The South African ideology: The myth of exceptionalism, the idea of renaissance

South Atlantic Quarterly

Volumn 103, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 607-628

  Lazarus, Neil ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248153229     PISSN: 00382876     EISSN: 15278026     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00382876-103-4-607     Document Type: Review

References (31)

1. For commentary on these developments, see Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (New York: Longman, 1983)
2. and Gail M. Gerhart, Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979)
3. Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (London: Heinemann, 1981 [1968]), 79
4. Subsequent references to this novel are given in the text. For detailed commentary on Armah, see my Resistance in Postcolonial African Fiction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)
5. Nondumiso Dingiswayo, "Sebokeng," in Ear to the Ground: Contemporary Worker Poets (Fordsburg: Congress of South African Writers, in association with Congress of South African Trade Unions, 1991), 20
6. Julie Frederikse, The Unbreakable Thread: Non-Racialism in South Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990)
7. Frantz Fanon, "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness," in The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1968 [1961]), 148. Subsequent references to this article are given in the text
8. Hein Marais, South Africa: Limits to Change: The Political Economy of Transformation (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 1998), 125. Subsequent references to this study are given in the text
9. Tom Lodge, Politics in South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki (Cape Town: David Philip, 2002), 27-28. Subsequent references to this study are given in the text
10. John Saul, "Starting from Scratch? A Reply to Jeremy Cronin," Monthly Review 54.7 (2002): 43
11. Subsequent references to this article are given in the text; see also the relevant sections of Saul, Millennial Africa: Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2001)
12. Jeremy Cronin, "Post-Apartheid South Africa: A Reply to John Saul," Monthly Review 54.7 (2002): 34
13. Kwame Nkrumah, "On the Threhold of Independence," in I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), 90-91
14. Gillian Hart, Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 22. Subsequent references to this study are given in the text
15. In an excellent article published in 1991, Mike Morris warned of the growing influence among corporate and policy intellectuals of a "growth model" emphasizing "political settlement and growth rather than... redistribution." This model, Morris noted, "specifically eschews radical state intervention to redistribute social and economic resources on a noneconomic basis, and puts its reliance instead solely on the operations of the free market." In the South African context, the application of this model "would go hand in hand with a political strategy that resolves the national question with the maximum accommodation to demands for majority rule but with minimum accommodation to demands for major restructuring of the economic and social fabric of the society. The thrust of this strategy would be to establish hegemonic consent by politically appealing to the material interests of those classes amongst the black population who are to become the greatest beneficiaries.... Those on the other side of the divide would be symbolically accommodated but their material needs would not be systematically catered for" (Morris, "State, Capital and Growth: The Political Economy of the National Question," in Steven Gelb, ed., South Africa's Economic Crisis [Cape Town: David Philip, 1991], 57)
16. Patrick Bond, "Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the Power Politics of Bourgeois Democracy," Monthly Review 54.I (2002): 44-45
17. Subsequent references to this article are given in the text. See also Patrick Bond, Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa (London: Pluto, 2000)
18. and Cities of Gold, Townships of Coal: Essays on South Africa's New Urban Crisis (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000)
19. Franco Barchiesi, "The Public Sector Strikes in South Africa: ATrial of Strength," Monthly Review 51.5 (1999): 17. Subsequent references to this article are given in the text
20. Ashwin Desai, We Are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002)
21. Neville Alexander, Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2002)
22. William K.Tabb, "Globalization Is An Issue, the Power of Capital Is The Issue," Monthly Review 49.2 (1997): 20
23. Sandile Dikeni, Soul Fire: Writing the Transition (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2002), 154. Subsequent references to this volume are given in the text
24. Quoted in Lodge, Politics in South Africa, 237
25. There is by now a vast literature on "truth and reconciliation" and the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The best place to start, perhaps, is with Kader Asmal, Louise Asmal, and Ronald Suresh Roberts, Reconciliation through Truth: A Reckoning of Apartheid's Criminal Governance, 2nd ed. (Cape Town: David Philip, 1997)
26. Anthony O'Brien, Against Normalization: Writing Radical Democracy in South Africa (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 258
27. Nadine Gordimer, The House Gun (London: Bloomsbury, 1999), 142. Subsequent references to this novel are given in the text
28. Nadine Gordimer, quoted in Andries Walter Oliphant's foreword to his edited volume, A Writing Life: Celebrating Nadine Gordimer (London: Viking, 1998), xiv
29. The phrase is Adorno's. See Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Refections from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1985 [1951]), 39
30. Lesego Rampolokeng, "The Cry of Disillusion," in The Bavino Sermons (Durban: Gecko Books, 1999), 53. Subsequent references to this volume are given in the text
31. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 28