World Bulletin / Ibrahim Tigli and Jalal Rayi - Cape Town
Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president who
steered his nation out of apartheid, passed away on December 6 at the age of
95.
Premesh Lalu, who studies social history and the apartheid
regime, has replied to the questions of World Bulletin about Nelson Mandela and
South Africa's past and future.
Lalu is the director of the Centre for Humanities Research
(University of the Western Cape) and chair of the Handspring Trust.
What is your opinion about South Africa and Nelson Mandela?
This is a moment of great sadness for all South Africans and
for many who have dedicated their lives to the struggle for justice. We have
thought about its meaning over the past few weeks at the University of the
Western Cape and in the Centre for Humanities Research. We’ve had to gather our
thoughts about what the passing of Nelson Mandela means for the project of
building a non-racial democratic South Africa.
I believe the first point to make is that Nelson Mandela’s
legacy reminds us of what it means to combine ethical and political
commitments, especially those commitments that define the anti-colonial
struggle, the struggle against apartheid, and the struggle against
underdevelopment. There’s something about his legacy, which offers us a way to
deal with the history of colonialism, apartheid and underdevelopment. In the
wake of his passing, it is not enough to say that Mandela was a political
visionary. That seems to be the general way in which the media has portrayed
his life. We would do better to ask how he came to his political views and
principles.
The project of reconciliation that he championed in the
later part of his life was itself a product of a long history of thought and
political debate in the struggles against colonialism, apartheid and
underdevelopment. He was an intellectual who thought about how one might
rethink the relationship between politics and the law, when both were mired in
the dehumanization of society. So that’s the first point I wish to stress about
the relationship between the name Nelson Mandela and South Africa.
We have a long history of anti-colonialism in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries in which the cause of justice has been abused and
undermined. We have seen this in many anti-colonial struggles across the world
in which the struggle for justice became entangled in sectarian ideological
struggles. Mandela for his part deepened our understanding of justice. He not only
demanded justice, but alerted us to why justice was demanding. So that’s what
he brought to bear on the political ideals that defined the struggle against
apartheid in South Africa; an radical critique and reworking of law’s
relationship to politics and ethics. He achieved this by insisting on an
intellectual sensibility, and an ethical belief, and commitment as the very
grounds for political action. This, I think, was a striking note on which to
end the 20th century and its many struggles. Combining these elements is both a
struggle and an education in its own right. To read the political writing of
Mandela is to discover the outlines of this struggle and education. He leaves
behind a commitment to thinking the limits and possibilities of the law, he leaves
behind a commitment to ethics, and he leaves behind the legacy of doing
politics that is deeply committed to the concept of the ‘human’. And that’s how
we might want to think about and remember someone like Nelson Mandela – as a
major political and legal thinker of our times.
What is Mandela’s struggle through ANC against apartheid?
PL: We must place Mandela’s long life and the many problems
he confronted as an individual in relation to the history of the African
National Congress, Black Consciousness, Marxism and the critique of
underdevelopment. As a member of the ANC Youth League in the 1940s, and later,
as he became a more prominent figure in the movement against apartheid, he was
part of a political formation that struggled to come to terms with the rise of
apartheid, not only as a repressive state apparatus, but also as a form of
modern biopolitics. One of the most crucial aspects about Mandela’s political
thought is that he struggled to make sense of the problem of apartheid,
especially through the passage of the Bantu Self Government Act of the 1950s
that gave rise to the dreaded homeland system. As a system of biopolitics, race
and ethnicity were mobilised to divide people into citizens and subjects. The
problem of underdevelopment was at the heart of the critique of apartheid that
Mandela helped to elaborate. In Mandela‘s thinking, one discerns an argument
against underdevelopment. We may even say that the growing threat of Native
Administration in the rural Eastern Cape may have prompted his departure to
Johannesburg. We will need further research of how the threat of Native
Administration in the rural areas presented many youth in the 1940s with the
danger of being trapped in a narrative of ethnicity and culture. The narrative
of ethnicity and culture touted by apartheid administrators translated into a
mechanism of control, even when it resorted to the language of self-government
and representation. But there was more. Mandela heard in the idea of Native
Administration, the echoes of a liberal notion of trusteeship. Trusteeship, as
I’ve said elsewhere, held that the black subject had to be educated into
becoming a modern political subject. Mandela saw both as part of the same
racial logic. Trusteeship and Native Administration were two sides of the same
coin.
Upon leaving the Eastern Cape, Mandela arrived in the city
of Johanneburg, which was substantially transformed by the migrant labour
system and secondary industrialization after the Second World War. The struggle
took on new dimensions in an urban area like Johannesburg. So in the first part
of his life, his thought was formed in relation to the problem of trusteeship
and its racial presuppositions. He understood that that process was one of
control that would undermine the life conditions of black subjects and their
standing as political subjects. But in the 1950s the question of apartheid was
something that had not necessarily been adequately understood, not only by
opponents of apartheid, but also its proponents. In other words, the generation
to which Mandela belonged was trying to figure out what this new formation of
apartheid was about. So in the second part of his life he joined an expansive
group of young intellectuals who sought to make sense of what apartheid was.
They seemed to understand that apartheid was not simply about a pedagogy of
culture but it was also about a pedagogy of violence and it was about a
violence that was increasingly entrenched in urban areas around the mobility of
black subjects. And so in the second phase of his political life he took on
board an understanding of what apartheid meant and why apartheid was a
different configuration of racial and ethnic control, one that exceeded the
designs of Native Administration. I would say that the third aspect of his struggle,
developed in the last years of his life when he became the head of state in a
democratic South Africa, was to show us the passage to a concept of the human
that might include all human beings. In other words, he wanted us to understand
what was at stake in the very idea of the human. And I think that this was his
lasting legacy in the last part of his life, and one that is most contested in
the post-apartheid present. Such a concept of the human was developed not only
on the basis of an older humanism, but as a juridical concept, one that
extended the very meaning of what we understood as justice.
Such a concept has of course been very difficult to grasp,
let alone actualise. It seemed to encounter its limit in the very institutional
edifice that sustained apartheid since 1948 to 1994. And it seemed to brush up
against the extreme difficulty of forging a concept of the post-apartheid. I
believe that Mandela only partially answered the question he posed and often by
relying on older scripts of resistance to supplement his legal thinking. I
don’t think that he could fully answer such an enormously challenging question
because, needless to say, it is a question bigger than anyone of us imagined.
And I think that is the legacy we’re going to have to deal with and fulfil. We
are left with the task of finishing the critique of apartheid at one level but
also creating the conditions of the new, of posing questions adequate to
elaborating a concept of the post-apartheid. What Mandela gifts South Africans
is the possibility of a new question about the meaning of the post-apartheid to
which opened the door. It is now up to us to extend that project and figure out
how it is we build a non-racial society, one that is not based on ethnic and
racial division that produces underdevelopment.
I would encourage us to consider the political and legal
thought of Nelson Mandela as we remember his contribution to the struggle
against apartheid. We may have to begin by revisiting the critique of
trusteeship and underdevelopment. We may have to attend to the relationship
between law and politics, and what lies in the interstices of the two. To work
through such an assemblage, we must bear in mind that Mandela was not alone in
making the arguments that defined the struggle against apartheid. There was an
entire generation in the 1920s and 1930s who were preoccupied with making sense
of the seeming senselessness of racial and ethnic differentiation. Consider for
example S. M. Molema who studied medicine in Edinburgh in 1917. Many like Molema
were opposed to the idea of trusteeship. They saw in it a danger of a form of
control and an entrapment out of which it would be difficult to imagine an
inclusive and democratic political subject. The second struggle was the
struggle against apartheid, which appropriated the terms of trusteeship to its
own apparatus of biopolitical control. When it became an effective project of
social engineering it suddenly dawned on a generation of political thinkers
that they were faced with the condition of violence that looked more and more
irreversible. And finally, I would suggest we attend to the question of the
human that underwrote the transition to democracy in South Africa, not as an
end in itself, but as a problem that opens onto the very meaning of the post-apartheid.
And I think that’s what Mandela’s thought leads us to.
How was Mandela’s political thought formed?
I think there’s one further point I wanted to raise about
Mandela’s political thought. When he became head of state in 1994, he had
access to some of the best legal thinkers in South Africa. These included
George Bizos, Dullah Omar, Zola Skweyiya, Albie Sachs, Kader Asmal, Arthur
Chaskalson, Zac Yacoob, Yvonne Magora amongst others. These were great legal
minds; the minds that gave us the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the
new Constitution. These were the minds that tried to develop ideas about rights
and they were such serious critical legal thinkers that Mandela’s presidency
became marked by the legal ways in which they thought about undoing apartheid.
And so in all the ideals of the man…of Mandela…I think you have to account you
have to account for the very deep legal ideas and understanding that defined
the project of political transition from apartheid to the post-apartheid.
His statement from the dock when he was on trial is a
footnote to the legal discourse that later framed the political negotiations
and transition. It is a statement that has captured the imagination of many,
including Jacques Derrida who wrote an essay based on it. It was also critical
in the days of mobilization against apartheid. In 1994 we witnessed its force again, at the
moment when we were confronted as a society by the question of how we would
unravel apartheid and its legacies. And so apartheid as legal formation was
dismantled and it was dismantled in such a way that it left behind the
possibility of building another society…of building a post-apartheid future. I
think that is one of the strengths of Mandela’s administration. Mandela gave us
a way to think about the law that tested the very foundations of law in
histories of colonialism, apartheid and underdevelopment. How could one entrust
the idea of the human, or justice, to a discourse of law that had proven itself
so complicit in the misery of so many. But rather than give up on the law, he
asked us to radicalize its implications, in the interests of a world that would
free itself from the very racial presuppositions that underwrote the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Recently, Adam Sitze has shown how this effort was made
possible through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, especially in the way
it attempted to approach amnesty jurisprudence. For Sitze, the TRC
reinvigorated a concept of amnesty by attempting to exceed its original scripts
in the history of colonialism for example. So they attempted to build something
completely different. I think that the post-apartheid was not merely a project
of transcending apartheid, but of producing a difference at the very heart of
apartheid’s reasoning. That was a massive undertaking, a gift if you like, to
those who sought to build a just society. And it is that difficulty, that
struggle, for which Mandela must be remembered.
In various parts of the African continent, we have seen that
leaders prepare to stay in power. But Nelson Mandela, only stood for one term.
And can it also be that he couldn’t meet the expectations?
I have heard the question posed again and again. But there
may be a problem with the question, because it already presumes to know in
advance what the problem of the state in Africa. It may be better to ask what
effect Mandela has had on the idea of the state in Africa and what his
leadership means for how we assess the state in Africa.
I think the first point to recognise is that most states in
Africa were formed as a consequence of independence struggles. State power
followed long and bitter anti-colonial struggles, with the promise not only of
building a nation, but also enabling a public sphere. The consequences of these
struggles have had an enduring and lasting effect on the political formation of
the state in Africa. The second is that many of these states came into being at
the height of the Cold War. And the ideological struggles of the Cold War have
had devastating consequences for the shape of African politics.
Mandela is one of the last in that generation of leaders to
come out of this mileu and in some sense his lesson is an important one. He
recalled what the struggles of the twentieth century were principally about. In
the aftermath of a long twentieth century, he reminded us that Africa would
have to change its concepts if it was to remain true to its anti-colonial
convictions. His was a reminder that Africa could no longer rely on the scripts
of the Cold War. The Cold War left in its wake mangled bodies and fractured
subjects and political formations across Southern Africa. In fact apartheid was
a project of the Cold War and its devastation was felt in Angola, Mozambique,
Namibia, and Zimbabwe. If one thinks about apartheid and what its consequences
were in Southern Africa those were the consequences of the Cold War. Liberation
movements and post-independent states were marked by the effects of the Cold
War.
What Mandela offered us was a possibility of re-inventing
the concept of the political. We’ve got to think about other modalities for
building democratic societies, one’s that are cognizant of the dehumanization
of race and underdevelopment. But we have to think of these in ways that do not
simply repeat earlier scripts of resistance. We need new scripts, new concepts
and new questions.
But let me address the fantasy of the West that it is better
off because it has a change of leadership every so often. To determine the
importance of Mandela along these lines is to lower the bar on what we expect
from our leaders. We should not measure a democracy in terms simply of a change
in leadership. Rather, the health of a state should be measured in terms of
leaders who leave office with a significant shift in political discourse that
affirms and actualises as far as possible a theory of change. That’s the sign
of great leadership…to leave behind a stronger set of possibilities in one’s
wake.
Were there any areas under Mandela’s rule which are left for
criticism?
In these past few weeks there are many who have expressed
their criticism of Mandela’s legacy. In some of the critiques for example,
Mandela is criticized for his failure to foresee the onset of neoliberalism. He
is also seen to have pandered to neoliberalism. Some have argued that he had
lost his connection to popular politics while in office. There will be enough
time to work through these questions in years to come.
But we must be mindful that Mandela was not the state.
Mandela was part of a state. He was part of a project to create a new society,
to build a new constitutional consensus in this country. In so far as he did,
we must acknowledge his enormous effort at trying to offer some very productive
responses to very difficult questions. But at the same time we know that he
could not necessarily have accomplished the full intensity of his thought.
There was something about what he was trying to do and what that state was
trying to do that was always going to come up against a limit. And so, we must
think about Mandela’s legacy critically, but also allow ourselves to think at
the limit of his thought. We mustn’t just accept the hagiographic script.
Mandela refused to be someone who was beyond criticism. He demanded criticism.
With his death, we are being asked to live up to is the possibility of building
on another concept of the political, but at the same time of avoiding
hagiography. We should forget the idea of Saint Mandela. We need to think about
what it means to build a concept of politics after the Cold War.
There are
three things that I think we ought to consider which would serve as a tribute
to Nelson Mandela. The first, is the need to enable the emergence of a vibrant
public sphere; we must build a vibrant democratic public sphere with institutions
of culture and education that are accessible. So that’s the one thing – we must
build a public sphere that is aimed at deracialising South African society. Secondly, we need a
new contract between the state and society. In the first years of Mandela’s
presidency, the contract between the state and society was formed around the
freedom charter. We need another contract between the state and society. We
need a contract that commits the state and society will continue to think about
how to become post-apartheid. And thirdly we need a state that trusts its
institutions. In other words we must build relations in society, that are not
simply based on institutions that follow the dictates of the state. We want
institutions that are critical, that build a critical citizenry. That’s what
the struggle against apartheid was about; that’s what brought apartheid down.
Our struggle was won on the strength of its intellectual traditions and the
capacity of people to understand that they were building something new; and it
is that desire for newness, for something that is different to apartheid, that
we feel is critical for producing another idea of politics that is not built
solely on a pedagogy of violence. The development of this idea will require us
to work through older scripts of resistance to discover new questions, one’s
that return us to the problem of the relationship between law and politics, and
that which lies in the interstices. There’s no easy road. Mandela discovered
that the road to freedom was long. Building a post-apartheid society is going
to be hard work. What Mandela has given us is the possibility to think again,
especially in these thought provoking post-apartheid times.
And last, what do you think South Africa will be without
Mandela?
That is such a difficult question. When one thinks about it,
it’s hard to imagine a South Africa without Mandela’s physical presence. At the
time of Mandela’s hospitalization in 2013, I argued that we must discover a way
to think of Mandela as someone who remains with us. I suggested that the best
way to do this was to ensure that we placed his thought in a longer genealogy
of thinking against apartheid. As long as the questions that Mandela’s
generation posed are not adequately answered, he will remain with us. When we
inquire into the meaning of the post-apartheid, the thought of Mandela’s
generation will haunt our response. In my opinion, we have as yet not arrived
at a proper answer to that question. So I think that Nelson Mandela is going to
be with us for a very long time. We’re going to have to rethink his ideas,
we’re going to have to go back to his concepts, his legal thinking, his
writing. We also have to return to the critique of Mandela. And we have to
rediscover what Mandela might not of have foreseen in his own political
outlook. So we have much work ahead of us. At the same time, when you look at
the enormity and the outpouring of human grief at the passing of Mandela, we
learn to understand what his death means for South Africa and the world. Yet, the
celebration around his life’s work is palpable. With time, we must return to
the gift of his thought.
South Africans are mostly very determined to return to the
questions that Mandela posed, perhaps to reformulate these questions. I think
what is very promising in this country is that we all have the capacity and
desire – and desire is the operative word here – to create something new. I’m
not just sloganeering in making this claim.
I think many of us realise that this is a time to gather our thoughts,
to prepare ourselves to think again, to ask different kinds of questions, and
to offer other ways of thinking about our world and society through elaborating
a concept of the post-apartheid.
Thank you very much Mr Lalu.
