Debate: Voices from the South African Left
Issue 3, 1997
Review by Ben Courtice
Debate is an impressive new publication — first printed in 1996 — devoted to questions of socialist analysis and strategy, centred on the South African left movement but including many global issues in its scope.
The focus of the current issue is the "retreat of the intellectuals". As an introduction, the editorial relates a depressing list of intellectual retreats, including "the lead Marxist critic of the Anglo American Corporation [who] turned to advertising his services (as a trade union insider) to Anglo ... the lead Marxist critic of export-led growth strategy debuted in the Financial Mail by endorsing Taiwan as a model for post-apartheid SA ... South Africa's lead Marxist peasant scholar, who was jailed for his SACP [Communist Party] ties during the 1960s ... presently serves as the [World] Bank's London representative."
Articles address themselves to "exploring the overall slide into status quo argumentation" and "tracing the evolution of economic policy". This makes for interesting reading.
Australian readers may find it hard to conceptualise a large layer of intellectuals working with the militant working-class movement: even when Australia has had a strong workers' movement, pragmatism rather than intellectual analysis has been its hallmark. But it is a serious consideration for the South African left.
Articles on the topic have appeared previously in other journals, notably by Oupa Lehulere in Links — the Australian-published "international journal of socialist renewal".
The first series of articles addresses the paths taken by the intelligentsia, and the arguments employed by those intellectuals who have retreated. Despite some tendency toward overly academic preoccupations, there is still a defence of the perspective of working-class struggle.
A 1990 article on "The Metamorphosis of Latin America's Intellectuals" by James Petras is included for an interesting international perspective and a parallel to the South African debate.
The next series of articles is entitled "Critique of GEAR". GEAR is the ANC government's Growth, Employment and Redistribution policy.
Lehulere relates this neo-liberal policy to the ANC's gradual slide away from a left orientation, obviously a topic related to the retreat of the intellectuals. He criticises the SACP's role, which he describes as providing "left-sounding theoretical cover for the right shifts of the ANC".
Lehulere concludes that it is time that the unions were broken from their adherence to the ANC-SACP alliance, and that a new party of the working class must be formed.
Other articles in this section include well-known writer Patrick Bond on questions of housing policy and articles on land reform, non-payment of apartheid's foreign debt and campaigns against education funding cuts.
Several members of the editorial collective in Durban are facing criminal charges for their part in the "struggle against neo-liberalism in the restructuring of the university" at which they work. An appeal for solidarity with them is included.
Another article reviews a public meeting sponsored by Debate on the topic "Whither the South African state?" with SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin among the speakers.
The issue finishes with a selection of dark and powerful poems by Lesego Rampolokeng.
This is an important journal for all who are interested in South African politics, and those who are facing similar struggles worldwide — as Petras' article illustrates. Important questions debated since last century by the left have new life breathed into them in these pages.
Also possibly of interest to Green Left readers is the Debate e-mail listserve for discussions about the journal, and about politics, political economy and culture more generally. The address is: majordomo@sunsite.wits.ac.za — write "Subscribe Debate" on the first line.
Subscription rates outside South Africa are US$40 for three issues (1 year), or $80 for an institution. The address is PO Box 483, Wits 2050, South Africa.