Professor John Saul, “South Africa’s Freedom Charter and its legacy: reflections on anticolonial programmes, post-colonial practices, and possibilities for the future”
Discussants: Ben Turok and Albie Sachs
Sociology, Anthropology and Development Studies Seminar August 5, 2015
Introduction by David Moore
When thinking of people such as Albie Sachs, Ben Turok and John Saul one asks:
‘what is it that makes members of a relatively privileged group take up a struggle
with underprivileged members of the world in which he lives – and to keep it up,
life-long?’ Some of this comes with genes and psychology – sheer energy, guts,
persistence and contrarian-ness – but lots of people have that, and are not
progressive or may be downright authoritarian. So as social scientists and their
friends at events such as this we have to ask how it is that people like these three
men (of pale colour and ‘intelligentsia’ class-belonging) have come to be – and how
institutions such as UJ can foster the conditions to create more.
John, Ben and Albie disagree a lot about politics and ideology: the audience
will discern liberal, ‘communist’, ‘ultra-leftist’, statist, party-ist and many more
ists. Maybe we can even guess which one of them uses a cell-phone and which two
do not? But it cannot be denied that beyond a great happiness that apartheid is
finished (and they all helped finish it) they share beliefs about freedom going far
beyond those paraded by those only wanting freedom from the state (not to pay
taxes or decent wages and to do what they want, consensually, in bedrooms).
These speakers’ freedoms mean freedoms from hunger, ignorance,
debilitating illness, and too early deaths or freedoms to education, health, shelter,
and productive work that careful state actions can enable. But they probably
worry that one of the freedoms they cherish most can easily be lost: the freedom of
speech, debate, argument, inquiry, expression, and assembling to carry these
freedoms out. We will partake in this freedom now as they argue passionately
about their beliefs, utilising the best theoretical and empirical support for their
arguments (the discipline of intellectual freedom will be on show), engaging their
debates with wider society, and perhaps even convincing people with state,
economic and social power to consider some of their ideas in a practical manner.
What unites them are many of the beliefs that contributed to the Freedom
Charter and a willingness to go into real battles to promote and protect them
against those too willing to use force to stop the arguments.
The biographies of Albie Sachs, Ben Turok and John Saul show family and
history contributing to their personas. In South Africa, Jewish families coming out
1 of the pogroms in Eastern Europe, into the trade union movement and the ANC
and the CPSA/SACP. In Canada and North America during the sixties came
radical young democrats and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Canadian
nationalism meant a mild social democracy taking public health care and equitable
education for all as common sense. Thus these three became immersed in worldwide radical politics. In Canada, the Soviet-style of socialism did not sit as
comfortably with the young radicals as it did with many in South Africa – but then
they didn’t need material support against a regime as brutal and reactionary as the
one here.
With Julius Nyerere promising a new sort of socialism in Africa, John Saul
and a host of radical scholars ranging from England to the West Indies were
attracted to this decidedly non-Soviet sort of socialist leader. Tanzania was a place
to exercise scholarly solidarity. At 27 John researched for a Phd and taught at the
University of Dar es Salaam in the mid-sixties. John’s radicalism denied him a Phd:
His right-wing committee at Princeton refused his doctoral thesis on cooperatives in Tanzania because, they said, he did not pay attention to the
conservative ‘modernisation theory’s’ take on the one-party state.
But as his over 20 books and innumerable articles attest, this did not stop
his publishing. This started with his and Lionel Cliffe’s edited Socialism in Tanzania:
Politics and Policies in 1972-3 and has continued ‘til now with his A Flawed Freedom:
Rethinking Southern African Liberation, his and Patrick Bond’s South Africa: The Present as
History: From Mrs Ples to Mandela and Marikana, his forthcoming On Building a Social
Movement: the North American Campaign for Southern African Liberation Revisited, and his
soon to be Southern Africa’s Thirty Year War with Cambridge University Press. In the
meantime he taught university students on ‘the hill’ in Dar, adult working
students at York University’s Atkinson College and post-grads in York’s Political
Science Department (as well as stints at Mozambique’s Eduardo Mondlane
University and down the road in Jo’burg at Wits). Three of his Phd students teach
here in Johannesburg: David Moore at UJ, Shireen Hassim in Politics and Melanie
Sampson in Geography at Wits – and he taught, and became a good comrade of
UJ’s Salim Vally, at York too. He finally got his doctorate – an honourary one – at
the University of Toronto’s Victoria University College a few years ago.
It was in Dar half-way through the sixties that John met Ben and many
other freedom fighters from South Africa and Mozambique. As Ben says in his
autobiography he had lots of strong debates with John and his friends such as
Giovanni Arrighi in Dar, but John and his partner Pat were always the most
welcoming and gracious hosts. John became a friend and comrade of Samora
2 Machel. On return to Canada he formed solidarity committees for the liberation of
southern Africa, which published the informative Southern African Report.
When they met in Dar, Ben himself had only recently escaped house arrest
in South Africa, helped along by the Scotsman Peter Mackay, who had set up a
refugee camp – and roads to it – in the newly liberated Zambia, to help southern
African freedom fighters.
While retaining a surveyor’s precise analytical skills Ben has been a
consistent political actor, union and party organiser (the sole surviving member of
the SACP’s underground leadership structure), including being a treason trialist,
prisoner (three years from 1962 under the Explosives Act) and writer (With My
Head above the Parapet: An Insider Account of the ANC in Power, 2013, Nothing but the Truth:
Behind the ANC’s Struggle Politics, 2003 and many more); editor, now of New Agenda¸
before of Sechaba, and now a series of serious books ranging from economic
development policy to “readings in the ANC tradition”. Perhaps most importantly
in the context of discussions about the Freedom Charter, it should be remembered
that Ben wrote the economic clause (nationalisation!) – and that it has never been
removed!
While an ANC MP before his recent retirement Ben may be most famous for
refusing to go along with the “secrecy bill” in its 2010 incarnation. The Daily
Maverick’s Ranjeni Munasamy has said that although now retired he is “a lone voice
currently speaking sense in the ANC” for advising President Zuma to “be a good
sport” and pay back some of the Nklanda money – and stating that Zuma knew
about the costs. “It is a pity”, wrote Munasamy, that “Turok will not be taken
seriously and his advice will be disregarded.”
Munasamy forgot about another voice in the ANC tradition: Albie Sachs.
Son of the famous trade unionist Solly Sachs and Ray Ginsberg, who was later
Moses Kotane’s assistant, Albie hasn’t stopped protesting against unjust laws
since at 17 he was arrested for sitting in a ‘non-white’ section of a Cape Town Post
Office. He was later a lawyer defending many black activists. Much later he was
making and interpreting laws … as you know, not so long ago he was a leading
member of the Constitutional Court. Now he spreads his wisdom about
peacemaking and reconciliation from Colombo to Colombia.
John and Albie have been close friends and arguing since they met in
Maputo in the late seventies at the University of Eduardo Mondlane, soon after
Albie joined the southern African space of the struggle after many years of the
same in the UK, where he got his Phd in Law at Sussex and taught at
3 Southampton University whilst advocating South Africa’s freedom all over the
world. In 1982 Ruth First was organising a farewell party for John after his year
teaching what his students called Diabolical and Hysterical Materalism. John was
late. As he arrived Craig Williamson’s bomb exploded and killed Ruth First. Six
years later Albie nearly met the same fate: as he opened his car door a bomb
erupted. Seven hours of doctors’ hard work saved him. Five years later he was
working hard on creating the new legal foundations of South Africa. His many
books include The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs, on his 90 days of solitary confinement in
1963 and later, incessant interrogation, sleep deprivation, and pressure to inform
on his comrades; his 1974 Justice in South Africa based on his Phd; Sexism and the Law, a
path-breaking feminist text; and more recently the Alan Paton prize winning Soft
Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter (1991) and in 2009 a second Alan Paton prize-winner
The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law.
What is it about the times that conditioned these three brilliant freedom
fighters? Consider the regional war against Portuguese and white colonialisms of a
special type, all a particular global conjuncture, with the Soviet Union, Cuba, and
China seeming to offer alternatives to capitalism in the global south, in a long
world-wide war for freedom that is ongoing. The debates about what kind of
freedoms were on offer from Maoists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, pan-Africanists, and
liberals in the context when youth were rebelling against many restrictions while
enjoying those freedoms offered by the possibilities of wealth and technology
(flying all over the world, telephones and telegraphs, the birth control pill …). This
blend of historical possibilities for new generations and new classes-in-formation
was creating a new space for the kind of debates about freedom exemplified by the
Freedom Charter and those who crafted it and fought for it.
This has created the possibilities for the kinds of freedoms argued about
here and also for new restrictions and repressions taken on by the classes who have
gained state and economic power using many freedoms (the technologically
advanced freedoms enabling social media mediated ‘Arab springs’ also enable
invasions of privacy and exchange).
So as well as listening and asking questions carefully now read these guy’s
books – their lasting legacies. Find out how and why some in a generation now
approaching its winter years found the courage and intellectual fortitude to fight a
huge repressive machine. And then figure out how to take that struggle forward in
this age of altered freedoms and new forms, cultures and ideologies of
authoritarianism that were never dreamt of in the days before internet and
fundamentality distorted religious beliefs.
4 One dares say that these three freedom fighters never thought the world
could be ruled by a bizarre ideological conglomeration of hyper-liberal economic
fantasies and those of evangelical religions that would make Karl Marx, Max
Weber and John Maynard Keynes weep (although they would be arguing about
the causes of this tragedy as vigorously as John, Ben and Albie debate the fate of
South Africa). Their global context was a combination of Keynesian economics
with Soviet Marxism as the backdrop, along with the teleology of secularism.
Places like South Africa might have to pass through something like a National
Democratic Revolution (although John would likely say the ‘stages’ are just
excuses for going slow, Albie would probably not like its determinism, while Ben
might think it could be just about right if only the ANC and its allies would get
serious) but history seemed on their side. They may well be ill-prepared for today’s
cultural and other wars …
UJ’s students and activists among their cohorts have to take the freedoms
presaged by the Freedom Charter to new levels: John, Albie and Ben can help a
whole lot.
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