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SOW the WIND Contemporary Speeches SOW THE WIND Contemporary speeches Neville Alexander 0 Sow the Wind was first published by Skotaville Publishers. ISBN 0 947009 07 8 Copyright © Neville Alexander 1985 All rights reserved. This digital edition published 2013. © Copyright The Estate of Neville Edward Alexander 2013 This edition is not for sale and is available for non-commercial use only. All enquiries relating to commercial use, distribution or storage should be addressed to the publisher: The Estate of Neville Edward Alexander, PO Box 1384, Sea Point 8060, South Africa 1 CONTENTS Foreword 3 Preface 5 Let us unite in the year of the United Front 8 Funeral oration: Jean Naidoo 25 The national situation 30 Nation and ethnicity in South Africa 49 The role of the student in society 65 Careers in an apartheid society 79 Education and social change 87 The role of women in our society 101 ‘Let us fight against the organ-grinder’: Background to the Nkomati Accords 108 Race, ethnicity and nationalism in social science in Southern Africa 138 Education in the new dispensation 167 After the August elections 183 2 FOREWORD VERY OFTEN IN A COUNTRY’S historical development there are those who grasp a deeper sense of that movement. They, in very many ways, act as a centralising force – unifying the tentative, hesitant and emerging ideas into a single penetrating thought. Neville Alexander as a person, and his writings as a body of thought, do both these things with strength, vision and courage. The single thrust that runs through much of Neville Alexander’s writings is the dynamic relationship he perceives between the national struggle for liberation in South Africa and the future political vision. Central to this vision, are such issues as the relationship between racism and capitalism, the role of the working class in the liberation struggle, the process of nation building and the role of education in social change. Neville Alexander’s writing enables us to witness significant pointers in the political development of the oppressed community of South Africa. This insight into these landmarks in the historical struggle of the oppressed is not, as Neville Alexander states in his preface, his idea – not his personal possession. They are ideas that have been shaped in the furnace of the liberation struggle in this country. It has been the result of a coming together of the times, a vision of future society and a political commitment to bravely explore the vision. What is Neville Alexander’s is undoubtedly his courage and commitment to articulate these issues and in his own life to give practice and strength to these views. Writing from a fascist prison in Italy, Anton Gramsci commented about his political development – ‘My entire 3 Sow the Wind intellectual formation was of a polemical nature, so that it is impossible for me to think “disinterestedly” or to study for the sake of studying. Usually I have to engage in a dialogue; be dialectical, to arrive at some intellectual stimulation’. In very many ways, Neville Alexander’s writings are not written ‘disinterestedly’. They are written with a passionate concern. A concern and a commitment to the national liberation of South Africa and the creation of a new nation. John Samuel 4 PREFACE LIKE MOST PEOPLE, I am extremely reluctant to rush into print. The printed word, after all, is fixed, as it were, for ever. One does not have the easy exit to blame mistakes on ‘a slip of the tongue’. Circumstances do arise, however, that are sufficiently compelling to persuade one that it is justified that certain representative views be exposed to a wider audience than those for whom they were originally intended. Such a confluence of circumstances has now taken place in our beloved country, over which so many crocodile tears have been shed. To say that we are once again standing at the crossroads of South African history is to say the obvious and the hackneyed thing. Yet, even the most self-evident truths have to be articulated from time to time, lest we begin to ignore them. Some of the ideas that recur in these speeches have already had an influence on events in this country. Against the background of what is taking place in South Africa today, it is not inappropriate that they be read more widely and with the greater attention that reading rather than listening to a speech makes possible. They are not my ideas. On the contrary, I have always been no more than a spokesperson and a conduit for views that reach back deeply into the history of our struggle and that have been shaped by the masses in struggle as well as by the leadership and by intellectuals who have tried to interpret the significance and the direction of that struggle. Others have said the very same things, often in the very same combination, sometimes even in the very same way. Many have certainly said it much better than I could ever hope to do. If there is any special merit in my particular formulations, I am hardly the person to judge this. 5 Sow the Wind The abiding focus of my own contribution is on subjects such as the link between racism and capitalism; the need for and the inevitability of socialist solutions to our problems hence the crucial need to ensure working-class leadership of our struggle; the importance of nation-building in order to eliminate ethnic and racial prejudice; the link between women’s liberation, national liberation and class emancipation; the vital need to initiate and to sustain educational and cultural practices today that will systematically and inexorably undermine and counter the divisive and exploitative practices that derive from the pursuit of the interests of the dominating classes in an apartheid society. None of these is new but all of them bear constant repetition and development. I trust that every person who reads these speeches will find some point of entry into this complex of thought that is derived in the most direct possible manner from our day to day struggle against apartheid and capitalism in South Africa. In these times of ‘night and fog’ when mysterious death or imprisonment can so suddenly remove one from the scene, it is perhaps an act of wisdom to publish and be damned. I have no doubt that what I have said and the way I have sometimes said it will give rise to much discussion and disagreement. That is as it should be, at least in my opinion, provided that those who disagree with me go for my ideas, criticise them and put forward feasible alternatives. The sectarian and totalitarian hubris that seduces some people who disagree with one’s ideas to brand one immediately as ‘an enemy of South Africa’ or as ‘an enemy of the people’ is without any doubt the greatest danger to our liberation struggle. My appeal to such people is to allow history to decide the questions on which we disagree fundamentally. My appeal to them is to remember the words of the prophet, ‘For they have sown the wind, 6 Preface and they shall reap the whirlwind.’ My thanks go to all those who, directly or indirectly, have helped me to reach my positions. On the personal side, my greatest debt is due to my late mother who was a source of constant support and quiet inspiration. On the public side, I can only thank the unfathomably tolerant working people of South Africa for demonstrating again and again that we need never doubt that no power on earth can ever destroy our humanity even in the most enslaved of societies. Finally, thanks to Skotaville Publishers for their almost reckless decision to publish these speeches. Cape Town, July 1985 7 LET US UNITE IN THE YEAR OF THE UNITED FRONT With the junction between Xhosa and Khoikhoi in May 1799, the uncertainty and ambivalence which had marked the first weeks of the Khoikhoi uprising came to an end. If, in the beginning, their behaviour had had something of the characteristics of ‘unorganized freebooting’ rather than anti-colonial warfare, of protest and revolt rather than revolution, now, in conjunction with the Zuurveld Xhosa and the aggrieved imiDange of Agter Bruintjies Hoogte, they led what seems to have been a determined campaign to drive the Boers from the district ... They seized cattle and sheep in such large numbers that they threatened to destroy the very foundations of the colonial presence ... (S Newton-King, ‘The Rebellion of the Khoi in Graaf-Reinet: 1779–1803’) Divide and rule ALL OF US KNOW the slogan: Unity is Strength. We know that all serious political leaders constantly appeal for unity. They know, and we know, that unity is the main weapon of an oppressed and exploited people against the oppressors. And yet, in spite of all the appeals, we are surrounded by signs of disunity and division. It is very clear that different people mean different things when they speak about this precious idea of unity. It is clear, therefore, that all of us who are serious about liberation, need to look more carefully at this unity which we swear by and for which all of us say we are working. In order to appreciate the importance of this question, let 8 The year of the united front us consider briefly what interest the rulers have in it. If unity is the main weapon of an oppressed people disunity or division is, conversely, the main weapon of the ruling class in an oppressive or exploitative society. From the earliest days of conquest and dispossession of the indigenous people of our country, rulers have acted on the principle of divide and rule.
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