The Meaning of Mandela A Literary and Intellectual Celebration Edited by Xolela Mangcu Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Compiled by the Society, Culture and Identity Research Programme of the Human Sciences Research Council. Project Manager: Adrian Hadland Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za © 2006 Human Sciences Research Council First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. ISBN 0-7969-2164-4 Copy editing by Sean Fraser Typeset by Tracey Fraser Cover design by Tracey Fraser Cover photograph by Alf Khumalo Photograph on page iii by Benny Gool Print management by comPress Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver PO Box 30370, Tokai, Cape Town, 7966, South Africa Tel: +27 (0) 21 701 4477 Fax: +27 (0) 21 701 7302 email: orders@blueweaver.co.za www.oneworldbooks.com Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by Eurospan Distribution Services (EDS) 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 8LU, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 20 7240 0856 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7379 0609 email: orders@edspubs.co.uk www.eurospanonline.com Distributed in North America by Independent Publishers Group (IPG) Order Department, 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, IL 60610, USA Call toll-free: (800) 888 4741 All other enquiries: +1 (312) 337 0747 Fax: +1 (312) 337 5985 email: frontdesk@ipgbook.com www.ipgbook.com Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za To Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela – for the gift of freedom Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Contents Foreword Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu vii Preface Xolela Mangcu xi Introduction Xolela Mangcu xiii 1 WEB Du Bois, Encyclopedia Africana and Nelson Mandela Henry Louis Gates Jr 1 2 Nelson Mandela: Great exemplar of the grand democratic tradition Cornel West 13 3 Views from a palette of the cultural rainbow Wole Soyinka 24 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Foreword Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu How fitting it is that these men of letters – Henry Louis Gates Jr, Cornel West and Wole Soyinka – should visit our shores to pay tribute to our beloved Madiba on the occasion of his 87th birthday. I must extend my congratulations to the organiser of these lectures and the editor of this book, Xolela Mangcu, for pulling off such a wonderful achievement. To get only one of them would have been a source of satisfaction on its own, but to get them to share a platform is indeed a remarkable feat. Each in his own right has changed the way we think about our world. Henry Louis Gates Jr has done more than any other in building at Harvard University the leading African American studies programme in the United States, and now I hear that this programme has been expanded to African American and African studies. Gates assembled at Harvard the famous Dream Team of scholars such as Cornel West, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Evelyn Higginbotham, William Julius Wilson and others. The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, which he co-edited with Kwame Anthony Appiah, is a work of historical proportion that should be made available in every school and university. It is the kind of work that our own scholars should emulate. We should begin to record the history of intellectual ideas and how those ideas fed into the struggle for freedom. Cornel West is a dear brother of the Church who has been known to me for a very long time. The last time he was here was during the dark days of apartheid, when we visited some of our communities together. We went to Port Elizabeth and Duduza in the then East Rand. West has literally changed the way we think and talk about race. His book Race Matters stands as one of the classics of American and world political philosophy. He tells us about the continued relevance of race without falling into the trap of what he calls ‘the pitfalls of racial reasoning’. He writes that black people should speak candidly about their victimisation without seeing themselves as perpetual victims. He is as critical of the breakdown of community as he is of the structural and vii Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za economic imbalances that produce such a breakdown. He manages a skilful synthesis between materialist structural analysis and cultural analysis, earning himself the exalted rank of university professor at institutions such as Harvard and Princeton. And what can I say about my comrade and fellow Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka? For decades, Soyinka has been speaking truth to power in his beloved Nigeria, often at great personal risk. His name is synonymous with both Nigeria’s remarkable literary achievements and the constant struggle for peace and justice for all the Nigerian people. It was in recognition of his literary genius that he became the first African writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His book Death and the King’s Horseman is an all-time classic, and so are many of his plays and poems, including Mandela’s Earth,a volume of poems he wrote during Madiba’s long incarceration on Robben Island. Soyinka’s artistic achievements as Africa’s leading playwright, poet, essayist, novelist, political commentator and social critic are matched only by his courage as a political activist and cultural worker. He once said that ‘social commitment is a citizen’s commitment and embraces equally the carpenter, the mason, the banker, the farmer, the customs officer, etc., not forgetting the critic. I accept a general citizen’s commitment which only happens to express itself through art and words.’ In these times of global warfare and strife, when nation is pitted against nation, and religion against religion, Nelson Mandela stands out as a global icon for peace, love, reconciliation and magnanimity. However, as these distinguished public intellectuals point out, we should neither banalise the meaning of Mandela nor put him on a pedestal that will make him inaccessible to the people for whom he struggled. Instead, we should understand more the historical forces and social values that shaped and influenced his leadership. Cornel West is absolutely right in suggesting that Madiba belongs in the democratic, freedom-loving tradition of Jesus, Socrates, and WEB Du Bois. This is a journey that reached its culmination in our own miracle in 1994. But, as Madiba has reminded us so often, we have only achieved the freedom to be free. Our country still faces many challenges – unemployment, greed, inequality and the devastation visited on our communities and young ones by the HIV/Aids pandemic. We cannot waver or falter in our quest to leave our children and grandchildren with a world better, safer and more just than the one we inherited. Our challenge is to make sure that never viii THE MEANING OF MANDELA Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za again shall the race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual orientation of any person or group of persons be the cause of their suffering. Intellectuals are, of course, keepers of memory. They remind us, as these fine intellectuals do in these lectures, that struggle is a permanent feature of the human condition. The conduct of that struggle requires moral and ethical resources that can only come out of a sense of history. But as Soyinka notes in one of his essays, ‘The Writer in an African State’, ‘a historic vision is of necessity universal’. It is thus the more appropriate that Madiba’s historic vision be shared and celebrated by all of humanity especially at such times of peril. Just like the great American civil rights leader had taken the struggle beyond the civil rights era to what he called the poor people’s movements, Madiba has become a beacon of peace and hope for millions through his charitable foundations – the Nelson Mandela Foundation, The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation – as well as through his personal interventions to broker peaceful resolution of what once seemed intractable conflicts. He describes his work as the continuation of the struggle for freedom: ‘I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.’ Thank you, thank you, thank you to these great intellectuals for inspiring us to continue in Madiba’s footsteps. Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu May 2006 ix FOREWORD Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za [...]... for the substantive issues that they raise but also for the culture of critical and open inquiry that they inculcate among those who participate in them They dispense with notions of membership, loyalty or party political identification Everyone is free to enter the open space to engage the speakers and each other The decision to organise a series of lectures on Nelson Mandela is discussed in the Introduction;... and Wole Soyinka were chosen for the intellectual leadership role they have played in shaping how we think about the African world in general A number of individuals and organisations made The Meaning of Mandela lectures possible First, I would like to acknowledge the former head of the HSRC, Mark Orkin, during whose tenure the lectures took place The members of the Society, Culture and Identity... communications aspects of the lectures I am grateful, too, for the support given by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, particularly in relation to the lecture series A special vote of thanks goes to Mrs Graca Machel, Zelda le Grange and John Samuel The Department of Arts and Culture, the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa donated generously towards the costs of the lectures I would... Introduction; suffice to say that it fell squarely within the broader theme of locating Africa’s unique contribution to the world – which continues to, in the words of Steve Biko, give the world ‘a more human face’ No person better embodies that legacy than Nelson Mandela The further decision to publish the lectures in this book was motivated by the desire to see more scholarly reflection on Madiba’s... with the issue of identity on the African continent Some of the people who delivered these lectures included distinguished writers such as Ayi Kwei Armah (Senegal), Dani Nabudere (Uganda) and Mahmood Mamdani (Uganda) The HSRC auditoriums were filled to capacity, confirming in many ways the hunger for public deliberation in the broader society Lectures, especially when they are free and open to the public,... joined the Human Sciences Research Council as Executive Director of the Society, Culture and Identity Research Programme My aim, among other things, was to make our research programme a centre of public deliberation My colleagues and I fashioned a lecture series entitled ‘Identity, Africa and the World’ The idea was to bring the South African public into conversation with scholars from around the world... generously towards the costs of the lectures I would also like to acknowledge the support of South African Airways, the Financial Mail, Business Day, the Sunday Times, Johnnic and the South African Broadcasting Corporation Finally, the extracts from Soyinka’s works in his lecture are reproduced here with the kind permission of the author Xolela Mangcu May 2006 xii ... Society, Culture and Identity Research Programme – Adrian Hadland, xi THE MEANING OF MANDELA Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Mcebisi Ndletyana and Pumla Gqola – played a pivotal role in conceptualising the series Jean Witten and Pam Mbuli provided excellent administrative support I would also like to acknowledge the support of the HSRC’s corporate communications team – Jackie Mfeka, Ina van der... developing our communications strategy The operations division made sure that there were no hiccups in managing the large crowds Thanks therefore go to director of operations Adeola Adesanya, Johan Louw, and sound engineering consultant Kentse Mphahlwa for the sound system and logistics, as well as George Matsane for his help during the lectures, particularly with the sound system Event management consultants . group of persons be the cause of their suffering. Intellectuals are, of course, keepers of memory. They remind us, as these fine intellectuals do in these. made The Meaning of Mandela lectures possible. First, I would like to acknowledge the former head of the HSRC, Mark Orkin, during whose tenure the lectures