Battle for the middle ground
Achille Mbembe warns of clash of extreme viewpoints if fight is not won, writes HANS PIENAAR
THE African National Congress (ANC) is marching against itself. It is quite astonishing, Achille Mbembe laughs. The philosopher, based at the University of the Witwatersrand, is talking about the ANC’s reaction to last month’s student march to Pretoria’s Union Buildings, when it exhorted its members to join in. “If you go to Pretoria, you are going against the government. You are going against the ruling party, but then the ANC turns around and says, we are with you, it is quite astonishing.”
His laugh is quite the opposite of President Jacob Zuma’s. Mbembe’s might be described as the philosopher’s laugh, one of wonder: how can this be? There is also a tone of exasperated surrender: I have given up trying to predict SA’s future. In an interview with Business Day last week Mbembe’s words were: “The problem with SA is that what happens is never what people predict will happen.”
Indeed, who would have thought that a bunch of marginal students more in the news for their comical pronouncements and antics such as lionising Hitler would spark off a national movement drawing in parents, commentators and intellectuals across the political spectrum. But here we are suddenly at what is universally described as a crossroads, and while there is a relative lull for the exams, nobody is under any illusion about what awaits in January and February.
“The future is probably up for grabs,” says Mbembe. He himself has emerged a guru among students and is also the atavar of the socially committed, active intellectual. Mbembe is one of the few who visited every campus during the upheavals and issued a rousing exhortation to the students to seize the opportunity to change history. But he has also cautioned against the “pathological” risks brought by “blackism” and fetishising black pain, while practising a reverse racism.