The intellectual emptiness of the post-colony

William Gumede and Leslie Dikeni call it 'the poverty of ideas' in the title of their recently published collection of essays. For Peter Vale, it is the think-tanks that should launch new ideas and provoke through launching challenging debates. Yet all they do is rehash old and tired, ideological standpoints.

Professor Achille Mbembe, in his opening two part lecture of the Sawyer Seminar series at Wits University, reviews Frantz Fanon and his relevance for South Africa, and Africa, today. In Fanon's analysis of the newly liberated countries, ruled by the nationalist parties of the liberation movements, a profound lack of intellectual engagement dulls the spirit of the post-colony. Lazyness, especially of the intellectual type, marks the landscape.

Parallels with our present of this observation are all too close. On the left, we have the resurrection of a revolutionary discourse that adds however little insight. It is a mere regurgitation of apparently anti-colonial, anti-racist, and anti-imperial agit-prop as it has been the staple of left-wing, Marxist inspired discourse since the 1960s. Or how does the equalisation of the white liberal with the racist, criminal murderer a la 'prime evil' Eugene de Kock add any new insights to our contemporary society and politics ?

From the right, we read that affirmative action, as it is practiced today, is the precursor of genocide. Current BEE policies are the same as the policies implemented by the Nazis in the 1930s in Germany against Jewish Germans. This is a variant of a theme that compared apartheid oppression to fascism, an existing strand in standard academic discourse on apartheid. Again, little insight about current predicaments is gained from such arguments.

Unfortunately, I could continue with this list.

So where to can we turn for the emergence of an intellectual discoursre that deserves its name and will provide us with new insights on our current politics and society? We may be quite far away from such a new impetus, and perhaps a long spell of a sobering draught is upon us, but I think it will emerge from a push for a renewed affirmation of non-racialism and in defence of the values enshrined in our constitution.

The death of Chris Hani: the more things change, the more they stay the same

In April, 15 years ago, right-wingers gunned down Chris Hani, the popular ANC leader, outside his home.

A the time, South Africa was at the height of transition negotiations from white minority rule and white rightwing leaders featured much more prominently in public debates than today. Their incendiary talk, depicting Hani as the militant leader of ANC terrorist shock troops, contributed to a climate in which the murder became possible.

15 years later we still have prominent politicians, like the ANC youth league's Julius Malema, Cosatu's Zwelinzima Vavi and others who see no problem in a war talk that wants to kill for the supreme leader, exterminates cockroaches and does other ghastly things to the enemy. And then they feign ignorance, engage in linguistic and non-sensical acrobatics when these things indeed happen.

No such war talk is mere 'figures of speech'. And it was never so.

In 1993, Shaun Johnson observed:

"Before the assassin made up his mind to take Chris Hani's life, Hernus Kriel, from the platform of parliament, described Umkhonto we Sizwe as 'a bunch of criminals'. A powerful newspaper told its readers Hani was mustering a terrifying, vengeful 'Black People's Army'. Before lawless youths went on their stabbing and stealing spree on Wednesday, ANC Youth League leader Peter Mokaba told a gathering of youngsters: 'The young lions must not only bark and roar, but you must bite'. And before this whole sorry saga started, we had Eugene Terreblanche exhorting his followers to revolution, Inkathata members being encouraged to 'bugger up' the ANC, PAC leaders endorsing the slogan 'one settler, one bullet'. The list goes on.
Every one of these people will today swear they didn't mean what you thought they meant. These were euphemisms, metaphors, allegories, parables...they didn't really mean it literally. Well. It is too late to tell that to the people who listened to, and believed, those words. They missed the subtleties. Not nearly enough people in our country can read. Pitifully few will have been familiar with John Locke's wise observation that 'we should have had a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.' ...Chilling statements are commonplace in South Africa today. It is fair to ask whether we are not now reaping their mean harvest." (Strange Days Indeed, Bantam, 1993)

Words matter. Discourses circulate, from the mundane and everyday life to politics, to academic discourse, and so on. How can we combat crime and violence when the words of our leaders mirror and perpetuate these?