The Revolution Will Not Be Colour Blind: The Enduring Relevance of Anti-Apartheid Voices

ABSTRACT

The explosion of identity-based movements, has brought issues of social oppression to the forefront of political and academic debates. These emerging voices have emphasized the intertwined fates of social oppression and capitalist development and in doing so, they have challenged traditional assumptions and mores regarding the role of race, gender, caste and ethnicity in reproducing capitalism. It is in this context that this article highlights the views of radical anti-apartheid activists on the relation between race and capitalism. To put things in perspective, the recent political effervescence has gone hand in hand with a resurgence of interest in anti-racist voices from the global south but missing in these discussions are the anti-apartheid voices from South Africa that played a crucial role in overthrowing the authoritarian regime and who, in the process made innovative theoretical interventions that highlighted the close relation between racism and capitalism. It is towards these writings that this article turns to and hopes to underline their enduring legacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Racial capitalism
• class
• Marxism
• internal colonialism
• global south

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For critical perspective on anti-racist movements in the USA, see Reed (2013, 2018) and Johnson (2020).

2 The black consciousness movement directed criticism towards these liberals for limiting the movement against apartheid by setting boundaries of response by the blacks themselves. They viewed them as being ignorant of their own privilege and as an impediment to black initiative (Gerhart 1978; Hirschmann 1990). It has been observed that BCM’s exclusionary politics also led to a shift among the white intellectuals from liberalism to Marxism and the articulation of apartheid as a tool of enforcing racial capitalism. This class of intellectuals was grounded in the “lived realities” of workers (Ally and Ally 2008, 170).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nishkala Sekhar

Nishkala Sekhar is an independent researcher. She holds a MA in Development Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, India. She has worked with on a number of projects related to gender, caste, sustainability and urban governance.

Rahul A. Sirohi

Rahul A. Sirohi is a development economist. His recent research focusses on the political economy of development. He is the author of From Developmentalism to Neoliberalism: A Comparative Analysis of India and Brazil (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and co-author of Reassessing the Pink Tide: Lessons from Brazil and Venezuela (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).