Mamphela Ramphele reflects tragedy of Black Consciousness

Pallo Jordan, Business Day

THOUGH it came as no surprise, I was nevertheless a bit saddened by the announcement this week that Mamphela Ramphele was leaving politics after being expelled from Agang SA, the political party she founded. Ramphele was among a generation of young black intellectuals who came to the fore during the political ice age that descended on South Africa in the aftermath of the Rivonia trial.

The thaw that came after they parted ways with the National Union of South African Students owed much to their youthful courage that rejected both the repressive racism of the National Party government and patronising liberalism. After establishing the South African Students Organisation, inspired by black consciousness, they mobilised students at tertiary institutions established in pursuance of Hendrik Verwoerd’s grand apartheid, turning many into bastions of the liberation movement. Ramphele’s personal contribution earned her the wrath of the apartheid authorities and a deportation order.

MaMbeki’s passing marks the end of an era

Pallo Jordan

Pallo Jordan, Business Day

MME Mofokeng, Aunt Piny, MaMbeki and many others are the expressions of affection she earned in a life of service. The passing of Epainette Moerane-Mbeki on June 7 truly marks the end of an era.

Born in February 1916 to a family of African teachers, who had migrated from Lesotho, she grew up as a member of the tiny landowning African elite made up of peasant farmers, professionals and clergy. Like others of their stratum, the Moeranes invested in the education of the children.

Racial solidarity not cause of ANC success

by Pallo Jordon, Business Day

SINCE 1994, the political party that has studiedly shunned negative campaigning and ad hominem attacks is the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC’s election campaigns have all been based on its political record and as a party in the government.

Yet one regularly encounters opinions that the ANC’s landslide majorities are not the function of rational voter choice but rather an expression of racial solidarity among Africans. The unpronounced, yet implicit, suggestion is that while white, coloured and Indian voters make rational choices, African voters are motivated by racial considerations that have little or nothing to do with reason.

Negotiator who outmanoeuvred PW

Pallo Jordan, The Sunday Independent

The announcement must have come while I was on the phone to my ageing mother. We had chatted at length about international events. “And how is Mandela?” she queried. “No real change since the last time,” I responded.

Imagine my shock when I turned on the TV to be met with the breaking news. Intellectually, I had come to terms with Madiba’s passing on the last occasion he was admitted to hospital. It had registered that it was just a matter of time. But, when the long-anticipated, inevitable moment arrived, it was emotionally wrenching. As a melancholy gripped me, here was that deep sadness, but no tears came to my eyes.

From some place, deep inside me, rose the emotions.

“A! Dalibhunga!

Gorha lomzi wakwaMthtirara!

Pallo Jordon on the recent outbreak of xenophobic violence in Port Elizabeth

Pallo Jordan, Business Day, 19 September 2013

THE shocking attacks on Somali-owned shops in the Port Elizabeth townships this weekend are an indictment of our failure as South Africans. Walking through our cities, it is clear SA has become an attractive destination to millions from our region and beyond. There are parts of Johannesburg where French and Portuguese are the languages one hears on the streets. In the towns of the Eastern Cape, one often finds that the local shop owner is from the Indian subcontinent. Until recently, the 7-Eleven I frequent in my Cape Town neighbourhood was run by a Congolese woman and her daughters.

There is no liberal tradition in South Africa

by Z. Pallo Jordon, Amandla

Liberalism regards the individual as the ultimate social and political agent, endowed with a number of rights. The ideology also acknowledges that individuals live in societies and are not totally autonomous. Consequently it also recognises a number of societal obligations the individual should fulfil in order to co-exist with others. In the continent of its birth liberalism proved most attractive to the propertied classes who had embraced the anti-feudal ethos of high social status attained through individual achievement rather than through birth. As propertied persons the early liberals were, however, very distrustful of the working poor and the property-less, whom they saw as venal and easy to corrupt. The franchise and attendant political rights were therefore to be enjoyed by the propertied classes and extended to the other classes on the basis of merit, demonstrated by a certain lifestyle.

S'bu Zikode, Richard Pithouse and Pallo Jordon Debating the Record of the ANC in Oslo

Xolela Mangcu & Pallo Jordan Discuss Mangcu's New Book on Biko

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Pallo Jordan’s speech at the 20th anniversary of the Bisho massacre

Pallo Jordan

07-09-2012

by Z. Pallo Jordan

Like so many of the landmarks along our long walk to freedom, September 7th 1992 does not mark a happy occasion. It was day on which the political and social forces striving to give birth to a democratic South Africa, clashed head-on with the joint forces of reaction represented by the tin-pot military strongman, Brigadier Oupa Gqozo and the die-hards of the apartheid regime. Twenty-eight people were mowed down in a desperate act of repression.

Pallo Jordan & Xolela Mangcu on Biko

Crisis of Conscience in the SACP: A Critical Review of Slovo’s “Has Socialism Failed?”

Pallo Jordan. Lusaka, February 1990.

“Has Socialism Failed?” is the intriguing title Comrade Joe Slovo has given to a discussion pamphlet published under the imprint of ‘Umsebenzi’, the quarterly newspaper of the SACP. The reader is advised at the outset that these are Slovo’s individual views, and not those of the SACP. While this is helpful it introduces a note of uncertainty regarding the pamphlet’s authority. The pamphlet itself is divided into six parts, the first five being an examination of the experience of the ‘socialist countries’, and the last, a look at the SACP itself.