[Debate] I Thus Caught That Colonial Mind-Set At Work

[Neville Adams]

Whichever way you put it - and you do put it loquaciously - this still reads
like an accusation that the leading Black activists in the Abahlali movement
are no more than ill-educated dupes of Svengali like white academics.   And
the supporting claim that other Black people have said similar things, is a
variation on 'some-of-my-best-friend -are...'   Where is your evidence,
apart from the assertions you make?

-----Original Message-----
From: debate-list-bounces at fahamu.org [mailto:debate-list-bounces at fahamu.org]
On Behalf Of Heinrich Bohmke
Sent: 13 April 2012 15:33
To: Debate is a listserve that attempts to promote information and analyses
of interest to the independent left in South and Southern Africa
Subject: Re: [Debate] I Thus Caught That Colonial Mind-Set At Work

Mandisi Majavu completely misses the point of my articles on South African
social movements.  He would have me write purely to satisfy an urge to
ridicule these movements and their leaders, poor Blacks.  He baits his trap
with the fact that I am white.  But he does so poorly.
Majavu can only skin me by misconstruing the authority he cites and by
withholding inconvenient information from his readers.

I write to criticize, (although I am happy with 'ridicule'), the
*misrepresentation* of South Africa's new social movements by a coterie of
mainly white academics.  These include Nigel Gibson, Michael Neocosmos,
Richard Pithouse, and Raj Patel.  They are by far not alone in this
enterprise but these individuals truly do distinguish themselves in the
unashamed level of hype they supply and in some cases the base peddling of
lies.

For some of them, it goes beyond the hagiographic articles.  It includes
assuming PR functions, fund-raising and ghost-writing speeches and press
statements for movements.  It reaches its acme in the Abahlali website
administered by Richard Pithouse and Raj Patel which, far from being a voice
of the voiceless, self-servingly carries the aesthetic, political and
sectarian stamp of these spin-sters.

With this activity comes power.  The power is exercised in two ways;
*internally*, as resource people, servicing financial, technological and
'intellectual' dependencies in exchange for influence and, as gatekeepers,
policing 'researcher' access to movements, delivering 'the' leader to
conferences and picking fights with supposed enemies on the movement's
behalf.

This feeds into the *external* power; the way movements and their academics
are branded to the outside world, through unremitting behind the scenes work
such as on websites, Wikipedia, blogs and through the skilful cultivation of
'respected' academics who are given insider information. One sees this in
the way academics who never actually speak to shackdwellers always thank
Richard Pithouse, for example, when writing about Abahlali.

Most of what I have written relates to the external power that
movement-aligned academics exercise.  Majavu is unable to challenge my
central point that their writing is riddled with romanticisation, spilling
into falsification.  Movement size, sustainability, internal 'radically
democratic' practices, ideological orientation, clever strategic gambits,
level of support and popularity within the areas they exist - all these
dramatic claims by academics have proven to be, at best, wishful thinking.
This is now widely accepted as a problem and a failing.

Recently, a dispute about an allegedly stolen book erupted between a
movement-aligned academic and a movement leader.  This incident gave me the
opportunity to examine also the role of the internal power that academics
exercise over movement leaders.  If I were to shy away from this it would
only be because there is a taboo within left politics to speak about this
aspect which silenced me.

What I laid bare does not amount to saying that poor Blacks are "morons",
the level to which Majavu either reduces my argument or the level at which
he understands it.  Nor, in tracing the relationship between movement
academics and two particular leaders, do I portray Black people in general,
or the two leaders involved in the equation, as lacking agency.  Far from
it.

While criticizing the academics, I have noted the canny use to which they
are also sometimes put by movement leaders; some of it wise and principled,
but some, I contend, also self-serving, survivalist and power-hungry. I
reject the patronizing and simplistic role assigned to Black agents in
(white) social movement writing in terms of which they are either the
long-suffering victim of structural violence or the pure embodiment of
truth.  No.  They are as able to be self-interested individuals navigating
their way across a complex social and political
landscape for their own benefit as anyone else.   In this regard
ceding the written tasks of movement-building to enthusiastic white
postgraduates may be a mutually beneficial arrangement.

But this is not the kind of agency with which left writing on movements is
comfortable.  The organized Black poor must either be pure victims or pure
saints.  Their leaders are incapable of error or offence.  When something
goes wrong for a halo-encrusted leader, they are instantly recast as
blood-spattered victim, with their faculty fan club lavishing rescue upon
them.  For me, the perch upon the pedestals of utter virtue and utter
weakness deprives movement leaders of the full spectrum of their humanity
just as effectively as straightforward bigotry.

I stand by my view that there are indeed instances in which (black) movement
leaders have *allowed* themselves to be politically and intellectually
mentored by their (white) academics.  At times, mentorship has slipped into
manipulation.  I am not the first person to note this tendency.
Incidentally, other writers who have spoken out about this problem are
seasoned Black activists.

This problem predates social movements by a few centuries.  No-one thinks it
racist to suggest that white missionaries ideologically bamboozled at least
some poor black people, including *inkosi*?  Or to note the unhealthy
dominance of white trade union intellectuals over black organiser canon
fodder in the early days of Fosatu?

In Mahmood Mamdani's excellent *Citizen and Subject*, he writes about FOSATU
in the 1970s and 80s:

'The division of labour between the black organizer and the white
intellectual leader had a truly Leninist ring to it: the organizer worked
full time, openly inside the union, and was subject to worker pressure and
criticism; the intellectual operated from outside the union, in a structure
not only external but also secret, remote from worker pressure.'

He goes on to quote a white intellectual, Mike Morris, allied to the union
movement:

"Whites had the idea whites should not be dominant in the union . but it led
to the worst manipulation, most vanguardist.  Black full time organizers
received directions from the outside. But whites were not paid, not
controllable, couldn't be hired or fired .  Whites had a backup of whites,
it was a secret to everyone except the front line.'
(Mamdani, 1996: 241).

The parallels with Fosatu are truly remarkable and the problem for people
like Pithouse and Patel is that there are people from the 'front line' who
know the 'secret' and think it should be revealed.

And then there is the term *askari*, which was applied often to a poor Black
person 'turned' to serve the system for financial reward.  For Majavu
turning is an impossible phenomenon, racist to even imagine.
How can a poor, Black person be used by whites?

One wonders how Majavu accounts for BEE fronting?  I very much doubt
Parliament is racist in suggesting, in anti-fronting legislation, that poor
Black individuals and communities who find themselves in unequal relations
of power and wealth with well-resourced whites can be manipulated into
lending their name to fraudulent schemes.  The fact that someone is poor and
Black is no magic charm against their being influenced, just as it is no
guarantor of that result either.

Indeed, in a much earlier paper, 'The White Revolutionary as Missionary',
published in *New Frank Talk*, I argue that historical method and style by
which white activists relate to Black distress has not changed very much
over the centuries.  This very often includes manipulation, containment and
cooption under the guise of help.
Whether this is successful depends on various factors; chief among them
whether the people are in such distress that there is no alternative to
accepting this help.

It all depends on the facts.  I have supplied facts and instances of
manipulation and ventriloquism, in some cases echoing what others have
noticed before.  I know S'bu Zikode and have insight into how he operates.
I have spent some time talking to him.  I have been in
meetings with him.  I have seen him on camera.   I have read his
original work.  I can draw inferences.

Besides, it takes years of rigourous, academic application and a bursary or
cushy job to wade through a wide and mediocre literature, in order to learn
how to author such pompous and specious nonsense about Fanon; as Majavu
himself must know.

As for Ayanda Kota, I did not simply blurt out my own impressions of the
relationship between him and his academics.  Before publishing I asked
people in Grahamstown who have knowledge of the people and issues. They have
shaped and added to my understanding.  Indeed the idea that some movement
leaders, among their laudable attributes, also have a broad stroke of the
'hustler' to them was an insight I gained from Black discussants, some of
them former members of the UPM, as my paper makes perfectly clear.

In his rant against me for suggesting that Kota is mentored by white
academics, Majavu neglects to inform his reader of something very important.
This is that my source is Kota himself.  A Prof Tabensky is a 'mentor' who
told Kota that the UPM must resurrect the black consciousness notion of
collectivism and hope in the townships as the first step to action.
Pithouse is another 'mentor' who liked to quote Fanon at Kota and Kota now
likes to quote the same ringing passage to others.

A Grahamstown resident and blogger, Rudzani Musekwa, whom I also quoted in
my piece asks pretty much the same question about Kota's
independence:

'Who is Mr Ayanda Kota really? Is he someone who is being used to further
the agendas of some academics? Who are these backers of Kota who are quick
to politicise everything every time he is arrested?'

I am not going to repeat the arguments that trace the unhealthy relationship
between movement-aligned academics and UPM leaders here.
I believe that while the complex and often calculating interchange between
academic and leader can often serve both their interests, (a case of one
hand raising the other up), the movement at large usually
ends up suffering.   This situation deserves a little ridicule and I
see no reason to spare Kota because he is Black.  Indeed, Kota and Zikode
have left the ranks of being mere local township politicians.
If the hype is to believed, they are men of national and international
significance quite capable of defending themselves; with a bit of Frederick
Douglas and Alaine Badiou thrown in.  John Holloway will follow soon, mark
my words.

Surely, upon reflection, Majavu must see that the vulnerability of leaders
and movements I point out is not genetic but is a function of an imbalance
of power and resources.  This is not about ascribing inferiority on the
basis of race.  It is about the power and dependency relations at play when
well-resourced academics, able to talk a certain lingo, the lingo of funding
proposals, legal aid, conference papers, international solidarity and the
op. ed. section, use that power in their dealings with people who lack that
capital.

I note that Majavu does not actually dispute that white academics write for
Black social movement leaders or perform the role of their political
mentors.  It is for him, a priori, racist to ever say so, which cannot be
the case and is not borne out by either historical or contemporaneous facts.

I turn now to the work of Buntu Siwisa.  Majavu cites him approvingly as
authority for the fact that city-based, academic-cum-activists like me are a
problem.  Apart from the fact that Majavu correctly notes that I am
city-based, he gets it all embarrassingly wrong from there on in.  The
entire point of Siwisa's article is that academics and other professionals
*inside* social movements have a disproportionate influence on how those
movements operate over that of ordinary members.  It can get so bad, Siwisa
suggests, that these city-based, movement-aligned professionals are able,
even, to rent a crowd; that is, to bring poor black people into motion for
reasons that suit the academic's own agendas which are not endogenous to
those of 'the masses'.

Back in 2001, Siwisa was doing exactly what I am doing now.  He was asking
very pointed questions about how academics aligned to early social movements
were operating, what were their interests, what was their influence upon
movements?  It is very hard to understand how Majavu could hope to pass off
Siwisa's critique as having any bearing on my writing whatsoever. It is
abundantly clear that I am not a supporter of these movements, nor am I an
activist inside them. Siwisa is actually authority against Majavu's mates,
listed above.  Siwisa is the lone, outside critic of social movements,
sceptical of all the hype, generated by the Gibsons, Majavus, Patels and
Pithouses of yesteryear.  The extend of Majavu's muddle-headedness is even
more visible when one considers that the writer he tries to use against me
went so far as to suggest that poor, Black people are capable of being
'rented' by middle-class professionals.  He should be condemning us both as
racists and bigots.

Perhaps it is not muddle-headedness.  Maybe it is just a desperate rant by
someone who is very much part of this group of praise-singing academics,
someone noticing the demise of these movements and anticipating with
bitterness the reduction in his reputation, such as it is, that will surely
follow.  For, while Majavu stands out starkly in some ways from the other
academics, it is not on account of his applause being any less wholehearted.

Why is any of this interesting?

It is not really very interesting.  It is part of the usual left
ya-da-ya-da-ya.  There are only negative lessons to be drawn.

Abahlali is now practically defunct.  So are many other movements.
There is no joy in this.  It is a time to reflect on whether the social
movement project was well served by the contributions of
academic-cum-activists.

It is also time to reflect on the way white people in particular, inside
movements, conduct themselves.  I have already made the point that they tend
to assume the missionary position over movements.

I did play a role in the first social movements to arise, around 1999,
injected with a generous amount of mythopoesis.  I was still around in the
early days of Abahlali.  But the distance between the stories told about
movements and the reality was just too great to be sustained or stomached.
It was also disconcerting the way radical discursive gestures made by social
movements were increasingly incorporated into liberal governance.  It was
amazing how the 'right to the city' became *in situ* upgrading of shackland
infrastructure. How eloquent talk of dignity and voice prepared the way for
a retreat from the social antagonism initially articulated by movements in
their protest mode infancy.  How the turn to law and the 'victories' it
supplied unraveled in unenforceable court orders, reverses on appeal and
repression.  How liberal discourses of social change entered movement spaces
and came from movement mouths.

The most difficult to stomach of all was how social movements became an
industry, where website form replaced street-level content, and Manichean
dramas of repression were constructed from events that were far more complex
and implicated movements in events at odds with their
publicized values.   Until all that remained to validate movements
were the spectacles of repression themselves, ones that became as strained
and ridiculous as the book theft arrest of Ayanda Kota (charge withdrawn).

Until it seemed that the instinct, if not conscious role, of left civil
society in movements had all along been to nudge them into a position where,
at best, they contained and profited from the social emergency in our
society, rather than exacerbated it.


Why does any of this matter?

Social movements never attracted the numbers of people who could mount a
challenge to the ANC and its anti-poor policies, either at the ballot box or
in the streets.  Partly as a strategic recognition of its weakness at these
levels, but partly also to experiment with new ways of doing politics,
social movements were held out to be prefigurative of the life and values
the left would want to live in a world not ruled by global finance capital
and the governments that serve it.  In other words, we did not need to have
numbers, we simply needed to demonstrate, in the way communities ran their
own movements and struggles, that a 'new humanism' was possible.

Unfortunately prefiguration has failed.  It failed for reasons that no one
in the left has deeply reflected upon.  South African society seems ripe for
protest and disaffection.  Indeed there is plenty of protest and
disaffection to go around.  Yet why have social movements, as such, not
ripened with any of it.  How is it that a Malema, with all his obvious
contradictions with respect to the poor, can sponsor so popular a discourse
in support of taking back the land and redistributing wealth when the best
and most principled minds, rooted in social movements, could and dared not
to put the social contract itself at issue?

When positing the joys of a prefigurative politics, what assumptions were
made about the poor, about shack dwellers, about rural women, the unemployed
that did not pan out?  What assumptions were made about South African
society in general?  What organisational forms were adopted? What turns were
made that ended in these doldrums?  Who were turned off by the way movements
were presented?  Who let themselves in?  What unnecessary sectarian fights
were picked?  What alliances were not forged? How did Siwisa's
academic-cum-activist types regulate their conduct within movements?  And
finally, would whatever struggles and community organisations that arise in
future, not be better off without the hapless left.

Heinrich Bohmke


On 4/9/12, Mandisi <africaparticipatorysociety at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.zcommunications.org/i-thus-caught-that-colonial-mind-set-at
> -work-the-mis-representation-of-post-apartheid-social-movements-by-man
> disi-majavu
>
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