WHAT IS THE ROLE OF AN INTELLECTUAL IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTEXT?

The usual attacks by Mr. Prince Mashele and the Midrand Group directed at Cde President Jacob Zuma of the ANC and Cde Gwede Mantashe, Secretary General of the ANC has prompted me to write this article. The ANC is finishing its centennial year this year and will be hosting an important conference as from 16 -20 December 2012. The policies that will be adopted there have the potential of deciding whether as a country, we will be able to resolve the triple crisis of unemployment, poverty and inequality or not.

The expectation from political activists and ordinary people is for the intellectuals to assist the ensuing analytical and political debate in the country. The expectation is for intellectuals to take the debates to a higher level. Let me make an example, when the man who is going to contest the incumbent President of the ANC disowned the Strategy and Tactics Document before this year's ANC Policy Conference, he said it has the "Marxist political jargon" and not even one intellectual has done a theoretical analysis of what he meant using the experience of other liberation movements post independence since the first independent country in Africa led by Nkrumah in Ghana. No one has tried to interrogate how does a leader sit in a meeting that present a concept paper on more than one occasion, does not strengthen the paper but instead seek to distance him from the paper?

In 2007, the ANC introduced a concept of a developmental state as a solution to the challenges facing the country and the continent. It has been 5 years now, no intellectual in the mould of Mr. Mashele and the Midrand Group has done any serious work on what kind of a developmental state can South Africa pursue. Instead of repeating attacks on President Zuma and General Secretary, which I think is not intellectual work at all, they should have compared the routes to economic development that were pursued by countries like South Korea and then attempt to influence the country to think about what kind of a developmental state will suit South Africa under the current global context.

The ANC introduced the second transition document, which the Deputy President of the ANC, think it has "Marxist jargon", what do they think as the self anointed intellectuals? The ANC Policy Conference decided that instead of a second transition, the country must rather have a radical second phase of the same transition that started in 1994 and wide ranging proposals have been made for the conference to ratify to reject, once again the intellectuals in our mist have not taking the proposal to a higher level about what can constitute the radical phase of transition. It is important to do this, in fact more important that casting aspersions on the leadership of the ANC.

Mr. Mashele, in the recent past wrote in one article that Cde Mantashe is not an intellectual? It left me thinking whether it is a duty of self anointed intellectuals like Mr. Mashele to pass any person, as an intellectual or not. I know that he works as a lecturer at Pretoria University, but I think he can pass his students only, not every South African. In my book, there are two streams of intellectuals, the academic and organic intellectuals and Cde Mantashe is more organic but with some form of academic achievements achieved during his term as a General Secretary of NUM. Cde President Zuma is an organic intellectual par excellence, even Deputy President Kgalema attested to this fact in the recent lecture of President Jacob Zuma in North West Province.

I want to end my article by reminding Mr. Mashele and the Midrand Group that there are three kinds of intellectuals;

1. Those that are famous during their lifetime as well as after their deaths

2. Known only to handful of intellectuals during their own lifetimes

3. Hardly well known during their lifetimes but became well known after their deaths

CEDRIC GINA, NUMSA President

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