Intellectual Representations of Social Movements in Post-apartheid South Africa: A Critical Reflection

ABSTRACT

Mdlalose’s [2014. “The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a South African Social Movement.” Politikon 41 (3): 345–353] personal account of Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) throws into stark relief the tendency among academics and intellectuals to ignore weaknesses and contradictions in social movements. It seems that many academics and intellectuals are more inclined to exaggerate the virtues of social movements, perhaps to accentuate their own theoretical and ideological commitments. It is with this in mind, I feel, that the letter of concern over the publication of Mdlalose’s article in the Politikon should be read. In this article, I intend to show that Friedman [2015. “Letter for Concern by Steven Friedman and Signatories.” Politikon 42 (1): 129–131] and his co-petitioners, who have written on AbM, have a great incentive to defend the movement against Mdlalose’s criticism of its practices. The petition works to defend the celebratory social movement narrative as manifested in the writings of left-wing academics and intellectuals on the movement (predominantly white, male and middle-class), through which, as Walsh [2015. “The Philosopher and His Poor: The Poor-Black as Object for Political Desire in South Africa.” Politikon 42 (1): 123–127] argues, they gained power to represent social movements in intellectual and other spaces.

Acknowledgements

The first draft of this article was presented at the University of Johannesburg’s Sociology, Anthropology and Development Studies Wednesday seminar on 22 July 2015. I am grateful for the constructive comments I received. The article is part of a book project that is funded by the AW Mellon Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. South African (mainly white) academics and intellectuals tend to underemphasize the influence of race on knowledge production within the country’s labour and other movements. White academics intellectuals tend to deal with the question of race in a highly simplistic way, obfuscating racial power dynamics within these movements. Maree’s (2006) response to Buhlungu’s (2006a) ‘Rebels without a cause of their own’, for example, defends the contribution of white middle-class intellectuals to knowledge production in the black labour movement, but it sidesteps Buhlungu’s critical reflection on their power and influence in the framing of the movement’s debates and strategies. Friedman (2014) offers a similar celebratory account of the role of white intellectuals – Rick Turner and Harold Wolpe – in the black labour movement. In his words, ‘Turner’s influence produced the key white middle-class intellectuals who played a role in organizing unions in the 1970s’ (Friedman 2014, 531). He, however, does not sufficiently analyse the impact of racial cleavages between the white middle-class outsiders and the black working-class insiders on knowledge production in the movement.

2. Poni, M. 2011. Interview with the author on 22 September 2011. Khayelitsha. [Digital recording in possession of author].

3. Sacks, J. 2013. The involvement of left intellectuals in the UPM. [Phone call] (Personal communication, 10 August 2013).

4. Indaba is a South African word, meaning an important conference or meeting held by African people, in particular, Zulu or Xhosa men.

5. See Walsh (2008) and Harris (2006) for analyses of the controversy surrounding the SMI in 2006.

6. Poni, M. 2013a. The AbM April 2012 press release. [Phone call] (Personal communication, 23 May 2013).

7. Interestingly, the press release announced that the movements would operate under one constitution, while maintaining their independence. It reads: ‘AbM in the Western Cape would be a separate but allied structure that could avoid control of any sort by ABM-KZN’ (AbM press release, 19 April 2012). It is hard to imagine how a single constitution would have been able to guarantee the continuing independence of the two movements, as it logically means that their autonomous praxis would have been subordinated to a uniform legal framework. Moreover, it begs the question as to whether the two movements would have had an equal say in decisions on the content of the constitution given that most of the bridge leaders in AbMWC, who I interviewed in my case study on AbMWC presented in my PhD thesis, depicted AbM as the big brother, pointing to an unequal power relationship between the two movements. The then interim secretary of AbMWC, Thembelani Maqwazimo, for example, alleged that the issue of the constitution was not properly discussed with the interim committee (Maqwazimo, T., 2013. The proposed new constitution for AbM and AbMWC. [Phone call] (Personal communication, 21 May 2013). If true, this demonstrates the dominance of AbM in the relationship between the two movements, which may be attributed to the fact that it enjoys greater technical support from left intellectuals than AbMWC had between 2008 and 2012.

8. Kota, A. 2013. The UPM media statement on the BRICS Summit. [Phone call] (Personal communication, 10 August 2013).

9. QQ is an informal settlement in Khayelitsha (Site B).

10. The bridge leaders were community leaders who connected the everyday life experiences of poor families and households in informal settlements in Khayelitsha, and those who lived in backyard dwellings in Macassar Village, with the politics and collective actions of AbMWC. Mzonke Poni indicated that they were accountable to their communities, on whom they relied for mandates concerning the movement’s democratic process and collective actions (Interview, M. Poni, September 22, 2011).

11. Mkhaliphi, M. 2011. Interview with the author on 18 September 2011. Khayelitsha. [Digital recording in possession of author].

12. Poni, M. 2011. Interview with the author on 22 September 2011. Khayelitsha. [Digital recording in possession of author].

13. Sacks, J. 2012. Telephonic interview with the author on 9 April 2012. Johannesburg.

14. Gugulethu is an African township in Cape Town.

15. Twala, M. 2012. Interview with the author on 12 October 2012. Gugulethu. [Digital recording in possession of author].

16. See Steyn (2012) for a critique of Gibson’s (2011) and Neocosmos (2009) romantic views of AbM’s autonomy.

17. While the tendency to romanticise about social movements has abated since 2006, the romantic sentiment did not completely disappear. Dawson (2010, 284), for example, claims that the struggles of the APF were bound up with struggles against national capital, the black elite, neoliberalism and global capitalism. Moreover, left intellectuals continue to produce (sometimes hurriedly) journal articles and books that uncritically promote social movements and, lately, trade union organizations (Alexander et al. 2013).

18. Hammersley’s (1995, 117) support for non-political social science research defies research practice. It is truly inconceivable that research on social and political phenomena, such as social justice, oppression and exploitation, could be impartially pursued.

19. Interview, T. Ngwane, March 13, 2012.

20. Mzonke Poni charged that researchers benefit from their relationship with social movements. They will thus exclude from their writings those things that will harm their relationship with the movements (Poni, M. 2013b. Research on poor people's movements in post-apartheid South Africa. [Phone call] (Personal communication, 24 October 2013).

21. I do not accept the coloured identity term on the basis that it is an authoritarian identity that was, as Goldin (n.d.) points out, imposed by the white colonial state and reinforced by the white apartheid regime for purposes of dividing the black oppressed masses. I prefer to identify myself as black. Manuel (2011), however, argues that those designated coloured have contributed to the struggle against colonialism and apartheid and, in the political parlance of the Black Consciousness Movement and the African National Congress, they are black. Yet, the awkward reality is that the majority of those designated coloured have internalized this identity, and some may even refuse to be called black. The internalization of the coloured identity has and continues to fuel racial stereotypes among Africans and coloureds, especially in the Western Cape. Two AbMWC members in QQ, for example, were reluctant to be interviewed, because they do not trust white and coloured people. It is reasonable to assume that their distrust stems from racial stereotypes about Cape Town’s white and coloured populations. (Sithelo, T. 2011. Interview with the author on 3 February 2011. Khayelitsha.)