed by the National Intelligence Service.</p>
<p>Adding to the momentum were the talks <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">Nelson Mandela</a> held with apartheid justice minister Kobie Coetsee <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mandela/interviews/coetsee.html">in 1986</a>, and the government’s invitation to Soviet leader Mikhael Gorbachev to engage in discussions. </p>
<p>It’s often forgotten that it was the hardliner PW Botha, who preceded FW de Klerk as president, who met with Mandela and released Walter Sisulu and other political prisoners on 15 October 1989. The Berlin Wall came down <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50013048">on 9 November 1989</a>.</p>
<p>Odendaal highlights the role played by the regular “safaris” that saw more than a thousand South African notables and activists meeting with the ANC between 1985 and 1990. This counters the view promoted by Barnard and Esterhuyse that these were irrelevant. </p>
<p>Instead, he suggests, they helped set the climate for negotiations by softening white South African attitudes to the ANC and widening ANC perspectives on conditions within the country. He quotes Barnard’s admission that these visits to the ANC in exile</p>
<blockquote>
<p>were threatening to take over from the government so we had to act quickly.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Weaknesses and strengths</h2>
<p>The book stresses that mass resistance and international sanctions pushed the apartheid government to the point where it had to negotiate. But its laser focus on the ANC’s constitutional process means that sometimes detail gets in the way of perspective, leading to too much listing of names and not quite enough contextual information.</p>
<p>For instance, Odendaal notes that the ANC was in “organisational disarray” by 1990. He also hints at the depth of the problems faced by the ANC’s army, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a> (MK), referring to a meeting between Tambo and MK’s Ugandan camp commander <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thenjiwe-mtintso">Thenjiwe Mtintso</a>, where she explains the dire conditions faced by recruits.</p>
<p>More could be said here. MK was decimated through being pushed out of its “forward areas” (its southern African bases), deeply infiltrated by apartheid agents and overwhelmed by internal problems under its compromised leader <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2014-09-02-joe-modise-benefited-from-arms-deal-former-scopa-chair/">Joe Modise</a>. Its other strand, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/members-anc-and-sacp-are-detained-due-operation-vula">Operation Vula</a> (which involved
establishing command structures within the country), was more successful but arrived too late to make a substantial difference to the balance of power between the ANC and the apartheid government. </p>
<p>These issues could have been explored in more depth even if it meant sacrificing some of the blow-by-blow detail.</p>
<p>Dear Comrade President might be hard going for the casual reader, but it makes a valuable contribution to the South African “struggle” library, revealing the importance of the constitutional process within the ANC for setting the trajectory of a democratic South Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans 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 historian counters the popular view that the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall set in motion talks to end apartheid. The process was unstoppable by then.Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1924252022-10-20T14:07:58Z2022-10-20T14:07:58ZSouth Africa’s struggle songs against apartheid come from a long tradition of resistance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490044/original/file-20221017-21-qtbypn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions sing political songs in 1987 in Johannesburg. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Walter Dhladhla/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Struggle songs, also known as protest music or liberation songs, are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007768308591202">defined as</a> “expressions of discontent or dissent” used by politically disenfranchised protesters to influence political conversations and express emotions. </p>
<p>Some scholars <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007768308591202">argue</a> that these songs date back to ancient biblical times when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and “the Hebrew people sang their lamentations”. </p>
<p>In the American context, researchers <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Sinful_Tunes_and_Spirituals.html?id=OvQLVneUgHkC&redir_esc=y">contend</a> that protest music can be traced back to transatlantic slaves. But others <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1">note</a> that the use of these songs <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1">goes back even further</a>.</p>
<p>In modern Africa and in other colonised contexts, such as Latin America, protest music was an <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/attachments/jps-articles/jps_2003_32_3_21.pdf">important tool</a> used by oppressed peoples in their quests to overthrow oppressive regimes. </p>
<p>In South Africa, struggle songs were critical in the strategies used to depose the oppressive race-based <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> state. They became effective instruments of confrontation used by the black majority against the white oppressors.</p>
<p>They were also used as a means of keeping alive the memory of political icons who had been killed, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-steve-bikos-remarkable-legacy-often-overlooked-82952">Steve Biko</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-south-african-struggle-hero-chris-hani-lessons-for-today-64715">Chris Hani</a>, and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/solomon-kalushi-mahlangu">Solomon Mahlangu</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time they helped ensure that those resistance leaders who were imprisoned, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/mandela-was-a-flawed-icon-but-without-him-south-africa-would-be-a-sadder-place-142826">Nelson Mandela</a>, or exiled, like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a>, were not forgotten. These people, the dead and the living, represented the country’s political struggle.</p>
<p>The songs were also a way of marking moments of grief, of which there were many, and the occasional moments of hope, as black South Africans looked forward to the apartheid regime’s demise.</p>
<p>As a researcher whose work looks at the intersection of rhetoric, language and media, I <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780367823658-26/persuasion-songs-protest-sisanda-nkoala">have</a> <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC-20c6b555ff">examined</a> the appeal of struggle music as an persuasive means of engaging in political communication in the South African context. </p>
<p>These texts are relevant even in the post apartheid context because they continue to be an important way in which people deliberate on issues. </p>
<p>Even though the lyrics are relatively simple, and the music can be viewed as straightforward and repetitive, the depth of the ideas they capture makes a case for reading texts like struggle songs at a level much more profound than what they literally denote. </p>
<h2>A brief history</h2>
<p>Different styles of music characterised different periods in South Africa’s struggle for liberation. The change in political and social conditions did not just prompt a change in the lyrics of the songs; it called for a change in the form to capture the tone of the times. </p>
<p>From the late 1800s into the early 1900s, the strong influence of missionaries on black South African literary culture influenced the tone and lyrics of protest music. It resulted in struggle songs that were characterised by a hymn-like sound. This was in the context of a shared Christian belief system. </p>
<p>For example, Biblical and ancient studies scholar, J. Gertrud Tönsing (2017) <a href="https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/4339">talks about</a> how the emphasis of prayer as a tool against the apartheid regime was rooted in the missionary influence. This, in turn, influenced the lyrics and melodies of the struggle songs that emerged so that they featured rhythmically static music and words written like prayers. </p>
<p>From the 1940s and 1950s the violence against black South Africans was written into law through the passing of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/group-areas-act-1950">Group Areas Act</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">“pass laws”</a>. These restricted the movement of black people in certain areas. </p>
<p>Music began to incorporate musical elements inspired by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113919#metadata_info_tab_contents">American jazz and kwela penny whistles</a>. Kwela is a <a href="https://ukzn-dspace.ukzn.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10413/9106/Allen_Lara_V_1993.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">pennywhistle-based street music with jazzy underpinnings and a distinctive, skiffle-like beat</a>.</p>
<p>This merger of musical elements was indicative of the cultural diversity that characterised the townships. Music historian Lara Allen <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113919#metadata_info_tab_contents">argues</a> that the music found resonance and gained popularity because the sound expressed a “locally rooted identity”. </p>
<p>Another feature of the struggle songs from this era was the topical subject matter. Lyrics spoke to current events as they affected black people – kind of “singing the news”. As Allen <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113919#metadata_info_tab_contents">puts it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this regard vocal jive enjoyed an advantage … in that lyrics, through reference to current events and issues of common concern, enabled listeners to recognize their own interests and experiences more concretely.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The 1960s marked an intensification of the apartheid government’s heavy-handedness on any form of protest and resistance. On 21 March 1960, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> occurred, where 69 people were killed while staging a protest against pass laws. In response, the struggle approach changed from a non-violent to an armed struggle with the establishment of the militant wing of the African National Congress, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">uMkhonto we Sizwe</a>. </p>
<p>The upbeat vocal jive style <a href="http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/265/the-sounds-of-resistance-the-role-of-music-in-south-africas-anti-apartheid-movement">was increasingly replaced</a> by militaristic rhythms and chants accompanied by marching actions. </p>
<p>Some of the songs from this period were simply chants. Nevertheless, they were still musical in the way in which they used the beat and other vocal sound effects to evoke emotions. They were often accompanied by the toyi-toyi, a high-stepping ‘dance’ that Allen describes as a march that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03057070902920015?casa_token=IJZ5nO8NssYAAAAA:WTltYQHaHlYg6ZvMtFriNwlAyF-CADEhEmDcxyV32iauPXJbrCVK0Vnl2xkrU0Hmws5O9K9FrD6rLg">mimicked the movement of soldiers in training</a></p>
<p>As musicologist and expert in struggle music Michela Vershbow <a href="http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/265/the-sounds-of-resistance-the-role-of-music-in-south-africas-anti-apartheid-movement">describes them</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The power of this chant builds in intensity as it progresses, and the enormity of the sounds that erupt from the hundreds, sometimes thousands of participants was often used to intimidate government troops.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>In a post-apartheid world</h2>
<p>In the late 1980s academic and expert on Latin American revolutionary songs Robert Pring-Mill <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/853420#metadata_info_tab_contents">wrote about how</a> songs that featured prominently in many oppressive cultures retained their power and currency over time.</p>
<p>This is true in South Africa too where songs from the struggle continue to hold an established place as part of South Africa’s political communication heritage. Examples include songs of lament, like <em>Senzeni na?</em> which bemoans the unjust treatment of marginalised South Africans. Another is the more confrontational <a href="https://www.newframe.com/political-songs-ndodemnyama-miriam-makeba/">Ndodemnyama we Verwoerd!,</a> which was written by Vuyisile Mini and sung by him and his compatriots while walking to their death in the apartheid gallows.</p>
<p>Pring-Mill argues that struggle songs endure because they reflect historical </p>
<blockquote>
<p>events recorded passionately rather than with dispassionate objectivity, yet the passion is not so much that of an individual singer’s personal response, but rather that of a collective interpretation of events from a particular ‘committed’ standpoint. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s noteworthy that in recent years, some of these songs are now said to be hate speech. There have even been calls <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/politics/political-parties/equality-court-grants-afriforum-leave-to-appeal-kill-the-boer-ruling-20221004">to ban them from being sung</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192425/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sisanda Nkoala receives funding from the National Research Foundation and has previously been awarded an AW Mellon-UCT Graduate Scholarship in Rhetoric </span></em></p>Struggle songs are relevant even in the post apartheid context because they continue to be an important way in which people deliberate on issues.Sisanda Nkoala, Senior Lecturer, Cape Peninsula University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1726962021-12-06T13:54:51Z2021-12-06T13:54:51ZPost-election pact failure: echoes of fraught history between South Africa’s ANC and Inkatha<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434197/original/file-20211126-25-exc37x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African president Cyril Ramaphosa (L) is congratulated by leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party Mangosuthu Buthelezi (R) after being elected president of South Africa during the swearing in of new members of the National Assembly.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nic Bothma </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s governing party and the minority Inkatha Freedom Party with a stronghold in KwaZulu-Natal agreed to form governing coalitions <a href="https://mg.co.za/politics/2021-11-17-ifp-anc-agreement-breaks-deadlock-in-21-hung-kwazulu-natal-councils/">in hung municipalities</a> in the KwaZulu-Natal Province following the 1 November local government elections.</p>
<p>The two parties had agreed that where one had the majority of seats, the other would support it to form the municipal government.</p>
<p>This deal failed. The <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2021-11-24-ifp-blames-anc-for-collapse-of-coalition-agreement-in-kzn/">IFP blamed the ANC</a> for fielding candidates in isiNquthu (Nqutu), Jozini in northern KwaZulu-Natal and other places where the IFP had the majority of seats. Similarly, the ANC accused the IFP of fielding candidates in uMhlathuze District in northern KwaZulu-Natal, eThekwini – the economic hub in coastal KwaZulu-Natal and other municipalities. </p>
<p>This fallout negatively affected the ANC more than the IFP as it won more seats in many hung municipalities. After this fallout, the IFP led coalitions in many of these municipalities.</p>
<p>Had the deal succeeded, it would have seen the ANC increase the number of municipalities under its control. It would have also helped in mending relations between the two parties. Its failure will increase mistrust between them.</p>
<p>The failure of the pact brings to mind the history of <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2017/12/the-rise-fall-and-retirement-of-mangosuthu-buthelezi">fraught relations</a> and “<a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/i-grew-up-in-the-anc-youth-league--mangosuthu-buth">unfinished business</a>” between the two parties. </p>
<h2>History of fraught relations</h2>
<p>Before establishing Inkatha Freedom Party <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/inkatha-freedom-party-ifp">in 1975</a>, <a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/person-details/24">Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi</a> <a href="https://www.ifp.org.za/prince-mangosuthu-buthelezi-timeline/">received the blessings</a> of the ANC through its leader, <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a>. This was made possible by two reasons.</p>
<p>Firstly, Buthelezi had been a member of the ANC Youth League while a student at the University of Fort Hare from 1948 – 1950. He joined the League <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/how-the-anc-and-inkatha-fell-out--mangosuthu-buthe">in 1949</a>. </p>
<p>Secondly, the <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/">ANC</a> and the Pan Africanist Congress (<a href="https://pac.org.za/">PAC</a>), the historical liberation movements, had been banned by the apartheid government <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pan-Africanist-Congress-of-Azania">since 1960</a>.</p>
<p>The ban left a political vacuum which Buthelezi decided to fill. Because he and the ANC were determined to defeat the apartheid government, it made logical sense that he should take the baton of sustaining the liberation struggle. He revived Inkatha ka Zulu (the coil of the Zulu nation), a movement which had been established by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/king-dinuzulu">Zulu King Dinizulu</a> in 1922. </p>
<p>Once Inkatha was established, Buthelezi used to travel to the exiled ANC’s headquarters in Zambia to report on progress. Gradually, some within the ANC <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-05-31-buthelezi-it-cuts-me-to-the-heart-to-be-unjustly-labelled-an-enemy-of-my-people/">became sceptical of his intentions</a>. They associated him with the Bantustan establishment which saw a number of political leaders becoming puppets of the apartheid regime.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands">Bantustans</a> were “self-governing” and “independent” states established by the apartheid regime with the intention to weaken black people by dividing them into little compartments called “states”. Leaders who accepted this “independence” became presidents in those states but remained financially dependent on South Africa.</p>
<p>In 1979 Buthelezi led a delegation to London <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/report/finalreport/Volume%203.pdf">to meet the ANC</a> to discuss differences of opinion between the ANC and Buthelezi regarding protest politics, economic sanctions and the armed struggle. </p>
<p>Tambo promised to meet Buthelezi again. However, this turned out to be the last formal meeting between the two parties. There are divergent views regarding this development. One version is that the ANC accused Buthelezi of <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/how-the-anc-and-inkatha-fell-out--mangosuthu-buthe">leaking details of the meeting to the media</a>. The other version is that Tambo was advised by the ANC to cut ties with Buthelezi because he could not be trusted.</p>
<p>The 1980s were turbulent moments in South Africa. The formation of the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03222.htm">United Democratic Front </a>(UDF) in August 1983 further soured relations between the ANC and Inkatha. Buthelezi blamed the UDF, which was allied to the ANC, for tarnishing his name and labelling him a traitor who <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA02562804_232">colluded with the apartheid government</a>. </p>
<p>Buthelezi argued that by agreeing to lead KwaZulu Government but not taking full “independence” <a href="https://theconversation.com/mangosuthu-gatsha-buthelezi-a-reappraisal-of-his-fight-against-apartheid-144212">as other leaders had done</a>, he had opted to <a href="https://www.ifp.org.za/prince-mangosuthu-buthelezi-timeline/">fight the system from within</a>.</p>
<p>The ascendance to power of President FW De Klerk <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/frederik-willem-de-klerk">in 1989</a> marked a new political epoch in South Africa. In <a href="https://theconversation.com/fw-de-klerk-made-a-speech-31-years-ago-that-ended-apartheid-why-he-did-it-130803">February 1990</a> he lifted the ban on liberation movements, set their leaders free and opened the door for negotiations that would lead to a new political dispensation. </p>
<h2>The 1990s and South Africa’s road to democracy</h2>
<p>The 1990s marked a critical juncture in relations between the ANC and the IFP. By now, Buthelezi had established himself as a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/721987">force to be reckoned with</a>. As <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv02103/05lv02104/06lv02106.htm">negotiations to end apartheid</a> began <a href="https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/ZA_900806_The%20Pretoria%20Minute.pdf">in 1990</a>, it became impossible to sideline him and Inkatha.</p>
<p>Violent skirmishes between the two parties – which were fuelled by apartheid operatives – further soured relations between the two parties. At least <a href="https://theconversation.com/archive-documents-reveal-the-us-and-uks-role-in-the-dying-days-of-apartheid-120507">20 000 people are estimated to have died</a> between 1984 and 1994.</p>
<p>As the negotiations began, Inkatha initially showed no interest in them – arguing that the deal was between the ANC and the apartheid government. After joining the discussion, Buthelezi halted the process midstream. Firstly, he wanted South Africa to be a <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-08-07-secret-details-of-the-land-deal-that-brought-the-ifp-into-the-94-poll/">federal state</a>. He later settled for there being six provinces, which <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-sa/south-africas-provinces">later became nine</a>. </p>
<p>Secondly, Buthelezi wanted <a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Govern_Political/ANC_18598.html">a place for the Zulu King</a> and the Zulu Kingdom. He managed to secure <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-08-07-secret-details-of-the-land-deal-that-brought-the-ifp-into-the-94-poll/">Ingonyama Trust </a>, which reserved land for the Zulu King to control. In his view, the ANC was not honest with him and undermined Inkatha and the Zulu nation thus forcing him to boycott the negotiations. </p>
<p>Through intense negotiations, the ANC and the IFP eventually found each other. <a href="https://theconversation.com/archive-documents-reveal-the-us-and-uks-role-in-the-dying-days-of-apartheid-120507">Professor Washington Okumu</a> from Kenya successfully appealed to Buthelezi to contest the first democratic election on 27 April 1994. By then, the ballot papers had already been printed and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/04/20/buthelezi-ends-boycott-of-s-african-vote/ec9c8d56-5eb9-4a35-8f50-03fcb595e731/">IFP’s name was pasted</a> at the bottom of the ballot paper.</p>
<p>The ANC disputed election results <a href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6a84aa.html">in KwaZulu-Natal</a>. Later, the two parties found each other and even formed a coalition through a “grand alliance”. </p>
<p>To mend the wall between the ANC and the IFP, President Nelson Mandela appointed Buthelezi into his <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-government-national-unity-gnu-1994-1999">Government of National Unity</a> cabinet, which existed from April 1994 to February 1997. Buthelezi was Minister of Home Affairs until 1999 under Mandela and continued in this portfolio <a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/person-details/24">from 1999 to 2004</a> under President Thabo Mbeki. </p>
<p>Buthelezi <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/buthelezi-to-act-as-president-again-14903">served as the Acting President</a> more than any of his cabinet colleagues. This was significant, not only because he had enough administrative experience from leading the KwaZulu Government, but also in terms of improving relations between the ANC and the IFP.</p>
<p>Since then, relations between the ANC and the IFP have been relatively stable but not without moments of mistrust as evidenced in the aftermath of the 2021 local elections.</p>
<h2>Lost opportunity</h2>
<p>The initial announcement that both parties had agreed to support each other to form municipal governments in hung municipalities brought a glimmer of hope that they were amenable to working together. </p>
<p>When the IFP <a href="https://www.news24.com/witness/politics/kznprovincial/high-drama-as-ifp-snubs-anc-in-kzn-hung-councils-20211122">announced </a> that it was no longer going to work with the ANC, this raised concerns about potential renewal of the historic feud.</p>
<p>For me, three issues could have saved this agreement. Firstly, the parties should have agreed to divide the four KwaZulu Natal economic hubs (eThekwini, uMsunduzi, uMhlathuze and Newcastle), between themselves. Secondly, the ANC should have agreed to change the Umlazi road from Griffiths Mxenge back to Mangosuthu Highway as the IFP had demanded outside of the formal discussions. </p>
<p>Thirdly, the IFP should have agreed to let the ANC keep the name of one of its regions as Mzala Nxumalo region - named after <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/jabulani-nobleman-nxumalo-1955-1991">Jabulani Nobleman “Mzala” Nxumalo</a>, an ANC and SA Communist Party stalwart. This failed deal serves as a reminder about fraught relations between the ANC and the IFP.</p>
<p>However, on many occasions, these two parties have been able to find each other, albeit temporarily. The failure of the 2021 post-election deal was a missed opportunity for them to work together.</p>
<p>Despite other political parties having made inroads in KwaZulu-Natal, such as the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters, they are ideologically miles apart from the ANC and the IFP, who remain the key players. Thus, the future of KwaZulu-Natal depends in large part to close relations between the ANC and the IFP.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172696/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bheki Mngomezulu 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 failure of the 2021 post-election deal is a missed opportunity for the African National Congress and Inkatha to work together.Bheki Mngomezulu, Professor of Political Science, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1638722021-07-06T06:54:51Z2021-07-06T06:54:51ZJacob Zuma: when did erstwhile South African revolutionary lose his way?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409656/original/file-20210705-39677-18fs4vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former South African president Jacob Zuma.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Photo by Rajesh Jantilal/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s the small crimes that bring you down. Al Capone went merrily on his murdering way until the FBI <a href="https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2005/march/capone_032805">nailed him for tax evasion</a>. Richard Nixon seemed immune to the consequences of lying about Vietnam, Cambodia and Chile but his lies over the silly crime of burgling the Democratic Party’s headquarters <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/richard-m-nixon/">did for him</a>.</p>
<p>So it is with Jacob Zuma South Africa’s former president. He faced <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/jacob-zuma-pleads-not-guilty-to-18-corruption-charges-e5d7fe94-9e4a-4883-ab7f-e6625ab48556">multiple charges of corruption</a>, but, so far, has avoided his day in court. He was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/10/khwezi-woman-accused-jacob-zuma-south-african-president-aids-activist-fezekile-ntsukela-kuzwayo">tried for rape and acquitted</a>. As president he was accused of working with an Indian family, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-22513410">the Guptas</a>, in orchestrating <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/state-capture-report-public-protector-14-october-2016">“state capture”</a> (seizing control of state organs for corrupt purposes). He is refusing to cooperate with the <a href="https://www.sastatecapture.org.za/">judicial commission</a> investigating the allegations.</p>
<p>In the end it is his contempt of the Constitutional Court’s order that he cooperate with the commission that may send him to jail <a href="https://theconversation.com/historic-moment-as-constitutional-court-finds-zuma-guilty-and-sentences-him-to-jail-163612">for 15 months</a>. He’s appealed for a <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/reprieve-for-zuma-as-concourt-agrees-to-hear-his-contempt-rescission-case-20210703">rescission of the order</a>.</p>
<p>A question that invariably gets asked is whether power changed him. The country’s former foreign intelligence chief Moe Shaik seemed to think so, <a href="https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9780624088967">writing glowingly</a> of the capable “struggle” version of Zuma, suggesting it was only as president that things went awry, although he noted that we will never know when “precisely Jacob Zuma lost his way”.</p>
<p>Perhaps it came rather earlier than Shaik thinks. As with so many fallen revolutionaries, the seeds of venality seem to have been sown in his younger days. It’s just that political power provided the nutrients for spectacular sprouting.</p>
<h2>A taste of Zuma</h2>
<p>My first taste of Zuma came in 1989. The ANC’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/members-anc-and-sacp-are-detained-due-operation-vula">Operation Vula </a> was under way. It involved building an underground insurrectionary network and I belonged to one of its regional leadership structures. We received an instruction to investigate whether <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/peter-mokaba">Peter Mokaba</a>, the leader of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2002-06-14-two-faces-of-mokaba/">was a spy</a>. </p>
<p>Our damning report was presented to Zuma and the ANC’s security chief Joe Nhlanhla who informed us that <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/peter-mokaba">Mokaba</a>, who died in 2002, was an informer whose relationship with the security police <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2002-06-14-two-faces-of-mokaba/">went deeper than we’d suspected</a>. Other ANC leaders got on board to spread this message but we were told that <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a>, who then led the exiled ANC, decided it would be better to rehabilitate Mokaba, which duly happened. </p>
<p>Soon after that I was visited by a senior leader of the South African Communist Party, which was in an alliance with the ANC. He pleaded with me to do a journalistic hatchet job on Zuma. He said his own home in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, was bugged by ANC intelligence and that Zuma was corrupt. </p>
<p>I ignored the request. But it was one of several signs I’d seen that Zuma was despised within the Communist Party. </p>
<p>Zuma had briefly been on the party’s politburo but fell from favour partly because of conflicts between ANC intelligence and its armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe. One conflict involved commander Thami Zulu, who was branded by Zuma’s allies as an enemy agent, <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/how-the-killing-of-thami-zulu-contradicts-zumas-cl">detained for 14 months</a> by the ANC in Lusaka and <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2018-02-15-the-murder-of-thami-zulu-a-call-for-a-formal-judicial-inquiry/">died of poisoning a week after his release</a>. Those who knew Zulu insisted he was innocent.</p>
<p>His death contributed to the hatred for Zuma. It was by no means the only crime attributed to ANC intelligence.</p>
<h2>Steely resolve</h2>
<p>Zuma started life in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jacob-gedleyihlekisa-zuma">1942</a>, the son of a policeman and a domestic worker. He received scant formal education but emerged as a lad with a sharp mind and steely resolve. At 17 he joined the ANC and three years on was arrested as part of a group of military recruits, leading to a <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-jacob-zuma-0">10-year spell on Robben Island</a>. He went into exile in 1975.</p>
<p>His ambition, prodigious memory and avuncular personality all helped him along and he became the ANC’s chief representative in Mozambique, a member of its political and military committee and its intelligence chief in 1987. Those who backed him tended to overlook his darker side, including his sexual promiscuity. </p>
<p>When Zuma returned to South Africa in 1990 KwaZulu-Natal was in the midst of a territorial war between the ANC and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Zulu nationalist <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/history-in-africa/article/abs/inkatha-and-its-use-of-the-zulu-past/14E0B3C8A767C4811A3A1AD974A1EA77">Inkatha </a> movement. He emerged as ANC leader there after seeing off the ANC warlord <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/harry-themba-gwala">Harry Gwala</a>, using his charm and Zulu credentials to secure the peace. But this came at a cost. The ANC drew some of Inkatha’s most notorious killers into its fold and a new form of violence broke out. </p>
<p>This time it had nothing to do with ideology. Instead, it was all about money – as so much was when Zuma was around.</p>
<h2>Corruption and legal jeopardy</h2>
<p>In 2004, when Zuma was deputy president, his financial advisor Schabir Shaik was arrested for his role in an arms deal and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment (but released after 28 months on <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/thepost/news/schabir-shaik-is-a-free-man-48662347">spurious health grounds</a>). He was found to have solicited bribes of R500,000 a year for Zuma, who was later charged with corruption. This was followed by further charges relating to another arms deal. But procedural irregularities and allegations of political interference meant <a href="https://theconversation.com/president-zuma-loses-bid-to-dodge-criminal-charges-but-will-he-have-the-last-laugh-85703">none of these went to trial</a>.</p>
<p>He faced legal jeopardy from a different source in 2006, tried for allegedly raping a 31-year-old Aids activist whom he knew to be HIV-positive (he said he believed a <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/sas-zuma-showered-avoid-hiv-bbc-news-05-april-2006">shower after sex would be adequate protection</a>). Zuma claimed it was <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/zuma-i-had-to-oblige-271913">his duty as a Zulu man</a> to have sex with a woman if she wore a short kanga (African wrap), and that he could not leave her <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA20732740_29">“unfulfilled”</a>. </p>
<p>He argued Zulu men have sexual primacy over women and he could therefore not be guilty.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/jacob-zuma-deadly-serious-1667308.html">To deny her sex, that would have been tantamount to rape</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Zuma was <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/fr/node/226198">acquitted</a> while the alleged victim was vilified, with Zuma and his supporters singing his favourite song, <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/zuma-gets-heros-welcome-20060213">Lethu Mshini Wami</a> (Bring me my machine gun) during and after the trial. The woman, later named as Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, fled into exile for safety. She returned after a decade and died <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2016/10/09/Zumas-rape-accuser-Khwezi-dies">in 2016</a>. </p>
<p>Thabo Mbeki had dumped Zuma as his deputy <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/zuma-axed-243733">in 2005</a> and the long-time allies became enemies. The <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">paranoid Mbeki</a> lacked the common touch and was oddly devoid of his former gracious charm, while Zuma was the opposite: friendly and humorous. By playing on popular concerns about service provision, crime, and Aids, and being chummy with the unions, the youth and the left, he won the backing of people who should have been more wary.</p>
<p>Zuma defeated Mbeki for the ANC leadership <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/52nd-anc-national-conference-polokwane-2007">in 2007</a> and became president in 2009, remaining in office for <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-jacob-zuma-0">nine years</a>. The left hoped he’d curb his excesses, but the opposite happened. The Guptas fed his greed in return for state contracts, to the point that they <a href="https://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/">offered cabinet positions to obedient hopefuls</a>.</p>
<p>Eventually, Zuma over-reached. He dipped into state coffers to upgrade his house <a href="https://theconversation.com/dramatic-night-in-south-africa-leaves-president-hanging-on-by-a-thread-57180">in Nkandla</a>. Then he <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-zumas-actions-point-to-shambolic-management-of-south-africas-economy-52174">fired two finance ministers</a> who would <a href="https://theconversation.com/firing-of-south-africas-finance-minister-puts-the-public-purse-in-zumas-hands-75525">not do his bidding</a>. </p>
<p>Cyril Ramaphosa won the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-anc-has-a-new-leader-but-south-africa-remains-on-a-political-precipice-89248">ANC leadership race in December 2017</a>. Two months later Zuma stepped down as president of the country. The Guptas promptly <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tony-ajay-and-atul-gupta-flee-south-africa-and-denounce-corruption-inquiry-lt5828rxh">fled to Dubai</a>.</p>
<p>Zuma faces jail for contempt, the revival of the original fraud, racketeering and money laundering charges, and possibly further charges, depending on the findings of the Zondo Commission into state capture, whose subpoenas he ignored. </p>
<p>There will be more posturing and more singing of Lethu Mshini Wami by followers who stand to lose from his demise. But at the age of 78 Zuma’s long day in the sun is over.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163872/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans 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 posturing is bound to continue. But at the age of 78 Jacob Zuma’s long day in the sun is over.Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1464082021-06-17T15:10:07Z2021-06-17T15:10:07ZKenneth Kaunda: the last giant of African nationalism and benign autocrat left a mixed legacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358636/original/file-20200917-24-1xzswgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda at the inauguration of former South African president Thabo Mbeki in 2004.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/dr-kenneth-kaunda-former-president-zambia-born">Kenneth Kaunda</a>, the former president of Zambia, who has <a href="https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/former-president-kenneth-kaunda-passes-away-aged-97/">died in hospital in the capital, Lusaka</a>, at the age of 97, was the last of the giants of 20th century African nationalism. He was also one of the few to depart with his reputation still intact. But perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, the standing of the man who ruled over Zambia for 27 years is clouded with ambiguity.</p>
<p>The charismatic president who won accolades for bowing out peacefully after losing an election was also the authoritarian who introduced a one-party state. The pioneer of “African socialism” was the man who cut a supply-side deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The nationalist leader known for personal probity planned to give huge tracts of farmland to an Indian guru. The revolutionary who gave sanctuary to liberation movements was also a friend of US presidents.</p>
<p>I met him in 1989 when I helped organise a delegation of 120 white South African notables for a conference with the then-banned and exiled <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/brief-history-anc">African National Congress</a>, which was fighting for the liberation of black South Africans, in Lusaka. “KK”, as he was known, shed tears as he welcomed guests, who included the <a href="https://hsf.org.za/about/about-the-helen-suzman-foundation">liberal MP Helen Suzman</a>, known for her defiant opposition to the apartheid government.</p>
<p>By then, he’d been president for a quarter of a century and seemed a permanent fixture at the apex of southern African politics. And yet, as it turned out, he was on his final lap.</p>
<p>He exuded an image of the benign monarch, a much-loved father to his people, known for his endearing quirks – safari suits, waving white handkerchiefs, ballroom dancing, singing his own songs while cycling, and crying in public. And yet there was also a hard edge to the politics and persona of the man, whose powerful personality helped make Zambia a major player in Africa and the world for three decades.</p>
<h2>The early years</h2>
<p>Kenneth David Kaunda was born in Chinsali, Northern Zambia, on October 24 1924. Like so many of his generation of African liberation leaders, he came from a family of the mission-educated middle class. He was the baby among eight children. His father was a Presbyterian missionary-teacher and his mother was the first qualified African woman teacher in the country.</p>
<p>He followed his parents’ profession, first in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), where he became a head teacher before his 21st birthday. He also taught in then Tanganyika (Tanzania), where he became a lifelong admirer of future president Julius Nyerere, whose “Ujamaa” brand of African socialism he tried to follow.</p>
<p>After returning home, Kaunda campaigned against the British plan for a <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230270916_12">federation</a> of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which would increase the powers of white settlers. He took up politics full-time, learning the ropes through working for the liberal Legislative Council member <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-33474">Sir Stewart Gore-Browne</a>. Soon after, as secretary general of the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress, he was jailed for two months with hard labour for distributing <a href="https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/zambians-campaign-independence-1944-1964">“subversive literature”</a>.</p>
<p>After his release he clashed with his organisation’s president, Harry Nkumbula, who took a more conciliatory approach to colonial rule. Kaunda led the breakaway Zambian African National Congress, which was promptly banned. He was <a href="https://biography.yourdictionary.com/kenneth-david-kaunda">jailed for nine months</a>, further boosting his status.</p>
<p>A new movement, the United National Independence Party <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3172067">(UNIP)</a>), chose Kaunda as its leader after his release. He travelled to America and <a href="https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/kenneth-kaunda-the-united-states-and-southern-africa/introduction-kenneth-kaunda-and-zambia-united-states-relations-before-1975">met Martin Luther King</a>. Inspired by King and Mahatma Gandhi, he launched the <a href="https://cdn.website-editor.net/74225855d7734800bb2b5c38f2c1cf16/files/uploaded/chachacha.pdf">“Cha-cha-cha” civil disobedience campaign</a>.</p>
<p>In 1962, encouraged by Kaunda’s moves to pacify the white settlers, the British acceded to self-rule, followed by full independence two years later. He emerged as the first Zambian president after <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/25/newsid_2658000/2658325.stm">UNIP won the election</a>.</p>
<h2>The challenges of independence</h2>
<p>One challenge for the newly independent Zambia related to the colonial education system. There were no universities and fewer than half a percent of pupils had completed primary school. Kaunda introduced a policy of free books and low fees. In 1966 he became the first chancellor of the new <a href="https://www.unza.zm/international/?p=history">University of Zambia</a>. Several other universities and tertiary education facilities followed.</p>
<p>Long after he was ousted as president, Kaunda continued to be warmly received in African capitals because of his role in allowing liberation movements to have bases in Lusaka. This came at considerable economic cost to his country, which also endured military raids from the South Africans and Rhodesians.</p>
<p>At the same time, he joined apartheid South Africa’s hard-line prime minister <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/balthazar-johannes-vorster">BJ Vorster</a> in mediating a failed bid for an internal settlement in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1975. He attempted the same in South West Africa (Namibia), which was then administered by South Africa. But <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/pieter-willem-botha">President PW Botha</a>, who succeeded Vorster after his death, showed no interest.</p>
<p>Kaunda helped lead the <a href="https://www.nti.org/learn/treaties-and-regimes/non-aligned-movement-nam/">Non-Aligned Movement</a>, which brought together states that did not align with either the Soviets or the Americans during the Cold War. He broke bread with anyone who showed an interest in Zambia, including Romania’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nicolae-Ceausescu">Nicolai Ceausescu</a> and Iraq’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/saddam-hussein-how-a-deadly-purge-of-opponents-set-up-his-ruthless-dictatorship-120748">Saddam Hussein</a>, while also cultivating successive American presidents (having more success with <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/james-carter/">Jimmy Carter</a> than <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/ronald-reagan/">Ronald Reagan</a>). He invited China to help build the <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/1983/0330/033064.html">Tazara Railway</a> and bought 16 MIG-21 fighter jets from the Soviet Union <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0205/020532.html">in 1980</a>.</p>
<h2>African humanism</h2>
<p>Kaunda’s economic policy was framed by his belief in what he called “African humanism” but also by necessity. He inherited an economy under foreign control and moved to remedy this. For example, the mines owned by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/British-South-Africa-Company">British South African Company</a> (founded by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes">Cecil John Rhodes</a>) were acquired as a result of colonial conquest in 1890. Kaunda’s threats to nationalise without compensation prompted major concessions from BSAC.</p>
<p>He promoted a planned economy, leading to “development plans” that involved the state’s Industrial Development Corporation acquiring 51% equity in major foreign-owned companies. The policy was undermined by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/mar/03/1970s-oil-price-shock">1973 spike in the oil price</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1973/02/04/archives/as-copper-goes-so-goes-zambia.html">fall in the price of copper</a>, which made up 95% of Zambia’s exports.</p>
<p>The consequent balance of payments crisis led to Zambia having the world’s second highest debt relative to GDP, <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11985187.pdf">prompting IMF intervention</a>. Kaunda at first resisted but by 1989 was forced to bow to its demands. Parastatals were partially privatised, spending was slashed, food subsidies ended, prices rocketed and Kaunda’s support plummeted. </p>
<p>Like many anti-colonial leaders, he’d come to view multi-party democracy as a western concept that fomented conflict and tribalism. This view was encouraged by the 1964 uprising of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/13/archives/rhodesia-holds-leader-of-cult-kaunda-says-alice-lenshina-calls-for.html">Lumpa religious sect</a>. He banned all parties other than UNIP in 1968 and Zambia officially became a one-party state four years later.</p>
<p>His government became increasingly autocratic and intolerant of dissent, centred on his personality cult. But Kaunda will go down in history as a relatively benign autocrat who avoided the levels of repression and corruption of so many other one-party rulers.</p>
<p>Julius Nyerere, who retired in 1985, tried to persuade his friend to follow suit, but Kaunda pressed on. After surviving a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/01/world/failed-zambia-coup-weakens-leader.html">coup attempt in 1990</a> and following food riots, he reluctantly acceded to the demand for a multi-party election in 1991. </p>
<p>His popularity could not survive the chaos prompted by price rises and was not helped by the revelation that he’d planned to grant <a href="http://www.minet.org/TM-EX/Fall-91">more than a quarter of Zambia’s land</a> to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who promised to create a “heaven on earth”). The trade union leader Frederick Chiluba won in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/02/world/zambian-voters-defeat-kaunda-sole-leader-since-independence.html">landslide victory in 1991</a>.</p>
<h2>The last years</h2>
<p>Kaunda <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4283286.stm">won kudos abroad</a> for what was considered to be his gracious response to electoral defeat, but the new government was less magnanimous. It placed him under house arrest after alleging a coup attempt; then <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/01/world/founder-of-zambia-is-declared-stateless-in-high-court-ruling.html">declared him stateless</a> when he planned to run in the 1996 election (on the grounds that his father was born in Malawi), which he successfully challenged in court. He survived an <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/shot-kaunda-claims-attempt-on-life-1.99800">assassination attempt in 1997</a>, getting grazed by a bullet. One of his sons, Wezi, was shot dead outside their home in 1999.</p>
<p>The 1986 AIDS death of another son, Masuzgo, inspired him to campaign around HIV issues far earlier than most, and he stepped this up over the next two decades. After Chiluba’s departure, he returned to favour and became a <a href="https://thenews-chronicle.com/a-life-that-defies-expectations-a-tribute-to-kenneth-kaunda-at-96/">roving ambassador for Zambia</a>. He reduced his public role following the <a href="https://www.lusakatimes.com/2012/09/19/mama-betty-kaunda-dies/">2012 death</a> of his wife of 66 years, Betty.</p>
<p>Kaunda will be remembered as a giant of 20th century African nationalism – a leader who, at great cost, gave refuge to revolutionary movements, a relatively benign autocrat who reluctantly introduced democracy to his country and an international diplomat who punched well above his weight in world affairs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146408/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans 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>Kaunda will be remembered as a giant of 20th century African nationalism – a leader who gave refuge to revolutionary movements, a relatively benign autocrat and an international diplomat.Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1607212021-05-13T14:58:05Z2021-05-13T14:58:05ZRamaphosa appears – finally – to have his grip on South Africa’s ruling ANC<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400503/original/file-20210513-24-19jnh99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa as well as of the ruling party, the African National Congress.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If the outcomes of the most <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/video/southafrica/news/watch-live-president-cyril-ramaphosa-delivers-closing-address-after-ancs-nec-meeting-20210510">recent meeting</a> of the national executive committee (NEC) of South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), are anything to go by, the party has reached a tipping point.</p>
<p>As he was giving an update of the NEC meeting, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa’s demeanour appeared to be that of a leader in charge, sending his secretary-general Ace Magashule <a href="https://www.enca.com/news/anc-secretary-general-ace-magashule-has-been-suspended">packing</a>, and giving him the executive committee’s ultimatum to apologise for his vindictive behaviour. The NEC is the ANC’s <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/national-executive-committee">highest governing structure</a> in between its five-yearly national conferences.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/elias-sekgobelo-magashule">Magashule</a>, who has been suspended by the party because he has been charged with <a href="https://mg.co.za/politics/2021-02-19-with-50-more-charges-magashule-gets-august-court-date/">fraud and corruption</a>, defiantly ignored his suspension and retaliated by in turn <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/magashule-attempt-to-suspend-ramaphosa-people-from-other-countries-were-calling-duarte-20210512">“suspending”</a> Ramaphosa.</p>
<p>In other words, he dared the president, but at his own peril. Ramaphosa is a formidable adversary. Based on his experience of their encounters during the negotiations for the new South Africa, FW de Klerk, the last apartheid-era president of South Africa, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/cyril-ramaphosa-who-anc-leader-jacob-zuma-south-africa-president-nelson-mandela-a8212046.html">warned that</a> Ramaphosa’s </p>
<blockquote>
<p>relaxed manner and convivial expression were contradicted by coldly calculating eyes, which seemed to be searching continuously for the softest spot in the defences of his opponents. His silver tongue and honeyed phrases lulled potential victims while his arguments relentlessly tightened around them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is what Ramaphosa, with the support of the NEC, has done to Magashule and his allies. He read them the riot act for disobedience. This bodes well for the ANC’s <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/politics/january-8-statement-anc-again-promises-renewal-within-its-ranks-20210108">renewal project</a>. This entails ridding the ANC of corruption, rebuilding public trust in it and ensuring it delivers on its obligations <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-new-dawn-should-be-built-on-evidence-based-policy-118129">as a government</a>. </p>
<p>According to Ramaphosa, all this is essential if the ANC is to win public trust and be a force for good in society.</p>
<p>Finally, Ramaphosa, who was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-safrica-politics-idUSKBN1EC05I">elected president</a> of the party in December 2017 on a <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017-12-18-cyril-ramaphosa-wins-anc-presidential-race/">slim margin</a>, has his grip on the ANC.</p>
<h2>Tumultuous epoch</h2>
<p>Ramaphosa is set to go down in the annals of history as an ANC president who presided over a tumultuous epoch in the party’s evolution. </p>
<p>He faced opposition from within the party ahead of his election, and his <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017-12-18-cyril-ramaphosa-wins-anc-presidential-race/">slim victory margin</a> emboldened those who had opposed him. Magashule pointedly <a href="https://www.news24.com/">took a jab</a> at Ramaphosa shortly after the election:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>it’s just a matter of five years, comrades. The conference happens every five years, so let’s work hard. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here, Magashule was mobilising his allies to start working on ensuring that, in the next elective conference in 2022, Ramaphosa is voted out of office.</p>
<p>This marked a fissure between the president and secretary-general, which found resonance in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-deal-with-provincial-strongmen-is-haunting-south-africas-ruling-party-96666">motley crew</a> elected to the leadership of the ANC in December 2017. The scene for internecine contestations was set. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man sitting in a chair and wearing a golf shirt in ANC colours looks in the distance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400506/original/file-20210513-18-civpg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400506/original/file-20210513-18-civpg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400506/original/file-20210513-18-civpg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400506/original/file-20210513-18-civpg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400506/original/file-20210513-18-civpg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400506/original/file-20210513-18-civpg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400506/original/file-20210513-18-civpg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ace Magashule, the suspended secretary-general of the ANC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Magashule is allied to Ramaphosa’s nemesis, former party president Jacob Zuma. Their faction within the ANC has fashioned itself as the true custodians of the aspirations of South Africa’s still economically weak black majority. They call themselves “<a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-03-14-carl-niehaus-tables-radical-economic-transformation-plan-ahead-of-ace-magashules-campaign-for-anc-president/">radical economic transformation forces</a>” fighting against the domination of the economy by the minority white population (<a href="https://theconversation.com/white-monopoly-capital-good-politics-bad-sociology-worse-economics-77338">white monopoly capital</a>), of which Ramaphosa is supposedly a lackey. </p>
<p>Magashule’s fierce opposition was part of his ongoing strategy of establishing a party within the party, from his powerful position. </p>
<p>This was a cardinal sin – and called for excommunication. But Magashule only got a rap over the knuckles. Instead of nipping it in the bud Ramaphosa pursued the elusive illusion of unity. This spawned mollycoddling, impunity and <a href="https://theconversation.com/precarious-power-tilts-towards-ramaphosa-in-battle-inside-south-africas-governing-party-158251">faustian pacts</a>.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa was made to look meek, to the extent that many started to ask whether the centre was holding. </p>
<p>The ANC became a platform for free-for-all, where squabbling over access to and control of public resources became a political preoccupation, with Magashule becoming a leading character working tirelessly to eviscerate Ramaphosa. The contestation was not ideologically driven. It was driven by greed. </p>
<p>By not acting earlier against Magashule, Ramaphosa’s leadership unwittingly became complicit in creating its own challenges. What appears to have broken the camel’s back were Magashule’s increasing infractions, his <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2019-05-03-four-times-cyril-ramaphosa-and-ace-magashule-have-butted-heads/">frequent contradictions</a> of the president’s public statements, especially on matters related to <a href="https://www.sastatecapture.org.za/">state capture</a> and corruption.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa eventually mustered the courage – and the support in the party – to suspend Magashule and gag his media gibberish. </p>
<p>Is the ANC out of the woods?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, not by a long shot.</p>
<h2>Can the ship be turned?</h2>
<p>Former party leader and president of the country Thabo Mbeki asked a vexing question after the NEC meeting that sealed Magashule’s fate:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/anc-nec-hears-claims-that-party-on-the-verge-of-collapse/">Do we still have any organisation called the ANC?</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The question is a profound one – not because of its literal poignancy, but for its figurative meaning. The moral heritage of the ANC has gone awry. The question for Ramaphosa is, how is his leadership going to bring this back to course?</p>
<p>It is disingenuous of Magashule’s allies to say the ANC is collapsing, but fudge the reasons for this with insinuations that ascribe developments to his suspension, instead of focusing on why he was suspended. </p>
<p>The party had increasingly become a haven for self-preservation rather than, as the governing party, the custodian of public interest. Accountability was met with short shrift and incendiary rhetoric to subvert justice. This included the ANC’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/conflating-morality-and-the-law-does-south-africas-governing-party-no-good-153730">“step aside resolution”</a>, which was taken at its 2017 national conference. The NEC’s guidelines for its implementation state that its members who are charged with serious crime should voluntarily step down, and if they fail to do so, should be suspended.</p>
<p>The moral indiscretion of some of its leaders has hollowed out any rectitude in the party. Its image in society is ruined. It is because of this that, as its leader, Ramaphosa’s job is cut out. </p>
<p>To turn things around, he requires taking on the best characterstics of former ANC leaders. The political savvy of <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a>, who kept the movement together for over three decades in exile; the reconciliatoty benevolence of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/nelson-mandela-presidency-1994-1999">Nelson Mandela</a>, who led it from 1991 to 1997; the wit of <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/former-president-thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a>, 1997 to 2007; and the calmness of Kgalema Motlanthe, party deputy president from 2007 to 2012; coupled with a bit of democratic dictatorship.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mashupye Herbert Maserumule received funding from the National Research Foundation(NRF) for his postgraduate studies. He is affiliated with the South African Association of Public Administration and Management (SAAPAM) and serves as the editor of the scholarly publication of this knowledges-based organisation - Journal of Public Administration.</span></em></p>Ramaphosa is set to go down in the annals of history as an ANC president who presided over a tumultuous epoch in the party’s evolution.Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1481212020-11-24T15:02:00Z2020-11-24T15:02:00ZMbeki and Obasanjo: case studies in the use of soft power in Africa’s interests<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364785/original/file-20201021-23-7ijop4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Thabo Mbeki share a light moment at a meeting of the G8 and developing nations in Tokyo in 2000.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Michel Euler</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The concept of soft power has been part of the parlance of international relations for <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1148580?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">three decades</a>. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00358533.2020.1819629?journalCode=ctrt20">Soft power</a> actors use non-coercive and persuasive means to achieve their objectives. Attraction rather than force is their preferred language.</p>
<p>The application of soft power remains focused on states because of their primacy in international politics. But, the increasing influence of non-state actors dictates a need to review this approach. Non-state actors on the international stage include international organisations, NGOs, multinational corporations, terrorist groups and individuals. </p>
<p>It is against this backdrop that I <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00358533.2020.1819629?journalCode=ctrt20">studied</a> the power of attraction of non-state actors. I focused on the soft power credentials of former African presidents – <a href="https://www.thebrenthurstfoundation.org/people/olusegun-obasanjo/">Olusegun Obasanjo</a> (Nigeria, 1999-2007) and <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/former-president-thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a> (South Africa, 1999-2008). </p>
<p>The two have made important contributions to the continent this century through promoting peace, democracy, pan-Africanism and regional integration.</p>
<p>The study captures the essence of their soft power. It also engages how it has rubbed off on their respective countries – during and after their presidencies. </p>
<p>I examined Obasanjo’s and Mbeki’s traits, ideas and policies. In particular I focused on their contribution to pan-Africanism and the idea of the <a href="http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/mbeki.html">African Renaissance</a>. I argue that they successfully used their soft power and international clout to make significant contributions in Africa and beyond.</p>
<h2>Obasanjo as a soft power president</h2>
<p>After Obasanjo’s civilian administration ended in 2007, he attracted widespread criticism within Nigeria. This is perhaps best captured by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s description of him as a “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt81pgm">master of hypocrisy</a>”.</p>
<p>But, this underplays some of his accomplishments. The period between 1976 and 1979 when he was the military head of state is <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Nigeria_s_External_Relations_and_Foreign.html?id=ImN0AAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">lauded by some</a> as the most dynamic era of Nigeria’s foreign policy. And during his civilian administration (1999–2007) Nigeria was catapulted from a pariah state (due to gross human right abuses by successive military regimes) to a significant regional and, to a lesser extent, global player. </p>
<p>Thanks to Obasanjo’s idiosyncratic soft power, Nigeria, once neglected in global affairs, witnessed an influx of high profile visits, including US presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Its voice was better heard in such bodies as the <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/">Commonwealth</a>, <a href="https://www.g77.org/">Group of 77</a> and the <a href="http://www.dirco.gov.za/foreign/Multilateral/inter/nam.htm">Non-Aligned Movement</a>. </p>
<p>Obasanjo was notable for his courage and decisiveness, particularly when it came to colonialism and, later, apartheid. His toughness on these issues, and his promotion of regional integration, had remarkable success. </p>
<p>A foreign policy that embraces genuine promotion of democracy and peacemaking generates <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=x5Q5DgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=soft+power&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwje2-zgiLvsAhX_SxUIHZ7aBt4Q6AEwAHoECAQQAg#v=onepage&q=soft%20power&f=false">soft power</a>. </p>
<p>Obasanjo enhanced his, and by extension Nigeria’s soft power through his successful peacemaking and promotion of democracy. The former, in places such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. The latter, in São Tomé and Príncipe, Togo and Côte d'Ivoire.</p>
<p>In Liberia, he was instrumental in ending the war. Obasanjo also facilitated the resignation of President Charles Taylor who was granted asylum in Nigeria. He played an active role in the transition to democratic rule that ushered in President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533952.2018.1492833?journalCode=rsdy20">in 2006</a>.</p>
<p>In São Tomé and Príncipe, Obasanjo ensured the reinstatement of President Fradique de Menezes following a military coup <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533952.2018.1492833?journalCode=rsdy20">in 2003</a>.</p>
<p>His reformist ideas, set out in the <a href="http://www.dirco.gov.za/foreign/Multilateral/africa/cssdca.htm">Memorandum of Understanding</a> of the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa, was adopted by the African Union summit in 2002. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589000600769926">memorandum</a> has four cornerstones. These are security, stability, development and cooperation as prerequisites for good governance on which African states would be measured. </p>
<p>It is thus clear that Obasanjo’s towering personality and international stature have enabled Nigeria to shape African institutions. He is thus a wielder of soft power.</p>
<p>Since leaving office, Obasanjo has continued to exhibit this soft power through conflict mediation and humanitarian interventions, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2008–2009) and Côte d'Ivoire (2011). </p>
<p>But, a number of shortfalls blot his soft power credentials. These include his unilateral decisions and apparent disdain for the rule of law <a href="https://journals.co.za/content/aa_afren/5/1/EJC10288">while in power</a>.</p>
<h2>Mbeki’s legacy</h2>
<p>Mbeki was influenced by some of Africa’s great political minds, as well as pan-African thinkers, during his years in exile in the UK. </p>
<p>For example, while studying at Sussex University in England in the mid-1960s, he engaged the ideas of pan-Africanist luminaries <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aime-Cesaire">Aimé Cesaire</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/fanon-and-the-politics-of-truth-and-lying-in-a-colonial-society-102594">Frantz Fanon</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-Senghor">Leopold Senghor</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/W-E-B-Du-Bois">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>. Arguably, all these individuals influenced Mbeki’s views as seen in his pursuit of pan-Africanism and African Renaissance. </p>
<p>Mbeki has often been labelled an “African intellectual” and “African <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17532523.2017.1414396">philosopher king</a>”. There is no gainsaying that his administration had the most impact of any post-apartheid government in international affairs – even more so than <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>. </p>
<p>This was evident in his push for South-South solidarity and reform of old international institutions such as the <a href="https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/">UN Security Council</a>. The African Union, despite its weaknesses, provided the platform for him to promote peace and security in Africa.</p>
<p>Exercising his soft power attribute (persuasion), Mbeki used shuttle diplomacy to garner the support of other African states, the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/group-eight-g8-industrialized-nations#:%7E:text=The%20Group%20of%20Eight%20(G8)%20refers%20to%20the%20group%20of,security%2C%20energy%2C%20and%20terrorism.">Group of Eight</a> and the <a href="https://asean.org/">Association of Southeast Asian States</a> to establish the <a href="https://www.nepad.org/">New Partnership for Africa’s Development</a> and the <a href="https://www.aprm-au.org/">African Peer Review Mechanism</a>. He was noted as a major peacemaker on the continent. This is best shown by his administration’s peacemaking and peacekeeping in Burundi, the DRC and Sudan.</p>
<p>Mbeki was often called upon to mediate and find lasting solutions to conflict in Africa. In 2004, the African Union asked that he proffer a political solution to the conflict in Côte d’Ivoire. He was actively involved in mediation to end conflicts in Comoros, Rwanda, Sudan, Eswatini and Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>Some of the interventions turned out to be a mere plastering of wounds as countries such as the DRC and Sudan remained fragile. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, Mbeki facilitated the <a href="https://peacemaker.un.org/drc-lusaka-agreement99">Lusaka ceasefire agreement</a> and the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/burundi_arusha-peace-and-reconciliation-agreement-for-burundi.pdf">Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement</a>. The accords aimed to end the DRC and Burundi’s conflicts, respectively.</p>
<p>Indeed, the calls for Mbeki’s mediation reflect recognition of his idiosyncratic soft power.</p>
<p>Mbeki’s administration demonstrated remarkable commitment to provide aid to Africa. The African Renaissance Fund was established in 2000 to disburse aid to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10220460802636158">fellow African states</a>. This offered an alternative to Western aid laced with debilitating conditions.</p>
<p>Mbeki continued to play a significant role after his presidency. He was appointed chair of the African Union’s efforts to bring peace to <a href="https://www.peaceau.org/en/article/progress-report-of-the-african-union-high-level-implementation-panel-for-sudan-and-south-sudan">Sudan and South Sudan</a> in 2009. This culminated in South Sudan’s independence in 2011.</p>
<p>The most significant factors that undermined his credibility were his <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40175024?seq=1">quiet diplomacy in Zimbabwe</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.25159/0256-8845/3094">HIV/AIDS denialism</a>. </p>
<p>Due to their soft power resources, Obasanjo and Mbeki made their mark on pan-Africanism and conflict resolution in Africa. Their ideas remain deeply ingrained in the African Union.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148121/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oluwaseun Tella 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>Former presidents Obasanjo and Mbeki have arguably made the most important contribution to Africa in the 21st Century by promoting peace, democracy, regional integration and pan-Africanism.Oluwaseun Tella, Director, The Future of Diplomacy at the Institute for the Future of Knowledge, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1453312020-09-03T15:50:45Z2020-09-03T15:50:45ZBook shines light on Dennis Brutus, one of South Africa’s most underrated poets<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355798/original/file-20200901-18-1s7reif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A younger Dennis Brutus, president of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee in Montreal, Canada in 1976.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Neil Leifer /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fortunately for the rest of us South Africans, the apartheid police state often shot itself in the foot. On the one hand, after a horrifying <a href="https://www.thejournalist.org.za/pioneers/henry-nxumalo/">exposé</a> of jail conditions in <a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668"><em>Drum</em></a> magazine at the end of the 1950s, it passed a total censorship statute on anything that went on inside prisons.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it incarcerated three of South Africa’s best poets – <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dennis-brutus">Dennis Brutus</a> on Robben Island, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/breyten-breytenbach">Breyten Breytenbach </a> and <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/jeremy-cronin-mr">Jeremy Cronin</a> in Pretoria Central – convicted for anti-apartheid activities. Surprise: after their eventual release, all the jails’ brutality and cruelties came out in graphic print for the world to read.</p>
<p>Tyrone August’s welcome, and overdue, biography – <a href="http://www.bestred.co.za/dennis-brutus-detail.html"><em>Dennis Brutus, The South African Years</em></a> – is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation at the University of the Western Cape.</p>
<p>This book both gives us readers the most thorough biography to date on Brutus, though there is nothing about where and how his seven children completed school and made their lives. The book focuses on how Brutus’ poems were influenced by the poets he read at school and university. Hopefully it will aid his poems becoming more prominent in future anthologies of South African poems, and in school books.</p>
<p>Brutus is one of the most underrated poets of South Africa. Among this reviewer’s treasured books are two collections, inscribed and autographed in his incredibly neat calligraphy.</p>
<p>All told, Brutus published 12 collections, starting in 1963 with <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sirens-knuckles-boots-Dennis-Brutus/dp/B0006CRN5W"><em>Sirens, Knuckles, Boots</em></a> and culminating in 2005 with <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16155787-leafdrift"><em>Leafdrift</em></a>. In addition, Worcester State University (US) brought out a selected poetry collection <a href="https://libguides.worcester.edu/archives/Dennis-Brutus">in 2004</a> to honour his 80th birthday.</p>
<p>That none of his collections were published in South Africa testifies to apartheid police state censorship: leftists passed from hand to hand copies of his poems. This <em>samizdat</em> circulated in handwritten, typewritten, and later photocopied sheets of paper.</p>
<p>Brutus was born in 1924 in the country today named Zimbabwe; his parents returned to South Africa two years later. He started teaching in 1950 and married in the same year. The government banned him from teaching in 1961 because of his anti-apartheid activities, depriving him of earning a living.</p>
<h2>Jail and exile</h2>
<p>Brutus fled to eSwatini (Swaziland), then a British colony, in 1963. The British colonial authorities refused to grant him a residence permit. He crossed the border to Mozambique. The PIDE secret police in Portuguese colonial Mozambique handed him over to the South African police’s Special Branch that targeted political activists. </p>
<p>He was shot trying to escape, and sentenced to 18 months on <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/robben-island">Robben Island</a>. Repeated beatings, and harrowing assaults, culminated in months of solitary confinement, causing hallucinations and nervous breakdown. He finally left South Africa on a no-return exit permit in 1966 after his release.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dennis-brutus-south-african-literary-giant-who-was-reluctant-to-tell-his-life-story-141730">Dennis Brutus: South African literary giant who was reluctant to tell his life story</a>
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<p>His first job in exile in the UK was as campaign director of the <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/gandhi-luthuli-documentation-centre/role-international-defence-and-aid-fund">International Defence and Aid Fund</a>, which raised money to hire lawyers to defend political prisoners and to send subsistence allowances to their next of kin. </p>
<p>In 1971 he emigrated to the US, becoming a professor in the English Department at Northwestern University. In 1975 he co-founded the African Literature Association. From 1986 he became professor of African literature at the University of Pittsburgh. He returned to South Africa in 2005 as an honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Involved in wider causes than just in South Africa, such as the <a href="https://www.pambazuka.org/activism/southern-africa-southern-african-social-forum">Southern African Social Forum</a>, he died of cancer in 2009.</p>
<p>Dennis Brutus’ achievements were two-fold: as a political activist and as poet.</p>
<h2>Political activism</h2>
<p>He joined the Teachers’ League of South Africa in 1950, which was the major affiliate of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/non-european-unity-movement-neum">Non-European Unity Movement</a>. Mostly comprising <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Coloured">Coloured </a> teachers, it focused on anti-racism and anti-imperialism issues. But he was non-dogmatic, also participating in protests of the Coloured People’s Congress, affiliated to the African National Congress. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>He hid both <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a> and <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a> (top ANC leaders who had to go underground to avoid detention) in his home when they visited Port Elizabeth. He was also friends and worked with Eddie Daniels and Patrick Duncan of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/liberal-party-south-africa-lpsa">Liberal Party</a>, a small non-racial political party.</p>
<p>As a sports administrator, he founded the South African Sports Association and later the South African Non-Racial Olympics Committee (<a href="https://africanactivist.msu.edu/organization.php?name=South+African+Non-Racial+Olympic+Committee#:%7E:text=The%20South%20African%20Non%2DRacial,went%20into%20exile%20in%201966.">Sanroc</a>) to lead the campaigns to get whites-only sports codes boycotted by foreign touring teams. Their first victory came in 1956, when the International Table Tennis Federation admitted as member the non-racial <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/SPORT/SPORTRAM.htm">South African Table Tennis Board</a> instead of the whites-only SA Table Tennis Union. </p>
<p>Global football followed with the same ban in 1961. <a href="https://www.joc.or.jp/english/historyjapan/tokyo1964.html#:%7E:text=The%20Games%20of%20the%2018th,introduced%20for%20the%20first%20time.">The 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo</a> became the first to exclude whites-only or internally segregated South African sports organisations. Activists from both the Unity Movement and those aligned to the ANC built up this no-racism-in-sport movement.</p>
<p>Throughout the remaining apartheid decades, overseas protesters led demonstrations against whites-only Springbok (South African national) teams.</p>
<h2>Dennis Brutus the poet</h2>
<p>Brutus’ development as a poet was influenced by the English Romantics, including Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats. He also read Yeats, Eliot and Auden. One major challenge for scholars of his oeuvre is that censorship compelled him to publish his prose and poems under a bewildering array of noms-de-plume: Anon., J.B Booth, B.K, le Dab, D.A.B., Julius Friend, John Player, and L.N Terry.</p>
<p>What demonstrated his originality and courage was that virtually no English language poets in South Africa had published poems on politics since <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roy-Campbell">Roy Campbell</a> in the 1920s. <a href="http://www.mwsfoundation.org.za/index.php/featured/304-welcome-to-unique-avcom">Mongane Wally Serote</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mandla-langa-1950">Mandla Langa</a> and <a href="http://www.apc.uct.ac.za/apc/researchers/professor-njabulo-ndebele">Njabulo Ndebele</a> were among the first literary critics to praise Brutus’ poems.</p>
<p>Probably his most widely circulated poem, <em>For a Dead African</em>, delineated the 1950s in its first stanza:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have no heroes and no wars</p>
<p>Only victims of a sickly state</p>
<p>Succumbing to the variegated sores</p>
<p>That flower under lashing rains of hate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His second stanza chillingly prophesied the 1960s detentions of anti-apartheid activists:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have no battles and no fights</p>
<p>for history to record with trite remark</p>
<p>only captives killed on eyeless nights</p>
<p>And accidental dyings in the dark.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A topic repeated in his poem <em>In Memoriam</em> to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24764301?seq=1">Imam Abdullah Haroun</a>, a clergyman beaten and kicked to death in detention by the Special Branch:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>because he chose not to speak / he died</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Brutus showed his political colours in print in <em>At a Funeral</em> about <a href="https://escholarship.org/content/qt6tc554rb/qt6tc554rb.pdf?t=mniomb">Valencia Majombozi</a>, who died in August 1960, shortly after graduation as a doctor, after much hardship:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Black, green and gold at sunset; pageantry and stubbled graves</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ANC colours were then illegal. To fly them was punished by up to six months in jail.</p>
<p>Other widely printed lines come from <em>Nightsong City</em>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sleep well my love, sleep well;</p>
<p>The harbour lights glaze over the restless docks,</p>
<p>Police cars cockroach through the tunnel streets;</p>
<p>From the shanties creaking iron-sheet</p>
<p>Violence like a bug-infested rag is tossed</p>
<p>And fear in immanent as sound in the wind-swung bell</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These relevant Brutus poems should be put up on the walls for tourists to view during the Robben Island Museum tours, which are led by former political prisoners as guides. This book should be in every library, and on your bookshelf.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.bestred.co.za/dennis-brutus-detail.html">Dennis Brutus: The South African Years</a> is published by Best Red, an imprint of the HSRC Press.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145331/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member, but writes this review in his personal capacities as a historian and a poet.</span></em></p>That none of his collections were published in apartheid South Africa testifies to the police state’s censorship.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1432762020-07-23T12:07:41Z2020-07-23T12:07:41ZAndrew Mlangeni 1925-2020: South Africa loses the last of the Rivonia triallists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349119/original/file-20200723-23-2h6mfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African freedom struggle stalwart Andrew Mlangeni at the UN.
</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Anti-apartheid struggle hero <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/andrew-mokete-mlangeni">Andrew Mokete Mlangeni</a>, who died this week at the age of 95, was the last surviving of the eight African National Congress (ANC) activists who were sentenced to life imprisonment in the infamous <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/people-involved-rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia trial in the 1960s</a>. </p>
<p>Mlangeni spent 20 of his 26 years in jail on Robben Island alongside fellow triallist Nelson Mandela and other luminaries of the ANC. He symbolised the generations who had joined the ANC during the most dangerous period of resistance to apartheid. No rewards, but only vindictive persecution, including detention and jail, were all that they could expect. They joined the movement to overthrow apartheid and build the South Africa envisioned in the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter of 1955</a>, the ANC’s blueprint for a free, democratic South Africa.</p>
<p>But he was no party apparatchik. He became a fierce critic of the ANC as it matured into a political party and began to show all the signs of abandoning its early commitment to establish a just South Africa. He was particularly outspoken about rampant corruption under President Jacob Zuma.</p>
<p>Speaking at the Rhodes University conferment of an honorary doctorate, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-04-09-read-in-full-andrew-mlangenis-inspiring-graduation-speech/">he said </a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some of our political leaders have become absolutely corrupt – they are no longer interested in improving the lives of our people. They are busy lining their pockets with the money that is meant to help the poor people. What a disgrace.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He said that if convicted of corruption, Zuma should be jailed.</p>
<h2>Early life</h2>
<p>His early life exemplified what so many South Africans shared. </p>
<p>He was born on 6 June 1925 on a white-owned farm near Bethlehem in the Free State. His father died when he was one year old. The farm owner then evicted the family, who went to live in the blacks-only township of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Bethlehem-South-Africa">Bethlehem</a>, known as Bohlokong (Place of sorrow) in Sesotho. Andrew had to drop out of school to earn money as a caddy at the nearest golf club.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mandela-was-a-flawed-icon-but-without-him-south-africa-would-be-a-sadder-place-142826">Mandela was a flawed icon. But without him South Africa would be a sadder place</a>
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<p>In 1939, he and his mother moved to Pimville, in what is today part of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/soweto">Soweto</a>, the sprawling black residential area southwest of Johannesburg. He returned to school: one of his teachers was <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a>, an ANC activist who went on to lead the movement in exile, after it was banned in April 1960.</p>
<p>In 1946 he began work in a factory. First-hand experience of exploitation made him join the Young Communist League. In 1951 he joined the African National Congress Youth League, and in 1954 the ANC. He married June Ledwaba in 1950. They had four children; she passed away in 2001.</p>
<h2>Freedom fighter</h2>
<p>In 1961 Mandela selected Mlangeni as one of the first six volunteers to be smuggled out of South Africa to receive military training and join the newly founded uMkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation), the armed wing of the ANC. He was trained in China, and successfully returned to South Africa.</p>
<p>In 1963 Mlangeni was among those the Special Branch of the apartheid police detained at Liliesleaf farm, and joined Mandela and others as accused in the Rivonia trial for sabotage. In 1964 they were sentenced to life imprisonment, and transferred to <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/analysis/explainer-andrew-mlangeni-what-happened-at-the-rivonia-trial-20200722">Robben Island prison</a>.</p>
<p>When the political prisoners won the right to study by correspondence in 1967, he was the first to enrol, and obtained a degree from the University of South Africa. After 26 years in jail, he was one of the Rivonia triallists released in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/world/freed-prisoners-call-on-pretoria-to-let-mandela-go.html">October 1989</a>. </p>
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<img alt="GCIS" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrew Mokete Mlangeni receives an honorary Doctor of Literature and Philosophy degree at Unisa.</span>
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</figure>
<p>When South Africa became a democracy <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14662040008447830?journalCode=fccp20">in 1994</a>, he was elected as an ANC member of parliament, serving until the 1999 election. He later served a second term, from 2009 to 2014. He was a <a href="https://www.pa.org.za/person/andrew-mlangeni/">member of both</a> the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans and the <a href="https://www.pa.org.za/person/andrew-mlangeni/">Joint Committee on Ethics and Members’ Interests</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/denis-goldberg-rivonia-triallist-liberation-struggle-stalwart-outspoken-critic-137670">Denis Goldberg: Rivonia triallist, liberation struggle stalwart, outspoken critic</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>His Rivonia celebrity status, and being an octogenarian veteran, gave him the space as an MP to take a public stance against corruption in Zuma’s administration. </p>
<p>He repeatedly criticised his own party in public, regardless of the tensions that would cause with some members of his own caucus. Up to the time of his death, he chaired the ANC Integrity Committee. Though a majority on the ANC’s National Executive Committee got it to ignore the Integrity Committee’s findings, Mlangeni had done all that he could.</p>
<h2>Accolades earned</h2>
<p>Mlangeni was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/andrew-mokete-mlangeni">awarded</a> the Order for Meritorious Service, gold class, in 1999 by President Mandela, the first head of state of democratic South Africa. In 2016 he was granted the <a href="https://www.joburg.org.za/media_/Newsroom/Pages/2016%20&%202015%20Articles/bizos-mlangeni-given-the-freedom-of-joburg-ID10496.aspx">Freedom of Johannesburg</a> and the <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/anc-veteran-andrew-mlangeni-in-london-to-receive-freedom-of-the-city-20180719">Freedom of the City of London</a>, and received the inaugural <a href="https://www.leadsa.co.za/articles/295772/the-launch-of-the-george-bizos-human-rights-award">George Bizos Human Rights Award</a>, named after the veteran human rights lawyer who represented the Rivonia triallists. </p>
<p>In 2017 he appeared in the documentary film <a href="https://www.uct.ac.za/event/life-wonderful-mandelas-unsung-heroes">Life is Wonderful</a>, along with the then two other living survivors of the Rivonia trial, <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-06-07-life-is-wonderful-retelling-the-rivonia-trial-with-new-voices/">Ahmed Kathrada and Denis Goldberg</a>.</p>
<p>In 2018 Durban University of Technology conferred an <a href="https://www.dut.ac.za/dut-to-confer-honorary-doctorate-to-dr-andrew-mlangeni/">honorary doctorate in Education on him</a>; in the same year, Rhodes University granted him <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/latestnews/archives/2018/rhodesconfershonorarydoctoratetodrandrewmoketemlangeni.html">an honorary doctorate in law</a>. The ANC awarded him its highest honour, Isithwalandwe-Seaparankoe, <a href="https://www.deccanchronicle.com/world/africa/220720/andrew-mlangeni-ally-of-mandela-in-anti-apartheid-struggle-dies-at-9.html">in 1992</a>.</p>
<p>President Cyril Ramaphosa <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/breaking-anti-apartheid-struggle-stalwart-andrew-mlangeni-dies-20200722">said on his death</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The passing of Andrew Mokete Mlangeni signifies the end of a generational history and places the future squarely in our hands. He was a champion and exemplar of the values we need to build in South Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When the weekly barrage of media coverage on the ANC is dominated by reports of corruption, Mlangeni’s life work reminds South Africans of commitment to winning democracy and defending tenaciously its triumphs and achievements. </p>
<p>It reminds us that democracy is not only a destination, but also a lifelong commitment to a just society and fighting for it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143276/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member, but writes this obituary in his professional capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>Although a commited veteran of the ANC, Mlangeni was no party apparatchik. He was outspoken against endemic corruption in government.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1428262020-07-17T07:07:36Z2020-07-17T07:07:36ZMandela was a flawed icon. But without him South Africa would be a sadder place<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347935/original/file-20200716-21-pen2n5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nelson Mandela, South Africa's freedom struggle icon and first black president, continues to be revered around the world. </span> </figcaption></figure><p>I was one of the thousands who watched <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>, the South African liberation struggle hero, leave prison on 11 February 1990, and then mount the podium in front of Cape Town’s City Hall, expressing the hope that the apartheid government would agree to negotiations so that there might no longer be the need for armed struggle against apartheid to continue. He <a href="https://apnews.com/7aa2aa4c5132da1676087cb6be48c9d0">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Today, the majority of South Africans, black and white, recognise that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our decisive mass action … We have waited too long for our freedom.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He appealed to white South Africans to </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://apnews.com/7aa2aa4c5132da1676087cb6be48c9d0">join us in the safety of a new South Africa. The freedom movement is a political home for you, too</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I was thrilled but also, underneath that, felt concern about the forces against him. I worried about the violence the apartheid military and its proxies would unleash.</p>
<p>I fretted about what I’d seen during my decade of membership of the African National Congress (ANC), the leading liberation movement for which he was jailed: the seeping corruption, elbowing for position, the exile old guard’s insistence on primacy. And, as he left prison hand in hand with his wife, Winnie, I feared the influence of a woman who’d already been convicted of kidnapping, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/books-paint-contrasting-pictures-of-winnie-madikizela-mandela-109893">accused of so much more</a>.</p>
<p>As I will show, these concerns were borne out. But, three decades on since his release, it still feels that without Mandela South Africa would be a sadder place. </p>
<p>The “Great Man” take on the past so often misses the undercurrents that keep greatness afloat, and yet there are few moments in recent world history where one person made quite such a difference.</p>
<p>Mandela’s extraordinary gifts – his integrity and self-discipline, intelligence and intellectual curiosity, depth of perception, strategic vision and tactical nous, and his steely resolve – set him apart. Towards the end of his <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-23618727">27 years in prison</a>, that meant leading in a direction that felt uncomfortable to some, through conducting <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/nelson-mandela-and-the-general-graphic-novel-apartheid-secret-negotiations-bloodshed-south-africa-a8633096.html">secret talks </a> with the government.</p>
<h2>Compromise and bargain</h2>
<p>Throughout this period he kept <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo’s</a> exile leadership of the ANC informed. But there were misgivings about his role. Mandela later went out of his way to allay these fears.</p>
<p>The example I recall most vividly (because I had to rush around closing secret offices and bank accounts) came six months after his release when the leadership of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/members-anc-and-sacp-are-detained-due-operation-vula">“Operation Vula”</a> (the ANC and South African Communist Party’s underground network) were rounded up.</p>
<p>FW De Klerk, the last apartheid president, used the arrests to demand that the Communist Party leader Joe Slovo be dropped from the ANC’s negotiating team. But Mandela, who’d once been a party member, dug in. De Klerk backed down, and <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/cis/omalley/OMalleyWeb/03lv03445/04lv03996/05lv04005.htm">eventually indemnified the group</a>.</p>
<p>The four years of negotiations saw more people killed in political violence – mostly from the state and its proxies, with <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02167/04lv02264/05lv02335/06lv02357/07lv02372/08lv02379.htm">an estimated 14,000 people dying</a>. Mandela could not prevent this mayhem, but his authority and gravitas kept the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">negotiations to end apartheid </a> afloat. Authority and momentum seeped from De Klerk into Mandela.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-mandela-stayed-fit-from-his-matchbox-soweto-home-to-a-prison-cell-135690">How Mandela stayed fit: from his 'matchbox' Soweto home to a prison cell</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Still, he and his team had to make compromises. One was that the apartheid military were mollycoddled because of the danger they presented. Another was that the ANC had to allow <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/inkatha-freedom-party-ifp">Inkatha</a>, the Zulu-nationalist party led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, control of KwaZulu-Natal.</p>
<p>In the end, Mandela’s team got more than many expected – a one-person, one-vote election and a <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-1#:%7E:text=The%20Constitution%20of%20the%20Republic%20of%20South%20Africa%2C%201996%2C%20was,supreme%20law%20of%20the%20land.&text=South%20Africa's%20Constitution%20is%20one,and%20enjoys%20high%20acclaim%20internationally">progressive constitution</a> with no entrenched rights for racial minorities. Without Mandela none of this would have been certain, or even likely.</p>
<h2>Mandela’s presidency</h2>
<p>Mandela’s five years as president were more ambiguous. He helped keep the peace through gestures like appointing De Klerk and Buthelezi to his cabinet, wearing Springbok colours in presenting the rugby World Cup trophy to the victorious South African side <a href="https://www.rugbyworldcup.com/news/103756">in 1995</a> and securing the formation of the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a>.</p>
<p>There were real changes, including houses for the poor and water supplies for three million, with two million <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/mandela-a-biography/oclc/437299443">connected to the electricity grid</a>. But job-creation programmes were abandoned and the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Mandela.html?id=eZsMAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">gap between rich and poor remained </a> even if the ranks of the rich became more racially mixed – and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27522260?seq=1">crime rates remained disturbingly high</a>. </p>
<p>It is sometimes said that the <a href="https://sastatecapture.org.za/">corruption that engulfed the country</a> started during <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/former-president-thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki’s presidency</a> (June 1999 to September 2008) and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e0991464-ee79-11e9-bfa4-b25f11f42901">became endemic under Jacob Zuma</a> (May 2009 to February 2018). But <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-corruption-in-south-africa-isnt-simply-about-zuma-and-the-guptas-113056">the seeds were sown earlier</a>, and Mandela did little to curb its growth within the ANC while leader.</p>
<p>He also neglected the HIV/AIDS pandemic while president. When I discussed this with Edwin Cameron, the Constitutional Court judge and HIV/AIDS activist, in an interview published in South Africa’s <em>Sunday Independent</em> in 2001, he shook his head sadly. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Of all the leaders of the 20th century who might have had an impact, Mandela was the one who could have done the most – without doubt this was one of the grievous omissions of his presidency…
He did 199 things that contributed to our nation’s salvation but the one thing he didn’t do as president was take a lead on AIDS – and it’s not because he wasn’t begged to. We tried in every single way, but he didn’t take it up and it was a tragedy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mandela’s talent for reading the political runes was not always matched by his ability to read people. Internal political leaders who’d publicly criticised Winnie were sidelined but his patrician’s hope that he could have a benign influence on her evaporated. They separated in 1992 and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/02/winnie-madikizela-mandela-obituary">divorced in 1995</a>.</p>
<h2>Secure legacy</h2>
<p>Mandela’s tendency to defer to the exile leadership came at a cost. He appointed several dud former exiles to his cabinet, including the <a href="https://www.biznews.com/interviews/2016/06/01/how-world-sees-sa-watch-zuma-imbongi-nkoana-mashabane-bombs-on-aljazeera">dozy Alfred Nzo</a> as foreign affairs minister and the <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2014-09-02-joe-modise-benefited-from-arms-deal-former-scopa-chair/">corrupt Joe Modise</a> as defence minister.</p>
<p>He also conceded to pressure from exile leaders to appoint Mbeki rather than Cyril Ramaphosa as deputy president, despite having earlier swapped them as negotiations head, regarding Mbeki as thin-skinned and inflexible, according to his official biographer, Anthony Sampson. Yet Mandela increasingly delegated power to his dauphin, who <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/opinion/24sat1.html">displayed the paranoia and obduracy he’d feared</a>.</p>
<p>Mandela left at the right time in 1999, when the country still seemed in a healthy state, after which he consolidated his international reputation, while throwing himself into the HIV/AIDS campaign on learning that his son, Makgatho, was HIV-positive. He described it as a war that had <a href="https://theconversation.com/mandelas-stance-on-hiv-set-him-apart-from-his-anc-successors-21264">killed more than “all previous wars”</a>.</p>
<p>This 18th of July marks what would have been his 102nd birthday. His legacy is secure, the rough edges smoothed – a figure of reconciliation more than a guerrilla leader, a statesman, not a former communist, an icon solidified in sculptor’s stone rather than a magnificent, flawed and complex human being.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142826/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans 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>Mandela left at the right time in 1999, when the country still seemed in a healthy state, after which he consolidated his international reputation.Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed 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">
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<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/916702018-04-09T14:54:29Z2018-04-09T14:54:29ZAn appreciation of South Africa’s jazz stalwart Jonas Gwangwa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212255/original/file-20180327-109175-tz2jim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C338%2C1985%2C1730&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa performing in Germany in 2010.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Music galore marked the passing early in 2018 of two South African titans of culture, Poet Laureate <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tribute-to-keorapetse-kgositsile-south-africas-poet-laureate-89700">Keorapetse Kgositsile</a> and trumpeter <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a>. Notable at their memorial events were powerfully moving tributes by two veterans still living: <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/biography-caiphus-semenya">Caiphus Semenya</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jonas-mosa-gwangwa">Jonas Gwangwa</a>. They have shared stages and the perils of exile with both. </p>
<p>Semenya and Gwangwa’s histories raise a persistent question – why, given the scale of their achievements, are they not more famous? The answer may be rooted in the prominence of live performance over composition: everybody remembers the man or woman on stage. Fewer enquire about who wrote – let alone arranged – the song.</p>
<p>So the 80-year-old Jonas Mosa Gwangwa can command instant warmth and recognition on stage, singing or playing trombone. That music has won him friends and fans around the world. The democratic South African government acknowledged his role in, as they termed it, “singing down apartheid” with the Order of Ikhamanga (Gold) in 2010. But even the <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/jonas-gwangwa">citation</a> for that award omitted much about the scope of his work as composer, arranger and director of stage shows.</p>
<p>Gwangwa was born in Orlando East, outside Johannesburg in 1937. As a student, he became a founder-member of the influential Huddleston Jazz Band alongside Masekela. And, like his contemporary, he also moonlighted wherever there was band work – for example, in trumpeter Elijah Nwanyane’s Rhythm Kings. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MS_0-Iy99L8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa often performed in Elijah’s Rhythm Kings.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When American pianist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/05/obituaries/john-mehegan-jazz-pianist-wrote-4-volume-textbook.html">John Mehegan</a> visited South Africa in the late 1950s, Gwangwa was one of the improvisers with whom he chose to work.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a2HU70zFxl8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa performed with John Mehegan.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Those and other collaborations led, in turn, to the 1960 release of the <a href="http://revive-music.com/2011/06/21/the-jazz-epistles-jazz-epistle-verse-1/">“Jazz Epistles, Verse One”</a>. It was the first LP released by black modern jazz players in South Africa. It also featured <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kippie-jeremiah-moeketsi">Kippie Moeketsi</a>, Masekela, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abdullah-ibrahim">Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim)</a> and more. As Gwangwa told me in my book <em><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/soweto-blues-9780826416629/">Soweto Blues</a></em> (2004):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Kippie got interested in both Hugh and I because we were attempting all those Charlie Parker things, and Kippie said: ‘Oh, so you like this music? Come here, let me teach you…’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was during the making of the Jazz Epistles album that Gwangwa began to compose: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I sat at the piano, messing around until I came up with this tune <em>Carol’s Drive</em>… a style was being formulated, of course, only I was not aware of this… I was thinking that I could improvise so why can’t I compose?</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Jazz Epistles with the Gwangwa composition, ‘Carol’s Drive’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His music writing skills grew when he was engaged as a copyist and pit player for the famous musical <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/king-kong-musical-1959-1961">“King Kong”</a>. When the production toured abroad in 1961, Gwangwa was one of many cast members who chose not to return to apartheid South Africa after the show’s run concluded. He ended up with Masekela at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. </p>
<p>Gwangwa played a pivotal role in selling South African music to initially uninterested US audiences. He was arranger and orchestra director on Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba’s 1965 Grammy winning album <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/an-evening-with-belafonte-makeba-mw0000453025">“An Evening with Makeba and Belafonte”</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TXAcMI1ROeI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Train Song’ from ‘An Evening with Makeba and Belafonte’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over the following decade, he also had his own projects, touring with Masekela and Semenya in the band, Union of South Africa, alongside American jazz band, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-crusaders-mn0000136075">The Crusaders</a>.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Union of South Africa.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gwangwa also released infectious Afro-pop with his band African Explosion.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HN9Jn74wi4I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Gwangwa’s band African Explosion.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Politically meaningful</h2>
<p>But, increasingly, the necessity to do something more politically meaningful with his music was becoming. As Gwangwa told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I figured that before I became an Americanised African, I have to go home and… grab a little kryptonite.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the early 1980s he was summoned by the president of the then banned <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/african-national-congress-anc">African National Congress (ANC)</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-kaizana-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a> to assist with a group of young musicians in the ANC training camps in Angola who wanted to perform. The result was a musical, called <em>Amandla!</em>. With its slick, disciplined stagecraft, varied programming, comedy, dance routines and original as well as traditional and struggle songs,<a href="http://www.peripherycenter.org/music/music-anti-apartheid-south-africa"> <em>Amandla!</em></a> was light years away from simplistic agit-prop.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The track ‘Sasol’ from the original musical ‘Amandla!’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The script-line was kept sharply up to date:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I always added or changed something to tally with whatever’s happening inside the country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Between tours, Gwangwa spent as much time as he could in the ANC’s military camps, rehearsing, scouting new talent and sharing the risks. After a vehicle accident in Angola shattered his leg, he spent more time in Botswana, working with the Gaborone-based Medu Arts Ensemble. It was there that much of his best loved <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/pure-sounds-of-africa/987954418">material</a> was developed.</p>
<p>The physical perils of exile manifested tragically on 14 June 1985 when the South African Defence Force <a href="http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/glossary/gaborone_raid.htm?tab=report">raided Gaborone</a>, killing more than a dozen people, many connected with Medu. For weeks afterwards, unmarked vehicles with South African number plates spied on Gaborone. One hunted Gwangwa through the streets until he evaded it in the narrow alleys of an informal settlement.</p>
<h2>Shortlisted for an Oscar</h2>
<p>In 1987, Gwangwa worked with UK composer George Fenton on the soundtrack for the movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092804/">“Cry Freedom”</a>, based on the friendship between newspaper editor Donald Woods and civil rights activist, Steve Biko. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cry-Freedom-Original-Picture-Soundtrack/dp/B000002O5E">music</a> was shortlisted for an Oscar and multiple other international awards, winning both an Ivor Novello and a Black Emmy award. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The title track from the soundtrack of ‘Cry Freedom’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although Gwangwa continued to perform – he played at both the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/british-anti-apartheid-movement-hosts-concert-mandela">1988 Nelson Mandela Birthday Concert</a> and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01b78f7">1990 Mandela release concerts in London</a> – that exposure opened additional doors to composing opportunities. Back home, by the mid-1990s his name was both a regular feature on music festival programmes, and a regular pop-up on film in composers’ credits. Since his return home, he has released eight albums.</p>
<p>Although composing now dominates his time, Gwangwa is still a powerfully compelling live artist. It may be a cliché, but one that is sometimes true: Gwangwa’s music at two memorial services for Kgositsile earlier this year – reprising songs that Medu veterans remember well from Botswana – really did not leave a dry eye in the house.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Gwangwa at a memorial service for Keorapetse Kgositsile.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell 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>South African jazz veteran Jonas Gwangwa has been getting recognition for the pivotal role he played in ‘singing down apartheid.’Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/858382017-10-25T12:18:10Z2017-10-25T12:18:10ZSouth Africa’s ANC is celebrating the year of OR Tambo. Who was he?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190606/original/file-20171017-30390-1bx309e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Oliver Reginald Tambo served as ANC president from 1967 to 1991.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">Oliver Tambo’s</a> name and reputation are <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781770100756">lauded</a>, not least because he succeeded, remarkably, in keeping the African National Congress <a href="http://www.anc.org.za">(ANC)</a> together as a liberation movement during an <a href="http://www.whyjoburg.com/oliver-tambo.html">exile lasting 30 years</a>. Despite this legacy, the ANC, now South Africa’s governing party, has seen a year culminating in what is, arguably, its greatest crisis. Today, factions within the ANC nostalgically point to the <a href="http://www.sabc.co.za/wps/portal/news/main/tag?tag=OR%20Tambo%20Memorial%20Lecture">example of Oliver Reginald Tambo</a> , or OR as he was affectionately known in party circles.</p>
<p>Evidence of <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/the-race-corruption-a-big-problem-for-anc">systemic corruption</a> and <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/09/04/mkhize-we-must-face-up-to-the-problems-of-factions-inside-anc">factionalism</a> for personal gain within the ANC are blamed for the failure to deliver improved living conditions to the poorest communities. The loss of three major metropolitan municipal councils in the industrial heartland testifies to diminished <a href="https://theconversation.com/sharp-tongued-south-african-voters-give-ruling-anc-a-stiff-rebuke-63606">confidence in the ANC</a>.</p>
<p>By contrast, in the year of his <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/splash/index">centenary</a>, Oliver Tambo is held as an exemplar of integrity, personifying the ideal of a leader who for 50 years selflessly served the movement, consistently holding up the goals of a humane and caring society.</p>
<p>But who was this much talked about Tambo? And what lessons can be learnt from his leadership?</p>
<h2>Exile</h2>
<p>In 1960, after the <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-E">Sharpeville massacre</a>, then ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli instructed Tambo to leave South Africa as an international <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">diplomat of the ANC</a>. His task was to mobilise a worldwide economic boycott.</p>
<p>With hindsight it was a prescient judgement call. The military wing of the ANC <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a> was launched a year later and within two years leaders of the ANC were facing charges of treason in the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia Trial</a>. The trial, which stretched through 1963-1964, led to life sentences for the leaders of Umkhonto we Sizwe, which included <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/walter-ulyate-sisulu">Walter Sisulu</a>, <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>, <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2360">Govan Mbeki</a> and <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/mr-ahmed-kathrada">Ahmed Kathrada</a>.</p>
<p>Tambo’s task was to alert the world to the horrors of apartheid South Africa, and to seek assistance and support from newly independent states in Africa. It was to be more than 30 years before he returned home in <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/oliver-tambo-returns-exile">December 1990</a>. During this time, his integrity combined with his keen intellect and natural warmth impressed many people in diverse countries around the world.</p>
<h2>Consensus seeker</h2>
<p>Tambo was a careful and astute listener. He followed the indigenous African consensus system of decision making, crafting a conclusion that included at least some of the opinions of all participants.</p>
<p>He believed that the ANC should maintain the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">“high moral ground”</a> and that it should be a broad umbrella under which all enemies of apartheid could shelter and enrich the movement, irrespective of their political beliefs. He was also cautious, likening the challenge of the liberation struggle to the traditional <em>“indima”</em> method of ploughing a very large piece of land. He <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">explained</a> at a Sophiatown meeting in 1953.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s a point where you must start. You can’t plough it all at once – you have to tackle it acre by acre…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of Tambo’s strengths was his constructive and creative response to criticism. In 1967, for example, following the failure of Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres to reach the borders of South Africa after a battle at <a href="http://www.sadet.co.za/docs/rtd/vol1/sadet1_chap12.pdf">Wankie in “Rhodesia”</a> (now Zimbabwe), Chris Hani and others, disillusioned with the leaders’ lethargy, released an <a href="http://www.loot.co.za/product/hugh-macmillan-chris-hani/pyjg-2664-g860?referrer=bookslive">angry memorandum</a>. In an interview I did with Hani in Johannesburg in 1993 he admitted: “We blew our tops.” They accused the leadership of Umkhonto we Sizwe and the ANC of getting too comfortable and losing their appetite to return home – they had become “men in suits, clutching passports”.</p>
<p>The response by the leadership was outrage – the Secretary-General Alfred Nzo called for Hani’s execution for treason. But Tambo immediately began organising a conference of elected representatives of the branches around the world. A message was sent to Robben Island to inform ANC leaders jailed there, including Nelson Mandela, of this development.</p>
<p>It was time for frank conversation and a comprehensive, considered assessment. The outcome was the historic and constructive conference at <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/morogoro-conference">Morogoro in Tanzania</a>. The conference took on a more inclusive and democratic direction for the ANC, foregrounding the political aims over the military, and identifying the importance of mobilising workers at home.</p>
<h2>Challenging 1980s</h2>
<p>In the 1980s Tambo was faced with a more serious challenge. International attention against apartheid was growing; he was travelling extensively, persuading ordinary people to undermine apartheid by boycotting its products and banks and denying it arms. Alarmed, the apartheid regime sent spies into ANC camps on the continent, infiltrating top committees in Lusaka and other ANC structures.</p>
<p>The panic that ensued turned the spotlight on the flaws of the Umkhonto we Sizwe leadership. Human rights abuses of suspected spies and “ill-disciplined cadres” led to <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media%5C1996%5C9608/s960822l.htm">unlawful deaths and executions</a>.</p>
<p>Tambo’s <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02582473.2012.675813">cautious response</a> was criticised by the leadership of both ANC intelligence and Umkhonto we Sizwe for “impeding investigation” into the spies, owing to “his sense of democracy”. The chief culprits of these human rights abuses were formerly trusted peers of Tambo. He faced the dilemma of blowing the ANC wide apart if he challenged them. Instead, he resorted to the compromising strategy of redeploying them to other sections of the movement, such as education – perhaps leaving an unfortunate legacy for today’s ANC.</p>
<h2>Enduring legacy</h2>
<p>Tambo was to set in motion a process that culminated in South Africa’s democratic constitution. He:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>subscribed Umkhonto we Sizwe and the ANC to the Geneva Convention, which imposed a strict adherence to human rights.</p></li>
<li><p>set up a <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/stuart-commission-report">commission</a> of trusted senior comrades to look into the conditions in the ANC’s camps in Africa as well as abuses. The commission’s report was highly critical.</p></li>
<li><p>summoned an consultative conference in Kabwe in 1985 that reaffirmed ANC’s humanist values, addressed gender inequalities and formally accepted whites in official positions.</p></li>
<li><p>appointed the movement’s top legal minds to research and craft a constitution for the ANC; it was inspired by the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>, which had been drawn up in 1956 after extensive consultation with ordinary people. It opened with the ringing words:</p></li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<p>South Africa belongs to all who live in it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>South Africa’s new democracy essentially incorporated many of the clauses in the charter’s the path-breaking <a href="https://www.gov.za/DOCUMENTS/CONSTITUTION/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-1">1996</a> constitution.</p>
<h2>Tambo’s insights remain relevant</h2>
<p>Reporting to his first conference inside South Africa in December 1990 after the unbanning of the ANC, <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/president-or-tambos-opening-address-ancs-48th-national-conference">Tambo warned that </a> “suspicions will not disappear overnight, the building of the South African nation is a national ask of paramount importance. </p>
<p>And he warned:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The struggle is far from over: if anything, it has become more complex and therefore more difficult. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He also reflected that "we were always ready to accept our mistakes and correct them.”</p>
<p>Faced by crises in the ANC, Tambo had always been ready to listen, responding constructively and creatively with new policies to meet the challenges of the time. </p>
<p>This is the enduring legacy of Oliver Tambo: many seasons later, many continue to gain insights and learn relevant lessons from his responses to the universal, human condition of our time. But whether they heeded this call is a moot point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have devotedly watched over the organisation all these years. I now hand it back to you, bigger, stronger - intact. Guard our precious movement.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85838/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luli Callinicos is author of Oliver Tambo: Beyond The Engeli Mountains published by David Philip Publishersin 2004. She received a Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Grant (1993), Ford Foundation (2000) towards writing the biography of Oliver Tambo. She serves on the MISTRA Council of Advisers, National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciens Board member, also on Council of Robben Island Museum.</span></em></p>Factions within South Africa’s ANC nostalgically point to the example of Oliver Reginald Tambo whose seen as an exemplar of integrity, personifying an ideal leader who served the party selflessly.Luli Callinicos, Researcher and founder member of the History Workshop, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/828582017-08-24T19:28:48Z2017-08-24T19:28:48ZThose who brought Zuma to power shouldn’t be forgotten, or forgiven<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182996/original/file-20170822-30494-lc6f1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The SACP and Cosatu have spoken out against South Africa's President Jacob Zuma.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flcker/GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is now a matter of record – rather than an issue for serious debate – that the presidency of Jacob Zuma has been an unmitigated disaster for South Africa. </p>
<p>Zuma’s stewardship – if his tenure since 2009 can be dignified with such a description – has been one long narrative of <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-20/jacob-zuma-blamed-for-south-africa-s-woes">national decline</a>. The fact that he remains in office is testament to the moral and intellectual decay of the governing African National Congress (ANC) over the course of his presidency. </p>
<p>That the party which produced such giants of the liberation struggle as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/chief-albert-john-mvumbi-luthuli">Albert Luthuli</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/his-life-and-legacy-oliver-tambo">O.R. Tambo</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">Nelson Mandela</a> should have repeatedly endorsed the leadership of such a compromised individual provides cause for great sadness at the humbling of a once great political movement.</p>
<p>But, as his presidency staggers on it has become noticeable that some in the ANC’s “broad church” are beginning to peel away in disgust. Over the last two years veterans of the movement have expressed dissatisfaction with the party’s direction and there have been frequent <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-04-06-anc-veterans-tell-president-zuma-to-step-down">calls for Zuma to stand down</a>. </p>
<p>There have been two unsuccessful attempts to unseat him at meetings of the ANC’s National Executive Committee (in <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/jacob-zuma-faces-confidence-vote-161128125939169.html">November 2016</a> and <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/breaking-motion-of-no-confidence-tabled-against-zuma-at-anc-nec-20170527">May 2017</a>. And eight motions of no confidence have been tabled against him in parliament. In the latest, 26 ANC MPs voted with the opposition, with a further <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-40869269">nine abstaining</a>.</p>
<p>In addition, the ANC’s alliance partners, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), have both <a href="http://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1473832/full-statement-sacp-calls-for-zumas-resignation/">called for his resignation</a>. Cosatu even barred Zuma from attending its gatherings, an unprecedented humiliation for an <a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/zuma-barred-from-speaking-at-any-official-cosatu-events/">ANC leader</a>. </p>
<p>Yet these expressions of revulsion at Zuma’s leadership should be placed within their proper historical context. It is important to recall the role these two organisations had in helping facilitate this disaster in the first place.</p>
<h2>Complicity and fantasy</h2>
<p>Between 2005 and 2007 the SACP and Cosatu were <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2007-12-18-zuma-is-new-anc-president">fervent cheerleaders</a> for Zuma in his successful campaign in 2009 to supplant Thabo Mbeki and become ANC president, and thus <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/jacob-zuma-presidency-2009-2017-march">president of the country</a>. The left projected their own ideological fantasies onto Zuma: they saw in him hope for a “left turn” and a repudiation of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/south-african-communist-party-sacp">neo-liberal economics</a> which they associated with Mbeki. </p>
<p>This was always a bizarre position. There was nothing in Zuma’s record to inspire confidence that he would engineer a shift to the left. As the country’s deputy president from 1999 to 2005, he failed to strike a single dissenting note about the ideological direction of <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.za/publications/other/gear/all.pdf">Mbeki’s macro-economic policy</a>, far less set out an alternative left-wing prospectus.</p>
<p>There was also a significant body of evidence suggesting his politics were highly reactionary, with strong overtones of <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00847.x/full">sexual and ethnic chauvinism</a> which should have set alarm bells ringing for any self-respecting socialists. </p>
<p>For example, Zuma was acquitted of a rape charge <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-10-09-breaking-news-khwezi-jacob-zumas-rape-accuser-has-dead-family-confirms">in 2006</a> after deploying a defence that was deeply sexist and patriarchal. Zuma also uttered the notorious comment which would come to haunt him – that he had intercourse with his accuser knowing she was HIV positive but took a shower afterwards as a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4879822.stm">precaution against infection</a>. This was a comment so steeped in ignorance that it should have immediately disqualified him from ever holding high political office.</p>
<p>But it didn’t end there. Throughout the rape trial his supporters gathered outside the court each day to hurl vicious sexist abuse at his accuser. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/may/09/southafricasonemanwrecking">“Burn the Bitch”</a> was a favourite. Her name and address were also circulated in a contempt of court, actions that paved the way for harassment which eventually caused her to <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2006-05-11-zumas-rape-accuser-flees-south-africa">leave the country</a>. </p>
<p>Not once when addressing his supporters at the end of each day’s proceedings, did Zuma condemn the abuse, or reproach his supporters. Instead, in a display of machismo, he chose to whip up the mob with <a href="http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Will-Zumas-Letha-umshini-wami-Bring-my-Machine-gun-song-win-him-second-term-20120514">militaristic anthems</a> from the ANC armed struggle era. All of this in a country blighted by <a href="https://theconversation.com/gender-based-violence-in-south-africa-whats-missing-and-how-to-fix-it-78352">violence against women</a>.</p>
<h2>Rise of kleptocracy</h2>
<p>Zuma also commenced his presidency with <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2017/04/21/zuma-and-npa-appeal-hearings-against-reinstatement-of-783-criminal-charges-to-be-consolidated">783 unresolved charges</a> of fraud, money laundering and embezzlement hanging over him relating to the notorious arms deal scandal of the late 1990s and early 2000s. But the SACP and Cosatu leadership chose to view those charges as evidence of a <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/cosatu-admits-they-could-be-wrong-about-zuma-251585">“conspiracy”</a> against Zuma and an attempt to sabotage a socialist presidency.</p>
<p>They would now prefer their unconditional support for Zuma to be considered merely as an unfortunate historical footnote which has not tarnished their ideological credentials. They are wrong. Their willingness to overlook such egregious failings was a cynical betrayal of progressive values. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julius Malema, once a staunch Zuma supporter, is now his fierce critic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Equally, Julius Malema, now the leader of the <a href="http://www.effonline.org/">Economic Freedom Fighters</a>, has sought to reinvent himself as a passionate opponent of Zuma. Yet as head of the ANC Youth League back in 2006-2007 he championed Zuma’s candidacy with a messianic fervour usually laced with threats against his opponents such as the infamous <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/kill-for-zuma-gets-life-of-its-own-406340">“shoot to kill for Zuma”</a> slogan.</p>
<h2>Mea culpa</h2>
<p>Ten years on the chickens have come home to roost, and the grim reality of the Zuma presidency is now visible. The South African state has become little more than a plaything of the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-03-24-00-the-gupta-owned-state-enterprises">Zuma patronage</a> network. This descent into kleptocracy has been documented in <a href="https://www.outa.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2.-REPORT.pdf">rich detail</a> by a number of <a href="https://www.outa.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2.-REPORT.pdf">reports</a>. </p>
<p>Consequently, the SACP and Cosatu have been compelled to recognise that Zuma and his corrupt support networks are indeed a cancer in South African politics, shamelessly enriching themselves in a country still defined by <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=10334">poverty</a> and extreme inequality with <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-06-01-sa-unemployment-rate-rises-to-14-year-high/#.WZ1FgrpFzug">unemployment at 27.7%</a> in the first quarter of 2017, and youth <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=9960">unemployment standing at 38%</a> </p>
<p>The SACP and Cosatu may have found their voices over the last six months in lamenting this appalling record. But this has been a deathbed conversion, occurring much too late to carry any real conviction.</p>
<p>The monster that is the Zuma presidency has wrought massive damage on South Africa and is rightly reviled. The role of the SACP and Cosatu as architects of that debacle should be neither forgotten nor forgiven.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82858/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Hamill 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 twilight of Jacob Zuma’s ruinous presidency coincides with growing revulsion at his misrule of South Africa. But, it’s important that his erstwhile supporters acknowledge their complicity.James Hamill, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/708662017-01-05T17:58:38Z2017-01-05T17:58:38ZRamaphosa has what it takes to fix South Africa’s ailing ANC. But …<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151714/original/image-20170104-18647-21pae9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cyril Ramaphosa celebrates his election as deputy president of South Africa's embattled governing ANC.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s deputy president <a href="http://www.gov.za/about-government/leaders/profile/987">Cyril Ramaphosa</a> has confirmed his availability to <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/ramaphosa-i-am-available-to-lead-20161215">contest the presidency</a> of the governing <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/splash/index">ANC</a> at its 54th national conference later this year. He has already secured the endorsement of the South African Congress of Trade Unions <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/politics/2016-11-24-politics-live-why-cosatus-backing-is-a-big-deal-for-ramaphosa/">(Cosatu)</a>.</p>
<p>He failed in his bid to lead the party once before. Twenty years ago his comrades Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma were chosen ahead of him for the top two jobs at the party’s <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/anc-national-conference-1991-2013">1997 Mafikeng Conference</a>. If his dream is going to be realised this time he is going to have to take on a major task of convincing ANC branches of his suitability.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa will need a restoration and renewal narrative to convince them. He’ll need to show he has a plan to rebuild the party, and inspire its cadres sitting on the side-lines to join in his renewal efforts.</p>
<p>If successful, he will need to switch immediately to election campaigning mode. The country goes to the polls in 2019 and he will have to do everything in his powers to salvage the former liberation movement’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/sharp-tongued-south-african-voters-give-ruling-anc-a-stiff-rebuke-63606">declining electoral support</a>.</p>
<p>For South Africans at large, he will need to show how the ANC as a brand can reclaim its sentimental and inspirational traits to warrant their trust.</p>
<p>These tasks seem insurmountable when one considers the extent of damage done to the party since Zuma’s rise to power was solidified at the ANC’s bitterly divisive <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-11-02-polokwane-and-mangaung-shades-of-difference/#.WG36ext97IU">Polokwane conference in 2007</a>. But Ramaphosa has faced seemingly insurmountable tasks of building organisations in challenging times before. He has also served in various international organisations and has been a member of teams appointed to <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/cyril-ramaphosa-anthony-butler">help countries in transition</a>.</p>
<p>He will need to draw on all this experience to succeed.</p>
<h2>A history of organising under difficult conditions</h2>
<p>Born on November 17 1952, Ramaphosa is from a generation I <a href="http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fwMoyHJCMfM">regard as the agitators</a> in the struggle for South Africa’s liberation. Inspired by <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-bikos-black-consciousness-philosophy-resonates-with-youth-today-46909">Steve Biko</a>, among others, this generation – born in the early 40s to late 60s – injected greater momentum to the fight against apartheid in the 1970s and 1980s.</p>
<p>As a young person Ramaphosa was an active member of the erstwhile <a href="http://v1.sahistory.org.za/pages/people/bios/ramaphosa-cm.htm">Student Christian Movement</a> (SCM) at Sekano-Ntoane High School in Soweto. His evangelical experience cannot be understated in the task that confronts him now. Much like the biblical character <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Nehemiah+2&version=NKJV&interface=am">Nehemiah</a>, his task is to inspire a dejected and hopeless people with a new vision.</p>
<p>That will not be a new experience for Ramaphosa. As historian Anthony Butler writes, while pursuing standard nine and ten at Mphaphuli High School in his parents’ village of Sibasa in Venda, he built a <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/cyril-ramaphosa-anthony-butler">stronger SCM within a short time</a>. This was after he was elected to its leadership in the first year of his arrival.</p>
<p>The same happened when he went to study at the then University of the North (now University of Limpopo). The SCM was weak and seen by some as a tool of domination. Rhamaphosa worked tirelessly with <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/frank-chikane">Frank Chikane</a> and others to turn it into a vibrant organisation. It became a vehicle of struggle when the Black Consciousness student movements <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/banning-south-african-students-organisation-saso-and-student-politics-1980s">were banned</a>. </p>
<p>Ramaphosa’s claim to fame, however, is the work he did in founding the National Mineworkers Union (NUM) in the early 1980s. The NUM operated under the auspices of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/council-unions-south-africa-cusa-formed">Council of Unions of South Africa</a>. Until then, attempts to unite mineworkers and fight for their representation in the mines had <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/cyril-ramaphosa-anthony-butler">failed</a>.</p>
<p>The fact that Ramaphosa was able to build a union in a mining industry fraught with ethnic politics, worker fragmentation and a history of state-sanctioned exploitation attests to his organisation building capabilities. This is especially so considering that he had never worked on the mines himself.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa’s colourful leadership continued over the next three decades across various settings. He became the ANC’s chief negotiator during the country’s transition from apartheid to democracy, beating ANC president Oliver Tambo’s protégé, Thabo Mbeki, to the position. </p>
<p>Ramaphosa became the secretary general of the ANC at its <a href="http://www.incwajana.com/cyril-ramaphosa/">1991 National Conference in Durban</a> after out-campaigning Zuma. He was succeeded in the position in 1997 by <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kgalema-petrus-motlanthe">Kgalema Motlanthe</a>, with whom he had worked at the NUM. </p>
<p>As the chief negotiator of the ANC he managed the negotiating committee. He showed great leadership, alongside the National Party’s counterpart Roelf Meyer when the talks broke down.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cyril Ramaphosa holds the newly signed South African Constitution as President Nelson Mandela looks on.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ramaphosa became a member of parliament in 1994 and headed the constitutional assembly which <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/drafting-and-acceptance-constitution">drew up the final constitution</a> of the republic. This was finally approved – to international acclaim – in <a href="http://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-1">1996</a>.</p>
<p>But after his crushing defeat by Mbeki to the post of deputy president in 1997 Ramaphosa went into business but maintained some involvement in politics. He was to make a sterling return 15 years later when he was elected ANC deputy president in 2012 at the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/53rd-national-conference-mangaung">53rd National Conference</a> in Mangaung.</p>
<h2>Ramaphosa the businessman</h2>
<p>Ramaphosa was among the first beneficiaries of the first wave of <a href="http://www.gov.za/broad-based-black-economic-empowerment-summit">equity-based black economic empowerment deals</a> in 1997. In partnership with medical doctor and anti-apartheid activist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nthato-harrison-motlana">Nthato Motlana</a> he joined <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=883851">New African Investment Limited</a>. From those early beginnings he was to form <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=25599686">Shanduka Group</a>, an unlisted entity with interests in resources, energy, real estate, banking, insurance and telecommunications. </p>
<p>He also chaired a number of South Africa’s largest companies, such as <a href="http://www.bidvest.com/downloads/pdf/Bidvest_Prod_Bro_Aug2013.pdf">Bidvest Group</a> and <a href="https://www.mtn.co.za/Pages/Home.aspx">MTN</a> and held non-executive board positions of others such as <a href="http://www.standardbank.co.za/standardbank/">Standard Bank</a> and <a href="http://www.ab-inbev.com/">SABMiller</a>.</p>
<p>His most <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-06-19-00-marikana-shootings-will-always-stalk-ramaphosa">controversial role</a> was as a non-executive member of the mining group Lonmin’s board. Shanduka was a minority shareholder in Lonmin, which owned the mine in Marikana <a href="https://theconversation.com/marikana-tragedy-must-be-understood-against-the-backdrop-of-structural-violence-in-south-africa-43868">where 34 miners were shot by police in 2012</a>.</p>
<h2>Leadership qualities</h2>
<p>Ramaphosa has the leadership experience to salvage the ANC and become a great president with a wide range of skills. He has the potential to restore hope at the top of the ANC following a period of mediocrity and scandal.</p>
<p>However, while he has a chance in convincing ANC members of his potential, the broader South African public will be even harder to convince. Firstly, as a key player at Lonmin, Ramaphosa is seen as having failed to improve the working conditions of the mineworkers he fought for in the 1980s. </p>
<p>Secondly, his relationship with Zuma, whom he has served as deputy president, has led to some awkward questions. Until last year he appeared to be complacent – or actively defended – Zuma even as the president became more deeply embroiled in alleged corruption scandals. This silence was evident even when Zuma was accused of violating the constitution Ramaphosa was party to creating.</p>
<p>It may be that Ramaphosa has the restoration and renewal narrative – as well as the organisational building skills and tenacity – to turn his own fate and that of the ANC around, but it’s going to be a ‘<a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-12-05-ramaphosa-my-long-walk-has-not-yet-ended/#.WG4S0xt97IU">long walk</a>’ as he put it. Time will tell.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70866/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ongama Mtimka chairs the board of Isidima Development Council which seeks to advance socioeconomic transformation in the Eastern Cape. </span></em></p>Cyril Ramaphosa is in pole position to become president of South Africa’s ruling ANC, 20 years after he lost the position by Thabo Mbeki. But, it won’t be easy. Neither will rebuilding the party.Ongama Mtimka, Lecturer and PhD Candidate, Department of Political & Conflict Studies, Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/620552016-07-10T16:45:11Z2016-07-10T16:45:11ZSouth Africa’s armed struggle: where the ANC’s ineptitude was a virtue<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129425/original/image-20160705-789-1g1bpyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former members of the ANC's armed wing perform the toyi-toyi dance in support of then ailing former President Nelson Mandela.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Thomas Mukoya </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whatever the virtues of South Africa’s governing African National Congress (<a href="http://www.anc.org.za/">ANC</a>) – we are assured it still has a few – it was never any good at armed struggle. And no more comprehensive support for that judgment has been assembled than the valuable new book, “<a href="http://penguinbooks.co.za/book/umkhonto-we-sizwe-anc%E2%80%99s-armed-struggle/9781770228412">Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle</a>”, by the University of Pretoria’s Thula Simpson.</p>
<p>South Africans can be grateful for this ineptitude. It may even count among the ANC’s greater virtues. For, had the ANC been militarily more capable, millions of South Africans might now be living in hell-holes of war such as those we see in Syria.</p>
<p>Instead, the ANC had the political imagination to reach an accommodation with apartheid’s masters who were, militarily, more powerful than it would ever be. The outcome was thus not a revolution in South Africa – although there have been far-reaching changes. Rather, both concluded they had more to gain from compromise than further confrontation.</p>
<h2>People’s power trumps armed struggle</h2>
<p>Armed struggle played a subsidiary – but, I will suggest below, an oddly important – role in this negotiated outcome. But the tactics deployed inside the country that were most decisive against apartheid were those that did not involve organised violence. They were the tactics in which ordinary people involved themselves, including strikes, boycotts and marches, and developing a vision of a different South Africa.</p>
<p>Underlying these nonviolent tactics was an insight that had become obscured during the setbacks the ANC and others suffered after the birth of the organisation’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), in 1961. The insight, only recovered in the early 1970s, was that any ruler can rule only for as long as those he rules allow him to rule. </p>
<p>Put another way, South Africans became increasingly aware that the claim of their primary slogan, “<a href="http://www.amandladevelopment.org/pages/learn_01.html"><em>Amandla! Ngawethu!</em></a>” (“Power is ours!”), was true. The power to decide the fate of the country was, indeed, theirs. Each man, woman and child possessed that power in some degree. And he or she didn’t need to carry a gun to be an agent of change.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Former Umkhonto we Sizwe commander Siphiwe Nyanda went on to head South Africa’s military.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span>
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<p><a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/siphiwe-nyanda">Siphiwe Nyanda</a>, probably the most effective field commander in MK, put it differently this year. The ANC, Nyanda said, might have been at the forefront of the struggle, but the people of South Africa had “<a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/politics/2016/03/31/veteran-still-leads-the-charge">liberated themselves</a>”.</p>
<h2>A rich historical collection</h2>
<p>These are my own conclusions, re-asserted with considerably more confidence after reading Simpson’s book. They are not his. Rather, Simpson is careful to reserve his own judgment, preferring to tell his readers the story and leaving it to them to reach their own conclusions about the role of armed struggle in South Africa. In doing so, he has given us what is undoubtedly the richest collection of incident and claim assembled about MK.</p>
<p>Most of the book consists of accounts of attacks, firefights, bombings, the capture of fighters, disputes within the ANC and MK, and cruelties on both sides. The accounts are drawn from, among others, interviews with MK fighters, court records and other scholars.</p>
<p>Each account is usually no more than a page long. And Simpson writes each in the historic present tense. This style puts the reader inside the situation being described, which enhances the drama and readability. It will please the scholar looking for more empirical detail and others, adult or child, who want to know how things happened.</p>
<p>Here is a snippet from his account of the night attack by South African special forces on the headquarters of MK’s special operations unit in Matola, Mozambique, in January 1981. Some South African soldiers had managed to slip into the special operations compound and rounded up some MK people. The noise attracted others’ attention:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sipho Thobela gets up and looks out the window. He sees his comrades lined up as if by a firing squad. He goes to fetch his AK [AK-47 assault rifle]. From the house’s balcony, Thobela opens fire on the men in the yard, upon which they start shooting at their captives as well as back at the house. The first captive they hit is Montso Mokgabudi, the commander (p276).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This attack was a heavy blow for MK. A group of gifted young commanders from the post-1976 generation was lost. It was they who had executed the attacks on, among others, the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/sasol-plant-under-attack">Natref and Sasol 1 and 2</a> oil-from-coal plants eight months earlier.</p>
<h2>Success in failure</h2>
<p>The preface to the book states that MK’s armed struggle was “the longest sustained insurgency in South African history”. That billing – though useful in marketing – may be a little misleading. There have been few “sustained insurgencies” in South Africa, let alone long ones.</p>
<p>It is also moot to ask how “sustained” MK’s armed struggle was, even in its own terms. For ten of MK’s 30 years of existence – from 1966 to 1975 – there was no armed struggle inside South Africa. The <a href="http://www.sadet.co.za/docs/rtd/vol1/sadet1_chap12.pdf">Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns</a> in which MK was involved in then-Rhodesia in 1967-68 were aberrant adventures that failed. And from 1976 to 1990, armed struggle spluttered on at very low levels of intensity.</p>
<p>MK’s significance may, paradoxically, lie in its failure – in the ANC’s inability to persuade most South Africans that armed struggle was a plausible way to achieve regime change. I say this as someone who wrote scores of Aesopian newspaper articles and distributed thousands of ANC underground leaflets trying to convince South Africans that it was!</p>
<p>I long to hear Simpson, after all this work, argue a judgment on this and related questions.</p>
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<h2>Daring to struggle</h2>
<p>The best tribute I’ve heard to MK’s contribution came from <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ronald-ronnie-kasrils">Ronnie Kasrils</a> in early 1990. The ANC had recently been <a href="https://global.britannica.com/topic/African-National-Congress">unbanned</a>. Kasrils was on the run inside South Africa after apartheid intelligence had uncovered <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/members-anc-and-sacp-are-detained-due-operation-vula">Operation Vula</a>, which they saw as an act of bad faith by the ANC and in which he was number three.</p>
<p>My former commander, Kasrils was willing to be interviewed for my <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02712/05lv02713.htm">doctoral research</a> on ANC operational strategy. At one clandestine meeting at Zoo Lake in Johannesburg, talking off tape, I asked if he could explain how the ANC was commanding such apparent authority among democrats inside the country even though its domestic organisation was at the time, we both knew, pitifully weak. How was it that the ANC looked likely eventually to lead a united front of democrats in negotiations?</p>
<p>Kasrils referred me to <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-tambo">Oliver Tambo’s</a> words in a speech in Venezuela seven years earlier. Tambo had been accepting, on Nelson Mandela’s behalf, the <a href="http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=26456&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html">Simón Bolívar Award</a>, named after the South American revolutionary. Tambo had told his audience of how the ANC and Mandela had “<a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/statement-oliver-tambo-accepting-simon-bolivar-award-behalf-nelson-mandela">dared to struggle</a>”.</p>
<p>I recall Kasrils saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our armed struggle, whatever its limitations, has shown that. We’ve dared. Say what they will, no other organisation can match it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That, to my mind, is what MK fighters’ blood, courage and daring bought. It was an important part of the price that the ANC paid to have the authority it needed to lead a broad front of democratic South Africans into negotiations that produced the minimum necessary condition – the institutions of formal democracy – to shape a free society. It was only a necessary condition that those fighters helped achieve, not a sufficient one – but it was priceless all the same.</p>
<p><em>“<a href="http://penguinbooks.co.za/book/umkhonto-we-sizwe-anc%E2%80%99s-armed-struggle/9781770228412">Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle</a>”, written by Thula Simpson, is published by Penguin Books South Africa.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62055/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Howard Barrell 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>Armed struggle played a subsidiary role in the ANC’s fight against apartheid in South Africa. The tactics that were most decisive in securing freedom were those that didn’t involve organised violence.Howard Barrell, Senior Lecturer at the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.