Tttmsfixntzbiai 1 (1986) APPROACHES TO THE NATIONAL QUESTION IN SOUTH AFRICA Neville Alexander ismxacnm In both the theoretical and practical political spheres, the question of the nation in South Africa has becorre highly controversial. Besides the predictable differences between exponents of ruling class positions and exponents representing the exploited and oppressed majority of the people of South Africa, major differences of approach and perception have beccme manifest within the liberation movement itself. There is also the allegation that this is in fact a non-question. Sans left- inclined activists hold that the national question ceased to exist in 1910 (with the Act of Union) or at the very latest in 1931 (with the Statute of Westminster). The reasoning is very sinple: the national question, following Lenin, is essentially a question of self-determination, ie, a question of national independence to the point of secession from an existing multi- national state or empire. Since Britain granted dominion status and full independence to 'South Africa' (or to the na- tional bourgeoisie) in the period 1910 - 1931, there is no national question. Quod erat demonstrandum! The short answer to this position is that it equates the national question with the colonial question and, clearly, is unaware of the full range covered by the term 'the national question'. Another version of this thesis holds that the national question is 'the land question of the bourgeoisie', ie, it is essentially a question of the peasantry freeing itself or being freed from feudal restrictions of one kind or another. Since there is no peasantry in South Africa because of the rapid development of capitalism in the aprarian sector and because the 'Prussian road' prevented the development of an African yeomanry in South Africa, there is no national question in South Africa. Quod erat demonstrandum! However this position reflects a very * (Originally prepared for the Centre for African Studies Seminars of the University of Cape Town October 1985) 63 Transftambun 1 Meamfee narrow Eurocentric approach and hence profoundly misconceives the national question. In both these negations of the rational question, it is held that the struggle being waged in South Africa is a classical struggle between labour and capital ie only a class struggle, nat a struggle for national liberation. On the basis of this •banality' (Amin, 1981:191), it is argued in these circles that what is referred to as the national question by 'petty bourgeois ideologues' is in fact the consequence of racial ideology - the ideology of the capitalist class in South Africa. All that needs to be done, therefore, is for the working class in its organisations, and more generally, to promote the counter-ide- ology and practices of non-racialism or anti-racism. The opposite extreme, which is defended by significant groupings in the liberation movement, is reflected clearly in its entire problematic in the following passage: A developed internal market with a clearly defined area within which a particular currency is used as a medium of exchange is a sine qua non for a capitalist nation. In the case of Azania the Xhosas, Zulus, Sothos, Indians and the so-called Coloureds constitute that many different nationalities. But because they suffer from the same economic disabilities - landlessness and structured propertylessness - they also constitute a single Black nationality. Their further evolution into a nation cannot be effected without a revolu- tionary transformation. The repossession of land and the consequent seizure of political power is an abso- lute necessity for the achievement of nation-hood in the specific conditions of Azania. By the same token and precisely because they have gone through their bourgeois democratic revolution, the white settlers have constituted themselves into a nation. (Tsotsi, 1982:8) Within the liberation movement, the 'nationalist' pole is opposite to that of the 'workerists'. It implies that the Tmnsfimmtion 1 Memrdee struggle being waged by the oppressed and exploited people of South Africa is a struggle for national liberation. Ihis strug- gle is being waged by the oppressed black 'nationality' against the white 'nation'. In sans versions of this position, this struggle is held to be prior to or at least nDre important than the class struggle between labour and capital. In more sophisticated versions, these 'two struggles' are seen as intersecting and mutually reinforcing even though they are held to be distinct from each other. A view that is now corrmonly held is that the two strug- gles are in fact one struggle because of the fact that 'race' and 'class' coincide. In most versions of this position, its proponents believe that the struggle for national liberation is totally compatible with the struggle for the emancipation of the working class, ie, the struggle for socialism. We see, therefore, complete confusion and contradiction. let this is a complex and vital question of our struggle, one which we ignore at our peril. B E iSFPHQflCH TO THE M D B N A L QUESEBCN What is the national question? For a subject that is written off so easily by some people, this question has generated an astounding number of theoretical and historical treatises in roost languages of the world! Whole libraries were written on this question in the Soviet Union alone before the death of Stalin in 1953; and whole libraries were (and are being) written there since 1956 when it was found that Stalin had been fallible in a number of inportant questions, including certain aspects of his celebrated essay on the national question. More than anything else, it has been the caning into being of the 'emergent' nations' of Africa, Asia and, to a lesser extent, of Latin America, that has reopened the debate on a question that was one of the major preoccupations of all socialist and many liberal theoreticians and political parties in Europe during the 19th century. Indeed, the two phenomena are directly related. For, it soon became obvious after World War II that the nations of the ex-colonial and semi-colonial world did not correspond in form to the nations of 19th century Europe. Ihey 65 Hansftanatian 1 were possessed of very few of the features of nationhood var- iously considered to be 'essential' by socialist and liberal theoreticians and students of nationalism in Europe. Yet the movements that brought these nations into being were undoubtedly 'nationalist' in some very obvious sense. Clearly, the European models were not absolute. Even for Europe itself, important differences between the modalities of western and eastern Euro- pean nations were identified. Ihe division of Germany and Korea into two states in 19^5 with the consequent theorisation of the implications on all levels of this act, redirected the attention of theorists to the inadequacy of the existing theory. Any treatment of the national question will be found to deal with either the problem of national unity or the problem of national indepenfenoe or with both problems. Most of the works on the subject are concerned with the question of national independence and this itself reflects the peculiarly Eurocentric bias of the work in this field. The Iaplicit or explicit assumption of all work on the national question is that nations are the mode of existence of virtually all capitalist and so- cialist social formations. Ihey are the 'mould' within which the classes that constitute the Jicdem social formations conduct their lives and their affairs. Even opponents of nationalism do not deny that internationalism is predicated upon the exisb- ance of nations. Ihe formal recognition and climax of this thesis is the existence of the United Nations Organisation, in which both capitalist and socialist states are represented. However, it seems decidedly questionable whether one can go as far as Regis Debray (1977) who sees the ration as a kind of eternal in-group that is vital for the continued existence of the human species. There is also no inherent contradiction between the postulate that nations are the normal mode of exis- tence of capitalist and socialist social formations and the almost universally recognised fact that the nation state is outmoded in terms of the development of the forces of production on a world economic scale. Ihe existence of trans-national companies and political formations such as the European Economic Conmunity indicates how the actual contradictions are (tempor- arily) resolved. I shall not discuss in detail here the slippery question of 66 TaatBfijaiatnjan l ALeaardee the definition of the nation as I have covered sane of this ground elsewhere (as Nosizwe, 1979=165-168). However, it is necessary to state clearly that The limited scientific value of a general definition is evident not only in the fact that it is incapable of revealing the essence of nations and the laws of their development but also in the fact that it cannot characterise fully and in a rigorous scientific manner the multiplicity of forms and the peculiarities of the origins and evolution of nations in all their phases of deveioprrent, and finally it cannot include all types of nations with their peculiarities under a general concept ... (^cakanjan, 1967:63) This insight is now shared by nest students of national move- ments in contrast to what Eugen Lemberg (1967) called 'Risorgi- mento nationalism'. The latter's insistence on, amongst other things, the principle of one langLBgs, cne nation is not a universally valid definition of nationhood despite the ideolo- gues of Afrikaner nationalism and also despite the impeccable Kautskyan-Leninist pedigree of Stalin's famous definition of 'a nation'. Davis' (1978:206) warning is very apt: It is high tims that historians, Nfarxist and other- wise, stop trying to fit Africa into the Procrustean bed of European development. African history has to be studied in its own terms. Nations have appeared in Africa as elsewhere in tiie world; but the modalities of their development and those of Europeans are diff- erent. Generally speaking nations develop in the course of the estab- lishment of capitalist relations o f production. How and where the territorial boundaries of any specific nation are drawn is a purely historical question which cannot be predicted accurately. It is a question that is decided in the course of the class struggle within a given social formation or between different social formations. The leading or mobilising class of the 67 Tranamseian 1 ALexanciep nation necessarily and 'naturally' bases its mobilising activity on the peculiarities of the historical development of the peoples concerned and in this sense every national movement is unique. The crucial point, however, is that while the nation may mean more or less the same thing at certain times to most of those who constitute it, it more usually does not. Or, to put it differently, because the nation has to be constructed ideolog- ically and politically on the basis of the developing, ie, also changing, capitalist forces and relations of production, each of the antagonistic classes in the social formation, generally speaking, conceives,of the nation differently in accordance with its class ideology. We have to bear in mind, however, that the concept of class ideology is not synonymous with the ideological configuration prevailing among the members of a given class at a given time. (Iherborn, 1982:54) This fact, indeed, will serve to explain why within the working class there are competing (non-class) ideologies which inform the different conceptions of the nation of South Africa that prevail among the workers. A recent contribution by Benedict Anderson (1985) has helped to clarify this aspect of the study of nationalism very much. Anderson's central thesis is that the development and spread in Western Europe of 'print languages' (eg high German or Standard English) in conjunction with the elaboration of capitalist rela- tions of production replaced the juxtaposition of 'sacred lan- guages' such as Latin to local or regional idiolects. This made possible a new kind of 'imagined community' qualitatively diff- erent from extant religious or dynastically centred 'ccnmun- ities'. The development of printing and its intimate connection with the invention of 'print languages' is the bridge between the development of capitalism and the origins of modem national consciousness. Anderson's book goes a long way towards ex- plaining the historical link in Europe between language and nationality. It also simultaneously negates the Eurccentrism of roost works on the national question which accept without 68 TxrmBprnabixm 1 AL&trm&r reservation Edward Freeman's dictun that 'language is the badge of nationality': Language is not an instrument of exclusion: in prin- ciple, anyone can learn any language ... Print-lan- guages is what invents nationalism, not a particular language per se. The only questiormark standing over languages like Portuguese in MDzambique and English in India is whether the administrative and educational systems, particularly the latter, can generate a pol- itically sufficient diffusion of bilingualism ... . In a world in which the national state is the over- whelming-norm, all this means that nations can now be imagined without linguistic conmunality (Anderson, 1985:122-123) The value of Anderson's contribution lies particularly in the fact that it enables us to concentrate on the nation as an ideological and political construct. In fact, Anderson himself, in what appears to be a quite unintended way, firmly points to the link between the study of the nation or nationalism and the most recent researches in the fields of ideology and semiology, when he maintains that '... from the start the nation was con- ceived in language, not in blood, and ... one could be "invited into" the imagined cornnunity1. (Anderson, 1985:15) He proposes to define the nation as 'an imagined political conmjnity - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign' (1985:15) and explains that it is imagined 'because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-msmbers, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their carraunion'. (1985:15) This is not in fact a very good definition. It smacks of idealism as it stands. In his book, however, it is at all times clear not only that the nation as an imagined ccmnjnity is a social reality to which individuals and groups inside and out- side the nation have to respond, but in addition, that it is an entity embedded in very concrete (capitalist or socialist) rela- tions of production (normally) on a very concrete territory. 69 ALexmtzr our purposes, the two rrcst important terms in Anderson's ^S^^ m ' W t a d ™» ' * * » « * '' bbecause ^^ y llead d the examination of how national consciousness or identity IB e ^ r ^ t e d . Was examination, as we shall T e in fact nothing other than the examination of the prc- of natioral unification or rational unity. Here Andersons via the findings of semiology becomes important for the and toe solution of the national question in South Africa. m m M> TIE CEESnSX CF NffnENflL IEEMTTK The construction of a discursive order in a particu- lar society is the historical outcome of struggles waged by social forces at crucial moments of contra- diction and crisis. According to historical materia- lism the decisive aspect of these struggles in class societies in the class struggle, and the resulting discursive order is a class order, articulated with existential-/and historical-inclusive discourses. (Therborn, 1982:82) Therbom presents the key to understanding why the class struggle and the struggle for national liberation constitute two nnnsnts of one and the sams social process in contemporary South Africa. In other words, why the struggle for national libera- tion is, from the point of view of the exploiteoUclasses, the incapable political form of the class struggle. Stated as simply as possible, we can say that in South Africa, because of the peculiar development of capitalism, different strata of the working class have been 'subjected and qualified' differently. They have been 'open to' different non-class ideologies with the result that working-class ideology has articulated with diff- erent existential and historical ideologies. Moreover, It is, then, natural - and not an aberration of underdeveloped class consciousness - that class ide- ologies coexist with inclusive-historical ideologies, constituting the subjects of the contradictory total- ity of an exploitative mode of production and/or so- 70 Tcansftnvntdon 1 Alexander cial formation. (Therbom, 1982:27) Black workers have quite naturally experienced and explained their exploitation not simply in terms of class but also in terms of colour. Indeed, even white workers, especially Afri- kaans-speaking whites, have at various times experienced and explained their exploitation in ethnic rather than merely in class terras. Black workers and other black people perceive themselves as being excluded from the imagined ccmnunity of the 'South African nation', ie they see themselves as outcasts. Therefore, through their organised political and cultural van- guards, and in other ways, they have generated alternative conceptions of this 'South African nation'. Two crucial points have to be made, however. It has to be noted, firstly, that ruling-class domination is not explicable simply in terms of racism or racial ideology. While the latter is integral to the system of racial capitalism in South Africa, it rests upon and reinforces class exploitation which, as in any other capitalist social formation, is the source of surplus value and capital accumulation. Hsnce, the struggle against racial discrimination cannot be unhooked from the struggle against capitalist exploitation. It is simply a fallacy to claim that black workers are faced with two autonomous but intersecting systems of domination, viz a system of 'racial domination' and a system of 'class domination'. ftowever valid it might be for specific analytical purposes to distinguish between the 'racial' and the 'class' elements and constitute the system of racial capitalism, it is impossible to transfer such a dichotomy on to the social reality in political and ideological practice, except in terms of, or for the purposes of, ruling- class mystification of that reality. The second point to note is that from within the working class and other black strata different conceptions of the South Afri- can nation have arisen. There is no single conception that corresponds a priori to working-class ideology. This insight is vital for the understanding of the complexity of the national question. What happens in practice is that the workers, like other class agents, are confronted with a range of actual and possible identities (generalised subjectivities or subject posi- 71 Tean&fanratwn 1 AL&mnkr tions) from which they select those which they consider approp- riate to their situation. Which of these identities will be selected is a question of practical politics, ie of mobilising the revolutionary classes by demonstrating to them the nest effective and, from the point of view of eliminating exploita- tion and oppression, the most appropriate strategy. Of course, this choice is not arbitrary even though we may be unable to predict accurately which choices will be made by the individual or by groups of people. The choice is always materially determined, since every ideology necessarily operated through affirmations and sanctions within a material matrix. If every ideology operates within a matrix of affir- mation and sanctions, then the competition, coexis- tence or conflict of different ideologies is dependent on the non-discursive matrices. The power of a given ideology in relation to others is determined by its pertinent affirmations and sanctions. (Therborn, 1982:34-35) CLASS AM) NffnHi In another context (Nosizwe, 1979), I have discussed very inadequately the ways in which different conceptions of the nation of South Africa relate to the question of the emancipa- tion of the working class. Before summarising these different positions, it is necessary to undertake a slight digression in order to head off another argument which bedevils discussion of the national question. This is the view that nationalism and nation building are attitudes or activities which are peculiar to the bourgeoisie or the petty bourgeoisie. The working class, it is often held, is 'inherently' internationalist and anti- nationality. As such, it is held to be completely fantastic and, of course, reactionary, to claim that the working class can lead a struggle for national liberation. This argument has been repeatedly refuted in historical prac- tice; the mast notable examples being the cases of People's China and Viet Nam. Ever since the collapse of the Second International at the outbreak of World War I, the question of 72 Transfarnabion 1 the internationalist instincts of the working class has preoccu- pied historical materialist analyses of concrete struggles. In the light of the experience of workers' and national liberation struggles in the twentieth century, few students of this ques- tion would disagree with the view that It is now clear that no dogmatic statement can be made about which social class is the 'natural' leader of a nationalist movement. Stalin's statement, re- ferring to the period before World War I, that 'the national questions is in its essence a bourgeois one 1 , has been attacked even in the Soviet Union, where K. Ivanov has denied that this part of Stalin's essay was inspired by Lenin ... (Davis, 1978:77) Twentieth century working-class movements and their organisa- tions in different countries have in fact led struggles for national liberation and national re-unification and, ipso facto, taken the lead in building or consolidating the particular nations in their national states. Of course, this does not imply that Marxists or socialists are or should be nationalists in any chauvinistic or exclusivist sense. The point is simply that the working class starts from a national perspective rather than an internationalist one. It is precisely the task of class-conscious 'vanguardist' elements to assist in the trans- formation of the consciousness of the working class in order that it transcend the national sphere and encompass the entire class on an international plane. It remains true, despite surprisingly deprecatory inferences drawn by serious students of the question, that the workers of the world are structurally more equipped than any other class to overcome the abysses of nationality and national chauvinism. In South Africa, too, the task of building the nation has devolved on the shoulders of the black working class. As in other colonial and post-colonial formations, in South Africa, too, the original colonial administrative unit has 'created meaning' (see Anderson, 1985:55; 105) for all the inhabitants, who have been linked in one degree or another through the mech- anism of the market. The national question in South Africa 73 TnmsflnvuHon 1 Alejarder consists in the task of unifying the nation and extending equal rights to all who constitute it. In order to mobilise the revolutionary classes, ie the black working class and the radi- cal sections of the urban and rural middle classes, the vanguard organisations of the black working class have necessarHy to project an alternative conception of the South African nation. That this conception of the nation can only be realised in a social formation that is organised along socialist lines is no contradiction, as should be abundantly clear by now, but, on the contrary, a guarantee that only the working class can lead this struggle' for national liberation to a successful conclusion. The bourgeoisie, which is tied to imperialism, is itself the lodgemaster of national oppression in that its very continuation depends on the denial to the vast majority of the workers and to other black strata of the democratic ri#its of citizenship. Far from uniting the nation, as its Jacobin ancestors had done in Europe the colonial national bourgeoisie evolved and implemen- ted 'elaborate strategies ... to divide the working people into ever smaller potentially antagonistic groups'. (Alexander, 1983:7) The tricatn=ral fiasco is the latest example of this strategy of divide and rule. No class, other than the black working class, is capable of bringing about the unity of the nation in the political and cultural-ideological spheres by extending to the entire popula- tion of South Africa equal democratic rights. The middle classes cannot be consistent since their interests are, generally speaking and in their own consciousness, tied to the capitalist system. Hence only the black working class can take the task of completing the democratisation of the country on its shoulders. It alone can unite the oppressed and ex- ploited classes. It has becoms the leading class in the building of the nation. It has to redefine the nation and abolish the reactionary definitions of the bourgeoisie and of the reactionary petty bourgeoisie. The nation has to be structured by and in the in- terests of the black working class. But it can only do so by changing the entire system. A non-racial TmnsfbimiLwn 1 ALexanks? capitalism is impossible in South Africa. The class struggle against racial oppression becomes one strug- gle under the general camand of the black working class and its organisations. Class, colour and nation converge in the national liberation noveriEnt, (Alex- ander, 1983:11) raae OF THE M E K » It is necessary to consider which of the prevailing non-class ideological discourses are mast likely to prorote the objective interests of the working class. In recognition of the complex- ity of the question and the tentativeness of the study of how ideology articulates with other dimensions of the social forma- tion, it may be added that There will be no single incontrovertible answer to this question. It is one which will have to be set- tled in the cut and thrust of democratic debate and political and ideological practice. It is one which the working class itself, through its own day-to-day experience, will set boundaries to. But once we have gained a reasonable measure of clarity on this score, it becomes our task to bring to bear all the scholar- ship at our comnand to help to create that universe in which new subjects can be constituted. (Alexander, 1984:22) The black working class is confronted with any number of variants on four basic views of the South African nation. There is, first of all, the present regime's, or rather, the Afrikaner nationalists', view of South Africa as a multi-national state. In this view, South Afria is composed of between ten and twelve 'nations', each of which is entitled to the 'right of self- determination1 to the point of 'accepting' a gratuitously proffered 'independence'. Whether in its verkranpte or in its verligte version, this view of the nation operates centrally with what passes as a scientific appreciation of the importance of 'ethnicity' 1 3 and) incidentally, with, in some cases, an 75 TraxBflanabian 1 Atexantesc unexceptionable 'Risorgimento' definition of the nation! Mast pluralist schools of modem liberalism of South Africa - of which van der Msrwe and Schrire (1980) is a typical example - operate with a similar ethnic ideology in nr>re flexible, less crude scholarly formulations. Among the oppressed classes, only the nest reactionary ele- ments of the black middle class, mainly 'tribal chiefs', headmen and some civil servants are systemically open to this ideologi- cal subjection. Clearly, numerous semi-proletarians in the reserves, migrant workers on farms and in the mines are either totally or partially subjected to this ideology. In making this point, we need to recall, however, that even in the normal course the 'Xhosa' or 'Malay' or 'Hindu', etc, worker is never a frozen Xhosa, Malay, Hindu etc, subject. S(he) is at the same time a 'worker', a 'migrant', and 'African' or 'Coloured' or 'Indian', etc, or 'South African', perhaps even an 'Azanian'. One of the effects of successful ideological subjection would in this case be precisely that the person concerned automatically qualifies him/herself always as a Xhosa, Sotho, etc. Within the liberation movement, this particular schema has never had any serious adherents with the exception of one curious episode in the 1930s involving the Cornnunist Party of South Africa, (see Nosizwe, 1979:50-52) People like the Woltons and Moses Kotane in the CPSA, who actually put forward the demand for a federation of 'ethnic' soviet republics in Southern Africa, were motivated by the very opposite considerations of those of present-day Afrikaner nationalists or liberal plur- alists. However, the incident does serve to underline the potentially disastrous consequences of transplanting a theory (in this case, Stalin's theory of the nation) without further amendment fronyxe set of historical conditions into a totally different one. The classic liberal position on the national question in South Africa is the so-called four-nations thesis. This view, which reifies the phenomenal aspect of the South African social for- mation has deep roots among all layers and classes. It has been, and is, promoted by a spectrum of political tendencies and organisations ranging from the old United Party through the Progressive Party, the Liberal Party to the Congress Alliance 76 Tffljtsftinnxbwn. 1 - ALexmclBP and recently even a faction within the Ran-Africanist Congress. Of all the possible discursive systems to which the black working class is exposed, this one has, until very recently, had the greatest resonance. Three important variants of this view of the nation are iden- tifiable. The basic liberal position, analysed in terms of a 'race relations' framework, was and remains that the four popu- lation registration groups that inhabit South Africa are 'races' which should be enabled through sound economic, political and cultural policies to coexist in 'multi-racial harmony' within a single nation state. These 'races' were never considered to be 'nations'. The franchise used to be conceded by liberals to all 'civilised', ie westernised, pro-capitalist, individuals within the 'South African nation'. Under pressure from the radicalised national movement, the franchise qualifications, at least in the old Liberal Party, were eventually dropped. The long term strategic aim of the liberal establishment was, and remains, to co-opt significant layers of the black middle class, which had to be nurtured, and moderate elements within the liberation movement. Today, because of the fundamental changes in class structure and political consciousness among the labouring people in South Africa, this largely white liberal, multi-racial posi- tion has tended to blur into the more subtle ethnic ideology referred to previously. The theorists who uphold this position analyse South Africa in terms of one or other variant of plur- alism. Within the liberation movement, the 'four nations thesis' was given its most conplete formulation in the writing of Lembede and in the literary publications of the ANC Youth League in the early 1940s. In 1948, the Youth League declared in its manifes- to that South Africa is a country of four chief nationalities, three of which (the European, Indians and Coloureds) are minorities, and three of which (the Africans, Coloureds and Indians) suffer national oppression. (Karis and Carter, 1972:32) In its most widespread version, this Youth League conception 77 Transflsvatian 1 Alexander of the South African 'nation' postulated that the 'African' people constitute the ration of South Africa and the other three •nationalities' constitute 'national minorities'. (Turok, nd) This version event)wily found expression in a more, ambiguous formulation in point no. 2 of the Freedom Charter. Adherents of this view range from those who maintain that the 'national groups' are either actual or'potential nations to those who see them as no more than 'ethnic groups' bound together in one historically evolved state. None of the politicians and theore- ticians of the four-nations thesis has, except as a formal hypothesis, to my knowledge, ever put forward the right to self-determination (in the Leninist sense) of these four 'na- tional groups' although there is much confusion and uncertainty about whether these national groups are nations or not. The dilenma was given classical expression by Lionel Forman in a symposium held in the Nfcwbray Mltra fell in Cape Town in 1954. In his contribution entitled 'Nationalisms in South Africa', Forman, who took Stalin's definition of the nation and Soviet practice in the national question as his point of departure, said, amongst many other extremely interesting and courageous things, that ... if the people struggling are indeed nations, then an important part of our policy must be the demand that these nations have the right to self- determination. If they are not nations, and if they are national groups, aspiring to be nations, then in turn they have the right for the conditions to be created by which they may beccme nations with the right to self-determination. This means that it will become part of working-class policy to guarantee to those nationalities which have not their own territory that they will be given terri- tory which they will be able to administer autonomous- ly, in which their own language will be one of the official languages and in which their national cul- tures may flourish ... 78 TmnsflTrnntion 1 Meamdee Which of South Africa's peoples are nations? I would not like to say. Possibly there are several comnun- ities in South Africa which are full-fledged nations. But I think the majority of communities which have common language and psychology in South Africa are not full nations, but national groups. That is, I think they are aspirant nations, lacking their own territory and economic cohesion, but aspiring to achieve these. Because of incisive criticism of his thesis in the subsequent discussion, Forman added that his view did not imply that one is not in favour of the obvious end aim - one single, united South African nation ... But the only correct path towards a single South African na- tion is through the creation of conditions by which the different national cultures in South Africa may first flower, and then merge... (He conceded that the demand for national self-determination) does not imply that this is an urgent immediate issue facing us today. While I think that the time will surely corns when it will be a correct and popular demand ... it would not yet be correct to put forward as a major demand, the right to self-determination. (Forman, 1954) 1b There are obvious contemporary implications of such analysis: The danger in this kind of talk is quite simply that it makes room in both theory and practice for the preaching of ethnic separatism ... 'Ethnic or 'na- tional group' approaches are the thin edge of the wedge for separatist movements and civil wars fanned by great-power interests and suppliers of arms to opportunist 'ethnic leaders'. (Alexander, 1983:9) Although these views were held mainly by activists in Congress and Conrnunist Party circles, earlier 'Trotskyist' and Unity 79 Tmnefaatabun 1 Meander Movement writers on the subject held similar, if less clear-cut, views on this question. Debate on the issue has continued in the Cfcranunist Party particularly. More interesting is the fact that a certain section from within the Pan-Africanist Congress has, via a Maoist path, corns to identify itself with an amended version of the old ECCI position of colonialism of a special type ard ended up accepting what is theoretically the sams position as that of the South African Cormunist Rarty, despite bitter attacks on the supposedly 'opportunist' tactics of that party. (see Nosizwe, 1979:120-121) A recent formulation of this position, clearly mindful of the development of the black consciousness movement and ideology since 1969, has it that While the African people are the pivot of the new nation their main allies are the so-called Coloureds and the Indian people. They form one bloc with the African peoples, take the latter's Africanist aspira- tions as their own, regard themselves as Africans living in an African country, identify with the his- tory of the African people as their own ... OHHATSI, 1983:2) It is the right of the African people to self-deter- mination that is the heart of the. national question. This struggle for self-determination is something the other Black national groups identify with as part of their own liberation. (TLHATSI, 1983:3) The ironies of history are indeed profound! Another variant of the colonialism of a special type thesis is that associated mainly with the black consciousness and PAC tendencies. This represents a third view of the nation that is available to the black workers. In this view, there are two nations in South Africa, an oppressing white and an oppressed black nation, sometimes referred to as a 'black nationality'. (Tsotsi, 1982) There is no need to go into any detailed discus- sion on this position on which much has been written, both pro and contra. It is noteworthy, however, that the exponents of the black consciousness position have tended to conflate 'race' 80 TmnsftJrvnbion 1 Alexander and 'class' to the point that in some versions all whites are projected as capitalists while all blacks are seen as workers. Classes are inherent in all capitalist societies. In any industrial and capitalist society we have those who own or those who manage the productive processes on behalf of the owners on the one hand and, on the other hand, those who do not. In fact the workers, blacks, are the most ruthlessly exploited in South Africa for they are the dispossessed; they do not own land, they do not own any ireans of production, they do not wield any meaningful and significant power The fact that one, as a member of the black race, is deprived of nBaningful political power does not make him a member of the white group (sic) which wields both political and economic power. Whites en masse are the perpetrators of this exploitative status quo. (Mthembu, 1982:163) A distinctive aspect of this 'two-nations' thesis is that it, not unlike some variants of the four-nations thesis, holds that the struggle for national liberation will eventuate in one (socialist, Azanian) nation. The oppressing white nation, it is to be supposed, will disintegrate, in that very many whites will refuse to live in a free Azanla and will emigrate to more racially congenial climates. Those who remain will identify themselves with the Azanian nation and cease to belong to the white 'nation'. Consequently, the proponents of the two-nations view see no contradiction between it and the now universally known slogan of One Azania, One Nation! This slogan, clearly, represents a political programme of national liberation invol- ving in some interpretations the leadership and emancipation of the black working class. The tactical-strategic inference often drawn from, or justified by, this theory of the nation that individuals classified as white cannot participate in the organisations of the black people, ie that identification by individual whites with the Azanian nation is possible only after liberation, is a point of dispute within the liberation move- ment. At bottom, it would seem that there is a certain meta- 81 TtanBfOaiabvon 1 ALeanndea? physical assunption about the ways in which oppression and exploitation qualify those who suffer these phenomena. It seems to be assured that whites in South Africa, because they are not oppressed, cannot identify at certain unspecifiable deep psychic levels with the oppressed and with their struggle. However that may be, there is no doubt that among the ex- ploited and oppressed, this view of the nation has become ex- tremely resonant. Indeed, during the late 1960s and all of the 1970s, it was unquestionably the dominant view among black acti- vists. So much so, in fact, that even adherents of the four- nations view began to consider tentatively that this nay well be the way in which the liberation struggle and capitalist develop- ment were shaping the people of South Africa. Since the theory is genecically the same as the colonialism of a special type theory, which holds, amongst other things, that 'Non-White South Africa is the colony of White South Africa itself', it is not a very large j m p to make. Consider the following: one exponent of this view, (Molapo, 1976), claims that the major disadvantage of the one-nation thesis is the fact that it ob- scures the colonial nature of South African society and conse- quently the national character of the liberation struggle. In his eyes the two-nations thesis is designed to overcome this flaw, as the two-nations thesis views South Africa as essential- ly a colonial situation of a special type, comprised of the oppressive nation and the oppressed nation, coexisting in the same territory. Both the tentativeness of this position and the mortnain of Stalin's theory of the nation beccme evident in the tortuous qualifications which Molapo hangs on to his thesis. Although Molapo (1976) clearly views the two-nations thesis as correct he acknowledges that there is a problem with the meaning of the term 'nation' in this context. For, both the oppressing nation and the oppressed nation in South Africa do not meet the general conditions laid down by Stalin's classical definition. He acknowledges that it is preferable to reserve the term 'na- tion' for fully fledged national conrajnities which satisfy all four components of Stalin's definition rather than those which are still advancing along the lines of national organisation teinl S ^ ^ T **concludes tbat U* two-nations thesis while oeihg appropriate as a characterisation of the general nature of 82 Transfbrmzbion 1 ALexmder the class struggle in South Africa, does need slight adjustment for neither of the two nations is complete in the fullest sense of the word. The fundamental problem with the two-rations thesis and with any other many-nations thesis in the South African context is that it holds within it the twin dangers of anti-white black chauvinism and ethnic separatism. It may not be possible with the ideology of a single nation to tap all those currents in the South African social formation which are systemically opposed to such divisive ideologies and thus to avoid completely the danger of petty bourgeois controlled movements based on anti-white chauvinism or ethnic separatism. To the extent, however, that the revolutionary classes in South Africa accept that they are part and parcel of a single nation, the liberation struggle becomes ideologically insulated against these dangers. Of cour- se, believing in something is no guarantee that it will happen. The objective basis for the realisation of the idea has to exist, otherwise it remains no more than a dream and an illu- sion. I have previously tried to demonstrate both the feasi- bility and the superiority from the point of view of a socialist or working-class project in South Africa of the one-nation thesis. (see Alexander, 1983; 1984; Nosizwe, 1979) In doing so, I have tried theoretically to reconcile this with the view that tine struggle in this country is simultaneously one for national liberation and class emancipation. The position of this fourth view of the nation can be put concisely and surmarily. According to this view, the people of South Africa are being moulded into one unified nation by the twin forces of capitalist development and the class struggle resulting from it. The national bourgeoisie, for reasons of capitalist accumulation, in effect aborted the ration in 1920 by fragmenting and freezing the population into four 'races' and a number of 'tribal' or 'ethnic' groups. As long as primary, especially extractive, industry was the dominant sector of the South African economy, or as long as the development of a large and diversified domestic market for the products of secondary industry and for tertiary services did not exist, this system produced the superprofits that justified it. In the course of the ensuing class struggles, and especially after 1946, the 83 TtanBfimabian 1 ALetmkler black workers gradually became the decisive force that will determine the direction of the entire system of racial capi- talism. Ihe oppression of the totality of the black people, which is one of the main features of the system, is akin to colonial oppression in a number of respects. It is national oppression in the sense that the vast majority of the people are denied the rights and privileges of nationhood, ie democratic rights, purely on the basis of the colour of their skins. Because of the peculiarities of capitalist development in South Africa, the only way in which racial discrimination and racial inequality, ie national oppression, can be abolished is through the abolition of the capitalist structures themselves. The only class, however, which can bring into being such a (socialist) system is the black working class. On it, by virtue of its unique historical position, devolves the task of mobili- sing all the oppressed and exploited classes for the abolition of the system of racial capitalism. In doing so, it has to unite the workers and their allies by undermining the divisive factors which have as a matter of policy been retained and invented by different ruling class governments in order to disorganise the South African proletariat. Beyond that, the working class has to devise counters-hegemonic strategies and practices which prepare the ground, in fact will constitute the ground, upon which the Azanian nation will stand. Although it is a secondary question, we have to add to this analysis the fact that the physical and political reintegration of the so-called independent homelands constitutes another as- pect of the solution of the national question. National unifi- cation and national reunification are part and parcel of the same process of national liberation. In this view, the workers of South Africa are exercising the right of self-determination by rejecting, in concrete mass struggles as much as in the progranmes of their political organisations, the partition and balkamsation of our country. ire AZMDM HAHEN The positive historical task of the Black workers in solving the national question in South Africa is the construction of the W TransfOrnabvon 1 Alexander (socialist) nation of Azania. This construction takes place in all the dimensions of the social formation, ie economically, politically and ideologically. Although certain economic forms and structures relevant to a South Africa free of exploitation and oppression are emerging out of the present struggle, it is in the nature of the process of liberation that the political and ideological construction of the new nation precedes its socio-economic realisation. Indeed, such politico-ideological construction is an inescapable precon- dition for the formal realisation of the nation both as having new socio-economic content and as a juridical entity, ie as a new state. Gelb (nd:10) has drawn the correct inference from Anderson's work that nationalist struggle involves a process of ideo- logical construction of this different nation, rather than simply reflecting a pre-given nation. Besides the many ways in which the workers in struggle con- struct the new nation - and it has to be emphasised that this is the ground on which everything else rests, without which all other efforts by individuals and organisations would be mere voluntarism - specific tasks fall to the 'organic intellectuals' of the working class in systematising the discourse in which this struggle is conducted. One of the ways in which organic intellectuals can use their access to scientific or scholarly skills is precisely by assisting the class in which they are rooted to fashion an oppositional or, more accurately, a counter-hegemonic ideology. This they do by, amongst other things, careful attention to the lan- guage which is inserted into and generalised in the political progranmes and actions of the organisations of their class. The importance of this scholarly activity derives from the fact that it is in and through language that the individual is constituted as a subject. (Alexander, 1984:15) 85 TtaaBftxsabicn 1 Alexander Lest I be accused of generating an elitist notion of the role of intellectuals in the process of liberation, I hasten to add that the process of ideological production is not a unidirec- tional one in which intellectuals fill the enpty minds of prole- tarians or of other class agents with a symbolical instrumenta- rium appropriate to their 'class interests'. It is a 'complex two-way process of learning and unlearning'. Clherbom, 1982:73) Therborn, indeed, reminds us that significant ideolo- gical mobilisations do not ... seem to owe much to the correctness or con- junctural adequacy of elaborate progranmes or grand theories. Ihe key figures in processes of ideological mobilisation are not theoreticians and writers of books, but orators, preachers, journalists, pamphle- teers, politicians, and initiators of bold practical action. (Therborn, 1982:119) Che of the main tasks of the organic intellectuals of the working class in South Africa today is to counteract the reifi- cation of concepts such as 'race' and 'ethnic group' which are clearly being promoted by traditional intellectuaLs and organic intellectuals of the ruling class to facilitate the perpetuation of the domination ond subjugation of the exploited and oppressed classes. By accepting, for example, the reality of entities such as 'ethnic groups' as part of what has been called the Cartesian Order 'which is suitable for analysis of the world into separately existing parts ... •, we deprive ourselves a priori of the possibility of probing alternative, possibly more constructive discourses. For by doing so we reinforce the ethnic stabilisation or freezing of our audience through our ideological productions. (Alexander, iyo ) H T B r e ^ y : " ** "ecessary for the organic intel- the wortaJTg class to undertake a process of decon- 86 Tmnsformxbion 1 struction of existing ideological discourses to which the black workers are subject, by 'analysing the process and conditions of (their) construction out of the available discourses'. (Belsey, 1985:103-124) An excellent exanple of this process is O'Msara (1983), where, using the exanple of Afrikaner nationalism, he demonstrates 'why and under what conditions ... differentiated collectivities of people come to be organised in terms of one ideology rather than another ...' In doing so, he successfully attacks Adam and Giliomee for failing to explain this in their work on Afrikaner nationalism because they use 'the highly circular concept of 'ethnic mobilisation' in which a priori 'ethnically organised groups' compete with each other for scarce resources'. (O'Meara, 1983:8) What has to be stressed is the vital political and social importance of creating a new discourse. There is an urgent need to realise that language is much more than a passive reflection of a pre-existent, autonomous reality. Indeed, the language we use, by virtue of the fact that it is the medium through which the historical subject is constructed, helps to construct the reality within which we act and to which we react. While we have to guard against all idealist temptations and test every- thing we do against the non-discursive practices and possibil- ities of the working class, we need to realise that attention to this formative role of language is the province par excellence of the organic intellectual. How to let a combination of word and deed render irrelevant possible ethnic identities and existing ethnic consciousnesses and subsume them under a larger national consciousness without destroying the rich cultural diversity of the people of South Africa? This is the current stuff of politics, especially of cultural politics. It is one of the major points of dispute on the national question between different political tendencies. How, further, to prevent national consciousness from being transformed into an exclusivist or sectional-communal conscious- ness that will undermine the struggle for a South Africa free of exploitation and oppression, ie for a socialist Azania? This is the other side of the national question in South Africa. Both sides of the question are answered positively only if the lead- ership of the working class in the national liberation struggle 87 TmnBfOrnabixjn. 1 ALexander is ensured. FOODDIES 1 In an interesting passage, Sarnir Amin calls this the 'reac- tionary or bureaucratic, formal position' which 'simply denies realities other than class. It denies the impor- tance of sex, nations, religions, or other categories, regarding them not as realities but as phenomena artifi- cially manipulated by the exploiting classes. This posi- tion results, moreover, in tactical failure in the class struggle because these realities are tenacious and subtly undermine the development of the class-for-itself'. (Arain, 1981:30) 2 The literature is vast. However, the following works will serve as a point of orientation: Symnons-Symonolewicz, 1965; Larrfoerg, 1967; OST-PROBLEra:, 1967; Davis, 1978; Amin, 1981; anith, 1983. 3 Consider the following by one of the leading Soviet Afri- canists who had a strong influence on the CPSA's position. (Written scras 30 years ago on the basis of Stalin's defini- tion) : 'Today in the Union of South Africa the process of forming two national societies continues, that of the Bantu and of the Anglo-Afrikaner. There are no grounds for assuming that one nation can be formed which would embrace the Bantu, the Goloureds and the Anglo-Afrikaners. The Coloureds could not at the present time become a component of the national Bantu group, they do not know the Bantu languages and in language, cultural forms and self-con- sciousness they tend to identify themselves with the Anglo- Afrikaners. The Indians are a completely separate group'. (Potekhin, nd:15) ^ It is perhaps useful to note that in its properly translated form, Stalin's definition reads as follows: 'A nation is an historically evolved, stable comnunity arising on the basis of a caimon language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a comnunity of culture', (quoted in Davis, 1978:71) -> Whether or not nations exist prior to the establishment of 88 Tnmeftxnntion 1 Aleaodep capitalist relations of production is an interesting his- torical and methodological question which need not detain us here. For the range of the polemic in this regard, see Amin, 1978:10-12 and Kroker, 1966:20-21. 6 For a similar approach, see Bourque and Laurin-Frenette (1975). 7 The whole question of the political and ideological forms in which the class struggle is conducted, though still extremely controversial in detail, has been given finality in practice. There are quite simply no attested cases of 'pure class consciousness or of 'pure' class struggles at the political level. Most analysts would agree with the following axiomatic statement: 'So far, at least, no great modern social revolution, bourgeois or socialist, has ever been made by a unified class subject demanding a completely new social order. Rather, such revolutions have been effected in particular conjunctures when the relations of force have changed in such a way as to undermine the old regims - in other words, through the emergence of economic, political, and ideolog- ical contradictions and situations of uneven development, both within the society and in its external relations, disarticulating the previous totality and its system of affirmations and sanctions. Tney have been consciously made when various forces, with different imnsdiate demands pertaining to the conjuncture, have come together. The social-revolutionary inport of these demands - bread, peace, land, independence, popular representative govern- ment, an end to repression - has stemmed from a constella- tion of clashing class forces and their organised expres- sions, through which certain historical social alternatives are ruled out and others open up ... 'The possibilities for revolutionary change should be de- rived fran the likelihood of economic and political crisis, and from the existence of materially organised alterna- tives, rather than from the state of mind of a class'. (Tnerbom, 1982:110-111) Of course, Tnerbom is careful to stress that class con- sciousness is important since the level of such conscious- 89 Ttmsfijamxtian 1 ALeamder ness and organisation will determine the degree of prepar- edness of the revolutionary class (es) for post-revolution- ary reconstruction, (see Therbom, 1982:111-112) 8 A recent study of how the Afrikaner workers were 're- cruited1 into the Afrikaner nationalist movement, that draws upon seme of the insights of Louis Althusser is O'Msara (1983). See especially his introductory chapter. 9 See Therbom (1982:71). •Class ideologies, like class politics, do rot 'represent' anything other than themselves, such as 'class interest'. Indeed, the notion of 'representation' is part of the utilitarian heritage in ^ferxism, which should be definitely discarded'. 10 Compare Hudson's very relevant ccmnaits regarding Pecheux's notion of the 'interdiscourse'. "It is the interdiscourse, then, which defines the available range of subject-posi- tions in a society into which individuals are "interpel- lated". A concrete individual will then be interpellated into a ruriber of distinct subject-positions throughout his Personal history and the overall unity of these distinct subject-positions is determined by the state of the class struggle and is not guaranteed by any original or primary unity attached to the subject form in general'. (Hudson 1984:8) 1 1 The recent literature on the relationship between class and nation is increasing rapidly. Ihe following references are a useful starting point: Lowy, 1976:98-100; Amin, 1981:30; Purivatra, 1979. 12 'it is tine to drop altogether the idea that the "inter- national working class" will bring about the revolution. There is no such thing as the international working class, father, there are many national working classes. In seme countries there is not even a working class at all. In man y others the working class, or the bulk of it, is not anti-capitalist or socialist'. (Davis, 1978:245) J J Sharp (198O) has shown the inadequacy and, in many cases, the charlatanism, of this 'science' of volkekLnde. For> those who are unaware of the history of this period, it "ay be of interest to know that this slogan was derived from 90 Tmnsfanmbvon. 1 ALexmdee the Comintern. In a letter to the CPSA dating from 1932, the Executive Conmttee of the Comintern (ECCI) counselled the CPSA to unite the 'Native, coloured, white and Asiatic toilers of S.A. and the protectorates' on the (basis of a programme that included, inter alia, the slogans): 'Down with the British and Afrikander imperialists. Drive out the imperialists. Conplete and inmediate national independence for the people of South Africa. For the right of the Zulu, Basuto, etc., nations to form their own independent repub- lics. For the voluntary uniting of the African nations in a Federation of Independent Native Republics. The estab- lishment of a workers' and peasants' government. Full guarantee of the rights of all national minorities, for the coloured, Indian and white toiling masses'. (ECCI, 1983:14) Also see Qiwony-Ojwolo (1978). At this same time (the so- called Third Period of the Comintern), a parallel trauma was shattering the Corrraunist Party of the U.S.A. where, on the recommendation of the Comintern, the demand for a separate 'Negro Soviet Republic1 in the black belt was being put forward seriously with some tendencies within the CPUSA. (see Gruber, 1984) 15 M l National GrcupB Shall Have B p a l Rffits There shall be equal status in the bodies of state, in the courts and in the schools for all national groups and races; All national groups shall be protected by law against insults to their race and national pride; All people shall have equal rights to use their own lan- guage and to develop their own folk culture and customs; The preaching and practice of national, race or colour discrimination and contempt shall be a punishable crime; All apartheid laws and practices shall be set aside. 16 A recent attempt to deny that the four-nations thesis bears this kind of interpretation and which put down all such allegations to 'misdiief-rnaking' seems to be an inept at- tempt to falsify history or is the result of a lack of information (see Anonymous, 1984). Echoes of Forman's dilemma resound across the decades in Congress - CP debates and writings. By way of example: 'Africans have always 91 Tmnepatation 1 Alexander retained an awareness of a separate historically consti- tuted "national" identity. Perhaps nationality would be more accurate. At any rate "nation" here is not to be read as "nation state1". (Turok, 1983) 17 Gelb (nd) has challenged the theory of internal colonialism along a broad front. Its specific implications for theory and practice in a national question have been outlined in Nosizwe, 1979:105-111- 18 See Nosizwe (1979:111-120) for its antecedents in the IMty Movement and the PAC. 19 See Alexander (1984:2-4) and O'M=ara (1983:15) for the useful distinction, derived fran Gramsci between 'literary' and 'popular' fornB of an ideology. 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Introduction and sons notes on the national question', in TUutsi, 22 (October, pp 2-7) Tsotsi B - 'On the national question', i n Solichrity, 9 1982 Turok, B - 'Class structure and national ideology in South nd Africa' (Unpublished mimeo) - 'Black consciousness i s not false consciousness' Extract from B Turok - 'Strategic Problems in South Africa's Liberation Struggle: a c r i t i c a l analysis (1974), published in faoada Frontline, 3 August 8-9 94 TransfCamxbvcn 1 ALeanndep Van der Msrwe, H ard R Schrire - Tbo& and Ethnicity: South Jtf- 1980 riam and mtermtwrnL Bzrepecbives (Cape Town and London: Eavid Philip) A Journal far t h t M kfl For in-depth information and commentary on • Southern Africa, labour _^jp and politics. c/«iTuEDuitgirui / ^J~~\ RATES for five issues are as follows SOUTHERN AFRICAN /" \ RnilTHiPBlT* RESEARCH SERVICE t Vi SOOIM AFRICA \ ^ ^ / Individuals, trade unions and community ofgamsations ... R12 50 P.O. 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