Re: [Marxism] In defence of Naomi Klein's analysis of South Africa | Links

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>By *Patrick Bond*
>
>In response to /Beware Electocrats: Naomi Klein on South Africa/* *by*
>Ronald Suresh Roberts *in /Radical Philosophy/ commentaries, July-August
>2008,
>http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2187&editorial_id=26668

I was rather shocked by Roberts's defense of South African 
neoliberalism, so I googled his name to figure out where he is coming 
from. This is what I found:

Ronald Suresh Roberts's ode to Mbeki
Vicki Robinson | Johannesburg, South Africa
15 June 2007 08:09

Stubborn, contradictory, a lame duck and surly. These are just some 
of the words used to describe Thabo Mbeki. But writer Ronald Suresh 
Roberts takes a different view.

Roberts has mounted the first systematic defence of Mbeki's 
controversial presidency in a persuasive analysis of the historical 
and global traditions behind many of Mbeki's decisions.

His book, Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki, will 
infuriate a long list of journalists, commentators and members of 
civil society whom Roberts censures.

They include Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya (a "colonial 
creature"), Business Day writers Karima Brown and Vukani Mde and 
editor Peter Bruce, political commentator Xolela Mangcu, journalism 
professor Anton Harber, former Progressive Party MP Helen Suzman (a 
"South African illiberal"), author and journalist William Mervin 
Gumede and Wits academic Achille Mbembe.

In the book, a copy of which was forwarded to the Mail & Guardian, 
Roberts places Mbeki's leadership at the centre of a careful blend of 
political philosophy (the writing of, among others, David Hume, 
Frantz Fanon and Nicolo Machiavelli), historical theories on race 
(the imperialist tradition versus the resistance tradition), Mbeki's 
own writing and the coverage of the South African media.

The book suggests that Mbeki's presidency has been crudely 
misunderstood, particularly by the media. He is likely to come under 
fire for his justification of many of Mbeki's controversial policy 
stances, which have alienated him from many ordinary South Africans 
and a large segment of his own party.

Writes Roberts: "I want to examine what Mbeki meant when, following a 
gathering of African intellectuals in Dakar, Senegal, he quoted Ngugi 
wa Thiong'o on the imperative to 'reject the coloniser's 
interpretation of reality?'."

Fit to Govern attempts to identify and critique what Mbeki calls the 
"imperialist tradition" from within what he calls the "resistance tradition".

Roberts says the Mbeki "enigma" has been generated by "an old and 
largely unreconstructed media oligarchy bereft of electoral 
influence" with an inability to contextualise Mbeki's transformation 
agenda beyond embedded stereotypes about the "native".

He cites as an example of the "colonial South African discourse" an 
M&G article in 1996 headlined: "Is Thabo Mbeki fit to rule?"

"The ideologically loaded notion of native 'fitness', previously 
taken as obvious by the anti-apartheid forces, had become a 
consensual agenda," writes Roberts.

The inability of the media, some business leaders, elements of civil 
society, leaders of the union movement and opposition political 
parties to free themselves from the "settler consciousness in 
post-1994 South Africa [that] has swung wildly between romanticising 
and demonising the native" means that Mbeki's leadership on, among 
other issues, HIV/Aids and Zimbabwe have been "treated as mere 
invective without historical grounding or relevance".

Roberts begins his chapter on Zimbabwe: "The word 'Zimbabwe' is the 
Pavlovian Bell of the white South African mind. Once the word rings 
out, all remnants of liberal good sense retreat, replaced by 
salivation and loud barking."

He builds his case on statements and interventions by Mbeki on the 
Zimbabwe crisis, saying the media and commentators have conveniently 
ignored these because Mbeki's methods are at odds with the preferred 
Western "doctrine of democratisation by gun-barrel", of which Iraq is 
the latest example.

"Citing Ruth First's classic critique of military coups, The Barrel 
of A Gun, Mbeki stressed the pointlessness not only of force-fed 
democracy, but of arbitrarily defined milestones, 'democratic musts', 
that schematically measure supposed progress towards democracy, often 
at the expense of realities on the ground."

On HIV/Aids he argues that Mbeki has been faulted "less for denying 
than for asking questions" about internationally accepted HIV/Aids treatment.

He builds a convincing argument for how Mbeki's stance on HIV/Aids 
has been misunderstood and in turn capitalised on by powerful 
individuals such as Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Edwin Cameron.

"In the end, because of Mbeki's courageous flak-taking, black South 
Africans, who have their way in general elections, but not yet in the 
apartheid media, received a far more cautious and sensible 
antiretroviral roll-out, compared with the frenzied drugs campaign 
that had been advocated by [Zackie] Achmat and [Edwin] Cameron at 
their most enraptured," wrote Roberts.

Roberts is likely to hit heavy flak from Aids activists over his 
defence of Mbeki's philosophical foot-dragging.

But Roberts predicted criticism. In the acknowledgements, he quotes 
the president: "As you know the representatives of the colonial 
'mother' will be waiting to do everything possible to discredit the 
book  [I hope] that such notoriety as it may gain because of the 
vituperative assessments ? would encourage some people to want to 
find out for themselves why your book is an object of what will 
surely be the most negative criticism." 


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