Kogila Moodley

The opening of the Apartheid mind : options for the new South Africa

Refusing to be governed by what is fashionable or inoffensive, Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley frankly address the passions and rationalities that drive politics in post-apartheid South Africa. They argue that the countrys quest for democracy is widely misunderstood and that public opinion abroad relies on stereotypes of violent tribalism and false colonial analogies. Adam and Moodley criticize the personality cult surrounding Nelson Mandela and the accolades accorded F. W. de Klerk. They reject the black-versus-white conflict and substitute sober analysis and strategic pragmatism for the moral outrage that typifies so much writing about South Africa. Believing that the best expression of solidarity emanates from sympathetic but candid criticism, they pose challenging questions for the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela. They give in-depth coverage to political violence, the ANC-South African Communist Party alliance, Inkatha, and other controversial topics as well. The authors do not propose a solution that will guarantee a genuinely democratic South Africa. What they offer is an understanding of the countrys social conditions and political constraints, and they sketch options for both a new South Africa and a new post-Cold War foreign policy for the whole of southern Africa. The importance of this book is as immediate as todays headlines.

The Continued Impact of Black Consciousness in South Africa

The idea of Black Consciousness heralded an era of alternative political awareness in the late 1960s. A self-empowering, vibrant, reconstructionist world-view emphasised the potential role of black initiatives and responsibility in articulating the power of the powerless. Between 1968–76, the Black Consciousness Movement (B.C.M.), as it became known, was one of the most important developments in South Africa, not only as the result of the self-confident protest and rebellion that it unleashed, but also ‘because of the questions it posed about the nature of oppositional politics in South Africa and its relation to the nature of South African society’. 1

Forecasting scenarios for South Africa

Abstract Reluctant reconciliation is taking shape in South Africa. The forced marriage between the National Party and the African National Congress results from a balance of forces where neither side can defeat the other. The emergence of multiracial domination has surprised most observers who saw the battle about legalized racism as a clear moral issue. Developments have also been widely misunderstood owing to the tendency to apply false colonial analogies or popular stereotypes of violent tribalism. Scenario-planning exercises enjoy great popularity in a society beset by anxiety and ideological confusion. Rather than reviewing the various scenarios sketched by others, this article selects three courses as played out in other countries and compares South Africa to these models. By exploring the similarities between South Africa and Zimbabwe, Yugoslavia and Germany, lessons are drawn about desirable policies in the post-apartheid era.

Comparing South Africa: Nonracialism versus ethnonationalist revival

Reluctant reconciliation is taking shape in South Africa. The ambivalent alliance between the two major contenders for power, the National Party (NP) and the African National Congress (ANC) results from a balance of forces where neither side can defeat the other. It is their mutual weakness rather than their equal strength, that makes both long-time adversaries embrace negotiations for powersharing. Like a forced marriage, the working arrangement lacks any mutual love but nonetheless is consummated because behind any alternative behaviour looms a worse fate for both antagonists. The emergence of multiracial domination has surprised most observers who saw the battle about legalised racism as a clear moral issue, the defeat of the last colonisers by a widely acclaimed movement of national liberation. During the 1970s and 1980s the international debate on South Africa was preoccupied with the obvious immorality of apartheid. The apartheid state was invariably treated as a monolithic racist entity, and internal strategic developments were overlooked or reduced to simple dichotomies between oppressors and victims. This either-or reasoning ignored local contexts and obscured the ambiguities, contradictions and irrationalities of life under apartheid. Undoubtedly the grotesque Verwoerdian social engineering was brutal; but it also contained a certain paternalistic benevolence that oiled the system and helps explain why apartheid lasted so long. Incontrovertibly, the racially defined privileges designated oppressors and victims, but if we are to understand South African politics, victimology needs to be balanced by accounts of how the seemingly powerless survived, gave meaning to their lives, and acted upon their particular historical circumstances. Developments in South Africa have also been widely misunderstood owing to the tendency to apply false colonial analogies or popular stereotypes of violent tribalism. Later, the personality cult surrounding Nelson Mandela and the accolades accorded to F W De Klerk have further romanticised a conflictual relationship, personalising it into a literal matter of black versus white, and thereby obscuring the social conditions and constraints under which these leaders act, the passions and interests that drive their interacting constituencies. Which are the likely futures of South Africa, compared with developments elsewhere? Scenario-planning exercises enjoy great popularity in a society beset by anxiety and ideological confusion. The Anglo-American exhortation for a

The Purchased Revolution in South Africa: Lessons for Democratic Transformation

The relatively peaceful changeover of political power in South Africa has been greatly facilitated by the vast resources of the state and a private‐sector‐led economy. Many potential trouble‐makers were bought off by being put on the payroll of the public service or being absorbed into even more lucrative private business. Ideologues of the old regime were pacified through generous retrenchment packages. This purchased revolution has rapidly produced a new Black elite, whose lifestyle discredits the legitimacy of ANC‐led liberation. The embourgeoisement of the new powerholders is critically analyzed and the likely alienation of an impoverished constituency assessed. However, government options to pursue a more radical economic policy of social justice are limited. Constrained by economic interdependence domestically, the semi‐developed South African economy must even more adhere to a global neo‐liberal consensus if it wishes to realize ambitious growth rates. The future of the ANC and a non‐racial democra...

Thinking about the significance of Nelson Mandela for education

We have arrived, almost inevitably, at the point where Nelson Mandela’s significance for education needs to be scholarly discussed. In the period building up to and in the wake of his death in December 2013, it had become clear that the world had in Mandela a figure of historical significance. This significance is emphasised for many in the absence of leadership they see in in relation to some of the world’s most egregious and seemingly intractable conflicts and challenges. Adam and Moodley (2005), for example, in their book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ask, ‘what would have happened in the Middle East had a Palestinian Mandela or Gandhi provided unifying moral and strategic leadership[?]’ (ix). What he had accomplished in his life in facilitating the settlement of the South African question, the world’s pre-eminent case-study of the Du Boisian problematic of the twentieth century – the problem of the ‘colour-line’ – forever positions him as one of the contemporary era’s most important figures. He stands in this sense, rightly alongside of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. But we are now in the enormously interesting situation, beyond the predictable flurry of hagiographies and romances that are now available, of having to say what this historical contribution constitutes. Fortunately, new scholarship is emerging which begins, articulately, to craft a way of entering into this new discursive space. The work of the literary theorist Elleke Boehmer (2008) is valuable for this task, as is that of Schalkwyk (2013). Both begin to separate out the personal, social and political in Mandela’s thinking to surface the texture of his logics in a way that allows one to understand him much more analytically. Out of this emerge frameworks for use. Boehmer, for example, presents him as a post-colonial humanist. We are now required to engage with this scholarly development around Mandela in education, and so, in this Forum, we begin the difficult task of

Shifting boundaries and flexible identities within a multicultural Canada

This analysis probes the evolution of Canadian multiculturalism within the national political constellation which in turn is influenced by global geopolitical trends. Rather than narrowly focusing on how and what is being taught under the rubric multiculturalism, falsely taking curricula or vacuous educational manifestos at face value, we describe the political background of Canadian multiculturalism. We contrast the pronouncements of the Canadian state with the sociological facts on the ground and we compare the Canadian situation with similar discourses and divergent developments in Europe, after locating each in their historical context. Canadian multiculturalism so far can be considered a largely unrecognized success story, not because of shrewd government intervention to integrate immigrants, but because the Canadian structural diversity made recognition of divergent identities the most feasible option to avoid conflict.

The politics of race, culture and education

Mike Cole (ed.), EDUCATION FOR EQUALITY, London: Routledge, 1989, 237 pp., £9.95 (paper) Peter Foster, POLICY AND PRACTICE IN MULICULTURAL AND ANTI‐RACIST EDUCATION, London: Routledge, 1990, 208 pp., £10.99 (paper) Alrick X. Cambridge and Stephan Feuchtwang (eds), ANTI‐RACIST STRATEGIES, Avebury: Gower Publishing, 1990, 162 pp., £25.00 David Gillborn, ’RACE’, ETHNICITY AND EDUCATION, London: Unwin Hyman, 1990, 245 pp., £9.95 (paper) Elizabeth Grugeon and Peter Woods, EDUCATING ALL: MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVES IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL, London: Routledge, 1990, 244 pp., £9.95 (paper) Barry Troyna and Bruce Carrington, EDUCATION, RACISM AND REFORM, London: Routledge, 1990, 139 pp., £30.00 and £8.99 (paper) Kenneth J. Meier, Joseph Stewart Jr., Robert E. England, RACE, CLASS AND EDUCATION, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989, 194 pp., npl

Discussant's Comments on the Presentation by Ali A. Abdi, “Global Multiculturalism: Africa and the Recasting of the Philosophical and Epistemological Plateaus”

I speak as a third-generation African of Indian origin, born in South Africa, with long-standing family connections with the African National Congress (ANC). Thus, I consider this critique as coming from within, both in critical solidarity with the principal liberation movement in its struggle against apartheid as well as in the even more arduous effort of post-conflict reconstruction. I felt it very refreshing to have an article of this nature presented on the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus, which is only now beginning to value the existence of the African continent and of African thought and philosophy. For far too long have the inferiorizing myths about Africa flourished. Indeed, over the past decades, when the question of including Africa in the area studies offered at the UBC was raised, the prevailing response was that there was a tacit agreement between the UBC and Simon Fraser University for the former to focus on Asia and the latter on Africa. The implication of this seemingly prudent division of scarce resources was that one could get a wellrounded education without exposure to either of these countries. In the UBC curriculum, Africa did not exist for a long time. Ali Abdi’s (this issue) point about “achieve[ing] a community of critically interconnected components that is continually in the making and evolving” is an important one. It transcends the stagnant notions about plurality of cultures all

Conditions for Peacemaking

Peacemaking requires a set of favourable conditions. Any peace agreement is bound to fail if these conditions are not present or cannot be achieved over time. While each conflict is unique in its history, solutions can best be discerned by comparing similarities and differences with other conflict situations. At the same time, general theoretical insights may be gained from such a comparison, negotiation strategies evaluated, futile approaches questioned and general policy advice formulated.