History Making and Present Day Politics - Stolten's African Studies ...

h i s t o r y m a k i n g a n d p r e s e n t d a y p o l i t i c s
inspired historians need to do some painful soul-searching, and while several
of the radical-revisionists were engaged in that practice some years ago, 59
these attempts seem to have faded out. Left intellectuals will have to develop
new convincing analyses to explain why popular black activism should focus
on socialist oriented reforms. If capitalist exploitation and racist oppression
are not inseparable in Africa, then South African socialism’s most important
rationale will have to be based on something other than basic anti-racism.
Growing historiographical consensus
The debate between historians has been quite heated at times and liberal
allegations that engaged radicals have often adopted a warlike tone in their
attempts to mobilise the anti-apartheid opinion are probably justified. To the
extent that this hostility was directed against de facto supporters of apartheid,
it is perhaps defensible, but in the light of the victory over apartheid, it
is of course easier to acknowledge that this attitude was sometimes unfair to
progressive political liberals. It is however interesting in this connection that
only few liberal researchers have made an effort to distinguish between early
liberal segregationists, well meaning political liberals (or social democrats),
economic liberalists, etc. Actually, one could argue that the most enlightened
liberals have been used to give credibility to liberalism as such. 60 Then again,
left liberals were occasionally criticised heavily by right-wing liberals for not
defending apartheid reforms. 61
Was liberal pragmatism harmful? Some of the social conflicts in South
Africa, which the liberals wanted to avoid during late apartheid, were clearly
coloniality Series, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2002.
59. Jewsiewicki, Bogumil, “African Historical Studies: Academic Knowledge as ‘Usable
Past’ and Radical Scholarship”, African Studies Review, Vol. 32, No. 3, 1989; Freund,
Bill, “Radical History Writing and the South African Context”, South African Historical
Journal, Vol. 24, pp. 154–160, 1990; Deacon, Roger A., “Hegemony, Essentialism
and Radical History in South Africa”, South African Historical Journal, Vol. 24,
pp. 166–184.
60. Adam, Heribert, “Predicaments and Options of Critical Intellectuals at South African
Universities”, in van den Berghe (ed.), The Liberal Dilemma in South Africa, New
York, 1979; Rainer Erkens, F. van Zyl Slabbert, and Donald Woods, “South Africa,
a Change for Liberalism?”, papers presented during a seminar of the Friedrich Naumann
Foundation in December 1983, Liberal Verlag, Sankt Augustin, 1985.
61. Wentzel, Jill, The Liberal Slideaway, South African Institute of Race Relations,
Johannesburg, 1995. Also, John Kane-Berman’s late writings.
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