A three-day conference focused on the themes expressed
through the work of Neville Alexander.
Neville Alexander's 50 years of engagement as a public and
committed intellectual came under scrutiny at a conference hosted by the Nelson
Mandela Metropolitan University from July 6 to 8.
Titled The Life and Times of Neville Alexander, the
conference organised its first two days around a "student and youth
apprenticeship", providing an opportunity for students from various
universities and youth from social movements to discuss the important themes
expressed through the life and work of Alexander.
The last two days were devoted to a number of keynote
addresses and other perspectives focusing on "the national question",
"education and liberation", "language, identity and
culture", and — as the final theme — "ethics, morality and values in
revolutionary practice" in post-apartheid South Africa.
Alexander's constant and creative search for practical and
demonstrable alternatives in the present while striving for a humanistic and
anti-capitalist future society featured prominently in most discussions. Several
considered reflective ways of taking forward the breadth of Alexander's
intellectual outputs and his revolutionary practice.
An important discussion about how Alexander conceptualised
the idea of a nation referred especially to both his enduring debate with
Nelson Mandela while incarcerated on Robben Island and his subsequent seminal
text written in 1979, One Azania, One Nation, setting out his theorisation of
the national question in South Africa.
He was motivated to write it, as he said, "by the desire
to facilitate the unification of the national liberation movement by fomenting
a discussion on the basis of national unity and the political-strategic
implications of ideas about who constitutes the South African nation".
Analysis and critique
In effect his writings were a trenchant analysis and
critique of the perspective adopted by the national liberation movement as a
whole, in all its political and ideological diversity. Intrinsic to the
discussion was also the question of "race" and other concepts such as
"nationalism", "national group", "ethnic group",
"class" and "colour-caste" as they related to both theories
constitutive of the nation and their relevance in practice — the practices of
the national liberation movement.
These were inevitably related to how the struggle against
apartheid was conceptualised, giving rise to strong historical debates about
how the relationships between "race" and class as well as democracy
and capitalism were understood.
Fundamental to Alexander's argument was the view that the
construction of a truly democratic South Africa was inseparable from an
examination of its political economy — that issues about the resolution of the
"national question" were fundamentally about the nature of the
post-apartheid state and its orientation to capitalism.
Alexander preferred to describe South Africa's social
formation as racial capitalism. His approach to the national question was a
refutation of the "bogus nationalisms" that intended to dilute the
force of class struggle and to "illuminate the character of the real
socioeconomic basis of inequality" and its ideological forms. For him the
nation "consists of all the people who are prepared to throw off the yoke
of capitalist exploitation and racist oppression. It involves a determined and
uncompromising struggle against all attempts to divide the population on the
basis of language, religion, tribe or caste."
A number of presentations focused on Alexander's work on
language and its importance in shaping the nation — such as his insistence on
the need to develop, validate and promote multilingualism as essential to the
political, social, economic and cultural development of South Africa and the
continent.
The language link
These presentations raised important questions about the
relationship between language and culture, language and identity and other
related questions and situated these in the context of the resistance to the
manipulative language policies of the apartheid regime. They pointed to the
thin line between the racist conceptions of language, culture and identity as
instruments of the apartheid state and the ostensibly liberatory conceptions of
nationalism.
These discussions also referred to the critical issue of
language as a medium of instruction and the importance of mother tongue-based
learning, especially in the formative schooling years as a bridge to language
acquisition more generally and, in South Africa, the transition to English as
such a medium of instruction. They pointed to the very important work already
being done at a number of universities such as the University of Limpopo, where
a dual-language degree (Sepedi and English) is already in place. The formation
of reading clubs and other similar initiatives in many townships, and the need
for interventions at the highest levels of policy-making and in public
institutions to give effect to the ideas strongly championed by Alexander over
many years also came into focus.
Alexander's approach and interest in education was not
separate from a larger quest for a different society. He also had little
interest in or time for ideas not connected to activity or organisation.
Conference participants reflected on the bankruptcy of the present approaches
to "the education crisis". In particular this discussion was hugely
instructive about the limitations of the present debate in the country, based
as it is largely on the attribution of blame to the key actors in education and
the loss of a strategic vision.
The persistence of the blaming approach, it was argued,
replaced the need for reflection on the real and underlying causes of failures.
These are attributable to a number of historical, social, political and
material causes, on the one hand, and on the other to the impact of these on
teachers' consciousness, curriculum development, pedagogical practice
(including the language of learning), perceptions about learners and the
disengagement of communities — all of which were compounded by the failure of
the intellectual imagination.
Sectarianism in the history of political organisations
across the dividing lines of the national liberation movement was also
discussed. This was raised to help to provide a platform for alternative
approaches based on a radical reappraisal of the present. It was especially
important for those who regarded themselves as pursuing a "radical"
political agenda to examine the inherent and divisive weaknesses of sectarian
politics in both the past and the present.
The idea of "dissent" as necessary to stimulating
and supporting a diversity of radical political traditions was regarded as
critical for the present and the future. The complex challenges of social
change facing the nation were incapable of resolution outside the framing ideas
of diverse ideas, and democratic practice was essential to it. Such practice,
more-over, required a new moral narrative on which it could be based — one
removed from the seductiveness of consumerism and avarice.
Alexander's favourite aphorism, "Enough is as good as a
feast", was regarded as emblematic of this moral approach by contrast with
the hollow moralism of those intent on maintaining an unequal status quo.
Participants shared Alexander's optimism that, despite numerous examples of the
"looting of the state", conditions could not be better to fashion a
new country based on the values and vision that inspired us during the struggle
against apartheid.
