Few would contest the view that Govan Mbeki was the most educated and well-read of the Robben Island prisoners in matters related to the study of economics. We rely mainly here on Colin Bundy’s (2012) excellent biography of Mbeki. Mbeki took formal courses in business economics through correspondence study at Unisa and other tertiary institutions; he successfully read for an Honours degree in economics and began coursework towards a Master’s in economics. His essays, some for formal study, were many and varied and showed a highly sophisticated grasp of both economic theory and economic history. His three-part essay on ‘The Rise and Growth of Afrikaner Capital’ demonstrates his skills as an analyst of the economics and politics of the growth of this racially defined fraction of South African capital; significantly, it predates Dan O’Meara’s (1983) classic study of the same subject (Volkskapitalisme) by two years. Mbeki also wrote a theoretical essay entitled ‘Notes on the Business Cycle, Unemployment, Inflation and Gold’, making the point that Afrikaner economists favoured a certain amount of inflation for economic growth, as rising prices would lead to rising profits and business development. He wrote an insightful essay entitled ‘Economic History: South Africa’ as well as one on a subject once again very topical in South Africa today, entitled ‘Monopoly Capitalism in South Africa: Its Role and Extent’. One final example of the essays he wrote was entitled ‘Movements in African Real Wages: 1939–1969’ (Mbeki 2015).
Given the time, context and prevailing restrictions, it is not surprising that Mbeki did not turn his undoubted intellect to matters of economic policy. Nevertheless, his work suggests that he understood the Freedom Charter as a policy document of the National Liberation Movement, and not just as a political programme. Among other arguments Mbeki made was one against the proposition that the Freedom Charter would permit a flowering of African capitalists, making a case instead of the Freedom Charter as a vision of a ‘national democratic republic’ and as a ‘transitional phase towards a socialist society’ (Mbeki 2015: 37). We learn from Bundy’s afterword to the book that Mbeki settled for the ‘modest revolution’ of 1994 and voiced no public criticism of the neo-liberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution programme, championed by his son, Thabo (Mbeki 2015: afterword).
Despite restrictions on reading, there were often robust and sometimes tense debates and clashes among ANC comrades over a range of political and social issues, some of which have only come to light after 1990. Mandela and Govan Mbeki clashed over the latter’s attempts to get the ANC to mobilise and organise to link worker and peasant struggle, as well as over Mandela’s apparent willingness to open talks with Bantustan leaders.
Although both men have denied it, Govan Mbeki’s relationship with Mandela was particularly complicated. They disagreed strongly over Operation Mayibuye – the swashbuckling programme for armed insurrection which Mbeki wrote with Joe Slovo in the early 1960s – and then, in prison, over Mandela’s willingness to entertain alliances with Bantustan collaborators. So serious was the conflict between the two men at one point that, in 1975, a group of nine ANC leaders on Robben Island convened to try to find a solution; a report smuggled out to ANC leadership in Lusaka contended that ‘the two who represented polar opposites in attitudes and opinions were Madiba and Govan’ (ANC 2001: n.p.).
In the midst of such titanic clashes over political tactics and strategy, some further evidence of matters related to economic and social issues could be found. Thus, for example, in Long Walk to Freedom Mandela remarks:
For a number of years, I taught a course in political economy. In it, I attempted to trace the evolution of economic man from the earliest times up to the present, sketching out the path from ancient communal societies to feudalism to capitalism and socialism. I am by no means a scholar and not much of a teacher, and I would generally prefer to be asked questions than to lecture. My approach was not ideological, but it was biased in favour of socialism, which I saw as the most advanced stage of economic life then evolved by man (Mandela 1994d: 455).
This sense that socialism was the end goal of the struggle, as expressed here by Mandela, was shared by most of the leadership of the anti-colonial struggle in Africa and Asia in the post-war era. Largely based on a broad allegiance to the communist ideology of the Second International and Third International, this approach was rarely debated. The nature of the economic transformation was mostly taken as obvious, flowing from the expected collapse of capitalism under its inherent contradictions and a more or less seamless transition to socialism. ANC comrades on Robben Island, in South Africa generally and in exile benefited from reading Maurice Cornforth, Maurice Dobb, George Padmore and Eric Williams, among others, writers whose works revolved around anti-colonial and anti-segregationist struggles in various parts of the world (Maharaj interview, 16 August 2016).1 As Mac Maharaj observes:
I can only speak from my recollection of what the kinds of issues were that we were living in the 50s when I became active, and the 60s. And I think that the mood in the 1950s, not only in the left movement but in the broad anti-colonial movement, was that the question of the transformation of society, particularly the economic transformation, had certain easy answers. And those easy answers were largely based on the experience of the Second and Third Internationals. Even the debate from the Fourth International assumed that that transformation is an easy thing to achieve (Maharaj interview, 16 August 2016).
According to Mlangeni, discussions on the Island among ANC prisoners were ‘based purely on the Freedom Charter’. They seemed largely to be restatements of the intentions of the Freedom Charter and the non-racial society based on equality it sought to create with little attention to the policies, programmes or mechanisms by which this was to be achieved:
We said, if we achieve what is said in the Freedom Charter, we’ll have achieved the kind of South Africa, a society in South Africa that we’d like to see emerge, a society where people are equal … We want the land which was largely owned by white people, to be owned by all the people of South Africa, there must be equal distribution of the land among all the people of South Africa, for example. People must be equal before the law, something which did not happen before, the judiciary, the judges, the magistrates must treat black people the same way they treat white people in court, you must be treated as a human being (Mlangeni interview, 6 October 2015).
Mlangeni revealingly indicates that when the Freedom Charter clause on nationalisation was debated on Robben Island, his original view that it represented a socialist proposal was disavowed during the discussion.
At first I also had the same view that nationalisation of the mineral resources, etc., is socialism but further discussions, more discussions on the Island proved to us that no, it doesn’t mean that we are introducing socialism in South Africa. It simply means that banks and mineral resources must be shared among those who work it; it doesn’t mean introducing socialism … I also had that interpretation that it meant that the resources must be shared among the people of South Africa (Mlangeni interview, 6 October 2015).
It is a moot point whether discussions of the Freedom Charter on the Island, in which Mandela was a key figure, opened up or closed down the powerful social democratic impetus in the thinking of Albert Luthuli over the period of the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, as discussed in chapter 2. It would seem from the available evidence (including from Long Walk to Freedom) that Mandela was politically cautious and privileged the multi-class alliance politics of the ANC in the context of the imperatives of national liberation. Luthuli went much further to engage with the implications of the social democratic path he advocated, unequivocally locating a central role for labour in such a social democratic agenda of social compacting.
Of course, the conditions for any such open debate among comrades on Robben Island were very constrained for many obvious reasons. Among other factors were that the ANC leadership (the High Organ) was physically separated from other political prisoners and because of the limitations of prison life in South Africa under grand apartheid (Kathrada interview, 9 October 2015). This is how Maharaj describes the conditions:
Look at it from the point of view of the prisoners