Introduction: The Sublime Object of Nationalism
This book sets out to address a gap in contemporary studies of nationalism and the nation. Despite the extraordinary growth of articles and books about nationalism and nations over the last 20 years, critical studies of African nationalism are not reflected in this literature. This is surprising for two reasons. In the first place, resistance to European colonialism usually happened in the name of nationalism and in pursuit of independent African nation states. In the second place, the pursuit of independent African nation states was not the only form that resistance to colonialism took.
Opposition to French colonialism, in particular, sought not so much the dissolution of empire as its democratisation. Before his conversion to nationalism, Leopold Senghor, the first president of independent Senegal, was a deputy in the French National Assembly. He only reluctantly sought independence for his country (Meredith, 2005). Closer to home, we will find in the figure of Sol Plaatje an ambivalence towards the British Empire. On the one hand, he railed against its injustices; on the other hand, he thought of himself as a loyal subject of the British crown (Willan, 2001).
What this means is that it is necessary to account for the rise of nationalism – and African nationalism in particular – as the pre-eminent form of resistance to colonialism and apartheid. This vision of what freedom from colonialism might look like has itself been a victim of nationalist mythologies, which narrate the story of an African people oppressed and exploited by foreign ones. Here, ‘the people’ are taken as something that preceded the period of nationalist struggle. What this conceals, however, is how an African people came into being in the first place. This book addresses itself to this question in the South African context.
The book will argue that African peoples emerged primarily in and though the process of nationalist resistance to colonialism. Here we must distinguish between the people as datum and the people as political subject. In the first case, the term ‘the people’ refers to an empirical collection of individuals in a given geography; in the second, it refers to a collectivity organised in pursuit of a political end. I am interested in this second sense of the term. The argument here is that the South African people came to be defined and produced in and through the politics and culture of nationalist struggle. Even if there are traces of other notions of what the term ‘the people’ means (clannic, for example), the image of the South African nation looms large in the political imaginary.
This view helps us recover the specificity of the nation, not simply as a cultural artefact, but as a political one. I will say more about this in the course of the book, which will argue that the nation is a political community whose form is given in relation to the pursuit of democracy and freedom. If democratic authority is lodged in ‘the people’, what matters is the way that the concept is defined, delimited and produced. In this sense, the nation precedes the state, not because it has always already existed, but because it emerges in and through the nationalist struggle for state power. The history of the postcolony1 is, in this sense, the history of ‘the people’ qua production.
From this perspective, we have to re-evaluate knee-jerk judgements about the failure of modernity in Africa. If the mark of modern power – as opposed to tribal, monarchical or dynastic authority – is that it vests sovereignty in ‘the people’ themselves, African nationalism too ‘locates the source of individual identity within a “people”, which is seen to be the bearer of sovereignty, the central object of loyalty, and the basis of collective solidarity’ (Greenfeld, 1992: 3). What matters is: (a) the limit and character of ‘the people’ in whom power is supposed to repose; and (b) the political forms through which ‘the people’ are represented. Simply put, the democratic project firmly places the identity of ‘the people’ on the agenda. We should not be surprised, therefore, to observe that the ongoing democratisation of African states has been accompanied by a renewed preoccupation with authenticity (Geschiere, 2005). Yet, if the democratic project poses the question of ‘the people’, we will see that an answer can take one of two forms. The first is that ‘the people’ constitute a nation; alternatively, that ‘the people’ constitute a democracy.
As a way of prefacing this argument, I want to consider an advertisement that appeared in the Sunday Times, a major South African weekend newspaper, in 2001. In ‘The media vs President T. M. Mbeki’, Ashley Mabogoane, Jabu Mabuza, Pearl Mashabela, Prof. Sam Mokgokong, Kgomotso Moroka, Don Ncube, Ndaba Ntsele, Christine Qunta, Mfundi Vundla, Peter Vundla and Sindiwe Zilwa accused the media of providing a platform for a right-wing plot to subvert South African democracy (Mabogoane et al., 2001). They caution the president not to ‘be distracted by the current campaign against [him]’, and add that ‘under [Mbeki’s] leadership we have the best government this country has ever had’. Finally, they advise the president to ‘go ahead and govern: govern fairly; govern with compassion but govern decisively’. Let us note the terms of the argument in this advertisement.
On the one hand, a right-wing conspiracy is posited. It is supposedly spearheaded by white, so-called liberals from the apartheid era, certain so-called independent research organisations (it is not clear which ones) run by whites, and a ‘few’ members of the white business community. They are aided by black commentators ‘who unwittingly contribute to this campaign’ (Mabogoane et al., 2001). These forces are acting in concert, spreading vicious, underhanded ‘disinformation’ about the president. Their intentions are malicious: to discredit him personally, and by way of him, the competence of black people generally. Even more sinister is their sabotage of the country’s economy (by portraying South Africa as a place not to do business in), and their attempt to subvert the will of the people (by questioning the fitness of a democratically elected president). In doing all this, the whites involved want to obstruct the dismantling of the apartheid system in order to secure the benefits they gain from its workings.
On the other hand, there are blacks who deeply love their country, who balance criticism with constructive mention of the government’s landmark achievements, and who see in the attacks on the president a hateful, contemptuous assault on democracy. Blacks are presented as having faith in the potential of the country to be a well-managed, technologically advanced and truly egalitarian society. Moreover, whereas racist whites see in the ‘errors’ of the president the necessary failures of a black man, the blacks observe such errors as all-too-human weaknesses. Whereas whites question the very competence of Mbeki’s leadership, and by association the leadership of all blacks, blacks propose guidance to a leader whose only weakness is that he is human.
Let us not worry about the truthfulness of this claim – that there is a conspiracy – other than to note how commonplace such claims have become in South Africa. Let us note rather that the advertisement makes certain epistemological claims that will help us determine its political genealogy. In particular, what is at stake is the nature of certain facts. Do they consist of independent and mostly unrelated actions or events? Or are they merely moments in a larger drama that is unfolding? Take, for example, the question of the media ‘campaign’. Here a number of articles, appearing in different newspapers and at different times, and written by various journalists are seen as evidence of an underlying unity, one that exceeds their literality (as newspaper articles), to reveal the secret and underhand work of (racist) conspirators. Of course, many journalists and newspaper editors, in countering this claim, assert precisely the opposite. Abbey Makoe writes in the Saturday Star, for example, that ‘[t]he era of white-owned media dominating public opinion in South Africa can no longer be used as an excuse for lazy black professionals who hardly ever make an effort to participate in matters of public debate’ (Makoe, 2001). Rather than being symptomatic of a conspiracy, these ‘awful’ claims against Mbeki are the work of ‘individuals’, the article claims. More importantly, their predominance is less a sign of a white conspiracy than it was of something else: the ‘quietude of silence’ into which black commentators had fallen. Unlike the 1960s and 1970s, which buzzed with the eloquence of writers like Steve Biko, Barney Pityana, Nchaupe Mokoape, Mamphela Ramphele and many others, the new elite (‘self-styled struggle heroes’) do not read, they do not write and