South Africa

South African History Online has a feature on the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the United Democratic Front (UDF). With the African National Congress, Pan-Africanist Congress, and other organizations banned the UDF filled an essential void and fueled the anti-Apartheid opposition in the tumultuous 1980s. Largely locally focused, the UDF confronted apartheid as much by confronting local problems as through national campaigns. SAHO thus brings to light a vitally important but often misunderstood aspect of the struggle.

Recently elsewhere I wrote about the passing of George Fredrickson, emphasizing the role he played in my own intellectual development. Here is his New York Times obituary.

Another leading South African historian, Stanley Trapido, who left South Africa after the Sharpevile Massacre in 1960 and became a lecturer at Oxford, also died recently. You can find his obituary (written by respected South African historian Charles van Onselen) in The Guardian here.

Hamba kahle, gentlemen.

(Crossposted at dcat.)

Thirty years ago this week the South African political philosopher Richard Turner was assassinated in his Durban home.

 South African History Online (SAHO) has put together a special feature on the anniversary of Turner’s shooting. His daughter, the journalist Jann Turner, has included her own personal reflections of her father’s life and death and what it meant not only for her, but for South Africa’s liberation struggle.

The posting has been light of light because of travel and a conference and the general need every so often to take a break. I will pick the pace back up soon. The Foreign Policy Association published my latest think piece last week, “South Africa’s Magnificent Catastrophe,” in which I make some tentative (and merely suggestive) comparisons between current South African politics and the state of United States politics in 1800. 

Two reviews recently appeared of Mark Gevisser’s mammoth new biography, Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred. Both make clear that Gevisser has produced an essential book that not only provides the deepest understanding of its subject to date, but that also serves to place Mbeki in the context of the country’s history and that history within the framework of Mbeki’s life. The Economist’s review is here and Financial Times’  is here.

Respected Africa expert Martin Meredith has been on quite a roll lately. His book The Fate of Africa: A History of 50 Years of Independence represents one of the most highly regarded and extensive treatments of the continent and its difficult recent past. He recently reissued his indictment of Robert Mugabe, Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe in revised form with the new title Mugabe: Power, Plunder, and the Struggle for Zimbabwe. And now he has published Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers and the Making of South Africa, an exploration of South African history in the period from 1871 to 1910, and a book almost as ambitious as The Fate of Africa. Here is Janet Maslin’s review in The New York Times.  
 

At the Mail & Guardian ANC stalwart Pallo Jordan has a discursive, somewhat diffuse cri de couer in which he honors the party’s past, defends the party’s history of honoring the collective, and gives respect to some of the party’s lions, such as Oliver Tambo and Albert Luthuli. In this time of party division and its uncertain future it is not surprising that some might look to the past to try to reconcile the present. As Jordan writes:

By nurturing the best of its traditions the ANC has outlived many younger movements. But the movement’s resilience and capacity for self-renewal has ensured it remained relevant over the decades despite the massive changes in national, regional and international politics.

It is frankly difficult to discern an actual prescription in Jordan’s piece, but it seems like an attempt to urge the party to look beyond its schisms and to continue to cultivate unity. Something tells me that his idealized future won’t be coming to fruition next month.

Two articles in The Mail & Guardian reveal a common trait among nation states and other political entities: A fundamental aversion to outside interference. During the American Civil Rights Movement white Southerners oftentimes claimed that their states were beset with outside agitators, alien forces who were there to cause trouble and then would leave without having to deal with the fallout. This was a nonsense justification, of course, but it did speak to a powerful sense of autonomy and sovereignty.

We see a similar tendency among African states today, though African concerns about outside encroachment are in many ways more valid than those of unreconstructed white southerners. Imperialism, the political machinations that characterized the Cold War,  and neocolonialism are all very real historical and contemporary phenomena. Nonetheless, a zeal not to be told what to do, not to be imposed upon, sometimes leads to overreaction — witness the ways that too many African leaders have rallied to Robert Mugabe’s defense, despite the fact that Mugabe’s victims are overwhelmingly Africans.

 That is why the M&G articles both caught my eye, even though thematically they cover different terrain. The first reveals African concerns about the United States’ new Africa Command (Africom) which, however well-intentioned, still is going to invoke myriad images of American self-interest trumping African interests. America did not serve Africa well during the Cold War, has practically disregarded the continent since except when natural resources have been involved, and has shown little followup on even those African initiatives that might have done good in recent years. This, coupled with the United States recent foreign policy misadventures and general hamhandedness in international relations causes many to view Africom with a jaundiced eye.

The second article reveals the insistence of those on all sides of the political debate in Zimbabwe on downplaying the role that Thabo Mbeki has played in recent reform efforts north of the Limpopo. “This is not just an Mbeki initiative, but a Southern African Development Community initiative,” the Movement for Democratic Change’s Morgan Tsvangirai insists. Again, this makes sense. While South Africa briefly became the world’s darlings, many in the region worry about the country’s disproportionate political, economic, culural and military power. Whether true or not, the claims that Mbeki’s role has been exaggerated allow Zimbabweans to believe that they have had some control over their fate even in the midst of chaos.

Observers and critics of African policy need to be aware of this understandable wariness that many Africans feel about having policies imposed upon them from the outside. Only in doing so will outsiders be able to develop sensitive policies geared toward the true development of primarily African solutions to African policies.

The normally cantankerous Paul Theroux has a glowing review of Tim Jeal’s new biography of Henry Morton Stanley in this week’s New York Times Sunday Book Review. Here is the concluding paragraph:

There have been many biographies of Stanley, but Jeal’s is the most felicitous, the best informed, the most complete and readable and exhaustive, profiting from his access to an immense new trove of Stanley material. In its progress from workhouse to mud hut to baronial mansion, it is like the most vivid sort of Victorian novel, that of a tough little man battling against the odds and ahead of his time in seeing the Congo clearly, its history (in his words) “two centuries of pitiless persecution of black men by sordid whites.”

My students find Stanley and his ilk fascinating and frankly a bit mystifying. Jeal’s biography looks to be a must-read.

Is there hope for real progress in Liberia? Ever since Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf took office, there have been signs of progress. In Today’s Boston Globe Carolyn Norris, West Africa Project director and Mark L. Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group, indicate that while there is much yet to be accomplished the small steps continue apace. This would, naturally, be fantastic news for on eof West Africa’s most beleaguered states.

The Mail & Guardian has several stories (see here, here, here, and here) about Steve Biko’s life, death, legacy, and his meaning for South Africans today on a whole host of issues, including crime and politics. 

Meanwhile mysterious rumors are beginning to swirl about a “counter-revolution” against the ANC. ANC paranoia? Politics as usual in a still young state? Opposition party fantasy? Media dream story? Probably a combination of all of these, truth be told.  Stay tuned . . .