On Scholars and Social Commitment

THIS essay argues for the need of a permissive postcolonial socio-political system allowing for dissenting views, including manifestations of critical loyalty through the articulation of dissenting views, and concludes with an appeal to opt for such a socio-political commitment.

The virtues advocated are considered as ingredients in the promotion of a human-rights-focused and development-centred culture conducive to socio-political as well as economic progress of the people. This view follows the notion advocated by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.In the introduction to his collection of lectures on ‘Development as Freedom’ he maintains: “Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means”.He points out that freedoms of different kinds are linked with one another.They include political freedoms, social opportunities, and access to economic resources.Political regimes in many of the African societies lack recognition of such contributing factors or even deny them.Instead, all too often, the political environment has militated against freedom of thought and expression.HONESTY AND BETRAYAL “Where there’s no fight for it there’s no freedom.What is it Spinoza says? If the state acts in ways that are abhorrent to human nature it’s the lesser evil to destroy it.”These were the thoughts of Yakov Bok, the protagonist of Bernard Malamud’s novel ‘The Fixer’, while being carried to his bitterly fought trial to prove his innocence after a long and excessive ordeal under torture and dehumanisation in the prisons of Czarist Russia.As a victim of anti-Semitic hatred, he refuses to compromise with a regime that violates his human dignity and self-respect, but even more so his profound sense of justice.Malamud created his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as a monument to civil disobedience, guided and motivated by a strong belief in humanism.Those in control over social power have often considered the Yakov Boks of this world as a threat to their hegemonic rule, not in their individual capacity but mainly reduced to the anonymity of faceless ‘masses’ representing social movements.In contrast to this tendency towards an impersonal reduction, those considered as scholars and intellectuals are often perceived as a danger on the mere grounds of their individual capacities.They are viewed as individual ‘risks’ in the sense of being potential opinion-leaders able to contribute to, if not actively shape, public opinion and debate.It would be a gross misunderstanding, however, to conclude that scholars and intellectuals are by nature or preference a critical counterweight to authoritarian or totalitarian rule or any other forms of abuse of power.Instead, the ‘intelligentsia’ has all too often been of strategic relevance in supporting such power structures for the sake of their own benefits.Members of an educated elite have frequently been advocates and protagonists, if not architects and masterminds, of oppressive structures, and many more have even been among the silent supporters of such systems and their devastating results.To be educated does by no means protect one from turning into an ideologue or a perpetrator of crimes against humanity of the worst kind.Far from being noble creatures, scholars and intellectuals are often tempted to serve political aims for their own gains.Honesty and integrity, supposed to be among the core values of intellectually ethical behaviour, are abandoned or neglected for more profane rewards than respect.Those who uphold their principles despite lack of material recognition are a rare species.Opportunism reigns.This is also true for the postcolonial era of southern African societies, some of which had to fight long and bitter wars of liberation at high costs to achieve sovereignty – only to deny their citizens the right to practise freedom in a democratically comprehensive way.Decolonisation processes all too often displayed cases of a striking metamorphosis by individuals.Being social revolutionaries initially, claiming to represent the ‘povo’ or masses, they ended up as relatively high-profile representatives of a postcolonial establishment placing their own gains above earlier principles.These members of a new elite have become part and parcel of a set of deep-rooted anachronistic values within a system of former liberation movements now in power.After seizing legitimate political control over the state, they turned their liberating politics of anti-colonial resistance into oppressive tools under the guise of pseudo-revolutionary slogans.Their “talk left, act right” seeks to cover the true motive of aiming to occupy the political commanding heights of society against all odds – preferably forever – at the expense of the public interest they claim to represent in the light of deteriorating socio-economic living conditions for the once colonised, now hardly liberated (and anything but emancipated) majority.THE STRUGGLE WITHIN THE STRUGGLE Scholars in politics include all too often the prototype of the sell-out intellectuals already lambasted by Frantz Fanon for their role in the decolonisation processes of the late 1950s, whom he accused of joining the liberation movement only to secure a slice of the cake shared after independence among those in control of the party in power.Almost half a century ago, the Martinique-born psychiatrist and political revolutionary, who had joined the Algerian liberation struggle, presciently described in his manifesto ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ the internal contradictions and limits to emancipation in anti-colonial resistance and organised liberation movements.Writing at a time when the Algerian war of liberation had not even ended, Fanon prophesied the abuse of government power after attainment of independence and in the wake of establishing a one-party state.In a chapter entitled ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ he predicted that the state, which by its robustness and at the same time its restraint should convey trust and calm, foists itself on people in a spectacular way, makes a big show of itself, harasses and mistreats the citizens and by this means shows that they are in permanent danger.The growing blending of party, government and state among the liberation movements in power indicates a very similar development in the post-apartheid era.The specific constellation based on the use of force to gain liberation from undemocratic and repressive conditions like those that prevailed in the colonial societies of southern Africa was hardly favourable to the durable strengthening of humanitarian values and norms.As part of abolishing anachronistic, degrading systems of rule it created new challenges on the difficult path to establishing sound and robust egalitarian structures and institutions, and in particular to promoting democratically-minded people.But independence without true democracy is still far from being liberation.CRITICISM AS LOYALTY The governments of postcolonial states in former settler societies such as Namibia and South Africa are, in contrast to the previous minority regimes broadly legitimate.Hence there is no justification for a right to generalised resistance to the state authorities as implied in the arguments concerning the colonial order.Notwithstanding this necessary clarification, a similar guiding principle of legitimate dissent from the state authorities’ controlled and enforced views should be advocated for an ethically motivated civic behaviour in the postcolonial societies of today.In the context of a political culture committed to the values and virtues of pluralism in a liberal democracy, critical voices should not automatically be associated with disloyalty to the existing system.After all, this has been one of the aims of a struggle against the totalitarian regimes previously in place – to abandon the intolerant authoritarianism shaping the colonial societies under minority rule and to allow for a variety of views.Unfortunately, this seems not to be the common and accepted understanding of many of those in control of political power in post-apartheid societies, who seem to feel mainly “accountable to themselves”, as the scholar Ken Good phrased it.He had spent most of his academic life in Southern Africa until he was – 72 years of age and after lecturing 15 years on the campus of the University of Botswana – declared a prohibited immigrant by the Head of State Festus Mogae, allegedly for his criticism of the government’s policy of forced removal imposed on the Bushmen.While most of the existing political orders are able to claim – in contrast to the preceding minority regimes – a more or less democratic legitimacy, they often fail to recognise the difference between its formal and moral dimensions.In other words: the mere fact that one is formally entitled to take certain decisions and actions on behalf of others without further consultation on the basis of (at times dubious) election results, does not necessarily and always justify such decisions or actions from a moral or ethical point of view.Rapid social transitions have an impact on those involved in the transformation, which affects them in a direct way.Once moving into the seats of power, the effects of being alienated from people at the grassroots whom political office bearers claim to have represented since the ‘struggle days’, should not be underestimated.It requires a high degree of (self-)critical reflection and assessment to protect oneself from not being moved further and further away from ‘the masses’.As part of the historical legacy, those who were fighting against institutionalised discrimination and oppression under totalitarian structured societies tend to resort to similar mechanisms of control once in power themselves.They are tempted to marginalise those who beg to differ or are perceived as different from the accepted norms under the newly imposed discourse of nation building.CHOICES FOR COMMITMENT As scholars and intellectuals we have socio-political choices to make.We have to decide if we are merely guided by our petty bourgeois class interests to enhance our relative privileges in a given power structure and social hierarchy by siding with those executing social control and maintaining economic and/or political power within the grossly unequal societies of southern Africa.Alternatively, we can opt for committing class suicide as Amilcar Cabral had suggested (and practised), although this sounds rather crude (and highly idealistic) in the era of postcolonial re-established social hierarchies.Instead, demanding the right to engage in social struggles as academics might be a more realistic point of departure – and difficult enough to practise.Like any other members of society, scholars and intellectuals are faced with bigger choices.These are about more than how best to ensure their narrowly defined self-interest of academic freedom in cosy niches of institutions of higher learning.Academic freedom in its true, wider sense is related to and is about fundamental aspects of human rights and development.And it’s up to us, if we accept the challenge and decide to fight for such interlinked goals.The question remains: Which side are we on? * Dr.Henning Melber was Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (Nepru) in Windhoek (1992-2000) and Research Director of The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden (2000-2006), where he is now the Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjoeld Foundation.This view follows the notion advocated by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.In the introduction to his collection of lectures on ‘Development as Freedom’ he maintains: “Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means”.He points out that freedoms of different kinds are linked with one another.They include political freedoms, social opportunities, and access to economic resources.Political regimes in many of the African societies lack recognition of such contributing factors or even deny them.Instead, all too often, the political environment has militated against freedom of thought and expression.HONESTY AND BETRAYAL “Where there’s no fight for it there’s no freedom.What is it Spinoza says? If the state acts in ways that are abhorrent to human nature it’s the lesser evil to destroy it.”These were the thoughts of Yakov Bok, the protagonist of Bernard Malamud’s novel ‘The Fixer’, while being carried to his bitterly fought trial to prove his innocence after a long and excessive ordeal under torture and dehumanisation in the prisons of Czarist Russia.As a victim of anti-Semitic hatred, he refuses to compromise with a regime that violates his human dignity and self-respect, but even more so his profound sense of justice.Malamud created his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as a monument to civil disobedience, guided and motivated by a strong belief in humanism.Those in control over social power have often considered the Yakov Boks of this world as a threat to their hegemonic rule, not in their individual capacity but mainly reduced to the anonymity of faceless ‘masses’ representing social movements.In contrast to this tendency towards an impersonal reduction, those considered as scholars and intellectuals are often perceived as a danger on the mere grounds of their individual capacities.They are viewed as individual ‘risks’ in the sense of being potential opinion-leaders able to contribute to, if not actively shape, public opinion and debate.It would be a gross misunderstanding, however, to conclude that scholars and intellectuals are by nature or preference a critical counterweight to authoritarian or totalitarian rule or any other forms of abuse of power.Instead, the ‘intelligentsia’ has all too often been of strategic relevance in supporting such power structures for the sake of their own benefits.Members of an educated elite have frequently been advocates and protagonists, if not architects and masterminds, of oppressive structures, and many more have even been among the silent supporters of such systems and their devastating results.To be educated does by no means protect one from turning into an ideologue or a perpetrator of crimes against humanity of the worst kind.Far from being noble creatures, scholars and intellectuals are often tempted to serve political aims for their own gains.Honesty and integrity, supposed to be among the core values of intellectually ethical behaviour, are abandoned or neglected for more profane rewards than respect.Those who uphold their principles despite lack of material recognition are a rare species.Opportunism reigns.This is also true for the postcolonial era of southern African societies, some of which had to fight long and bitter wars of liberation at high costs to achieve sovereignty – only to deny their citizens the right to practise freedom in a democratically comprehensive way.Decolonisation processes all too often displayed cases of a striking metamorphosis by individuals.Being social revolutionaries initially, claiming to represent the ‘povo’ or masses, they ended up as relatively high-profile representatives of a postcolonial establishment placing their own gains above earlier principles.These members of a new elite have become part and parcel of a set of deep-rooted anachronistic values within a system of former liberation movements now in power.After seizing legitimate political control over the state, they turned their liberating politics of anti-colonial resistance into oppressive tools under the guise of pseudo-revolutionary slogans.Their “talk left, act right” seeks to cover the true motive of aiming to occupy the political commanding heights of society against all odds – preferably forever – at the expense of the public interest they claim to represent in the light of deteriorating socio-economic living conditions for the once colonised, now hardly liberated (and anything but emancipated) majority.THE STRUGGLE WITHIN THE STRUGGLE Scholars in politics include all too often the prototype of the sell-out intellectuals already lambasted by Frantz Fanon for their role in the decolonisation processes of the late 1950s, whom he accused of joining the liberation movement only to secure a slice of the cake shared after independence among those in control of the party in power.Almost half a century ago, the Martinique-born psychiatrist and political revolutionary, who had joined the Algerian liberation struggle, presciently described in his manifesto ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ the internal contradictions and limits to emancipation in anti-colonial resistance and organised liberation movements.Writing at a time when the Algerian war of liberation had not even ended, Fanon prophesied the abuse of government power after attainment of independence and in the wake of establishing a one-party state.In a chapter entitled ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ he predicted that the state, which by its robustness and at the same time its restraint should convey trust and calm, foists itself on people in a spectacular way, makes a big show of itself, harasses and mistreats the citizens and by this means shows that they are in permanent danger.The growing blending of party, government and state among the liberation movements in power indicates a very similar development in the post-apartheid era.The specific constellation based on the use of force to gain liberation from undemocratic and repressive conditions like those that prevailed in the colonial societies of southern Africa was hardly favourable to the durable strengthening of humanitarian values and norms.As part of abolishing anachronistic, degrading systems of rule it created new challenges on the difficult path to establishing sound and robust egalitarian structures and institutions, and in particular to promoting democratically-minded people.But independence without true democracy is still far from being liberation. CRITICISM AS LOYALTY The governments of postcolonial states in former settler societies such as Namibia and South Africa are, in contrast to the previous minority regimes broadly legitimate.Hence there is no justification for a right to generalised resistance to the state authorities as implied in the arguments concerning the colonial order.Notwithstanding this necessary clarification, a similar guiding principle of legitimate dissent from the state authorities’ controlled and enforced views should be advocated for an ethically motivated civic behaviour in the postcolonial societies of today.In the context of a political culture committed to the values and virtues of pluralism in a liberal democracy, critical voices should not automatically be associated with disloyalty to the existing system.After all, this has been one of the aims of a struggle against the totalitarian regimes previously in place – to abandon the intolerant authoritarianism shaping the colonial societies under minority rule and to allow for a variety of views.Unfortunately, this seems not to be the common and accepted understanding of many of those in control of political power in post-apartheid societies, who seem to feel mainly “accountable to themselves”, as the scholar Ken Good phrased it.He had spent most of his academic life in Southern Africa until he was – 72 years of age and after lecturing 15 years on the campus of the University of Botswana – declared a prohibited immigrant by the Head of State Festus Mogae, allegedly for his criticism of the government’s policy of forced removal imposed on the Bushmen.While most of the existing political orders are able to claim – in contrast to the preceding minority regimes – a more or less democratic legitimacy, they often fail to recognise the difference between its formal and moral dimensions.In other words: the mere fact that one is formally entitled to take certain decisions and actions on behalf of others without further consultation on the basis of (at times dubious) election results, does not necessarily and always justify such decisions or actions from a moral or ethical point of view.Rapid social transitions have an impact on those involved in the transformation, which affects them in a direct way.Once moving into the seats of power, the effects of being alienated from people at the grassroots whom political office bearers claim to have represented since the ‘struggle days’, should not be underestimated.It requires a high degree of (self-)critical reflection and assessment to protect oneself from not being moved further and further away from ‘the masses’.As part of the historical legacy, those who were fighting against institutionalised discrimination and oppression under totalitarian structured societies tend to resort to similar mechanisms of control once in power themselves.They are tempted to marginalise those who beg to differ or are perceived as different from the accepted norms under the newly imposed discourse of nation building. CHOICES FOR COMMITMENT As scholars and intellectuals we have socio-political choices to make.We have to decide if we are merely guided by our petty bourgeois class interests to enhance our relative privileges in a given power structure and social hierarchy by siding with those executing social control and maintaining economic and/or political power within the grossly unequal societies of southern Africa.Alternatively, we can opt for committing class suicide as Amilcar Cabral had suggested (and practised), although this sounds rather crude (and highly idealistic) in the era of postcolonial re-established social hierarchies.Instead, demanding the right to engage in social struggles as academics might be a more realistic point of departure – and difficult enough to practise.Like any other members of society, scholars and intellectuals are faced with bigger choices.These are about more than how best to ensure their narrowly defined self-interest of academic freedom in cosy niches of institutions of higher learning.Academic freedom in its true, wider sense is related to and is about fundamental aspects of human rights and development.And it’s up to us, if we accept the challenge and decide to fight for such interlinked goals.The question remains: Which side are we on? * Dr.Henning Melber was Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (Nepru) in Windhoek (1992-2000) and Research Director of The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden (2000-2006), where he is now the Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjoeld Foundation.