tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/robert-sobukwe-24303/articles
Robert Sobukwe – The Conversation
2023-05-15T17:17:22Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204819
2023-05-15T17:17:22Z
2023-05-15T17:17:22Z
Justice Yvonne Mokgoro: South Africa’s trailblazing defender of justice, human dignity and the constitution
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525569/original/file-20230511-17-jo3h2q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former South African constitutional court judge, Yvonne Mokgoro.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vathiswa Ruselo/Sowetan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many great legal minds have made important contributions to the development of the law, justice and constitutionalism in South Africa. One figure who stands out as a particularly influential jurist of the era is retired judge <a href="https://www.concourt.org.za/index.php/judges/former-judges/11-former-judges/63-justice-yvonne-mokgoro">Yvonne Mokgoro</a>. She was among the first justices of the country’s new constitutional court, serving from 1994 to 2009.</p>
<p>Researchers at South Africa’s <a href="https://hsrc.ac.za/who-we-are/">Human Sciences Research Council</a> have <a href="https://repository.hsrc.ac.za/handle/20.500.11910/11726">aptly described</a> this remarkable jurist: </p>
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<p>As the first black African woman appointed to the Bench in 1994, she brought with her fresh scars of the oppressive system of apartheid that alienated and marginalised her as a black person and as a woman … As a member of the Constitutional Court Justice Mokgoro was active and engaged, with her most lasting contribution being her efforts to Africanise human rights through the dignification of the law and the operationalisation of ubuntu as a constitutional value.</p>
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<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Sobukwe</a>, a pan-Africanist leader and lawyer, greatly influenced her to break the glass ceiling for women who wished to become lawyers, and her dedication to fighting injustice. Remarkably, he represented her <a href="https://www.servantleader.co.za/yvonne">in 1970</a> after her arrest for protesting against the ill-treatment of a man by the apartheid police. </p>
<p>I would argue that just as the US celebrates the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/18/100306972/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-champion-of-gender-equality-dies-at-87">legal, cultural and feminist icon</a>” and human rights defender, South Africa can be proud to have the retired Justice Yvonne Mokgoro. She has dedicated her life to defending justice, equality and human rights for all.</p>
<h2>The early years and education</h2>
<p>She was born in 1950 in Galeshewe, near Kimberley in the Northern Cape, as the second child of working-class parents. She finished high school at the local St Boniface High School in 1970.</p>
<p>Her university education was mostly part time. She obtained an undergraduate (B Iuris) degree at the then University of Bophuthatswana, a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) two years later, and a Master of Laws (LLM) in 1987. She also studied at the University of Pennsylvania in the USA, where she earned a <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/justice-yvonne-mokgoro">second LLM degree in 1990</a>. </p>
<p>Mokgoro’s journey included working as a nursing assistant, a retail salesperson and a clerk in the department of justice of the erstwhile nominally independent <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Bophuthatswana">Bophuthatswana</a>. She was also a maintenance officer and public prosecutor in the then Mmabatho magistrate court. She later became an associate professor of law at the University of Bophuthatswana (now North West University) and <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/justice-yvonne-mokgoro">the University of the Western Cape</a>. </p>
<h2>Legacy</h2>
<p>Mokgoro has served South Africa and its justice system with distinction. Her influence on issues of protection of children and vulnerable communities, transformation of the legal profession and parity for female legal scholars and lawyers will linger for decades. Her commitment to access to justice and nation building is commendable. </p>
<p>Her judgments and some academic works, such as the 1998 journal paper <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/pelj/article/view/43567">Ubuntu and the Law in South Africa</a>, have become foundational texts for legal education in South Africa and beyond. </p>
<p>Her academic writing and judgments have aided the development of constitutionalism in South Africa.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-has-its-first-woman-deputy-chief-justice-heres-who-she-is-176896">South Africa has its first woman Deputy Chief Justice: here's who she is</a>
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<p>She is a strong advocate for the rule of law and respect for the principles enshrined in the country’s constitution. These include respect for human rights and dignity. She believes that all South Africans have a patriotic duty not to allow the constitution to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26633677_UBuntu_and_the_law_in_South_Africa">slide into disrepute</a>.</p>
<p>She is also an avid proponent of reconciliation and national cohesion. For instance, in her separate judgment <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/1995/3.html">in 1995)</a>, she eloquently argued for <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-archbishop-tutus-ubuntu-credo-teaches-the-world-about-justice-and-harmony-84730">ubuntu</a> (humanness) as the philosophy that should foreground interpretation of the constitution. She <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/1995/3.html">stated that</a>:</p>
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<p>Although South Africans have a history of deep divisions characterised by strife and conflict, one shared value and ideal that runs like a golden thread across cultural lines is the value of Ubuntu … While it envelops the key values of group solidarity, compassion, respect, human dignity, conformity to basic norms and collective unity, in its fundamental sense it denotes humanity and morality. Its spirit emphasises respect for human dignity, marking a shift from confrontation to conciliation.</p>
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<p>Also notable is that she advocated for reconsideration of the place of African jurisprudence in relation to South African law, the South African constitution and customary law. She <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/pelj/article/view/43567">has urged</a> the</p>
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<p>revival of African jurisprudence as part of the total or broader process of the African renaissance.</p>
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<p>Mokgoro’s parents greatly influenced her role in the constitutional court. She did not see her position as a judge as being about power. It was about her responsibility to the people of South Africa, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Life-Soul-Portraits-Women-Africa/dp/1770130438">ensuring justice for everyone and improving people’s lives</a>.</p>
<h2>Judgments</h2>
<p>Mokgoro’s advocacy for group solidarity and reconciliation is discernible in several of her judgments. </p>
<p>For instance, in <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2004/11.html">Khosa and Others v Minister of Social Development, Mahlaule and Another v Minister of Social Development (2004)</a> the constitutional court was faced with a challenge to the constitutionality of the <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/social-assistance-act">Social Assistance Act, 1992</a>. The act provided that only South African citizens qualified for social grants. </p>
<p>The challenge was brought by two indigent Mozambican citizens who were permanent residents in South Africa. Mokgoro upheld a decision of the high court to allow permanent residents to receive the grants. </p>
<p>She thus advanced the rights of immigrants and refugees in South Africa, and advocated for the protection of all children.</p>
<h2>Legal icon</h2>
<p>Mokgoro deserves to be celebrated as a selfless jurist who highlighted the centrality of the constitution and human rights in South Africa. She is an icon of the legal profession, a defender of the marginalised.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/rule-of-law-in-south-africa-protects-even-those-who-scorn-it-175533">Rule of law in South Africa protects even those who scorn it</a>
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<p>She is also one of the judges who, alongside <a href="https://www.chr.up.ac.za/world-moot-previous-judges/95-moot-courts/world-moot-court/judges/1646-justice-albie-sachs">Justice Albie Sachs</a>, mainstreamed African jurisprudence through the use of ubuntu in some of her judgments.</p>
<p>Aspiring judges and law students would do well to know this remarkable woman’s powerful judgments, which make clear the principles of human dignity and justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204819/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Omphemetse Sibanda 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>
Justice Mokgoro’s advocacy for group solidarity and reconciliation is discernible in several of her judgments.
Omphemetse Sibanda, Executive Dean and Full Professor, Faculty of Management and Law, University of Limpopo
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/193546
2022-11-14T12:25:56Z
2022-11-14T12:25:56Z
Juby Mayet, legendary South African writer and journalist, remembered through new book
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492798/original/file-20221101-23-skjo9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A young Juby Mayet in Vrededorp, Johannesburg.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Baileys African History Archives/Drum photographer/Courtesy Jacana Media</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South African writer <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/zubeida-juby-sharon-davis-mayet">Juby Mayet</a> passed away in 2019 at the age of 82. She wrote her autobiography in 1997 but it has only now been published, 25 years later. <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/freedom-writer/">Freedom Writer: My Life and Times</a> finally places the spotlight on an outstanding figure in South African journalism.</p>
<p>Mayet was a reporter in Johannesburg from 1957 until 1978, and during those two decades she wrote for important popular and political publications. These included the tabloid newspaper Golden City Post, the famous <a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668">Drum magazine</a>, the UBJ Bulletin published by the anti-apartheid Union of Black Journalists, and the anti-apartheid periodical The Voice.</p>
<p>For Black South Africans, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid society</a> was exploitative, violent and demeaning, which made publications produced by Black writers culturally and politically essential. Blacks saw themselves and their experiences represented in ways they recognised and appreciated by Golden City Post and Drum. The UBJ Bulletin and The Voice dared to publish openly critical reports about the apartheid regime’s brutality.</p>
<p>Starting in the late 1960s, Mayet also became a leading anti-apartheid reporter – she preferred the term “freedom writer” – who used her typewriter to speak truth to power and suffered the consequences.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668">Journalism of Drum's heyday remains cause for celebration - 70 years later</a>
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<p>I first met Mayet in 2018 when I interviewed her about her coverage in the 1960s of prosecutions of “mixed” couples who contravened the Immorality Act, the infamous <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/127/1/159/6573630">apartheid law</a> that made it illegal for whites and Blacks to have sex across the colour line. I quickly realised what an impressive person she was and how significant a reporter she had been. </p>
<p>As a historian, I have long been writing about women whose skilful and courageous efforts to navigate life in patriarchal South African society have gone largely unnoticed. Mayet, too, has been overlooked, in her case by researchers who celebrate South Africa’s rich history of journalism and literature. For example, Drum magazine in the 1950s and 1960s is known for producing iconic male Black writers like <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-themba-south-africas-rebel-journalist-was-a-teacher-at-heart-181126">Can Themba</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/william-bloke-modisane">Bloke Modisane</a> and others. But Mayet, too, was a graduate of the “Drum School of Journalism”. She was there, in plain sight, yet somehow invisible to researchers.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493858/original/file-20221107-25-6a3ctl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of a woman with pigtails surrounded by five children of varying ages. She has her hands around them and is smiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493858/original/file-20221107-25-6a3ctl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493858/original/file-20221107-25-6a3ctl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493858/original/file-20221107-25-6a3ctl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493858/original/file-20221107-25-6a3ctl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493858/original/file-20221107-25-6a3ctl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493858/original/file-20221107-25-6a3ctl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493858/original/file-20221107-25-6a3ctl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Mayet (centre) with five of her eight children in the 1970s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mayet family archive</span></span>
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<p>Fortunately, her autobiography has now been published, along with an afterword I wrote to provide more details about her achievements. I hope she will now get the public attention she deserves.</p>
<h2>Imprinted by Fietas</h2>
<p>Mayet was born in 1937 to a Malay family, a group categorised as Coloured under apartheid. Her autobiography tells of how she was raised in <a href="https://www.joburg.org.za/play_/Pages/Play%20in%20Joburg/Culture%20and%20Heritage/Links/Life-behind-the-scars-of-Fietas.aspx">Fietas</a>, a neighbourhood near downtown Johannesburg, the country’s economic hub. Originally designated as a Malay location, Fietas was destroyed and rezoned a “white” neighbourhood after passage of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/group-areas-act-1950">Group Areas Act</a> (1950).</p>
<p>Fietas was where Mayet developed her cosmopolitan sensibility. The small, vibrant community was culturally diverse; Malays, Indians, Coloureds and some poor whites co-existed peacefully. She was raised Muslim but, she writes, “as a kid, growing up in slums where people lived together, mixed”, she had neighbours, friends and a sweetheart from different cultural and religious backgrounds. Fietas taught her to look beyond race labels, and its imprint on her psyche helps explain her lifelong hatred of apartheid, which sought to differentiate and distance people from one another.</p>
<h2>Discovering the wonder of words</h2>
<p>Mayet always loved reading and wanted to be a writer. She began composing short stories as a teenager and, remarkably, her first was published when she was just 17. Already she had “long ago made up my mind that I was not going to get married and settle down into the rut that I saw so many women finding themselves in”.</p>
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<span class="caption">From left, Rashid Seria, the late Mike Norton, Juby Mayet, Charles Nqakula, Marimuthu Subramoney and Phil Mthimkhulu at a Union of Black Journalists congress in Durban, 1977.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mayet family archive/Courtesy Jacana Media</span></span>
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<p>Her big break came when she was hired to do freelance work for Golden City Post. She impressed senior staff and the owner of the Post and Drum, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jim-bailey">Jim Bailey</a>, who personally hired her as a cub reporter in 1957. She said she always felt like she worked for both publications because they shared staff and offices, and encouraged a joint readership.</p>
<p>She began by covering social and community events, and writing advice columns for adolescents and women, offering recipes and fashion tips. In the 1960s she worked full time for Drum where, she writes, “I really found my wings” as a writer. She started writing feature articles, opinion pieces, short stories, poetry and more.</p>
<h2>The freedom fighter</h2>
<p>Over time, Mayet’s work became overtly political. Some of the stories she was most proud of were about leading Black anti-apartheid activists who she admired, like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-sobukwe">Robert Sobukwe</a> and <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/media/rhodesuniversity/content/graduationgateway/hondocs/Profile_for_Ntsiki_Biko.pdf">Nontsikelelo Biko</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Steve-Biko">Steve Biko</a>’s widow.</p>
<p>Mayet became a reporter when journalism was a male domain and sexist profession. The famed literary renaissance of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/sophiatown">Sophiatown</a>, a legendary Black neighbourhood also destroyed and rezoned and of which Drum and the Post were part, had been relentlessly macho. Historian Rob Nixon <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Homelands-Harlem-and-Hollywood-South-African-Culture-and-the-World-Beyond/Nixon/p/book/9781032318806">called it</a> “airlessly male and sometimes misogynistic”. Drum made her a cover girl in 1957, something she did not want to be. She wanted to be seen the way she saw herself, as a serious writer. Almost from the start, she criticised sexist traditions and attitudes that limited girls’ imaginations and women’s life choices.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493791/original/file-20221107-3517-a5795f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An older woman with long grey hair smiles as she talks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493791/original/file-20221107-3517-a5795f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493791/original/file-20221107-3517-a5795f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493791/original/file-20221107-3517-a5795f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493791/original/file-20221107-3517-a5795f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493791/original/file-20221107-3517-a5795f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493791/original/file-20221107-3517-a5795f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493791/original/file-20221107-3517-a5795f.png?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"></a>
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<span class="caption">Mayet interviewed on TV in 2017 after winning a lifetime achiever award for her journalism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screengrab/YouTube/SABC</span></span>
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<p>In the 1960s she started mocking and then openly criticising apartheid ideology and laws in her reports, columns and short stories.</p>
<p>She joined the Union of Black Journalists in 1973 and it soon “became my life”. She helped publish the UBJ Bulletin, banned after its coverage of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976 Soweto uprising</a>, and then The Voice. In 1978 she was arrested for contravening the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/internal-security-act-passed">Internal Security Act</a> and spent nearly five months in detention without trial. After her release, she was “banned”, making it illegal for her to appear or speak in public and for the press to publish or report her words. These acts of reprisal by the regime caused her and her family intense emotional and financial hardship and destroyed her career.</p>
<h2>Time to remember Juby Mayet</h2>
<p>The fact that Mayet, a self-described “extremely shy” girl of colour from a poor family, had the temerity to pursue her desire to be a writer in apartheid-era South Africa is remarkable. The fact that she succeeded in forging a career documenting the absurdities and cruelties of apartheid in the male-dominated, sexist world of journalism is extraordinary. The fact that she did so as a widow raising eight children on a Black reporter’s paycheck is nothing short of incredible. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493859/original/file-20221107-21-b3q1b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover showing a woman smoking a cigarette as she types with one hand on a typewriter." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493859/original/file-20221107-21-b3q1b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493859/original/file-20221107-21-b3q1b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493859/original/file-20221107-21-b3q1b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493859/original/file-20221107-21-b3q1b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493859/original/file-20221107-21-b3q1b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493859/original/file-20221107-21-b3q1b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493859/original/file-20221107-21-b3q1b0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jacana Media</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Her career has been neglected in part because she was severely modest. After writing her autobiography in 1997 she did not try to get it published because, she said, she doubted people would want to read about her. </p>
<p>Thankfully Jacana Media, an independent South African publishing house, has brought her autobiography to life.</p>
<p>Mayet is long overdue for serious consideration as a writer. Hopefully her autobiography will ensure she finally wins the recognition and admiration she deserves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193546/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susanne M. Klausen has received support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada with an Insight Grant (2016, Grant #435-2016-1162), the Gerda Henkel Foundation with a research fellowship (2018, Grant #AZ 36/V/18), and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) with an individual fellowship (2019–20).</span></em></p>
The Drum journalist was a rare woman in a male-dominated world. Her autobiography has now been published after her death.
Susanne M. Klausen, Brill Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Penn State
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/184393
2022-06-08T13:57:35Z
2022-06-08T13:57:35Z
Robert Sobukwe: equal status in the pantheon of South African activists is long overdue
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466930/original/file-20220603-23-zlf9xk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Robert Sobukwe in his cell at the prison on Robben Island.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The mortal fight against apartheid is usually cast in terms of good versus evil, a simple schism in which there are heroes and villains, or racially, in a white against black equation that blots out pretty much all else in between. But of course, this is hardly ever the case. </p>
<p>Apartheid – and the racial segregation it was based on – thoroughly tested ethical principles and stances, made unlikely heroes of some and improbable scoundrels of others. It besmirched moral lenses more often than not. And because the sight it proffered isn’t usually pretty – and to protect the collective sanity of South Africans – there had to be neat ethical resolutions for untidy political and moral dilemmas. </p>
<p>The result was that many individuals fell through the cracks in the unfolding story of apartheid’s collateral damage.</p>
<p>One such figure is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Robert-Sobukwe-ebook/dp/B08N6YXKL8/ref=sr_1_7?qid=1654258886&refinements=p_27%3ADerek+Hook&s=books&sr=1-7">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a>, the formidable founder of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pan-africanist-congress-pac">Pan Africanist Congress of Azania</a> (PAC). He is the subject of a May 2022 Robben Island Museum hosted exhibition <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7eIiRcnP8Q">titled</a>, “Remember Africa, Remember Sobukwe”</p>
<p>Sobukwe, in very trying times, remains an unsung hero in the epic moral fight against the evil that was apartheid. He was a political leader, a social activist and genuine humanist who stood undaunted and undefeated by the deadly curveballs apartheid threw at him.</p>
<h2>History written by the victors</h2>
<p>Sobukwe casually subverts apartheid’s assumed ethical linearity by adding what is now unjustly viewed as a minority voice. Dubbed “Biko before Biko”, he was once perceived to possess more revolutionary potential than Nelson Mandela. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a> was the charismatic leader of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) during apartheid. He rallied South African youth in collective rebellion while at the time lavishing them with much-needed hope.</p>
<p>In attempting to dismantle apartheid’s vice-grip, Sobukwe discountenanced suggestions and methods of integrationism, a stance that saw him part ways with the African National Congress (ANC). This led <a href="https://roape.net/2022/06/01/remember-africa-remember-sobukwe/">to the formation</a> of his own still surviving movement, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania in 1959.</p>
<p>There’s an African proverb that speaks directly to what many perceive to be Sobukwe’s undervalued status in South African political history. The proverb, popularised by author and poet <a href="https://www.biography.com/writer/chinua-achebe">Chinua Achebe</a>, goes like this: that lions need to become historians in order to truthfully narrate their own history otherwise the tale of the hunt would always end up glorifying the hunter.</p>
<p>The ANC – and not the PAC – emerged victorious at a winner-takes-all contest that marked the end of apartheid. Due to this outcome, Sobukwe’s historical significance naturally receded.</p>
<p>Even under apartheid, Sobukwe could have had a much easier life if he chose. In 1954, he was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Bantu Languages at the historically white University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The importance of education was instilled in him as a boy together with his siblings by his struggling parents. Even in imprisonment, Sobukwe would acquire a degree in economics and another in law after he was released. Understandably, he was called “Prof.” by his associates and well-wishers.</p>
<p>However, Sobukwe was not content to live within the comforts provided by academia. He had joined the radical wing of the Youth League of the African National Congress. He subsequently became the editor of the uncompromising periodical, The Africanist. </p>
<p>Within the ANC, an ideological crisis occurred between those who were deemed moderates and the radicals. The moderates favoured an integrationist and gradualist approach to the sociopolitical impasse created by apartheid. Radicals such as Sobukwe supported an African revolution driven by Africans and for Africans without any accommodationist overtones. </p>
<p>The unresolved crisis meant he had to abandon the ANC and form the PAC instead.</p>
<h2>Incarceration and banishment</h2>
<p>In 1960, Sobukwe launched the Positive Decisive Campaign to peacefully protest the apartheid pass laws. He had informed the apartheid authorities of his non-violent protest. Nonetheless, the authorities responded <a href="https://theconversation.com/survey-shows-ignorance-about-big-moments-in-south-africas-history-like-the-sharpeville-massacre-157513">by massacring 69 individuals at Sharpville</a>. Applying the Criminal Law Amendment Act with criminal intent, Sobukwe was sentenced to three years of incarceration with hard labour served at Pretoria Central and Witbank Prisons.</p>
<p>When the time for his release came, parliament promulgated the Sobukwe Clause which saw him serve another six years at the notorious Robben Island. But he refused to be broken. He studied, taught, exercised and kept up steady correspondence with family and friends. </p>
<p>After he was eventually released, he was banished to Kimberley where he had no family and friends which must have felt like another spell of solitary confinement. Indeed his life was never the same after his indictment and incarceration. From that time until his eventual death from lung cancer in 1978, he was severed from family, friends, medical care and economic opportunities. </p>
<p>The intention of the apartheid regime had been to annihilate him psychologically and physically. They humiliated and starved him and also denied him permission to take up opportunities offered to him in the US. Indeed the systematic torture and horror meted out to him by the apartheid authorities were simply mind-blowing. They created a concatenation of arid dungeons for which there was no escape specifically for him.</p>
<p>When he died, his burial was arranged by the <a href="https://azapo.org.za/">Azanian People’s Organisation</a> (Azapo) at Graaff-Reinet and was attended by 5,000 people. Evidently, Sobukwe, even under the most intolerable conditions, had been effective in inspiring an ever loyal corps of freedom fighters who continued his invaluable work. </p>
<p>Sobukwe was principled, uncompromising, dedicated and courageous. When hope faltered and died, he resurrected it, where the enervated cried out for help and succour, he provided them. And as many of his faithful followers at the Robben Island Museum exhibition testified, he was undoubtedly a man for all seasons.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha 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>
Robert Sobukwe was once perceived to possess more revolutionary potential than Nelson Mandela.
Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/181126
2022-05-01T08:28:22Z
2022-05-01T08:28:22Z
Can Themba: South Africa’s rebel journalist was a teacher at heart
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459054/original/file-20220421-60275-4z0ccn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail of a photo of Can Themba at Drum magazine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Jürgen Schadeberg courtesy Wits University Press</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Siphiwo Mahala is well known as a South African short story writer, novelist, playwright and literary organiser. He is also an academic. In fact, his most recent book is a product of his PhD thesis, titled <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/can-themba/">Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi</a>. <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/can-themba/">Can Themba</a> was a journalist and short story writer who challenged the apartheid state by foregrounding the pain and the joy of black life. We asked Mahala to tell us more.</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Who was Can Themba and why does he matter?</h2>
<p>Can Themba was part of a generation of black writers that revolutionised journalism and the South African literary landscape in the 1950s and early 1960s. This was a culturally dynamic and politically volatile period in South Africa. In 1948 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> was introduced by the white minority government, followed by the enactment of draconian laws in the early 1950s, which sought to separate people according to race. This prompted the black oppressed majority to intensify its resistance struggle. Artists, intellectuals and the growing cohort of black journalists were at the forefront of finding platforms to speak against these socio-political ills and challenge the regime. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668">Drum</a> was the most widely distributed magazine that foregrounded the voices of urban black people at this time. Themba was associate editor and also wrote for Drum’s sister newspaper, the Golden City Post. He was central in chronicling the black condition. Themba had a penchant for ordinary stories – of the neglected, the marginalised and even the resented – and he wrote them in such a sensational way that they would attract global attention. He was a daring journalist, unafraid to put his body on the line in pursuit of a story.</p>
<p>The kind of stories he covered included the impact on ordinary people of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/1957-alexandra-bus-boycott-and-its-unsung-heroes-roseinnes-phahle-june-2019">1957 bus boycott</a> and of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">pass laws</a>. One of his most documented stories was Brothers in Christ, where he investigated if white churches would welcome black worshippers in accordance with the Christian doctrine of brotherhood. He was assaulted and charged for trespassing in churches, creating a controversy that solicited international attention. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo in which a man looks wryly into camera, a hat on his head and a floral button up shirt on." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Can Themba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Jürgen Schadeberg courtesy Wits University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His romantic relationship was the subject of police interrogation because he dared to love across the colour line. He was manhandled and arrested for doing journalism. He was banned under the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/suppression-communism-act-no-44-1950-approved-parliament">Suppression of Communism Amendment Act</a> and his writing could neither be published nor referenced in South Africa until 15 years after his death. Clearly the apartheid regime wished to erase him from the face of history. </p>
<p>He went to exile in the early 1960s, was banned shortly after and died in exile. This has made it difficult to trace his life’s journey. Although his works – especially his short story <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2017/02/14/the-suit-why-can-themba-s-1950s-complex-tale-of-love-is-still-a-hit"><em>The Suit</em></a> – have been celebrated for years, his personal story has been sketchy, limited to his period as a Drum journalist. </p>
<h2>How does your study approach him?</h2>
<p>My interest was in his construction. Tracing the factors that contributed to the making of the writer who became known as the winner of Drum’s short story competition in 1953, and the elements that contributed to his deterioration a few years later. I feel privileged to have been the first to <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/trending/can-themba-the-man-in-the-suit-20180912">document his life story</a> – more than 50 years after his passing in 1967. In this book, through the voices of people who knew him personally, we get to know Can Themba as a husband, father, a drinking buddy, a teacher, a colleague. As a person and not just the public figure. </p>
<p>More than half the people I interviewed as part of the research have since passed away. The unique insights shared by the late <a href="https://www.news24.com/drum/News/can-thembas-wife-passes-on-20170728">Anne Themba</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-nadine-gordimer-29224">Nadine Gordimer</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tribute-to-keorapetse-kgositsile-south-africas-poet-laureate-89700">Keorapetse Kgositsile</a>, <a href="http://new.observer.org.sz/details.php?id=14985">Parks Mangena</a>, <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/prof-mbulelo-vizikhungo-mzamane-posthumous">Mbulelo Mzamane</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ahmed-kathrada-a-simple-life-full-of-love-after-26-years-of-incarceration-75361">Ahmed Kathrada</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/lindiwe-mabuza-feminist-icon-who-used-art-to-fight-for-democracy-in-south-africa-173638">Lindiwe Mabuza</a> cannot be replicated and could have been easily lost. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/celebrating-dolly-rathebe-south-africas-original-black-woman-superstar-172532">Celebrating Dolly Rathebe, South Africa's original black woman superstar</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>I trace him from an early age, his family background in the racially mixed community Marabastad, relocating to Atteridgeville, a township outside Pretoria. I trace his schooling as well as his years as a student at the University Fort Hare, where he studied towards a BA degree and majored in English which he passed with a distinction. Sharing the university syllabus helps us to understand the foundations of his literary apprenticeship, as it included literary criticism, the history of literature and the study of poetry. The earliest available record of Themba’s publication dates back to 1945, when he was a student at Fort Hare, and the influence of Shakespeare is palpable. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GFI6eIgbuG8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The author interviewed about the new Can Themba book.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This period also gives a glimpse of what he and some of his fellow students would become. Whereas Themba and his fellow literary enthusiast <a href="https://theconversation.com/dennis-brutus-south-african-literary-giant-who-was-reluctant-to-tell-his-life-story-141730">Dennis Brutus</a> contributed mainly poetry and short stories in student journals, political leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a> was contributing articles in political pamphlets. </p>
<p>I hope readers will take away a more holistic view of Can Themba and understand that he was an abundantly talented individual who was as flawed as the rest of us. He died before his fullest potential could be realised. </p>
<h2>What did you conclude about Themba?</h2>
<p>Much has been <a href="https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Repository;jsessionid=DB90F6AB0DA8180580F37290A3131738/uj:8643?exact=sm_mimeType%3A%22application%2Fpdf%22&f0=sm_type%3A%22Thesis%22">written</a> about the perceived lack of political commitment in his works, his romanticisation of the township and his excessive drinking. In this book, I reveal some of his sharpest political commentary. I reveal that Themba did not drink until he joined Drum. Former Drum photographer Jurgen Schadeberg states that drinking in the newsroom was encouraged. Schadeberg says Themba initially felt out of place in the newsroom, and kept wearing a tie just like the teacher he was. </p>
<p>Themba died in 1967, supposedly of alcohol related causes, only 14 years after he started drinking. I interrogate a number of personal, social and political factors that contributed to his early demise. As an epigraph to the book, I use a quote from his former protege, veteran journalist <a href="https://sanef.org.za/sanef-mourns-the-death-of-veteran-journalist-writer-and-researcher-harry-mashabela/">Harry Mashabela</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Can Themba was what he was and not what he could have been because his country is what it is.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For a writer who believed in freedom of expression, living in a tyrannical society was a constant assault to his soul. </p>
<p>More than anything else, I realised that Can Themba was a teacher at heart. It’s common knowledge that before joining Drum in 1953, he had been working as a teacher, and that he taught at St Joseph’s Catholic School in Swaziland, where he passed away in 1967. It’s not very well known that he lived for teaching even when he was not teaching for a living. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover that foregrounds a photograph of a young man in glasses leaning back, a newspaper open in his hands and a typewriter on the desk in front of him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wits University Press</span></span>
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<p>He was a teacher in his <a href="https://readinglist.click/sub/remember-can-themba-on-the-50th-anniversary-of-his-death-at-the-launch-of-the-house-of-truth-by-siphiwo-mahala/">House of Truth</a>, which he established in his room in Sophiatown as a forum for debate. He taught in the newsroom and in the drinking dens, becoming known as the “shebeen intellectual”. And in every space where he found himself. He did guest lectures at universities. He even offered English lessons to groups and individuals. For me, his greatest legacy is his determination to nurture young minds. </p>
<p><em>Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi is <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/can-themba/">available from</a> Wits University Press</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181126/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Siphiwo Mahala is affiliated with the University of Johannesburg as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and a Senior Research Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study.
</span></em></p>
Abundantly talented and flawed, apartheid-era writer Can Themba wasn’t afraid to put his body on the line for a story.
Siphiwo Mahala, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Johannesburg
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/169991
2021-10-18T14:16:29Z
2021-10-18T14:16:29Z
How South African editor Aggrey Klaaste put himself on the line with his contrarian idea
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426982/original/file-20211018-15-u4rmbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aggrey Klaaste, right, used the Sowetan newspaper to drive his Nation-building campaign. He is seen here with John Mabatho, the newspaper's production manager.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Velasco © Arena Holdings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1988, Aggrey Klaaste <a href="https://www.omt.org.za/history/some-omt-beneficiaries/aggrey-klaaste/">became the editor of Sowetan</a> and launched a project to intervene in the fraught political situation in South Africa. The Sowetan was the foremost daily newspaper for black South Africans, a successor to the Post and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/black-wednesday-banning-19-black-consciousness-movement-organisations">The World</a>, both banned by the apartheid state. </p>
<p>It was a tumultuous time in South Africa, with state persecution and efforts to quell protest and opposition reaching their zenith. Amid ongoing protest against the apartheid state, the government had declared <a href="https://www.saha.org.za/ecc25/ecc_under_a_state_of_emergency.htm">two states of emergency</a>. In addition, political groups within the country were at war with one another. </p>
<p>Klaaste was distressed by what he saw happening in black communities, where residents faced state terror and political violence. As a result, he sought to rebuild local community organisations and to restore values such as good citizenship, self-help and neighbourly conduct. On taking up the editor’s mantle, he began outlining his “big idea” – <a href="https://www.joburg.org.za/play_/Pages/Play%20in%20Joburg/Joburg%20Vibe/links/people%20of%20the%20city/Links/Aggrey-Klaaste---still-building-the-nation.aspx">nation-building</a>. Its central idea was to unite black South Africans behind community improvement and engagement. He intended the newspaper to be a key driver of the project.</p>
<p>What Klaaste was doing was providing a forum for citizenship at a time when black South Africans were marginalised. </p>
<p>Klaaste immediately ran into strong headwinds – inside the newsroom and outside it.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/public-trust-in-the-media-is-at-a-new-low-a-radical-rethink-of-journalism-is-needed-155257">Public trust in the media is at a new low: a radical rethink of journalism is needed</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Most of the journalists who worked for him supported the <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-83">Black Consciousness Movement</a>. The movement brought together the country’s oppressed people to collectively fight against racial oppression. They strenuously opposed nation-building, as they saw it as collaborating with the apartheid system.</p>
<p>One of the arguments encountered was that it wasn’t the time to talk about nation-building. Apartheid needed to be torn down first. A former Sowetan journalist remembers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We actually confronted and fought Klaaste … saying, you know, ‘liberation now’ and good stuff later. But he said, ‘No, no, no – it’s got to go in parallel.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Outside the newsroom, the union coalitions and mass anti-apartheid movements were advocating civil disobedience to bring the country to its knees, a far cry from Klaaste’s nation-building.</p>
<p>Klaaste persisted. He began to explore nation-building in his weekly column, “On the Line”. But the concept of nation-building presented a challenge. It was a vague ideal that needed to be fleshed out. So, at first, he floated the concept without too many details.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am preparing the ground, laying the bed so to speak for the seed of an idea I hope to be planting in the not too long future. Frankly, the idea excites and exhilarates me as it appears to have breath-taking possibilities.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The birth of an idea</h2>
<p>Klaaste suggested that black South Africans were in a weak position, despite being in the majority, and that the weakness stemmed from a lack of unity, the lack of a “central idea” to motivate all the various movements. </p>
<p>Nation-building could be that idea.</p>
<p>His column inaugurated a conversation with his readers about nation-building. He also circulated them before publication to Sowetan journalists for critique. The idea began to evolve through these processes. His column became the philosophical heart of the nation-building campaign that Sowetan was establishing, the space where the idea was debated and developed.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-threats-to-media-freedom-come-from-unexpected-directions-148265">New threats to media freedom come from unexpected directions</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>At first, Klaaste maintained an uncertain and questioning position, reporting on reactions to the idea. He shared the positive responses and the negative. He tended to answer criticism by stressing the need to rebuild community, to work for a future.</p>
<p>However, soon he and his colleague <a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1990-07-09-9007070127-story.html">Sam Mabe</a> began engaging vigorously with opposing views. Klaaste was always respectful and constructive in his engagements. He felt strongly that people with differing political positions should talk to each other. He demonstrated such bridge-building through his writing.</p>
<p>One column explicitly modelled the “for and against” of his idea. In early 1989, he put his nation-building approach side by side with its main opposition, the “liberation first” position, writing the column as a discussion between two friends. His interlocutor is unnamed, but could have been any one of a number of Sowetan senior colleagues or anti-apartheid activists. He is described by Klaaste as “a dear friend of mine”, “who has in various courageous, responsible ways, showed me what it means to be committed to the struggle”.</p>
<p>Klaaste “hears” the friend’s argument in the column, honouring both the speaker and his position:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He has convinced me in his quite persuasive way that if the decision for the total revolution is taken in his unselfish totally responsible way, you must be a fool not to agree with him … He has taught me that perhaps we are almost fated to pay the heaviest of prices for our mistakes…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In response, Klaaste convinces his friend to let him give nation-building a shot.</p>
<p>The column described not so much an argument, but an ongoing process of dialogue, in which everyone’s point of view was heard.</p>
<p>Klaaste and Mabe also began fleshing out nation-building in relation to other philosophies. Early on, <em>ubuntu</em> (humanness) is introduced as a foundational concept. The southern African word is often used to encapsulate sub-Saharan moral ideals, expressed in the maxim</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/what-archbishop-tutus-ubuntu-credo-teaches-the-world-about-justice-and-harmony-84730">a person is a person through other people</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Klaaste argued that nation-building was black South Africans taking moral leadership in creating a future for the entire country, based on the practice of <em>ubuntu</em>, which he connected to a range of black political leaders. Among them were <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Sobukwe</a>, founder of the Pan Africanist Congress, and Nelson Mandela.</p>
<p>Klaaste didn’t nail nation-building to any political flag, but as “the nation’s forum to sort out divisiveness”. He used the example of a family, in which each member has different political affiliations: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I belong to an extended family … we have leanings towards a whole range of diverse and ideological planks. We never fight over this … Nation Building is about the formation of such filial links.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nation-building thus provided a broad church for the variety of politics in black communities. The campaign also explicitly drew on one aspect of Black Consciousness, active self-reliance, to argue that black communities must take charge of their own empowerment.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-makes-blunders-but-still-feeds-democracy-an-insiders-view-146364">Journalism makes blunders but still feeds democracy: an insider's view</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>By 1989, a year into nation-building, the campaign was firmly established at the newspaper. In 1989, too, the apartheid government began talks with the ANC. These were to culminate in a democratic dispensation for South Africa.</p>
<p>This made nation-building highly relevant to the new era of creating inclusive citizenship.</p>
<p><em>This article is an edited extract from a chapter in the <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/public-intellectuals-in-south-africa/">book</a> Public Intellectuals in South Africa: Critical Voices from the Past, edited by Chris Broodryk and published by <a href="https://witspress.co.za/">Wits University Press</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169991/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lesley Cowling 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>
Klaaste was distressed by what was happening in black communities, where residents faced state terror and political violence. He sought to restore values such as self-help and neighbourly conduct.
Lesley Cowling, Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/156223
2021-03-03T15:00:02Z
2021-03-03T15:00:02Z
How Zuma uses war metaphor to fight allegations of graft in South Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387163/original/file-20210302-21-1kapoft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former South African president Jacob Zuma at the State Capture Commission in July 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Early in February former President Jacob Zuma issued a <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/judgment-heralds-constitutional-crisis-in-sa--jaco">statement</a> defying a Constitutional Court decision compelling him to appear before the <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">judicial commission</a> probing grand corruption in South Africa. He used a war metaphor to explain why he would be a victim if he adhered to the court’s decision. </p>
<p>The commission had asked the court to issue an order forcing him to testify before it. Zuma is central to the work of the commission as the allegations that the state had been captured for private benefit happened during his tenure which stretched from <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-jacob-zuma-0">May 2009 to January 2018</a>. He has also been implicated by witnesses at the commission as being complicit in the corruption.</p>
<p>The commission sought the intervention of the apex court after Zuma had walked out after his application that its chairperson, Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, recuse himself was <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2020-11-23-jacob-zuma-scores-a-criminal-charge-for-walking-out-on-zondo-heres-how-he-got-there/">dismissed in November 2020</a>. The court <a href="https://theconversation.com/treating-zuma-with-kid-gloves-has-failed-what-now-for-south-africas-corruption-commission-154571">ruled</a> that he should cooperate with the commission.</p>
<p>Zuma’s defence against the commission is based on metaphorical reasoning. Understanding his key metaphor provides insight into his rhetorical strategy. He has <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/judgment-heralds-constitutional-crisis-in-sa--jaco">complained</a> that the </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Constitutional Court also mimics the posture of the commission … by suspending my Constitutional rights rendering me completely defenceless against the commission. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>To be defenceless presupposes that someone else is waging war against you.</p>
<p>Metaphors are not used for their own sake <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=wlerDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=political+metaphor+analysis+-+musolff&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjq5fCT3pHvAhU2VRUIHTaODuMQ6AEwAHoECAQQAg#v=onepage&q=political%20metaphor%20analysis%20-%20musolff&f=false">in politics</a>, but as part of a strategy to persuade a particular audience to accept a point of view, and act accordingly. Zuma clearly succeeds in persuading his loyalists to <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2021-02-09-we-will-support-zuma-until-death-do-us-part-mkmva-heads-to-nkandla/">continue to “defend” him</a>. Simultaneously, he uses it as a shield against being held accountable. </p>
<p>The metaphorical language is key to understanding these two contradictory consequences.</p>
<p>We have researched the language of <a href="https://repository.nwu.ac.za/handle/10394/33090">South African political propaganda</a> as well as the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10228195.2013.868025">metaphors</a> used by post-apartheid South African presidents. Drawing on this analysis, we concentrate on Zuma’s two main statements about the commission: the <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/site/files/transcript/135/15_July_2019_Sessions.pdf">verbal statement</a> when he appeared before Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo on 15 July 2019, and his <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/judgment-heralds-constitutional-crisis-in-sa--jaco">written statement</a> on 1 February 2021. </p>
<p>His verbal statement is his most comprehensive personal account before the commission, and therefore consists of more natural and spontaneous speech than a formal, written account. We have used this statement alongside his 1 February statement, which focuses directly on the commission. </p>
<h2>Zuma’s wars</h2>
<p>Zuma speaks of war in its literal and metaphorical senses. His “narrative” starts with an actual war, the armed struggle for liberation against the apartheid government. When the war ended, the original goal was achieved and the African National Congress (ANC) was elected as the governing party.</p>
<p>Warfare is in general an important metaphor in political vocabulary and it is, therefore, not a surprise that it is an important metaphor in the political vocabulary of the ANC and other parties. For example, former presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki once called on South Africans to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10228195.2013.868025">wage war</a> against the enemies of poverty and hunger, or gender-based violence, racism, sexism and xenophobia. They were calling on South Africans to be warriors, to fight with common purpose to defeat these metaphorical enemies.</p>
<p>Zuma’s purpose is different. As we show in our <a href="http://upnet.up.ac.za/services/it/documentation/docs/004167.pdf">research</a>, <em>Linking the dots: metaphors in the narrative of self-justification by former president Zuma</em>, he uses warfare metaphors to defend himself and persuade his supporters to continue supporting him. </p>
<p>He presents himself as the ultimate warrior for the economic liberation of the poor. In his <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/site/files/transcript/135/15_July_2019_Sessions.pdf">oral presentation</a> to the commission in 2019, and his <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/judgment-heralds-constitutional-crisis-in-sa--jaco">public statement on 1 February 2021</a>, he identifies his “stance on the transformation of this country and its economy” as the reason why he is the “target” of a campaign of “propaganda, vilification and falsified claims.”</p>
<p>Zuma turned on the heat in his <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/judgment-heralds-constitutional-crisis-in-sa--jaco">February declaration</a>, by claiming similarities between himself and <a href="https://theconversation.com/letters-reveal-africanist-hero-robert-sobukwes-moral-courage-and-pain-112439">Robert Sobukwe</a>, the late leader of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The parallels are too similar to ignore given that Sobukwe was specifically targeted for his ideological stance on liberation. I on the other hand am the target of propaganda, vilification and falsified claims against me for my stance on the transformation of this country and its economy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Zuma’s defiant stance reached a crescendo when he <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/judgment-heralds-constitutional-crisis-in-sa--jaco">proclaimed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I do not fear being arrested, I do not fear being convicted nor do I fear being incarcerated. I joined the struggle against the racist apartheid government and the unjust oppression of black people by whites in the country at a very young age.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His language openly suggests that the liberation struggle and his current struggle are equally concrete and historical, pretending that there is nothing metaphorical in his narrative of self defence.</p>
<h2>Hiding behind metaphors</h2>
<p>The metaphor of warfare allows the former president to construct a version of reality that suits his purposes. He highlights incidents that make sense to him and his supporters as evidence of his opponents’ activities. Just like the apartheid security apparatus targeted him and other ANC operatives, his modern day “enemies” – security agencies, <a href="https://theconversation.com/white-monopoly-capital-an-excuse-to-avoid-south-africas-real-problems-75143">“white monopoly capital”</a>, the commission and Constitutional Court – target him as a part of their war against him. </p>
<p>At the same time, the metaphor of warfare, with its familiar role definitions, allows Zuma to evade those aspects of reality that do not fit the narrative. </p>
<p>He is the good warrior for the cause of those in poverty. The idea that he and his associates would do anything to harm the cause of <a href="https://www.news24.com/fin24/Economy/radical-economic-transformation-zuma-vs-ramaphosa-20170502">“radical economic transformation”</a>, does not fit his narrative. His warfare metaphor simply offers no room for conflicting facts or the possibility that he is prosecuted due to alleged violations of the law or the constitution. Like the lonely hero on stage at the end of a Shakespearean tragedy, Zuma told Justice Zondo <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/site/files/transcript/135/15_July_2019_Sessions.pdf">in July 2019</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Zuma must go. What has he done? Nobody can tell. He’s corrupt. What has he done? Nothing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This “nothing” is the point – in terms of the warfare metaphor – that paints him in the defenceless victim role. There is no rhetorical room for evidence of alleged wrongdoing. Allegations and evidence of wrongdoing are, therefore, strategically excluded from consideration.</p>
<h2>Zuma’s gambit</h2>
<p>Zuma’s narrative of self defence begins with his role in the literal liberation struggle, when he was an actual soldier and freedom fighter. He extends the language of warfare into the present, as a metaphor to make sense of his current persecution. Because the language of warfare is rooted in actual, concrete events, it seems coherent and reliable enough to make it credible and persuasive.</p>
<p>The former president’s metaphorical interpretation of reality excludes the possibility that evidence of his alleged wrongdoing can be incorporated into the same narrative: such evidence must, therefore, be rejected, or be reinterpreted, as falsehoods concocted by his opponents.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bertus van Rooy received research funding under the Incentive Funding for Rated Researchers scheme from the National Research Foundation from 2008-2018.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ansie Maritz 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>
Metaphors are not used for their own sake in politics, but as part of a strategy to persuade a particular audience to accept a point of view, and act accordingly
Ansie Maritz, Lecturer in Afrikaans linguistics, University of Pretoria
Bertus van Rooy, Professor of English linguistics, University of Amsterdam
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/153803
2021-01-22T17:30:01Z
2021-01-22T17:30:01Z
South African minister’s COVID-19 death unites friends and rivals in tribute
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380165/original/file-20210122-21-i0shrv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jackson Mthembu is the most prominent South African politician to succumb to COVID-19.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The death of <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/minister-jackson-mthembu%3A-profile">Jackson Mphikwa Mthembu</a>, Minister in the Office of the President of South Africa, has been met with sorrow across the country. Tributes have come from across the political spectrum for the country’s first government minister to succumb to COVID-19. He was 62.</p>
<p>Mthembu’s integrity, dedication to his job and sense of humour explain the response to his death.</p>
<p>President Cyril Ramaphosa <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/press-statements/statement-president-cyril-ramaphosa-passing-minister-jackson-mthembu">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Minister Mthembu was an exemplary leader, an activist and life-long champion of freedom and democracy. He was a much-loved and greatly respected colleague and comrade, whose passing leaves our nation at a loss. I extend my deepest sympathies to the Minister’s family, to his colleagues, comrades and many friends.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The leader of the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance, John Steenhuisen, <a href="https://www.polity.org.za/article/the-da-mourns-the-passing-of-jackson-mthembu-2021-01-21">said</a> to Mthembu’s family, friends and the governing partty, the African National Congress:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You have lost a generous man with a big heart and an even greater sense of humour.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Corne Mulder, leader of the right-wing <a href="https://www.vfplus.org.za/">Freedom Front Plus</a>, <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/jackson-mthembu-dies-of-covid-19-related-complications-20210121-2">said</a> “Jackson Mthembu was an excellent chief whip of Parliament. He stood strong on principle when Parliament came under attack during the Zuma years.”</p>
<p>He was referring to the <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/richard-calland-the-zuma-years/lwlk-1845-g5a0">tenure of former President Jacob Zuma</a>, from May 2009 to February 2018, characterised by populism and <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-democracy-or-a-kleptocracy-how-south-africa-stacks-up-111101">rampant corruption in government</a>. </p>
<p>Jessie Duarte, the deputy secretary-general of the African National Congress, enthused about how Mthembu had been a dedicated, committed activist with “an unbelievable work ethic” who was meticulous about his work and believed that the democratic project could work.</p>
<p>She <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2021-01-22-in-quotes-jessie-duarte-jackson-mthembu-leaves-behind-a-legacy-of-honesty/">said</a> Mthembu had a great sense of humour and an “amazing” ability to interact with people:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have lost a person who put the country first, at all times. For us who have lost a brother and a friend, this is a very great loss. He leaves a legacy of honesty and integrity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His death drives home the seriousness of the <a href="https://mg.co.za/news/2021-01-21-stern-warning-against-covid-greets-mthembus-death/">COVID-19 pandemic in the country</a>.</p>
<h2>The early days</h2>
<p>Mthembu’s life mirrored the daily toils black South Africans had to endure under colonialism and apartheid. His life was also synonymous with the struggle for freedom by the young activists who picked up the baton from leaders like <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Sobukwe</a>, among others, who were either jailed or banned or, like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a>, paid the ultimate price at the hands of the apartheid regime.</p>
<p>Mthembu was born in the eastern Transvaal, today’s Mpumalanga province, in the east of the country. He was raised by his grandmother and uncles. From the age of seven, he had to help his grandmother working in the family’s maize fields. He was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jackson-mthembu">kicked out of school</a> several times because his family could not afford school fees, uniforms or school books.</p>
<p>He was a student leader during <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">the 1976 school revolt</a>, sparked by the imposition of the Afrikaans language as a medium of instruction. The revolt spread throughout the country. The harsh response of the apartheid regime, shooting and killing unarmed children, led to revulsion around the world, further isolating the apartheid government. </p>
<p>He was expelled from <a href="https://www.dpme.gov.za/about/Pages/Minister.aspx">Fort Hare University in 1980</a> owing to his political activities. In 1980 he got a job at Highveld Steel and Vanadium, and became one of the first Africans to be promoted to production foreman. Between 1984 and 1986 he became a senior steward of the Metal and Allied Workers’ Union, which is today called the <a href="https://www.numsa.org.za/">National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>During the 1980s struggle years it became almost a norm that unionists also became community leaders. In 1980 Mthembu became chair of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jackson-mthembu">Witbank Education Crisis Committee</a>. He also served on the eMalahleni Civic Association; the local branch of the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/cis/omalley/OMalleyWeb/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03208.htm">National Education Crisis Committee</a>, which campaigned for a “people’s education”; and the <a href="http://www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/keywords/detainees-parents-support-committee-dpsc">Detainees’ Parents Support Committee</a>.</p>
<h2>Defiance amid persecution</h2>
<p>The Special Branch (the apartheid political police) repeatedly detained him for months of solitary confinement during the <a href="https://www.saha.org.za/ecc25/ecc_under_a_state_of_emergency.htm">1980s states of emergency</a>, tortured him in police stations, and petrol-bombed his home. Mthembu was prosecuted for sabotage, treason and terrorism with 30 other activists in the <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/presidency/jackson-mthembu-mr">Bethal terrorism trial of 1986-1988</a>. He was acquitted.</p>
<p>After this acquittal, the apartheid security police continued with their harassment and intimidation. This led him to move away from Witbank, to the east of Johannesburg, and find refuge in Soweto and Alexandra in the Gauteng province as an “internal exile”, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/press-statements/statement-president-cyril-ramaphosa-passing-minister-jackson-mthembu">seriously disrupting his family life</a>.</p>
<p>He was elected deputy regional secretary for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging-complex">Pretoria-Witwatersrand- Vereeniging</a> region (today’s Gauteng) of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/united-democratic-front-udf">United Democratic Front</a>, the above-ground home for supporters of the then-banned African National Congress during the 1980s.</p>
<p>Mthembu worked with the South African Council of Churches, and in 1988 led a convoy of 300 minibuses as the SWAPO Support Group to help them during Namibia’s first democratic elections. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-west-africa-peoples-organisation-swapo">SWAPO (South West African People’s Organisation)</a> went on to win the elections, and has governed Namibia since independence from South Africa <a href="https://theconversation.com/namibias-democracy-enters-new-era-as-ruling-swapo-continues-to-lose-its-lustre-151238">in 1990</a>. </p>
<h2>Life of public service</h2>
<p>Mthembu’s career was as one of the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2006-08-28-his-legacy-should-not-be-forgotten/">“inziles”, as opposed to the exile generation</a> and the generation jailed on Robben Island. This has a two-fold significance. First, generational. The Robben Island generation, such as Mandela, and the exile generation, such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a>, are now almost all retired. Zuma straddles both the Robben Island and exile experiences. Second, the “inziles” of the United Democratic Front had a less authoritarian and more participatory political culture than the islanders and the exiles, and this characterises their subsequent career.</p>
<p>In 1994 Jackson Mthembu was elected to Parliament and participated in the drafting of the South African constitution. Between 1997 and 1999 he was a member of the Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature, and served as Member of the Executive Committee for Transport. </p>
<p>He was elected to the national executive committee in 2007, and worked at the ANC head office, Luthuli House in Johannesburg, where he and then secretary-general Gwede Mantashe defended Zuma over the scandal involving the use of public money for expensive renovations to his private home at <a href="https://cdn.24.co.za/files/Cms/General/d/2718/00b91b2841d64510b9c99ef9b9faa597.pdf">Nkandla</a>. In 2014 he became an MP in the National Assembly, chairing the portfolio committee on environment, becoming ANC Chief Whip in 2016. </p>
<p>As the tide within the ANC was beginning to turn against Zuma,
he worked with the <a href="https://www.da.org.za/">Democratic Alliance</a> to <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/mthembu-slams-anc-mps-accusations-that-he-colluded-with-da-in-state-capture-motion-20171128">schedule a parliamentary debate</a> on <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">“state capture”</a> – large-scale corruption – during Zuma’s presidency. </p>
<p>Mthembu took part in the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-08-26-how-ramaphosas-campaign-spent-r400-million-and-why-it-matters/">CR17 campaign</a> to get Cyril Ramaphosa elected as the successor to Jacob Zuma as president of the ANC. In 2019 Ramaphosa appointed him Minister in the Presidency.</p>
<p>Mthembu, sometimes affectionately referred to by his clan name, Mvelase, is survived by his wife Thembi Mthembu and five children. His first wife, Pinkie, and one of his daughters predeceased him. His death was greeted with ringing tributes across the floor in parliament.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153803/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is a member of the ANC, but writes this in his professional capacity as a political scientist and historian.</span></em></p>
Jackson Mthembu’s death drives home the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/128240
2019-12-08T07:14:54Z
2019-12-08T07:14:54Z
Frank review of South African foreign policy over 25 years
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304973/original/file-20191203-66990-3olhlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In an important new book, South Africa’s foreign policy performance over its first quarter-century democratic governance is put under the spotlight. Professor Eddy Maloka, CEO of the African Peer Review Mechanism, surveys South Africa’s performance in an incisive, accessible, credible account of how and why the country has acted in regional and global affairs. </p>
<p>Professor Maloka, an historian by training, is both a scholar and a practitioner of South African foreign policy. In addition to his years of research, writing and teaching, he also worked in national and provincial government. He served as special advisor to South Africa’s foreign minister between 2009-2016. </p>
<p>His latest <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48427263-when-foreign-becomes-domestic">book</a> – When Foreign Becomes Domestic: The Interplay of National Interests, Pan-Africanism and Internationalism in South Africa’s Foreign Policy – is constructively provocative. The book, he stresses</p>
<blockquote>
<p>is written for students of international relations, practitioners whose hard work in our diplomatic service is not always appreciated, and the public interested in the intricacies of South African foreign policy making and implementation. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Maloka argues for the benefits of taking a long-term view of foreign policy trends and principles. And based on his own rich experience in public service, he also urges greater efforts to bridge the worlds of scholarship and the hard work of diplomacy. </p>
<p>I agree that ways can – and should – be found to foster closer working relations between academics who study and teach about foreign policy and the women and men with responsibility to act on behalf of all South Africans in world affairs.</p>
<p>But it may be more difficult than many of us might hope. This is perhaps best illustrated in the chapter National Interests and Human Rights – the most thought-provoking and timely in the book in my view. </p>
<p>The author concludes that the national interest and human rights remain “the two topics bedevilling Tshwane’s foreign policy.” </p>
<h2>Contested territory</h2>
<p>South Africa continues to be an open and often fractious democracy, where no one is above the law. Protecting this fundamental equality and freedom lies at the heart of human rights concerns of citizens. In my view it should also be the lode star of foreign policy. </p>
<p>Yet conflicts arise, often with global partners, who don’t share South Africa’s democratic commitments. In a world of sovereign states cooperation requires compromise. Sustaining and advancing African solidarity can also be contentious domestically. This is especially so when principles of human rights are, or appear to be, at risk. </p>
<p>Professor Maloka cites three controversial foreign policy decisions: South Africa’s membership of the International Criminal Court; the recent saga surrounding former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the court; and the Dalai Lama’s attempt to visit the country.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304966/original/file-20191203-67017-a8o0ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304966/original/file-20191203-67017-a8o0ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304966/original/file-20191203-67017-a8o0ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304966/original/file-20191203-67017-a8o0ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304966/original/file-20191203-67017-a8o0ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304966/original/file-20191203-67017-a8o0ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304966/original/file-20191203-67017-a8o0ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>These are surely all issues that justify the book’s title: When Foreign Becomes Domestic. Each ignited lots of domestic controversy that bedevilled policymaking. They also complicated South Africa’s pursuit of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313574089_Kwame_Nkrumah_and_the_panafrican_vision_Between_acceptance_and_rebuttal">Pan-African</a> solidarity.</p>
<p>The activism of domestic human rights constituencies in all three cases have been criticised for undermining long-term Pan-African solidarity. This is a view Professor Maloka shares. Yet he concludes that the government</p>
<blockquote>
<p>must always factor in what is best for the country and its people and Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Only one of the three issues is actively contentious; Bashir is out of power and the Dalai Lama is slowing down and less involved in world affairs. But South Africa’s withdrawal from the ICC, still deserves the kind of informed public debate, which the author encourages. </p>
<h2>The need for nuance</h2>
<p>I believe Professor Maloka is correct to criticise those who simplify foreign policy by treating any state – especially South Africa –- as a “unitary actor”. This is certainly the case in the area of human rights where domestic stakeholders are especially active. </p>
<p>And he is rightly concerned that the country shouldn’t overlook the role that its diplomats play as actors in their own right on the frontiers of foreign policy, in a rapidly changing and often contentious world. </p>
<p>And the fact that back home there are the frequent difficulties of coordination between the presidency, the foreign ministry and the headquarters of the South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress. </p>
<p>He also is critical of anyone who breaks down South Africa foreign policy into distinct periods according to the leader of the moment. For example, in a chapter on The Decline of South African Foreign Policy, he argues Jacob Zuma’s first term continued many activist policies in Africa and beyond.</p>
<p>This was despite the shock of a global economic crisis which erupted after the meltdown in financial markets in 2008. These events were beyond South Africa’s control. Only in Zuma’s second term did corruption and abuses of governance threaten to undermine constitutional projections and the rule of law.</p>
<p>Professor Maloka encourages the reader to consider how difficult many of the choices and trade-offs are that governments have to take to advance the national interest. Many are also constrained by time, information, money and power. </p>
<p>He recommends that scholars should have greater access to better government record keeping and archives. This could potentially be helpful on a number of fronts. It could allow academics to uncover missed diplomatic opportunities to prevent or resolve competing objectives abroad. It could also open the door to engaging domestic stakeholders in helping balance competing interests and values when setting policies in the national interest.</p>
<h2>Who gets to play?</h2>
<p>Professor Maloka has rendered an important contribution by spelling out his three pillars of South African foreign policy: national interests, pan-Africanism and internationalism. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305728/original/file-20191208-90597-zpst6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305728/original/file-20191208-90597-zpst6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305728/original/file-20191208-90597-zpst6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305728/original/file-20191208-90597-zpst6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305728/original/file-20191208-90597-zpst6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305728/original/file-20191208-90597-zpst6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305728/original/file-20191208-90597-zpst6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Professor Eddy Maloka, CEO of the African Peer Review Mechanism.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But his hope that that foreign policy can become more tightly run to protect and advance South Africa’s “national interest” begs the question of who gets to play in a vibrant diverse democracy. </p>
<p>Civil society played a crucial role in the anti-apartheid struggle, at home and abroad, and human rights should remain a vital issue of national security and decency. So too do trade unions, business leaders, and party activists, among others. </p>
<p>If South Africa can remain faithful to the ideas and ideals enshrined in its human rights focused <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a>, it can show to others the value of checking abuses of power at home and abroad.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128240/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John J Stremlau 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 country’s national interest and human rights remain the two topics bedevilling South Africa’s foreign policy.
John J Stremlau, Honorary Professor of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/127631
2019-12-05T14:49:39Z
2019-12-05T14:49:39Z
Methodist 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 University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/112439
2019-03-04T13:33:49Z
2019-03-04T13:33:49Z
Letters reveal Africanist hero Robert Sobukwe’s moral courage, and pain
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262378/original/file-20190306-48438-1ny6tjw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Between 1963 and 1969 Robert Sobukwe spent six years of near-complete solitary confinement on Robben Island.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Book cover</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>On 21 March 1960 the apartheid police <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">opened fire on unarmed marchers</a> protesting against a law that forced black people to carry identity documents. Over 200 were injured and 69 killed. The following edited excerpt is from a new book featuring the prison letters of Robert Sobukwe, who organised and led the march.</em></p>
<p>In a letter of condolence written on 5 August 1974 to Nell Marquard, a friend who he had been corresponding with since his time on Robben Island, South African pan-Africanist leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a> made a telling observation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I learnt some time ago that one cannot put oneself in another’s position. We may express sympathy, feel it and even imagine the pain. But we cannot feel it as the one who suffers it. They have a saying in Xhosa that the toothache is felt by the one whose tooth is aching.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sobukwe, who clearly knew about suffering, loneliness and the impossibility of ever fully communicating one’s pain to another, was writing just after the death of Nell’s husband, the noted Cape liberal, author and historian, Leo Marquard. Given that Leo was a prominent liberal, and that white liberals had not always been friendly to the aims and agendas of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) – the organisation that Sobukwe led from 1959 until his arrest in 1960 – one might have expected coolness from Sobukwe. Not at all. He, as always, was gracious:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am thankful that I was able to talk to you two years before Leo’s death and more thankful that he died knowing how much his contribution had been appreciated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Touching as this acknowledgement of his contribution would have been for Marquard, the real poignancy of Sobukwe’s letter comes a little further on, when he starts speaking of the myriad difficulties he has faced since leaving <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/916">Robben Island</a>, where most of South Africa’s liberation struggle leaders were jailed. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It has not been a good year for me. I had planned to leave [from Kimberley] … by car on the 31st May and make straight for Cape Town. But these boys [apartheid security police] beat me to it. They came on the 30th May, 1974 to serve the fresh lot of bureaucratic output. Well it’s good to know that our security is entrusted to such alert people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite the fact that he makes light of it, one senses in Sobukwe’s letter that the constant surveillance and harassment of the security police was taking its toll. Behind the ironic salute to the astuteness of the police, there is also a disturbing foreshadowing. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a>, in many respects Sobukwe’s most direct political heir, would be stopped and arrested on a not dissimilar road trip from Cape Town four years later, an event which would lead directly to his death at the hands of the Security Police. Sobukwe continues: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Veronica (Sobukwe’s wife) has had a major operation as you probably read in the papers. She should have had this operation last year, but did not and the condition got worse. She has made a remarkable recovery, thanks to my very efficient and tender nursing, and has now gone back to Joh’burg for a check up. From there she will be in Durban to spend a week or so with her sister before proceeding to Swaziland to see the children.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Between May 1963 and May 1969 Sobukwe was to spend six years of near-complete solitary confinement on Robben Island.</p>
<p>These circumstances had their origins in a momentous historical event organised by Sobukwe himself. On 21 March 1960, he had led the Pan Africanist Congress in what he called a “positive action” campaign, protesting against the oppressive pass laws that governed the movements – and indeed the lives – of black South Africans. </p>
<p>This mass action resulted in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> later that same day, in which at least 69 people were killed when the South African police opened fire on a crowd of protesters. This event, which drew international attention to the injustices and brutality of apartheid, was a watershed moment in the history of South Africa. It led to a three-year jail sentence for Sobukwe for inciting people to protest against the laws of the country.</p>
<p>Not content that by 3 May 1963 Sobukwe would have served his sentence, the apartheid government passed an amendment to the General Law Amendment Act, the notorious <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-mangaliso-sobukwe">“Sobukwe Clause”</a>, which enabled the Minister of Justice to prolong the detention of any political prisoner year after year.</p>
<p>He was then relocated to Robben Island, and kept apart from other prisoners, where he remained for six years. The clause – never used to detain anyone else – was renewed annually by the Minister of Justice.</p>
<p>Sobukwe, in a very significant sense, was never a free man again after his 1960 imprisonment. The apartheid government unleashed a series of bureaucratic cruelties upon him after his May 1969 release from Robben Island. They forced him to live in the geographically remote town of Kimberley – far removed from any friends, family or associates. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The house where Sobukwe was held on Robben Island .</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flcker/Daniel Mouton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They insisted he take on a low-ranking job that would have made him complicit in the apartheid policies that he went to jail protesting. He refused. They repeatedly refused to allow him to leave the country to take up job offers he had received from the United States; and they obstructed his attempts to get the medical treatments that he needed, and that would have extended his life (he died of lung cancer on 27 February 1978).</p>
<p>This then is the background to the consolations that Sobukwe sought to offer Nell Marquard in his 1974 letter. It’s only on the last page of that letter that he seemed to finally find the words that suited both his emotions and the note of commiseration that he wished to convey to Nell:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Xhosa have standard words of condolence. They say
<em>Akuhlanga lungehlanga lala ngenxeba</em> (There has not occurred what has not occurred before … lie on your wound).
God bless you. Affectionately, Robert.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This resonant phrase – which also appears in Sobukwe’s letters to his friend Benjamin Pogrund – applies equally, if not more so, to Sobukwe himself. “Lie on your wound(s)” is a call to bide one’s time, to heal, and to reconstitute one’s self despite evident suffering. It is a call to have courage, to bear the moral burden of pain, and it provides an apt title for what was the most difficult period of Sobukwe’s life, namely his time on Robben Island, which the selection of letters collected in this <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/lie-on-your-wounds-2/">book</a>, published by Wits <a href="http://witspress.co.za/">University Press</a>, represents.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112439/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek Hook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A collection of prison letters provides a peek into the suffering of South African liberation hero, Robert Sobukwe.
Derek Hook, Associate professor of Psychology, Duquesne University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/57136
2016-04-02T10:31:10Z
2016-04-02T10:31:10Z
How racially divided South Africans can find their common humanity
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117142/original/image-20160401-6806-10pjqxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa is at a crossroads. As citizens of the country the questions that come to mind are: Who are we? What is our identity? And who among us are South Africans?</p>
<p>I raise these questions because the emergence last year of the “Rhodes must Fall Movement”, followed by the “Fees must Fall Movement”, brought to the fore the legacy of the country’s settler colonial past and the sharp inequality between black and white that persists today in spite of the great triumph of the country’s democratic struggle in 1994. </p>
<p>Why, 22 years into a democracy committed to non-racialism, has black consciousness re-emerged?</p>
<h2>White people and black consciousness</h2>
<p>Forty years ago whites were asking themselves the same questions with the emergence of the black consciousness movement under the charismatic leadership of Steve Biko. In 1973 I was asked by the national student organisation of white students to give a lecture on the origins of black consciousness and how whites should be responding to this challenge.</p>
<p>I argued that for whites to liberate themselves from racism will be a long and difficult intellectual and psychological process. It will involve, <a href="http://www.thenewradicals.com/the-1973-nusas-seminar.html">I said</a>, a</p>
<blockquote>
<p>critical self-examination to understand the forces that have shaped us – this process of de-socialisation and de-colonisation is a total process as it involves re-discovering the history of our country and the culture of its peoples.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Needless to say the apartheid regime reacted in a very hostile way to my lecture.</p>
<p>Two years later I was arrested and charged with, inter alia, promoting black consciousness. Re-reading this lecture 43 years later I would say much the same as I did then: as a community, whites have made little progress in speaking local languages, with little knowledge of African history, art and music.</p>
<p>Of course this is a broad generalisation and there are many whites who have begun to confront this challenge.</p>
<h2>What turn to take at the crossroads</h2>
<p>What turn are we to take at this historic crossroad? Let me share with you three propositions on how we could approach this challenge.</p>
<p>Firstly, as the leader of the Pan Africanist Congress <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/robert-sobukwe-inaugural-speech-april-1959">Robert Sobukwe</a> used to say, there is only one race and that is the human race. </p>
<p>Secondly, our identities are socially constructed and they can be reconstructed to build a joint national culture. As Steve Biko <a href="http://abahlali.org/files/Biko.pdf">remarked</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sure a joint culture will have European experiences because we have whites here who are descended from Europe. We don’t dispute that. But for God’s sake it must have African experiences as well. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Cuban anthropologist, Fernando Ortiz, referred to this process of integration as transculturation, <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/cuban-counterpoint">where</a> in tomorrow’s phase</p>
<blockquote>
<p>cultures fuse and conflict ceases … where mere racial factors have lost their discriminating power.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This leads to my third observation: there are two different ways of building greater social cohesion and collective solidarity. The first is value based, defining solidarity as a “moral imperative that … is a fundamental value in all the major religions of the world: Do to the other what you would like her to do to you. Love your neighbour as <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14747731.2014.860804">yourself</a>.”</p>
<p>This is, of course, a fine goal but not always attainable.</p>
<p>I want to propose a more pragmatic approach, one that sees solidarity as a constitutive element of mutual self-interest. It is best captured in the age-old trade union slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all.”</p>
<p>Solidarity in this context means moving from an individual self-interest, or the self-interest of a smaller group, to a broader self-interest. As Luli Callinicos shows in her book, “<a href="https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/4488640">The World that Made Mandela</a>”, Nelson Mandela broadened his idea of solidarity from the AbaThembu group, to the Xhosa people, then to black Africans in general and, as he interacted with the cosmopolitan peoples of Johannesburg in the 1940s and 1950s, to solidarity between all those who live in South Africa.</p>
<p>This is the challenge we face: we need to realise that our long-term interest lies in our common humanity as South Africans, rather than in short-term individual gain or in racial populism. This can only be achieved if we remember our past. If we don’t remember how we got here, we won’t know how to fix it.</p>
<p>But the question, surely, is how do we remember this past? On the one hand, we have a past of conquest and violent dispossession of land. Indeed, the city of Grahamstown, named after Lieutenant-Colonel Graham, led the British forces in the violent expulsion of the Xhosa from the Zuurveld in January 1812. It was to become the <a href="http://antiques.gift/the-struggle-for-the-eastern-cape-1800-1854-subjugation-and-the-roots-of-south-african-democracy_2828780.html">first successful dispossession</a> of the land of the Xhosa people.</p>
<p>On the other hand, in the words of Jacob Dlamini in his award-winning book “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Askari-Collaboration-Betrayal-Anti-apartheid-Struggle/dp/1431409758">Askari </a>”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>how different would our history sound if told not as a story of a racial war, but of what we might call, after Njabulo Ndebele, a “fatal intimacy” between black and white South Africans. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dlamini <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Askari-Collaboration-Betrayal-Anti-apartheid-Struggle/dp/1431409758">continues</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To say that apartheid generated an unwanted intimacy between individuals, and to challenge the false claim that the struggle against apartheid was simply a race war, is not to say that race did not matter or that race thinking has no salience. Race obviously mattered a great deal. But it would be wrong to think that race determined the allegiances and loyalties of individuals in any simplistic way.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is naming Grahamstown after the victor in a war not a constant reminder of a painful past? Is it not inconsistent with our commitment to reconciliation? But, and here is where Dlamini’s approach is relevant, many of the British troops in the expulsion of the Xhosa from the Zuurveld were of Khoi origins. After all the Khoi had been made vulnerable by prior dispossession. They became collaborators in the <a href="http://antiques.gift/the-struggle-for-the-eastern-cape-1800-1854-subjugation-and-the-roots-of-south-african-democracy_2828780.html">war of dispossession</a>.</p>
<h2>How to reconcile conflicting narratives</h2>
<p>How do we reconcile these conflicting narratives – the master narrative of racial dispossession and redemption that lies at the heart of South Africa’s struggle history and the story of collaboration and betrayal as the Khoisan fought “old acquaintances and in some cases <a href="http://antiques.gift/the-struggle-for-the-eastern-cape-1800-1854-subjugation-and-the-roots-of-south-african-democracy_2828780.html">relatives</a>”. </p>
<p>Reconciliation of these two narratives, I suggest, is possible; paradoxically, out of the subjugation of the Xhosa, the roots of South Africa’s democracy emerged through the non-racial franchise introduced to the Cape colony in 1854.</p>
<p>By the end of the 19th century the Eastern Cape had nurtured generations of African voters, among whom were the founders of 20th-century African nationalism and eventually the successful struggle for democracy against <a href="http://antiques.gift/the-struggle-for-the-eastern-cape-1800-1854-subjugation-and-the-roots-of-south-african-democracy_2828780.html">white minority rule</a>.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=15258877772&searchurl=tn%3Dlong%2520walk%2520to%2520freedom%26an%3Dnelson%2520mandela%26fe%3Don%26sgnd%3Don">Mandela observed</a> is his autobiography on his education at the Methodist mission schools of Clarkebury and Healdtown,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These schools have often been criticised for being colonialist in their attitudes and practices. Yet, even with such attitudes, I believe their benefits outweighed their disadvantages.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If South Africans are to make the radical changes they must to become truly great, the new generation will have to find a way of understanding the country’s past in its profound complexity – not only the pain of racialised dispossession – but also the ongoing struggle to discover their common humanity as South Africans.</p>
<p>It is a complex and difficult challenge but I know from my interaction with the students of 2015 that you will not fail us. In the memorable words of <a href="http://home.ku.edu.tr/%7Embaker/CSHS503/FrantzFanon.pdf">Frantz Fanon</a>: “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.”</p>
<p><em>This is an edited version of Professor Webster’s speech given at the Rhodes University ceremony to award him an Honorary Doctorate on April 2 2016 in Grahamstown.</em></p>
<p><strong>Professor Edward Webster is an internationally recognised sociologist. He has had a life-long interest in worker education. In the wake of the 1973 Durban strikes he and his colleagues at the University of Natal established the <em>South African Labour Bulletin</em> and the first workers’ college in South Africa. In 1976 he was charged under the Suppression of Communism Act for calling for the release of Nelson Mandela and promoting “worker unrest”. He launched a pioneering two-week course on labour studies at Wits University in 1980. He has retained an interest in trade union education, and shop stewards in particular.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57136/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Webster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
If South Africans are to make the radical changes they must to become truly great, the new generation will have to find a way of understanding the country’s past in its profound complexity.
Edward Webster, Professor Emeritus, Society, Work and Development Institute, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/52601
2016-02-16T04:21:47Z
2016-02-16T04:21:47Z
Sobukwe’s pan-Africanist dream: an elusive idea that refuses to die
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111330/original/image-20160212-29214-1lp2idg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C671%2C4716%2C3507&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Foundation essay: Our foundation essays are longer than usual and take a wider look at key issues affecting society.</em></p>
<p>Is Africa really for Africans? American commissioner to Africa and abolitionist <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/aah/delany-major-martin-robison-1812-1885">Martin Delany</a> asked this question a century and a half ago following his sojourn in Africa and Europe. </p>
<p>Attempts to answer it spawned pan-Africanism - an idea that refuses to die. This question is asked in memory of South African leader <a href="http://www.southafrica.info/about/history/robert-sobukwe-overview.htm#.Vr2c9fl97IU">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a>, a doyen of pan-Africanism who died in February 1978. </p>
<p>What became of Sobukwe is a consequence of a myriad of factors, starting from his days at <a href="http://ectoday.co.za/business/a-legacy-of-black-excellence/">Healdtown Comprehensive School</a>. A speech he made as head boy at the school emphasised co-operation between blacks and whites, demonstrating his sense of awareness of the issue of race at a young age.</p>
<p>Such awareness evolved into an ideological posture, nurtured and refined by many factors that spawned his Africanist orientation. It was at Fort Hare, a university from which a great many African leaders graduated, where much of this happened. His study of Native Administration as a subject and interaction with a lecturer who taught it, <a href="http://www.jonathanball.co.za/index.php/component/virtuemart/robert-sobukwe-how-can-man-die-better-detail?Itemid=6">Cecil Ntloko</a>, sharpened his political consciousness. </p>
<p>To these add the pursuit to forge synergy of African people’s struggles against colonialism as institutionalised in the All-African Convention of 1935; his interest in African politics; and John Galsworthy’s play titled Strife - a story of <a href="http://www.jonathanball.co.za/index.php/component/virtuemart/robert-sobukwe-how-can-man-die-better-detail?Itemid=6">“a struggle between Labour and Capital”</a>.</p>
<p>While a member of the African National Congress (ANC), Sobukwe embraced its Youth League’s definition of African nationalism that emerged during the leadership of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/anton-muziwakhe-lembede">Anton Lembede</a>. It was at odds with the mother body as it </p>
<blockquote>
<p>emphasized the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=YR9JUxYlJOkC&pg=PA225&lpg=PA225&dq=Leo+Kuper+emphasized+the+exclusive+basis+of+African+solidarity,+as+a+race+and+as+a+nation&source=bl&ots=_rsEb8So99&sig=uimfHaCfTMWd7s9rVCygNFF3pBU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwii7sXB-vnKAhUGuRoKHQc-B98Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=Leo%20Kuper%20emphasized%20the%20exclusive%20basis%20of%20African%20solidarity%2C%20as%20a%20race%20and%20as%20a%20nation&f=false">exclusive basis of African solidarity</a>, as a race and as a nation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sobukwe developed the philosophy of African nationalism to even higher intellectual heights. He believed that African nationalism was</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a basis for the complete unity of the African people, and the basis for achievement of national freedom for the African people as a step towards a fully <a href="http://www.jonathanball.co.za/index.php/component/virtuemart/robert-sobukwe-how-can-man-die-better-detail?Itemid=6">fledged democratic order</a> in South Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He dedicated his life selflessly to this cause. The lesson he left for humanity was his ideological stand that there is <a href="https://ilizwe.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/speeches-of-r-m-sobukhwe.pdf">only one race</a>, the human race. Perhaps if we had listened to Sobukwe’s teachings, the world would not be struggling today with blatant racism.</p>
<h2>The fathers of pan-Africanism</h2>
<p>Delany argued in his <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=9dBC2U-EgBsC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=%E2%80%9CAfrica+for+the+African+race+and+black+men+to+rule+them%E2%80%9D,+Official+Report+of+The+Niger+Valley+Party,+Martin+Delany&source=bl&ots=cwzA3gCqKo&sig=h_tvXH6ZexCXeOBityvlH_FPR9A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjPgvKBgvLKAhWJ0xoKHWOWAz8Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CAfrica%20for%20the%20African%20race%20and%20black%20men%20to%20rule%20them%E2%80%9D%2C%20Official%20Report%20of%20The%20Niger%20Valley%20Party%2C%20Martin%20Delany&f=false">1861 Report</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Africa for the African race and black men to rule them</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Attempts to achieve this date back to the struggles against slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and racism. </p>
<p>They became systematised into a pursuit called pan-Africanism. It aimed to elevate the human race of African origin from <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/4029079?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">centuries of humiliation</a>. Pan-Africanism came to engender the spirit of African unity among the native Africans and those in the <a href="http://panafricanperspective.com/pheko.htm">diaspora</a>.</p>
<p>Following Edward Blyden’s theorisation of <a href="http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/73/292/277.full.pdf">African Personality</a>, a Trinidadian barrister, <a href="http://www.africanidea.org/pan-Africanism.html">Henry Sylvester-Williams</a>, coined Pan-Africanism. The concept came to frame efforts to </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Africa-Unity-The-Evolution-Pan-Africanism/dp/0582645220">re-establish the dignity</a> (of Africans) in a world that has hitherto conceded [them] none. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Blyden is considered the father of pan-Africanism. But, pan-African scholar <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pan-Africanism-Exploring-Contradictions-Development-Interdisciplinary/dp/1840143754">William Ackah</a> argued that pan-Africanism does not have “a single founder or particular tenets that can be used as a definition”. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.naacp.org/pages/naacp-history-w.e.b.-dubois">WEB DuBois</a>, <a href="http://marcusgarvey.com/">Marcus Garvey</a>, <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/gah/hayford-joseph-ephraim-casely-1866-1930">Joseph Casely-Hayford</a>, and <a href="http://www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org/Who%20We%20Are/who-was-george-padmore">George Padmore</a>, among others, enhanced the profundity of the concept. It later evolved into an ideology, a philosophy, and a movement. It enthused the first generation of post-colonial African leadership, chief among them <a href="http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/pan-afrikanism-afrocentricity/37699-pan-africanism-imperialism-unity-struggle-towards-new-democratic-africa.html">Kwame Nkrumah</a>.</p>
<h2>So what is it?</h2>
<p>Pan-Africanism is a socio-political worldview. As an ideology, it represents integrative intent directed at fundamental change in society. In <a href="https://consciencism.wordpress.com/history/consciencism-philosophy-and-ideology-for-decolonisation/">Nkrumah’s words</a>, Pan-Africanism</p>
<blockquote>
<p>guides and seeks to connect the actions of millions of persons towards specific and definite goals. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is a philosophy “based on the belief that Africans share common bonds and objectives and … advocate[s] unity to <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1803448.Pan_Africanism_in_the_African_Diaspora">achieve these objectives</a>”. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Philosophy is the instrument of ideology for a desired social, economic and political order. According to <a href="https://consciencism.wordpress.com/history/consciencism-philosophy-and-ideology-for-decolonisation/">Nkrumah</a>, it “performs ideological function when it takes shape as political philosophy”, laying “down certain ideals for our pursuit and fortification”, and becoming “an instrument of unity by laying down the same ideals for all the members of a given society”.</p>
<p>After decades of decolonisation, an inevitable question is whether a desired social, economic and political order as envisaged in pan-Africanism has been realised.</p>
<h2>Is Africa really for Africans?</h2>
<p>Africa is a construct of colonial imagination, which the 1885 <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195337709.001.0001/acref-9780195337709-e-0467">Berlin conference</a> perfected in the resolution to balkanise her for imperial ends. </p>
<p>This <a href="http://nobidadetv.com/archives/9690">destroyed</a> “the cultural and linguistic boundaries established by the indigenous African population”. Africans became estranged from one another, separating into different nationalities.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.dfa.gov.za/foreign/Multilateral/africa/oau.htm">Organisation of African Unity</a> was established in 1963 to foster unity and solidarity. But it did not deconstruct the Berlin conference stratagem of continued domination of the continent. Its focus was on colonial freedom. It did not change the narrative of the scramble for Africa. This “showed the <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3677657/Nationalism_and_Pan_Africanism_revised_-_decisive_moments_in_Nyereres">limits</a> of the pan-Africanism of African states”. </p>
<p>The decolonisation project secured the independence of the African states, but their evolution followed the pattern of fragmentation determined in Berlin. Hence, Africans characterise each other as foreigners in their colonially determined boundaries.</p>
<p>Sometimes this assumes the form of hatred and violence - <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2015/05/xenophobia-south-africa-150501090636029.html">xenophobia</a>, <a href="https://writix.co.uk/blog/the-history-of-rwanda-genocide">ethnic</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/angolan-civil-war-1975-2002-brief-history">civil</a> wars. And African leaders jealously protect their sovereignty. These are the contradictions that drive Africa’s history.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://dilemma-x.net/2013/02/10/black-history-month-the-united-states-of-africa-the-diasporas-remittances-in-2012/">United States of Africa</a> remains an elusive ideal. This is a pity because an important lesson of geopolitics is that the world’s largest economies derive their strength from their unity.</p>
<p>Nkrumah was conscious of this. He was so committed to the pan-African ideal of a united Africa that he was even prepared to give up the sovereignty of Ghana. </p>
<p>He knew that for Africa to be for Africans it must unite. This requires, as Dialo Diop correctly <a href="http://bookze.xyz/pub/mafube-tafelberg">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>mutual and reciprocal surrender of sovereignty among states on the basis of common interest and free popular consent.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the concept of <a href="http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/mbeki.html">African Renaissance</a> former South African president <a href="http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/speeches/1998/mbek0813.htm">Thabo Mbeki</a> articulated a pan-African agenda in the 21st century. He did so with profound clarity and a sense of mission, underscoring the significance of collective self-reliance of African countries. </p>
<h2>Securing African future a pan-African way</h2>
<p>Contemporary institutional arrangements to pursue the pan-African agenda in the <a href="http://www.au.int/">African Union</a> and <a href="http://www.au.int/en/organs/pap">African Parliament</a> are laudable. But, do these institutions really exemplify the Unity of Africa or that of her leadership? </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I am asking this question because ugly scenes of violence against African foreign nationals dominate our space. Why is pan-Africanism not yet a fully lived experience? Some appear to ascribe a reason for this to <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=rZCPAQAAQBAJ&pg=PR4&lpg=PR4&dq=Kwandiwe+Kondlo.+2009&source=bl&ots=DBMapBB540&sig=7QCMczbrM6OxQVlzoacW8nOMlbg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNx_iH9O_KAhXFvBoKHQitC2YQ6AEITzAJ#v=onepage&q=Kwandiwe%20Kondlo.%202009&f=false">continentalism</a>. This suggests that the African Union and African Parliament are used as a means to achieve this rather than pan-Africanism. </p>
<p>Most African leaders are stuck in the sovereignty of their nationalism. So are their followers. Burundi’s stand against the African Union’s decision to <a href="http://europe.newsweek.com/burundi-african-union-wont-impose-peacekeepers-421557?rm=eu">deploy peacekeepers</a> is a case in point. Pan-Africanism is pitted against nationalism. This makes Africa weak and vulnerable. It gives way for <a href="http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/ashcroft3a.html">“a continuity of preoccupation”</a>. </p>
<p>As the decoloniality scholar <a href="http://www.thethinker.co.za/resources/48%20Thinker%20full%20mag.pdf">Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni</a> explains, the colonial matrices of power continue </p>
<blockquote>
<p>to exist in the minds, lives, languages, dreams, imagination, and epistemologies of modern subjects in Africa and the entire global South.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Africa to be for Africans, pan-Africanism should be a lived experience, not an ideological project for political rhetoric. </p>
<p>A body of pan-African thought exists. This has been developed by outstanding African scholars, political scientists, historians and philosophers living in Africa and the <a href="http://panafricanperspective.com/pheko.htm">diaspora</a>. It is the responsibility of African universities to accommodate it in their curricula to ensure that the future leaders of this continent have a pan-African orientation when they graduate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52601/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mashupye Herbert Maserumule received funding from National Research Foundation(NRF) for his post-graduate studies. He is affiliated to the South African Association of Public Administration and Management(SAAPAM)- an organisation that he served as its President from 2012-2015. He is the Chief-Editor of the Journal of Public Administration. </span></em></p>
Robert Sobukwe developed the philosophy of African nationalism to even higher intellectual heights. The lesson for humanity was his ideological stand that there is only one race - the human race.
Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/53594
2016-02-04T04:27:35Z
2016-02-04T04:27:35Z
How the origin of the KhoiSan tells us that ‘race’ has no place in human ancestry
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109968/original/image-20160202-32222-14dj62q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The annual 'Living Landscapes' procession is aimed at raising awareness of the Cedarberg's KhoiSan cultural heritage. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ancient origins, anatomical, linguistic and genetic distinctiveness of southern African San and Khoikhoi people are matters of confusion and debate. They are variously described as the world’s first or oldest people; Africa’s first or oldest people, or the <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Khoi-San-want-recognition-as-first-people-of-SA-20150820">first people</a> of South Africa.</p>
<p>They are in fact two evolutionarily related but culturally distinct groups of populations that have occupied southern Africa for up to 140,000 years. Their first-people status is due to the fact that they commonly retain genetic elements of the most ancient <em>Homo sapiens</em>.</p>
<p>This conclusion is based on evidence from specific types of DNA. This evidence also demonstrates that other sub-Saharan human populations retain genetic bits and pieces of DNA from non-KhoiSan primordial humans. These pre-date their out-of-Africa colonisation of the balance of the world.</p>
<p>What is important in the debate on the origins of, and diversity among, population groups of <em>Homo sapiens</em> is to establish what cannot, and should not, be derived from the various DNA evidence used to support the KhoiSan-as-first-people hypothesis. </p>
<p>This is that the KhoiSan, or any other groups of humans, can be assigned to evolutionarily meaningful “races” – or subspecies in biological classification.</p>
<p>The DNA evidence, if interpreted incorrectly, could be used to support the findings of “scientific” racial anthropologists such as <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Carleton_Stevens_Coon.aspx">Carleton S. Coon</a>. </p>
<p>As recently as 1962, Coon “recognised” the KhoiSan as the Capoid race. He based this on the distinctive anatomical features of the Capoids from those he used to designate the Congoid race. These include golden brown rather than sepia-coloured skin, the presence of epicanthic eye folds, prominent cheekbones and <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/steatopygia">steatopygia</a>.</p>
<p>But, if correctly interpreted, the scientific evidence points quite to the contrary.</p>
<h2>Human evolution cannot be drawn like a tree</h2>
<p>If one were to compare the entire DNA genomes from representatively sampled human populations from around the world, the resulting relationships would look more like an evolutionarily reticulated chain-link fence. In other words, a network rather than a tree. This applies to even purportedly racially important anatomical features.</p>
<p>This is because human population groups worldwide are highly homogeneous (99.5% similar) genetically and their anatomical features vary in an uncorrelated fashion over the landscape. </p>
<p>These groups are, in evolutionary terms, very recent entities that have no biological or <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-science-has-been-abused-through-the-ages-to-promote-racism-50629">taxonomic</a> significance.</p>
<p>The DNA evidence used to discover the human genetic “footprints” that characterise the KhoiSan, and other diverging populations, is today easily put together. Forensic pathologists use it to determine an unidentifiable corpse’s population group. This process has been popularised on television shows such as <a href="http://www.tvmuse.com/tv-shows/CSI--Crime-Scene-Investigation_8779/">CSI</a> and <a href="http://www.fox.com/bones">Bones</a>.</p>
<p>This DNA evidence comes from:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Y chromosome polymorphisms inherited without recombination along <a href="http://www.ramsdale.org/dna13.htm">male lineages</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, from nuclear <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v409/n6822/full/409821a0.html">DNA</a>; and</p></li>
<li><p>most especially from <a href="http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/3/757.full.pdf+html">mitochondrial DNA</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Mitochondria are organelles within a cell that have their own independent DNA separate from that in the nucleus that determines an organism’s external appearance and physiology. They are involved with cellular respiration and nothing more.</p>
<p>Mitochondrial DNA allows the detection of direct genetically “ungarbled” connections among evolutionarily evolved human population groups. This is because a component of it evolves much faster than the bulk of nuclear DNA. Also, mitochondrial DNA is inherited maternally and is thus not intermixed with paternal DNA during reproduction.</p>
<p>Some evolutionary genetic anthropologists ignore the overwhelming balance of evidence that there is no evolutionarily significant <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-science-has-been-abused-through-the-ages-to-promote-racism-50629">racial variation</a> in either genes or anatomy. Instead they focus on these very few bits and pieces of DNA that, in evolutionary terms, change rapidly. This way they reach distorted conclusions about discernible “races” within the human species.</p>
<h2>Why there is only one race</h2>
<p>Recent DNA results used to detect human population genetic “footprints” is <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24988-humanitys-forgotten-return-to-africa-revealed-in-dna/">summarised</a> in: Humanity’s forgotten return to Africa revealed in DNA.</p>
<p>The story it tells is as follows. About 140,000 years ago human populations from East or Central Africa moved southwards and “colonise” western southern Africa. The probable nearest living relatives of these source populations are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/hadza/finkel-text">Hadzabe people</a> from north-central Tanzania; and</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0509/feature5/">Mbuti pygmies</a> from the eastern Congo.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>This migration gave rise to the present-day <a href="http://www.san.org.za/history.php">San hunter-gatherers</a>.</p>
<p>Much more recently – about 2000 years ago – there was a second movement of “colonists” from the north into southwestern Africa. They gave rise to the pastoral <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people-south-africa/khoikhoi">Khoikhoi people</a>.</p>
<p>This second group of “settlers” carried within its genome bits of Eurasian-sourced – and even some <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-neanderthalensis">Neanderthal</a> – DNA derived from European humans who had returned to Africa about 3000 years ago.</p>
<p>Subsequent to this second colonisation, there was intermixing between the Khoikhoi and San. This gave rise to their close anatomical similarities despite the fact that they retained their marked cultural and linguistic differences.</p>
<p>Much more recently – about 1700 years ago – there was a third major north-to-south migration. This time it was the Bantu-speaking, black Africans into south-eastern Africa. Those “settlers” that eventually became the Xhosa peoples moved westwards and encountered the Khoikhoi, whom they drove further west and intermixed with genetically.</p>
<p>So, it is now possible for genetic evolutionary “anthropologists” to distinguish population differences among humans to infer the timing of their movements throughout the globe.</p>
<p>It is even possible to map one’s genetic “ancestry”, as South African President Nelson Mandela did, indicating that he possessed some <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/dna-test-may-reveal-youre-related-to-madiba-1.268615">KhoiSan</a> DNA.</p>
<p>The important point is that this evidence should not be used to assert that these differences, or shared bits of “ancient” DNA, support the identification of multiple human “races”. In fact, it confirms the wise assertion by the pan-Africanist leader, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/robert-sobukwe-inaugural-speech-april-1959">Robert Sobukwe</a>, that there was only one race: the human race.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53594/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Before his retirement Tim Crowe received funding from the South African National Research Foundation and Department of Science and Technology through an award to the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology as DST/NRF Centre of Excellence.</span></em></p>
Human population groups worldwide are highly homogeneous genetically. They are in fact 99.5% similar and their anatomical features vary in an uncorrelated fashion over the landscape.
Tim Crowe, Emeritus Professor, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.