Archie Mafeje: His Intellectual Legacy

“A GIANT has moved on.”

This is how Professor Adebayo Olukoshi at Codesria, in Senegal, paid tribute to Archie Mafeje recently. He died on March 28 in Pretoria.I take this to mean that Mafeje didn’t just pass away but has passed on his extraordinary knowledge, his commitment to Pan-Africanism, his believe in the centrality of ideas and his uncompromising support to the downtrodden in our societies, to a new generation of scholars and activists to carry on the mantle.I personally sat at the feet of this great scholar at the American University in Cairo (AUC).But we continued to interact even after my student days especially during my stints at both SAPES Trust in Harare and at Unam were he was instrumental in setting up the Multi-Disciplinary Research Centre.I was, therefore, privileged to know this towering figure personally.He was an engaging teacher and first-rate debater.Someone who hardly spoke from prepared notes whether in class, seminar or a conference – he would usually just sit there, hold his head and speak off the cuff.And he rarely gave written exams.Instead he would insist on an essay.I recall during my first semester at AUC, the first assignment he gave me was to write an essay on ‘Cattle and Class in Botswana’.Which I thought was a bit too much to ask from a recent high school graduate.He was lenient though, and I managed to scrape together a C grade.Later on, I came to understand where he was coming from – because he was not just a teacher but also a very prolific academic writer and he wanted others to write and write well.He was the author of many books, monographs, chapters in books and articles both popular and academic – including his frequently cited article on: ‘The Ideology of Tribalism’.Thus I cannot agree more with Olukoshi when he says: Archie Mafeje was the quintessential person of science and one of the most versatile, extraordinary minds to emerge from Africa was, in his days, a living legend in every sense.His knowledge was a vast as his grasp of issues – almost all issues – was breathtaking”.One of Mafeje’s undergraduate degrees at the University of Cape Town was in science.The other, in the social sciences as was his Masters (cum laude), both from UCT.He obtained his PhD in Anthropology and Rural Sociology from Cambridge University in 1966.That’s why it’s so difficult to pigeonhole him into a specific discipline.And as Olukoshi correctly points out: His discourses transcended disciplinary boundaries and were characterised by a spirit of combative engagement underpinned by a commitment to social transformation.”The Institute of Social Studies, in The Hague, where he was first appointed Professor of Anthropology and Sociology in his mid-30s, has this to say about Mafeje: “He was one of the outstanding social scientists whom the ISS has been honoured to have counted on its staff.A social scientist at heart, he broke through traditional disciplinary lines.”C.Wright Mills once wrote that never in human history had people been so much in need of “the sociological imagination” – a perspective on the world that would allow them to make sense of the relationship between the personal and the public.Mills, a radical American sociologist, was of an earlier generation than Mafeje.Like Mills, however, Mafeje always wanted to provide a social rudder and an intellectual compass.That is the project that Mafeje devoted his entire life to – to help people understand their own condition better as a means of fighting back the (neo) colonial institutions and structures that have marginalised them economically and disenfranchised them politically.Mafeje says: democracy in the present African conditions can only refer to two things: First, the extent to which the people’s will enters decisions which will affect their life chances; and second, the extent to which their means of livelihood are guaranteed.In political terms the first demand does not suggest capture of “state power” by the people but it does imply ascendancy to state power by a national democratic alliance in which the popular classes hold the balance of power.The second demand implies equitable distribution of resources.Neither liberal democracy, imposed “multi-partyism” nor “market forces” can guarantee these two conditions.It transpires, therefore, that the issue is neither liberal nor “compradorial” democracy but social democracy.”On empire, he would write: “In an era of new neo-liberalism since the collapse of Soviet ‘socialism’, it is fashionable to confess the social injustices of the past while upholding the principles and prescriptions of neo-classical economic orthodoxy.Euphemisms such as ‘globalisation’ and the ‘free market’ have effectively put an ideological ban on discussions about imperialism and capitalist exploitation.”Mafeje was intellectually controversial.And this attracted him a lot of opposition both politically and intellectually.When he was appointed as Senior Lecturer at UCT in 1968, the apartheid government refused to allow him back into the country and put pressure on UCT not to go ahead with the appointment.Consequently, students from UCT, Wits, Rhodes and Natal went on protest – but in vain.In 2003, UCT Council decided to offer him a formal apology.Almost 30 years later, the same scenario played itself out, this time subtly and under different set of conditions, at the University of Namibia.To borrow from Olukoshi again: “The power of his pen and the passion of his interventions always went hand-in-hand with a uniquely polemical style that was hardly meant for those who were not sure-footed in their scholarship.”Those who crossed his path such as the Harvard University’s Anthropologist Sally Falk Moore and Prof Ali Mazrui, among others, know that.”If Prof Mazrui is the leading African scholar, who is he leading and where to?” he one asked.Columbia University Professor, Mahmood Mamdani, has called for the memorialisation of Mafeje by making his work more accessible, especially to younger scholars.The committed radical and deconstructionist of colonial anthropology is no more.But his legacy lives on.He died on March 28 in Pretoria.I take this to mean that Mafeje didn’t just pass away but has passed on his extraordinary knowledge, his commitment to Pan-Africanism, his believe in the centrality of ideas and his uncompromising support to the downtrodden in our societies, to a new generation of scholars and activists to carry on the mantle.I personally sat at the feet of this great scholar at the American University in Cairo (AUC).But we continued to interact even after my student days especially during my stints at both SAPES Trust in Harare and at Unam were he was instrumental in setting up the Multi-Disciplinary Research Centre.I was, therefore, privileged to know this towering figure personally.He was an engaging teacher and first-rate debater.Someone who hardly spoke from prepared notes whether in class, seminar or a conference – he would usually just sit there, hold his head and speak off the cuff.And he rarely gave written exams.Instead he would insist on an essay.I recall during my first semester at AUC, the first assignment he gave me was to write an essay on ‘Cattle and Class in Botswana’.Which I thought was a bit too much to ask from a recent high school graduate.He was lenient though, and I managed to scrape together a C grade.Later on, I came to understand where he was coming from – because he was not just a teacher but also a very prolific academic writer and he wanted others to write and write well.He was the author of many books, monographs, chapters in books and articles both popular and academic – including his frequently cited article on: ‘The Ideology of Tribalism’.Thus I cannot agree more with Olukoshi when he says: Archie Mafeje was the quintessential person of science and one of the most versatile, extraordinary minds to emerge from Africa was, in his days, a living legend in every sense.His knowledge was a vast as his grasp of issues – almost all issues – was breathtaking”.One of Mafeje’s undergraduate degrees at the University of Cape Town was in science.The other, in the social sciences as was his Masters (cum laude), both from UCT.He obtained his PhD in Anthropology and Rural Sociology from Cambridge University in 1966.That’s why it’s so difficult to pigeonhole him into a specific discipline.And as Olukoshi correctly points out: His discourses transcended disciplinary boundaries and were characterised by a spirit of combative engagement underpinned by a commitment to social transformation.”The Institute of Social Studies, in The Hague, where he was first appointed Professor of Anthropology and Sociology in his mid-30s, has this to say about Mafeje: “He was one of the outstanding social scientists whom the ISS has been honoured to have counted on its staff.A social scientist at heart, he broke through traditional disciplinary lines.”C.Wright Mills once wrote that never in human history had people been so much in need of “the sociological imagination” – a perspective on the world that would allow them to make sense of the relationship between the personal and the public.Mills, a radical American sociologist, was of an earlier generation than Mafeje.Like Mills, however, Mafeje always wanted to provide a social rudder and an intellectual compass.That is the project that Mafeje devoted his entire life to – to help people understand their own condition better as a means of fighting back the (neo) colonial institutions and structures that have marginalised them economically and disenfranchised them politically.Mafeje says: democracy in the present African conditions can only refer to two things: First, the extent to which the people’s will enters decisions which will affect their life chances; and second, the extent to which their means of livelihood are guaranteed.In political terms the first demand does not suggest capture of “state power” by the people but it does imply ascendancy to state power by a national democratic alliance in which the popular classes hold the balance of power.The second demand implies equitable distribution of resources.Neither liberal democracy, imposed “multi-partyism” nor “market forces” can guarantee these two conditions.It transpires, therefore, that the issue is neither liberal nor “compradorial” democracy but social democracy.”On empire, he would write: “In an era of new neo-liberalism since the collapse of Soviet ‘socialism’, it is fashionable to confess the social injustices of the past while upholding the principles and prescriptions of neo-classical economic orthodoxy.Euphemisms such as ‘globalisation’ and the ‘free market’ have effectively put an ideological ban on discussions about imperialism and capitalist exploitation.”Mafeje was intellectually controversial.And this attracted him a lot of opposition both politically and intellectually.When he was appointed as Senior Lecturer at UCT in 1968, the apartheid government refused to allow him back into the country and put pressure on UCT not to go ahead with the appointment.Consequently, students from UCT, Wits, Rhodes and Natal went on protest – but in vain.In 2003, UCT Council decided to offer him a formal apology.Almost 30 years later, the same scenario played itself out, this time subtly and under different set of conditions, at the University of Namibia.To borrow from Olukoshi again: “The power of his pen and the passion of his interventions always went hand-in-hand with a uniquely polemical style that was hardly meant for those who were not sure-footed in their scholarship.”Those who crossed his path such as the Harvard University’s Anthropologist Sally Falk Moore and Prof Ali Mazrui, among others, know that.”If Prof Mazrui is the leading African scholar, who is he leading and where to?” he one asked.Columbia University Professor, Mahmood Mamdani, has called for the memorialisation of Mafeje by making his work more accessible, especially to younger scholars.The committed radical and deconstructionist of colonial anthropology is no more.But his legacy lives on.