Interrogating the Grand Narratives about Zimbabwe: the case of the Shamvu District

Christopher Merrett reviews 'The Promise of Land'

The Promise of Land

by Christopher Merrett, The Witness

A STRUGGLE for land has been central to the history of South Africa, complicated by the fact that to the protagonists it represented very different world views.

The recent centenary of the Natives’ Land Act was a reminder that land was a cornerstone of white domination, a reason why Fred Hendricks argues in The Promise of Land that its reform is a “barrier to a unitary imagination of the South Africa nation”.

Instead, a revolution is required to complete the process of decolonisation and creation of a national identity. Twenty years after liberation, democracy, social justice and the symbolism of restitution should have made the country look very different, he suggests.

Marxisms past and present

Kirk Helliker, Rhodes University, South Africa

Peter Vale, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract

Marxism was central to the understanding of South Africa’s struggle for freedom. This article provides a critical analysis of Marxist literature on South Africa since the 1970s, drawing out its relevance for contemporary analyses of the post-apartheid state and for radical politics today. It suggests that while the literature offered important insights into the character of the apartheid state, it failed to provide a critical appraisal of the state per se. Moreover, the capturing of state power by the liberation movement was not grounded in an understanding of the oppressive character of the state-form. The undermining of mainstream Marxism under neo-liberalizing conditions in post-apartheid South Africa has opened up the prospects for anti-statist radical libertarian thinking (including autonomist Marxism), and this thinking is consistent with the practices of certain autonomist popular politics currently emerging. Social theorizing on South Africa has had a complex relationship with Marxism. This article is interested in drawing on this experience in an effort to understand its implications for the ‘new’ South Africa where, 20 years after apartheid’s formal ending, social transformation remains caught in the logic not of Marxism but neo-liberalizing capitalism.

Contemporary Social Theory 2010

Contemporary Social Theory

Sociology III

Department of Sociology

Rhodes University

Fourth Term 2012

This year there is a special Contemporary Social Theory course to mark the visit to the Department of Sociology of Professor John Holloway during the fourth term.

The course focuses on specific theorists, as follows:

Week 1: Partha Chatterjee (by K Helliker)

Weeks 2 & 3: John Holloway

Week 4: Alain Badiou (by Michael Neocosmos, UNISA)

Week 5: Samir Amin (by T Alexander)

Week 6: Jacques Ranciere (by R Pithouse, Politics Department).

Fanon’s Curse: Re-imagining Marxism in South Africa’s Age of Retreat

by Kirk Helliker & Peter Vale, Paper presented at XII Annual Conference of the International Association of Critical Realism Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 23rd-25th July 2009

Although increasingly hidden by the incarnation of capital and the national project, South Africa has a long and deep-seated association with Marxism. This intellectual project, including the critical moments in its rise and demise, is the central focus of this article. The argument is simple, almost linear: South Africa’s interest in Marxism – especially Western Marxism – was abruptly truncated. There has been an unravelling of interest in Marxism since the end of apartheid: this we regard as a retreat. The generalised condition of retreat has stunted the possibility of an engagement with building a socialist alternative that once appeared to be ingrained in the struggles which raged during apartheid’s endgame.