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On the one hand, he has the potential to be one of the greatest African leaders, and a true visionary for South Africa. On the other, he seems guarded, held back by who knows what. Paradoxically, Mbeki should realise that his success lies in letting others take ownership of his agenda. Otherwise, we will continue to get flashes of brilliance only – like we did this time around.

      The potential for Thabo’s ‘renaissance’

      Mail & Guardian, 2–8 July 1999

      ‘Where are the black intellectuals?’, Thabo Mbeki has often asked. I would urge him to consider an even larger and prior question: where is the intellectual environment required for the emergence of those intellectuals?

      It is a known fact that black people have historically been ex­cluded from what I have previously called the ‘knowledge–ideas complex’. It consists of interlocking, mutually supportive and impenetrable relationships among white intellectuals, in fields ranging from literary criticism to urban planning. Because of their strategic position at the cusp of intellectual and cultural pro­duction, white intellectuals have been able to disproportionately project their values on to our public morality and public policies. Our constitution, bill of rights, and the rules and rituals of polit­i­cal decision-making have a liberal western outlook. Happily, the values of justice and fairness enshrined in the constitution co­incide with the values of most South Africans.

      But why should black people continue to be coincidental in shap­ing the national political culture? Are there ways of increas­ing black participation in its making? Moving from a procedural democracy comprising western-type institutions to a more sub­stan­tive democracy might create new spaces for black intellec­tuals. Creating a proper intellectual environment is therefore inextric­ably tied to a larger question: where is the social vision that chal­lenges intellectuals to bring out the best in them? How might we then begin to facilitate greater black intellectual participation in the endeavour of nation-building?

      Let’s start with the question of a social vision, and end with some ideas on what we can do about the intellectual environ­ment. The absence of a social vision has undermined black intel­­lectual participation in public life in many ways. For example, during our recent elections, I noticed a racial division of labour in the public discourse. White political parties and intellectuals dominated the discussion of broader democratic values and prin­­ciples. In the words of my fellow columnist Steven Friedman, the right issues were being raised by the wrong people. However dubious their motivations were for opposing an ANC two-thirds majority, their language was framed in terms of democratic prin­­ciples. Black parties and intellectuals, on the other hand, seemed stuck in the discourse of delivery, as if they had become more knowledgeable about building houses than building nations.

      This is not to say that there isn’t a tiny minority of black scho­lars working on issues of democracy, but rather to ask whether we have anything resembling the substantive society-wide dis­cus­sions that took place among the French philosophes in the 18th century; in the 13 states of pre-independence United States; in India in the 1950s; and in South Africa itself during the struggle against apartheid.

      All of that energy has dissipated under the weight of post-apartheid technocracy and materialism. Winning government contracts has become more important than reading and writing – the essence of the intellectual function.

      Getting to the intellectual environment, I am struck by the ab­sence of institutions in which people of ideas can get together to engage each other and the public on the democratic experience. We talk to each other only through newspapers, radio, tele­vision and, for the lucky few, the Internet. The ideas that float in the public domain are never followed up and interrogated in any in-depth manner with members of the public. If South Africa is ever going to be the winning nation that Mbeki talks about, we have to know how to become a learning society first – in the manner that organisational gurus talk about learning organisations.

      One practical suggestion would be to introduce topics such as nation-building and pluralism in the agendas of existing com­mu­nity forums. Members of parliament could also use their con­stit­uency meetings to talk about issues that pertain to our identity as a nation. Something drastic should also be done about the state of university salaries; as long as universities remain underfunded, the perception will continue that the intellectual function is not a priority in our national development. Young people will continue to shun academic careers for as long as they see them as not pres­tigious or lucrative enough.

      Perhaps Mbeki and the minister of education, Kader Asmal, should have a tête-à-tête about how the state of the universities prevents the emergence of a black intellectual class – most of whose members do not have inheritances like their white coun­ter­parts. But being black is not a sufficient condition in and of itself for playing a progressive role in the articulation of a new national identity. Black intellectuals should learn some lessons from the negative example of black economic empowerment; we should avoid a situation where a group of self-anointed elites become the high priests of black intellectual life. Nor should we allow envy and petty jealousies – that great affliction of for­mer­ly oppressed people everywhere – to interfere with intellectual collaboration.

      One of the weirdest things I have heard is that there is a grow­ing divide in our intellectual community between those who have attended American and European universities and those who remained behind, or attended African universities. Seemingly, the latter are the true intellectual arbiters of the African expe­ri­ence, while the former are pawns in a grand white scheme to deny Africa its true intellectuals. Rubbish; let’s just get on with it.

      We should also be careful that black self-determination does not turn into a blind black jingoism. The challenge is to make sure that a healthy black nationalism is not turned into a degen­erate anti-whiteism. People like Steve Biko and Robert Sobukwe were able to avoid that fate through their relationships with whites. We should challenge the dictionary-based, and therefore static, definitions of who Africans are that have come from some black scholars. We need definitions that evolve and express our chang­ing circumstances, aspirations, and position in the world.

      It is that improvisational approach to identity that made it pos­sible for Biko and his black consciousness comrades to redefine blackness to include coloureds and Indians. That is why Mal­colm X came back from Mecca a changed man – less essential­is­tic about the white man as the ‘devil’. Just as we speak of Arabian-Africans like Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, we should be able to talk of Jewish-Africans, Italian-Africans, or whatever. Improvisa­tion, adaptation, hospitality, generosity and inclusion are at the heart of the African personality, encapsulated in the notion of Ubuntu. Black intellectuals have the potential to bring those values to bear on the process of generating a new social vision for South Africa. But that’s all it is at this point: a potential.

      Mbeki, visionary at large, is the manager at home

      Sunday Independent, 6 February 2000

      In his seminal article ‘Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?’, the Harvard University leadership guru Abe Zaleznik argues that managers and leaders are indeed different kinds of personalities. Managers value stability, predictability, efficiency, and rational control over organisational processes. They are infatuated with strategy. Leaders, on the other hand, are in a constant process of what Joseph Schumpeter called ‘creative destruc­tion’. In fact, leadership arises out of the ability to mobilise people around what may initially seem to be hopeless causes.

      While managers rely on mounds of strategy manuals to guide their action, leaders inspire change through sheer talent, imagi­nation, intuition, and effective relationships with followers. Draw­ing on William James’s classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), Zaleznik describes managers as once-born people for their reluctance to venture beyond inherited patterns, and leaders as twice-born people for their restless search for change. To paraphrase the late Robert Kennedy, managers see things as they are, and ask why; leaders see things as they never were, and ask why not.

      President Thabo Mbeki possesses both leadership and man­agerial qualities, but displays them at different levels. He has been a visionary leader on the global stage. South Africa and the African continent

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