As I read Xolela Mangcu’s heartfelt ode (Crossfire, June 5 to 11) to the need for national values, I see the jets roaring over the Union Buildings, leaving behind in their thundering blur a rainbow of colours. Presidents, ministers and generals stand stony-faced, with hand on heart, framed by the deafening adulation of people waving a new flag.
It is this aspect of nationalism that creates the lump in the throat and tear in the eye. It is also this nationalism that deadens the senses, obfuscates the problems and creates the us-and-them mentality that sends nations to war.
His implicit and disturbing assumption seems to be that we need another cult of the individual through which to establish a democracy. Around this national leader are ”public intellectuals” who carry forth the message ”through multiple institutions like the media, policy institutes and community forums”, who will paternalistically encourage the public to air their views and then stamp on the debate ”a common morality” and consensus.
The example of Jawaharlal Nehru that he uses is interesting. Partha Chatterjee, an influential member of the Subaltern School of Historians in India, has shown that the post-independence regimes rewrote the historical script via the officially sanctioned nationalist intellectuals to suit their own interests. ”To him [Nehru] the peasants and the urban poor are ruled by passions, not reason; they can be mobilised by poets and charismatic presences like [Mahatma] Gandhi, but after independence this large number ought to be absorbed into the state, to be made functional to its development”.
There is no reason to assume that these tendencies will not emerge here. Divorcing nationalist discourse from political and economic policy is like saying ”the people are poor, destitute and homeless, but that doesn’t matter, because we have 50 years of independence to celebrate”. Do we want to be celebrating the memory of ”a great father of the nation” in 50 years, and still be steeped in a morass of poverty and inequality?
While I do not necessarily have a problem with trying to construct some set of national values, I do have a problem with making national consensus a national value.
At the moment there is a discussion underway at the University of the Western Cape around the restructuring of the way we are taught at universities. It is a discussion which is happening in some form or another at all universities in South Africa. The changes being discussed are occa-sioned by the policy recommendations of the White Paper on higher education. A discussion document is in the process of being circulated.
In essence, the document suggests that the White Paper is written within the context of a competitive global economy, and that higher education institutions must become ”responsive” to what are seen as ”the needs of society” and, particularly, the economy.
”Society and economy” are two concepts whose needs are liberally sprinkled throughout the document, to the extent that the recommendations state that ”it has become patently clear that South African higher education cannot remain aloof from these changes”, referring to the changes in the ”world economy”.
The White Paper proposes a need for ”programme-based learning” that will ”promote access” by, among other things, having a ”new and flexible qualifications structure” with ”multiple entry and exit points”. It argues that higher education must become ”responsive” to the ”present and future needs of the economy”, and ”responsive to labour market trends”.
It soberly reminds us that ”whether we do so proactively by taking charge of the change agenda, or reactively by being coerced through sanction and funding leverage … change is inescapable”.
It argues that one of the obstacles to this change is that ”higher education culture is characterised by inflexibility, linearity and inertia”, and this is a problem if we want ”responsive programmes”.
As ”black intellectuals”, are we supposed to be shaking our heads in agreement with the above-mentioned recommendations? The way I read Mangcu, we should be. After all, these recommendations seem self-evident, if we are to become competitive in the global economy, reduce unemployment, secure housing for everyone, and become the engine of growth in Southern Africa and build our new ”national values”. So is one unpatriotic if one questions this ”national consensus”?
”Public intellectuals”, for Mangcu, are an essential part of his project of building national values. My argument is that the kind of public intellectual Mangcu is evangelising for is an anti-intellectual.
People go to university for many different reasons. Some people have gone for career- specific courses in the natural sciences, law and management sciences. Some people have gone in pursuit of knowledge of a more general kind.
The pursuit of knowledge has, at various points in history, been tied up with the project of freedom, an unfashionable project these days.
Secular universities and the people in them have, by and large, been engaged in unearthing, discovering, questioning and developing ideas which enriched, challenged and outraged their societies.
This brings to mind one of the most eloquently written defences of the intellectual, from Palestinian academic and activist Edward Said, when, in the 1993 Edward Reigh Lectures, he observed that ”the intellectual, properly speaking, is not a functionary nor an employee completely given up to the policy goals of a government or a large corporation, or even a guild of like-minded professionals.
”In such situations the temptations to turn off one’s moral sense, or to think entirely within the speciality, or to curtail scepticism [for national consensus?] in favour of conformity, are far too great to be trusted.”
These words ring in my mind as I read the proposals for university restructuring and Mangcu’s suggestion that public intellectuals rely on ”private funding by the new black millionaires”.
What are the recommendations of the higher education Act, but the national consensus of government and big business, including ”the new black millionaires”?
Are those involved in intellectual pursuits not being asked, nay, being told, to become ”functionaries” whose task it will be to change themselves into the spin doctors of this or that policy, like Gear and the ”African renaissance”, which are the current wisdom?
Are intellectuals, quoting Said, not becoming those who are not being asked to ”lead, but to consolidate government’s policy, to spew out propaganda against official enemies, euphemisms, and on a larger scale, whole systems of Orwellian Newspeak, which could disguise the truth of what was occurring in the name of national honour”?
I agree fully that ”it is imperative that we develop the next generation of South African intellectuals”. But is ”programme- based learning” not turning the current generation into ”programmers”, rather than people involved in an activity which is supposed to equip indi-viduals with the lifelong learning skills of creative, dynamic, independent, analytical and critical thinking?
What an irony an ”African renaissance” is if we are only teaching people to be ”responsive” to the global economy, like it is a benevolent hand that comes through the clouds to give us bread.
The pursuit of knowledge, I am afraid, has been replaced by the pursuit of (wealthy) posterior ends to fill seats, because they bring with them money.
The discourse of education planners in this regard is illuminating, when they ask: ”Does the programme seek out and reflect the concerns of the stakeholder and client?” Not student, or learner, but ”client”.
The motto of the service industry is ”the client is always right”. Some academic spin-doctors, or ”public intellectuals”, are already surveying their ”clients” to find out what is deemed important in a course and what is not, and so out go those dry, boring parts and in come the shiny, snappy and sexy bits.
Old professors will soon be hobbling off to be nipped and tucked, visiting image consultants, who will say, ”dump those cords, tweeds and polo-necks, and check out what’s hip if you want to keep your job!” So out go the humanities. After all, how ”responsive” is Greek philosophy?
Instead of asking intellectuals to be the high priests of national consensus, or rather national silence, we should be asking whether we can allow the arts and humanities to be at the mercy of the market.
Before we all become teary-eyed and nostalgic about dubious old nationalists, or jump to make changes because they are ”inevitable” and necessary ”for the country”, we should pause and consider who is asking us to make these changes.
They are not divinely ordained truths, or emergent from the mythical collective wisdom of ubuntu, but perceived needs, as indispensable as the latest fashion accessory, and these truths change and fluctuate, like interest rates.
Isn’t that precisely why some spheres of society should be allowed to be relatively ”inflexible and inert”, and dance to the tune of a different drum? So that when we are all swept away in the euphoric moment of national pride, as Mangcu is, there are some who can temper that with caution, and show us alternatives, precisely because they are patriotic.
Suren Pillay is a lecturer in political science at the University of the Western Cape