Condemned: The ANC’s leadership comprised lifelong communists and cadres of working class origin who had never known privilege and who had lived a lonely life in prison or in exile.
Saul’s critique is selective
John Saul conflates the ANC’s role in defeating apartheid power and its performance in recent times (Deluded ANC fell short of true liberation). I concede there are ample grounds for criticising the current performance of the ANC and its government. These failings are dealt with quite fully in the party’s recent policy documents. Hopefully this will be followed by some resignations so the failings don’t continue.
But none of this justifies Saul’s condemnation of the ANC’s role in the liberation struggle in his terms. He talks of a “recolonisation by capital” through “intermediaries”, “the ANC’s role in the defeat of the liberation struggle” and “a new class gaining power”. All this to support his case that there was a betrayal.
These are a gross distortion of the events that led to the negotiated settlement of 1994. The fact is that neither the ANC nor the apartheid regime could see a prospect of victory. Each side was strong enough to maintain its power but not strong enough to overthrow the other. There were external factors at work too.
Saul’s allegation that the ANC was led by a new class of sellouts lacks credibility. Among the leadership were lifelong communists, cadres of working-class origin who had never known privilege and who, for the most part, lived a Spartan and lonely life in prison or exile.
Some of the concessions made in the negotiations may be questioned, especially in economic policy. But to claim that this was a betrayal is mistaken.
One is surprised that Professor Saul relies solely on quoting selected opinions in arriving at his critique. The article has no facts, no rigorous analysis of the objective conditions, hence his entirely unbalanced assessment. He ends up feeding cynicism about the ANC, thereby writing off a heroic chapter in the history of our country. – Ben Turok
Only equality is being consumers
The beauty industry is a multi-billion dollar contributor to capitalism (Prettifying comes at a pretty price). It depends entirely on trying to comfort women who feel bad about themselves because of the myriad ways sexism and male domination have diminished, negated and placed their lives as secondary from the moment they were born – and, for some, from the moment their sex was discovered in utero.
While it is true that opportunities to have a fuller life have opened up for some women, the great majority of females globally remain in subservient, low-paid, lesser-paid or invisible positions in the home, the workplace and in public spaces generally.
Make-up, hair dye, new clothes, non-ageing potions and lotions – these are offered to women as inducements to accept their lot. Racism adds a dimension that includes skin-lightening and hair-straightening products. Of course, men are also bought off with toys – cars, electronic gadgets, tools, porn and so on.
Capitalism leaves no one free to be angry. And capitalism is making inroads into inducing women to buy cars and technology and porn and men into buying pots of grooming gunk – using notions of “equality” to suggest that we have an equal right to be dumb consumers.
Women need to be angry – but that isn’t allowed. Men are angry, and although they are allowed to dramatise it in sport, war and the workplace, it gets them nowhere. Ours is an inchoate anger that the beauty industry preys upon.
So let’s allow little girls to show their anger and let’s give little boys the freedom to cry, and, for sure, something will change in their future. – Roslyn Cassidy, Johannesburg
Swana speciously ignores revisionism
Sandile Swana delivers a broadside against South African universities, suggesting that they have “indoctrinated [black South Africans] to believe … all sound knowledge is Western philosophy and Western-style universities” (Birth pangs of an African meritocracy).
Swana’s statements are, at best, deliberately obtuse and, at worst, ill-informed.
By way of flatly contradicting Swana’s statement, one only needs to point to the significant body of revisionist scholarship by both black and white academics at South African universities, scholarship that illuminates the richness of African history and culture.
Swana’s desire to create an intellectual opposition between Western values and knowledge systems, on the one hand, and those of Africa on the other is not helpful in a world that is so interconnected, global and dynamic.
If Swana reads his history, he will note that some of the greatest moments of intellectual, scientific, cultural and technological achievement have been during periods of internationalism.
We need to explore a multiplicity of understandings in South African today, not lock ourselves into narrow ideological positions. – Peter Hyslop, Cape Town