The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

narratives and moral trajectories of the resistance biographies of Ngcuka and his accusers,
especially former Transport minister, ex‐Robben Islander and underground resistance
hero, Mac Maharaj, came under public, forensic scrutiny. At stake in these proceedings
was whether some people had “abuse[d] their past contribution to the attainment of
freedom as a licence for their own corruption and greed”. 161
Ngcuka may have been vindicated by the proceedings and Maharaj may have emerged
“with his own reputation in tatters”. 162 But these were not merely empirical issues that
could be decided through access to the surveillance and intelligence archives of the
apartheid state and the ANC. The Commission also marked more than merely a
watershed in South Africa’s democracy of the demise of the age of the “Old Activist” and
the rise of the age of the “New Mandarin”. 163 If it was possible for a biography of
resistance to take an immoral turn to corruption and even personal gain, then this also
raised questions about the very terms of that resistance biography, and how it came to be
narrated in the first place. The turmoil surrounding Allan Boesak’s status as struggle hero
had constituted a biographic crisis in South African public culture in which doubt began
to be raised that greatness was something inherent. Now the possibility of moral deviation
posed challenges for the discourse of the heroic leader and perhaps even for the morality
of political biography itself.
A biographic order
In spite of these biographic dilemmas and travails, the concepts of greatness and
exemplary lives had seemingly seeped into the very veins of South African state and
society since the 1990s. Heroic biography became part of the order of society, and
biographic concepts of history expressed themselves in virtually all spheres of life. The
rituals of state were conducted with keen attention to biographic memory. In February
2004, Thabo Mbeki walked “in the shadows of imposing posters of African greats and
161 Bulelani Ngcuka, Declaration to the Hefer Commission of Enquiry, 10 December 2003, reproduced
in the Sunday Times, 14 December 2003.
162 Anthony Holiday, ‘An affair of masks and shadows’, Cape Times, 14 January 2004.
163 Mark Gevisser, ‘Yesterday’s men grasp their last at Hefer’, Sunday Times, 7 December 2003.
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