Why the dream of a prosperous, united nation continues to elude SA
- Edward Webster
The goal of one united South African nation living prosperously under a constitutional democracy remains elusive.
This is in spite of the constitution boldly declaring that
South Africa belongs to all who live in it, both black and white, united in our diversity.
The central issue raised by the struggle against racial injustice, colonialism and imperialism – what is referred to in South Africa as the National Question - reemerged dramatically three years ago. It started as a demand for the removal of the statue of arch imperialist and colonialist, Cecil John Rhodes, from a prominent position at the University of Cape Town. It rapidly grew into a powerful movement in support of decolonisation. The National Question, it appears, remains highly relevant and unresolved.
In a new book, The Unresolved National Question: left thought under apartheid a number of authors set out the multifaceted origins of the idea.
Political traditions
Four main contested political traditions have shaped this debate.
The first is the Marxist-Leninist tradition, which goes back to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and the debates between Lenin, Stalin and Manabendra Nath Roy of India.
At the centre of these debates was the idea of two distinct stages in the struggle for national liberation, a national democratic stage and then a socialist stage. This strategic approach was adopted by the Communist Party of South Africa - now the South African Communist Party (SACP), in 1928/1929. It later developed into the idea of South Africa as a colonialism of a special type.
The second is the Congress tradition, associated with the African National Congress (ANC) and its iconic leaders, Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela. At the heart of this tradition is the idea of one non-racial nation. Historian Luli Callinicos shows how Mandela and Tambo steadily widened their concept of the nation to include all races.
Professor Robbie van Niekerk, a South African expert on social policy, traces the roots of the ANC’s economic and social thought to the 1943 Bill of Rights of African Claims and the 1955 Freedom Charter. In these documents “the nation” can only be fully realised through the universal extension and provision of public goods by a democratic state. Or, as Luthuli put it, the new government should have as its objective the creation of a democratic welfare state with redistributive social policies in health, education and welfare.
The third is the Trotskyite tradition. This goes back to the thirties in the Western and Eastern Cape and is associated with the Unity Movement. This approach is developed in the book by the late Marxist historian and then activist Martin Leggasick. Leggasick and his colleagues were to form the Marxist Worker Tendency of the ANC developing Trotsky’s notion of the “permanent revolution”. Revolution, they argued, developed continuously and unevenly on a world scale, rather than proceeding through discrete chronological stages. Legassick was eventually expelled from the ANC.
Finally, there is the