The death of
Neville Alexander on August 27, coming as it does in the wake of the
massacre of mineworkers at Marikana, is a double blow. He had
the breadth of intellect and depth of knowledge to help the world to
understand the significance of these events.
Throughout
his life Alexander, who was born on October 2 1936, maintained
the important combination of being both an activist and a scholar.
His activism saw him imprisoned on Robben Island for 10 years and
subjected to house arrest for a further six years.
His whole
life he argued for and practised a principled approach to building an
independent anti-capitalist left while emphasising the need for the
unity of all organisations committed to a socialist future.
He believed
that it was impossible to wage a successful struggle without a theory
and remained committed to using the analytical tools of Marxism to
develop this theory. His Marxism was not vulgar: it was enriched by
his deep understanding of the South African reality with its complex
intersections of race, class and gender. He was also an
internationalist, following recent developments in North Africa and
the Middle East closely.
In South
Africa's increasingly crass intellectual environment, in which many
around him were abandoning their moral compasses and replacing
principled political interventions with buffoonery, he stood out as a
voice of great insight, attempting to provide what he at one stage
described as a "GPS" for the country.
The recent
events at Marikana would have come as no surprise to him. Cutting
through the hype about South Africa's celebrated transition to
democracy, he warned repeatedly of the long-term dangers of the
compromises arrived at during the negotiated settlement –
compromises that ensured the continuity of the capitalist state and
the highly un-equal social relations embedded in it.
Radical
redistribution
In fact, in two books on the transition, Alexander argued that "it is common cause in South Africa that unless a radical redistribution of material resources is realised within the lifetime of the present generation, all the glib rhetoric of social transformation, national democratic revolution and African Renaissance will come to mock their authors and exponents in the years ahead". He warned repeatedly of the potential for social instability.
His prescient
ability to predict South Africa's political trajectory made him an
unpopular figure with the ruling establishment, who were often
unsettled by his critique of the dominant, largely celebratory
discourse of national liberation and their own role within it. But he
was also widely respected, even by those he criticised.
Remarkably,
despite the fact that he foresaw the mess South Africa now finds
itself in, he never lost hope in the ability of its people to achieve
the Azanian uhuru so many had hoped for.
His optimism
was profound. He had a deep respect for humanity and the ability of
the human spirit to overcome the most difficult odds and believed
that human beings were not inherently self-centred. He knew periods
of despair in his life, but he never lapsed into cynicism.
His great
love for humanity also made him a very humble person. Not one to be
impressed by titles and status (or what he liked to call
"honorifics"), he believed that, in his own words,
"intellectuals are not people who go to universities, but are
people who understand how society works and how to change it".
He did not just mouth these sentiments, but lived them, continuing
with grassroots work to the end of his life.
Alexander
viewed ostentation with disdain. He was humorous, perfecting the art
of scorn towards the politically and morally corrupt sections of the
elite, but he was also always inspirational. His analysis was often
enlivened by characters and events from German literature, Greek
mythology and Shakespearean comedy, and his everyday speech was
peppered with aphorisms such as "enough is as good as a feast"
and "you shall be judged by your deeds, not by your words".
No
Sizwe
Alexander will be remembered for his pioneering work on the national question and language. Writing under the pseudonym "No Sizwe" in the 1970s, he critiqued the dominant liberation organisations' approach to building a new united historical community.
He argued
that they essentialised "race", which would probably make
it all but impossible for "race thinking" to disappear in a
future South Africa. He firmly rejected the racial classifications of
the apartheid state and drew on the concept of "racial
capitalism" to explain the ways in which the South African state
derived economic and social value from the maintenance of racial
identities.
In the two
subsequent decades, he developed this line of argument, asserting
that, for South Africa to emerge as a nation, it would need to be
united on all levels of the social formation, including the economic,
cultural and social. To simply proclaim South Africa the "rainbow
nation" was premature, because the material conditions that
would allow a united nation to come into being were simply not
present. These realities meant that the nation's social cohesion was
built on quicksand.
In fact,
Alexander feared that society would fracture, creating space for
opportunistic leaders to mobilise racial divisions to build power
bases. Using the xenophobic attacks in 2008 as a salutary backdrop,
he warned emphatically that "Things can fall apart very quickly.
Our entire sociohistorical fabric can unravel within a few weeks: it
took less than 100 days in Rwanda!"
In later
years he argued that unless state institutions placed
disadvantage rather than "race" at the centre of their
transformative strategies, they would only benefit a narrow group of
black people and perpetuate race thinking at the expense of the
working and unemployed poor.
His work on
language developed his arguments on the national question. He
believed that South Africa would not unite unless indigenous
languages became the languages of power.
If Alexander
could be faulted for anything, then it could be for insufficient
introspection about why independent left organisations have so far
failed to have consistent mass resonance and why their ideas have
failed to become the general ideas of society. The last thing
Alexander would have wanted is a hagiography.
Like a true
revolutionary, he touched and changed many, many lives, including our
own.
Our thoughts
are with his family, his many friends and comrades, and his partner
Karen Press. Alexander's funeral this weekend will take the form of a
private cremation. There will be many commemorative meetings in the
coming few weeks throughout the country and beyond.
Hamba kahle,
comrade Neville.
