For a 3000-word article, it is not surprising that Achille Mbembe received quite a number of article responses. Most of which were correctly pointed but unfortunately combative; on the balance of responses, therefore, one gets a sense that they fell short of upholding the analytical rigour which, in fact, anchors the ‘moral rage’ that epitomises this generation’s demands. Subsequent to this, what I want to do in this response is to engage Mbembe’s take on the South African polity thematically but analytically.
So let’s distil Mbembe’s conjectures.
On the whole, there are four aspects to Mbembe’s deconstruction of the contemporary polity; First, is the cautioning against politicizing the pain of this generation by raging against ‘white racism’, which Molefe’s retort snubs; Second, is the dissatisfaction with the underpinnings of modernity (i.e. rule of law, separation of power, free market etc); Third, the relationship between the Black middle class, by which Molefe points out their ‘precarity’, and the Black, poor, majority. The fourth and final theme is Mbembe’s take on the use of the strength of the majority to invest in effective redistributive programs, to which Molefe falsely places his rebuttal on the reality that “We, blacks as a singular collective, are not in control of the state.”
In this rebuttal, I primarily focus my response on the first and third aspects. The first because I think this generation’s rage, first beginning with the escalation, since 2004, of community protests against the intransigency of local governments, to Julius Malema’s early rebukes against white monopoly capital, is a public debate that requires sustained analysis and accurate interpretation, both of which can only emanate out of dialectical engagement. The third because, since the explosion of Black writings against racism (note, I make no slippage to “white racism”) and the 2015 student protests demanding Black self-assertion, the Black middle class have finally come to the ‘party’. What seems to be happening is that the Black working class have long been responding to class contradictions while the Black middle class have only begun to respond to the racial contradictions of the legacy of apartheid, the latter at least publicly; and mainly its youth strata, were we to take ‘formerly white Universities’ as an indicator.
The third aspect is too big an undertaking to do, at least in this response, while I think the fourth aspect of Mbembe’s article has largely been clarified by Molefe. On Molefe’s point, however, it must be stated that selectively identifying political events and presenting them as demonstrable evidence against the existence of a “Black majority” is incorrect. This is because Mbembe’s ‘Black majority’ thesis came out of Black people’s fixation with racism, or to put it in his words, “our libidinal investments in whiteness”. Which while I understand the presence and impact of racism in South African society, given our majority, it is a fair point. After all, is this not what Steve Biko also called us to do: to focus our attention on Black society?
The issue is not so much about the existence of a “Black majority” but why that seems to be our only unifying factor as opposed to harnessing that energy to “create different dominant standards by which our society live…” Mbembe is correct to point out that black people have access to the State; certainly not all, but Black people from different classes have access. In fact, part of the logic behind community protests across the country, from the demarcation struggles to so-called service delivery protests, paradoxically, have been about accessing the State. Corruption itself, as corrosive as it is, is also about accessing the State and its resources. There are many NGO reports, and the like, that uphold this reality.
And perhaps this is where Mbembe locates this paradox by way of a question. He says: “In a Black majority country in which Blacks are in power, what is the cost of our attachment to whiteness, this mirror object of our fear and our envy, our hate and our attraction, our repulsion and our aspirations?” Definitely, and for different reasons, Andile Mngxitama and Mbembe would surely be in agreement here. Thus to negate the idea of a ‘Black majority’ because of the many divisions between Black people, as if they unique, which is what Molefe inadvertently does, is disingenuous.
Nevertheless, Mbembe articulates an “age of urgency” or of impatience, wherein which there exists a “fusion of self and suffering in this astonishing age of solipsism and narcissism”. And this is where he locates Black rage. Which, according to Mbembe, is “claiming all kinds of rights – the right to violence; the right to disrupt and jam that which is parading as normal; the right to insult, intimidate and bully those who do not agree with them;” And on which, he continues, “personal feelings now suffice. There is no need to mount a proper argument.” This, he says, amounts to a politics of “self-enclosure”, where these feelings are self-legitimising. Undeniably, these rest on a kind of moral rage.
Though while I agree that our existence is relational, as our life experience is enriched by the experience of others, does Mbembe want Black people to mount a proper argument with white supremacy? What does he think we‘ve been doing in our private and public spaces all along? Fundamentally, and you see this when Mbembe evokes the legacy of Mandela, at issue here is the idea of liberation, not the supposed democratic fruits of a negotiated settlement. Not the set of compromises that structured this very politics of “Rainbowism”. The issue here is that this politics seeks constant negotiation, constant skirting around the issue because of its unequal accommodation of ‘whiteness’. It’s not only the apartheid spatial logic and aspects of state security that replicate themselves through unreversed legislation; it is also, acutely, the maintenance of the white superstructure that pervades right through the boardrooms of Johannesburg all the way to the streets of Cape Town. An imported, “hypocritical humanism”, is being rejected here. In sum, an emerging consensus, casting aspersions on the 1994 consensus, is developing.
So let’s forget the “narcissistic investments so privileged by this neoliberal age”, which may partly be to blame, one must admit; but let’s speak of these investments as historically constituted phenomenon.
For instance, South Africa is at a moment where the coalescing force of negotiating transformation is spent out. Black people are simply tired of constantly explaining their frustration, their competency, their skill and their ability! This being the result of a negotiated settlement qualified by white society’s terms and conditions. Mbembe’s contradiction, perhaps tension, lies in the fact that one cannot claim the ‘right to violence’ but then use that right only to want an apology; surely not? If so, if it’s an apology that’s sought, then how does this “hatred become an exhausting and self-destructive pose”?
It is no accident that the youth, both in poor communities and in universities, occupying a transitional social stratum “composed of such elements as tradition, history, social demands, hopes, and individual future prospects, all of which they have to incorporate into a coherent picture in order to build a proper foundation for their personal life”, are frustrated. My suspicion is that over and above the obvious class and racial inequalities, it was the then ANC Youth League leadership collective under Julius Malema, through their public sparring, that made it possible for a generational shift to occur; making differences between generations pronounced.
For example, Julius Malema, then ANC Youth League President, who, through his rhetoric, framed a discourse that ‘insulted, intimidated and bullied those who did not agree with him’. And interestingly, by virtue of its content, was a discourse that could not be housed in the ANC; as big a home as the ANC is. Echoing a version of Anton Lambede’s African Nationalism, Malema was attempting to capture the class struggles that, partly due to the ANC’s ongoing instability, continue unabated though community protests for local resources and power. In turn, in the period between his troubles with the ANC national leadership and the late Mandela’s hospitalisation, Black writings against racism became pronounced. One saw this more acutely through Daily Maverick articles.
Within the ANC, this marked a generational rift, where the ANC reflected a moderate politics of negotiation and reconciliation, and the then Youth League, agitating for a radical, transformative phase. The latter was accompanied by a different mood, tempo and spirit, which is apparent in the current student fervour. This is not inexplicable; the stuff (i.e. strategies) of transformation has never been for the rational even though their rooted in rational understandings of the present and the past.
One sees this general rift manifest in different ways. Like Mbembe’s critique of the tempo and spirit of this age, Rhoda Kadalie dismisses the struggles of this ‘age’ (this is really a struggle that was present in their time but they did not have the time to fight it). She says: “Their claims are largely baseless given the failed results of transformation elsewhere. Their agendas are to wreak havoc on campuses, easy targets to display the brute force they use to prove they are committed and powerful. With much time on their hands these protesters fling about accusations of racism as randomly as Andile Lili’s poo protests against the Democratic Alliance”. Now, one need not take this critique seriously because she’s clearly not read any of the protestor’s statements and public positions. What’s important here is to understand the ongoing generational rifts occurring.
And what these generational shifts indicate is that the supposed democratic dividends of the negotiated settlement of 1994 masked a domination that overshadows the idea of the ‘nation’. But importantly, they also indicate that the burden of negotiation should not be placed at the doorstep of Black society but of white society. Essentially, it would seem that white society will one day have to negotiate with the mood, tempo and spirit of this generation, on the terms and conditions set by Black society. On the surface of it, at least, this is what appears to be at stake. It’s therefore not surprising to hear that at a Wits University protest against increasing student fees, a white student is reported to have said the following: “You bloody Kaffirs think you can do whatever you want”.
So certainly, a kind of moral rage in these politics is apparent. Moral rage is “an emotional response to what other people do, not to what we do to ourselves”. That is, this relates to the extent to which we “identify with the victim of outrageous behaviour”. So regardless of division within Black society, what is observable in our context, therefore, is that Black people, beyond class lines, are demanding different priorities then what the status quo permits. And this is not necessarily new. Truth is, “different advantages and disadvantages within the opportunity structure of a society… produce disagreement about priorities and give rise to competing ideologies”.
For instance, do property rights take priority over the project of reconstruction and justice? Or does the rule of law take priority over transformation? Ward Goodenough reminds us that “these differences do not mean that people lack a moral sense. They are differences only in how each individual’s moral sense is constituted”. And given South Africa’s persistent legacy of segregation, in all its manifests, the spirit of this ‘age’ is historically constituted. This is also due to the past generations seemingly ‘head in the sand’ mentality to issues concerning transformation.
Finally, and relating to the third aspect, the increase in anti-racism was also because Malema’s rhetoric appealed to the Black middle class. Malema was successfully using a discourse that appealed to both the interests of the Black middle class and that of the Black majority poor. In his usually coy tone, Mbembe, however, articulates the relationship between these groups as exaggerated: he says, “Top of Formwhat we are hearing is that there have not been enough meaningful, decisive, radical change, not only in terms of the life chances of the black poor, but – and this is the novelty – in terms of the future prospects of the black middle class.” One is left wondering where or what the novelty is, as if the middle class are exaggerating their struggle. And as if the totality of their identity is victimhood. Having read Molefe, what appears to be evident is that racial profiling impacts negatively on the opportunity structure of society for Black people. And Corporate South Africa, especially, is replete with such allegations where Black executives are promoted to non-core business positions where they stand fewer chances of becoming CEO’s.
While there may be many divisions or differences between people, let alone Black people, the coming together of the Black middle class and the Black poor majority is closer than it was, say, 10 years ago. While these struggles are occurring independent of each other, it’s an important development because it means Black people as a collective are beginning to understand the urgency of mapping out their own future development. More so when the #IamStellenbosch campaign is indicative of this very need to increase the tempo, mood and spirit of transformation.
Matimba!