Working in a South African Politics Department During the 1980s: Recollections

Abstract

This memoir opens with a discussion of the author's recruitment as a junior lecturer in African government at Wits in 1978, exploring his motivations in leaving Britain to work in South Africa. Politics was taught in ways at Wits that were distinctive for their theoretical orientation and empirical content as one of the major concerns was to consider how people without power act politically. Teaching was shaped by the wider background of national insurgent politics in which many students arrived at Wits with a deep distrust of pedagogic authority. In other ways academic work was shaped by this politics and the second part of this article explores the author's engagement as an expert witness working for defence lawyers in political trials. A concluding section addresses the degree to which these experiences were typical or exceptional at South African universities during the decade.

Notes

1 The quotations from Lewin are in Murray (1982), 256–257.

2 A key figure in the Dar es Salaam group in generating an African application of ‘dependency’ analysis was Rodney (1974) whose How Europe underdeveloped Africa was widely read on South African campuses.

3 For a sophisticated discussion of this argument, see Saul (1974).

4 I especially admired—and used in class—Wallerstein's wonderful essay (1964, section d, part 3).

5 For an especially well-developed version of this argument, see Canetti (1981), Chapter One, 15–105.

6 In this lecture, Rude (1980) was drawing upon his about to be published Ideology and Popular Protest.

7 To be fair, not all the Department's theorists were Frankfurt School Marxists. Hudson worked within the precepts of Althusserian Marxism and developed a powerful critique of South African structuralists, conducted within the terms of their own ‘marxist epistomology’ (1990).

8 For Wits-based reservations about the ‘anti-historical biases’ of these approaches, see Bozzoli (1983, especially 2–3) and Bozzoli and Delius (1990, especially 24–25).

9 ‘Black’ in these official figures refers to African students: by 1990 there were 1580 Indian and 308 coloured students registered at Wits. The statistics are from the Department of National Education (cited in Stuart et al. 1992, section 5, 5).

10 See Van Kessle's reference to Turfloop students’ efforts to put into practice ‘democratic centralism’ at village meetings (2000, 96–97).

11 For example, its authors’ contention that the Freedom Charter ‘could be major step along the road to socialism’ was a more unambiguous formulation than would have appeared in any ANC-sanctioned text (see Community Resource and Information Centre 1985, 139).

12 Flyer titled ‘Students Action Committee on the Freedom Charter’, Students Representative Council, Wits, n/d. bur circulated in June 1986 (author's collection).

13 N. Stutterheim, ‘To all students', 26 March 1981 (one page flyer published and circulated on campus by the University of the Witwatersrand).

14 Circular letter signed by Dr E R Amoils et al. ‘To all members of staff and students’, n.d.

15 Progressive Students’ Society, ‘Open letter to the Administration’, April 1987.

16 For O'Brien's views about anti-apartheid opposition, see his What can become of South Africa (1986).

17 O'Brien argued that unlike sanctions—which he continued to support, the boycott was counterproductive.

18 Professor David Welsh, then head of the politics department at UCT, insists that opposition to O'Brien's visit was externally instigated, and that the UCT SRC began organising protests only after requests from the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement. He notes that Carla Sutherland, the SRC President, had co-signed the original application to the university authorities to secure funding to support O'Brien's visit. See David Welsh, Chapter XX in English and Skelly (2000, 281).

19 I think Conor himself would be pleased that disagreement over his South African visit continues to elicit public commentary. See Roy Foster's letter to the Guardian, 3 August 2012.

20 Between 1955 and 1990, only four students at Wits, including Alf Stadler, completed PhDs in Political Studies.

21 David Welsh believes that by the mid-1980s the boycott was beginning to affect South African universities quite seriously. He refers to a dwindling flow of external applications for university posts, refusals by British faculty to serve as external examiners, and difficulties that South Africans experienced in attending international conferences and in publishing in foreign journals (Welsh in English and Skelly, Essays in Honour of Conor Cruise O'Brien, 278). This was not our experience. I agree with Guelke's view that ‘the academic boycott was quietly disregarded by most people and that its enforcement was a low priority’ (‘Ireland and South Africa’, 142).

22 Maybe not, though. At that time, officials in Heunis's department were also engaged in preliminary contacts with United Democratic Front leaders. On the basis of what they were learning, Heunis and his advisors were already in disagreement with people in security and intelligence services who were encouraging P. W. Botha to believe that there were elements within the ANC willing to denounce violence and acceded in negotiations to a ‘consensus seeking model’. Heunis may have been playing devil's advocate and testing out the merits of such arguments through the questions he was asking us. (Heunis 2007, 124–125).

23 In Cambridge police station in East London in 1983, one of the constables who had been present at the interrogation of one of the people we were defending told me that our client was a brave man, very tough, and it had taken a lot of effort to break him down.

24 For a detailed recapitulation of my evidence, see Naidoo (2012).

25 For my evidence, see State vs. Mncube, MZ and Nondulo, ME 1988, Tom Lodge Papers, Historical Papers. Wits University, A3104/E25.

26 State vs. Wellington Mealies, 1987. Tom Lodge Papers, A3104/E16.

27 State vs. Barbara Hogan, Rand Supreme Court, Johannesburg, 1982, Tom Lodge Papers, A3104/E4.

28 For a detailed account, see Sisulu (2002, 320–324). For further commentary on de Vries's evidence and its reception from Justice Milne, see Abel (1995, 326–327).

29 This was the case, for example, when we managed to persuade a magistrate in Hoedspruit that a bundle of ANC pamphlets containing a text of the Freedom Charter were legal documents, whereupon he dismissed all the charges (State vs. Phineas Mojapelo, 1987, Tom Lodge Papers, A3104/E20.

30 State vs. Vusumuyi Sindane, Ermelo, 1986, Tom Lodge Papers, A3104/E14.

31 For an astringent analysis of Politikon’s content between 1974 and 1983, see van Nieuwkerk (1984). For my own discussion of Politikon during the subsequent decade, the 1990s and the continuing omission of detailed consideration of protest politics and insurgent action, see Lodge (2005).