The Intellectual Meets the South African Social Movement: A Code of Conduct is Overdue, When Researching Such a Conflict-Rich Society

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Notes

1. For the record, wildly incorrect allegations from at least one intellectual associated with AbM (2015) have circulated electronically, placing the blame for Mdlalose's alienation and argumentation at the hands of the institution I direct, the Centre for Civil Society (CCS), and myself. These claims are rebutted elsewhere, due to Politikon space constraints (Bond 2015).

2. South Africans and international observers of this debate should read the eloquent Journal of Asian and African Studies speeches attributed to S'bu Zikode. Although full of unreferenced allegations against government officials — and one against me — surely they are just as acceptable as the placement of an association president's unreferenced convention speech in a typical journal. Just as in Mdlalose's Politikon case, the issue editor who included two of these speeches signalled to readers in the introductory essay that these were an authoritative, organic statement from a political actor whose views were relevant to that journal's special issue. If Zikode's targets felt compelled to rebut the charges, then either their lawyers would do so through a libel case, or they would provide rebuttals in the next issue. That is standard practice and should be welcomed.

3. Several are linked here: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/resources/meccsa-statement-of-research-ethics-guidelines/. Notably, even the least sensitive of social sciences in the most arrogant locale, that is, economists of the USA, were forced into conflict-of-interest declarations after devastating exposes in the 2010 film Inside Job fingered their liberalization advocacy and bank consultancies as partly responsible for the global economic collapse.