State+and+intellectuals+in+lethal+dance,+Robert+Greig,+Sindy

Sunday Independent, Johannesburg, May 14, 2006 //Edition 1//
=State engages intellectuals in a dance of lethal intimacy=


 * Robert Greig**

'When I hear the word 'culture', I reach for my revolver," is a remark famously attributed to various Nazis - Goebbels, Goering and Rohm. It characterises the aggression of many politicians to intellectuals and ideas generally.

Equally, intellectuals tend to forget that power grows from the barrel of a gun. Nevertheless, politicians seek the endorsement of good minds and intellectuals allow their brains to melt away in the glow of power. Between the two is a dance of lethal intimacy.

Last week, for two days, intellectuals chosen by the government met to discuss their future contribution to government. Their agenda involved such topics are decolonising the culture of South Africa; "enhancing the self-affirmation" of citizens; and protecting and promoting indigenous languages.

They also got into moral regeneration - an area recently vacated by a former deputy president found not guilty of rape and facing corruption charges - the one who keeps asking to be given "my machine gun". The assembled were not merely intellectuals: they were black intellectuals; their gathering was entitled "the Native Club".

This, apparently, elicited giggles. Should it have? "Native" implies that the rest are … settlers, perhaps? Do the vice-chancellors and think-tank fillers believe that? Do they think that their government should identify itself with implicit stigmatisation? Perhaps "native" alludes to the status of black people in the 1950s and before, a term habitually used by dominant whites to describe the contents of the servants' quarters or farm kraals. Or to the Native Representative Council, that "toy telephone" of 1936?

In societies, like meets like: women meet without men, and Muslims, Jews, bankers and golfers meet sans the outsiders whose presence would divert energy. Gatherings of those of like mind, background, experience or interest are normal and unexceptionable just as long as they're not conspiring to rub out the group next door or want the government of the people, by the people, to foot the bill for the time.

That's one problem with the Native Club: the government is using the taxes of the excluded settlers, Muslims, the Jews, the golfers, the white intellectuals - to foot the cost of consciousness-raising among black intellectuals. Could it be that the government needs to buy the latter but not the former?

It's racial discrimination and it gives one racial group privileged access to government - and the invitation to influence policy. The natives get the goodies; the rest - the niggers - stay outside.

This may sound like an objection to affirmative action. Black intellectuals were - and are - damaged and disadvantaged by historical military defeat, followed by varieties of systemic race discrimination.

Intellectuals need books, institutions, receptive outlets, time and space in which to think, and freedom and opportunity to meet like - and unlike - minds. All previous regimes have denied these on racial grounds to black people. The social position of black intellectuals is not that of whites. Black intellectuals have had to work harder.

Established intellectuals tend to be of the middle class. Those of the Native Club have transcended or are transcending their histories. They are not a shoeless peasantry. Most probably have well-paid jobs, are in control of their job security and have access to materials and peer recognition. Materially, they don't need government handouts.

The Native Club was a presidential initiative favouring a racial sub-group of a class. The favouring may have had the aim of co-opting people likely to be affronted by aspects of the government's performance. (In the West, at least, middle-class intellectuals apply matches to revolutionary tinder. In Africa, the same job tends to be done by the military, but the Nobel prize winning poet of Nigeria, Wole Soyinka, who was imprisoned, might have another take on intellectuals in Africa.)

The Democratic Alliance's Tony Leon sees the Native Club as a manifestation of ANC centralisation in what the kindly might call the nanny state and the critical more obvious names like control-freakery. You don't have to regulate to control: you can also flatter, seduce and co-opt, you can divide and rule, racially as in this case, and this may be behind the Native Club.

The initiative was cheer-led by Pallo Jordan, the minister of arts and culture - the one habitually referred to, in awed tones, as a "real intellectual" - and by a bevy of compliant institutions whose officials' salaries are in some cases paid for by non-black taxpayers: the Centre for Policy Studies; the Institute for Global Dialogue; the Africa Institute of South Africa.

Racism in government, at variance with the ideals of the constitution, is probably as inevitable as racism in daily life, if less acceptable because governments represent the whole. In the arts alone, for example, black journalists have got exclusive briefings and train rides; black artists have been flown to Brazil.

That racism is inevitable does not make it acceptable. The point is to avoid it. Archbishop Desmond Tutu rightly complained that whites don't wave the flags vigorously enough. This may also be because they're not given the flags to wave: the Native Clubs get them. For example, the Nationalists had great difficulty understanding why those excluded by virtue of race or language from volkspeel planning didn't throng to cheer the dancers.

It's easy - and correct - to damn the government's divisive actions. But black intellectuals who attended the Native Broederbond meeting largely bought into it. A generalisation: the outspoken or critical public black intellectual is unusual. Criticism behind the closed doors of the ANC meeting is not public criticism.

When governments seek out intellectuals, you can bet intellectuals will be compromised. What look like respectful consultations by governments tend to be calculating exercises in suborning.

The Kennedy era is probably the best example of the dance between those of unequal power which ends in tears. Many American intellectuals, drawn by the lustre of power and material influence, were committing what the French author, Julian Benda, called in 1927 "the treason of the clerks", meaning "the abdication of the role of intellectual" by intellectuals. They were invited to the White House, flattered by Jack and Jackie. Like our own president, Kennedy liked ideas; he was a published writer (Profiles in Courage).

Kennedy used intellectuals to window-dress Camelot. As president, he made the tough or seedy decisions; the intellectuals either lost their status as intellectuals or were soiled by fallout. Since this is South Africa, some zealot is bound to chirp: "But all this is Amerocentric. Africa is different." They may point to the philosopher-king, Leopold Senghor, the Senegalese president, of whom it is cruel but necessary to note that he retired not in Africa, but in France as a respected deputy of the former colonial power. Treason of the clerks has many nuances.

To mention this is not to suggest that intellectuals - who live by the life of the mind - or the intelligentsia - who live by the life of opinion - cannot survive in the practical world of power or fixing electric plugs. Some do, very well. But this inevitably means getting on with the job, as defined by others, and putting aside the free expression of ideas which may be critical.

The best and the brightest in government are not intellectuals. And the best and the brightest intellectuals won't remain intellectuals in government. Creative distance and even tension between those who create and implement programmes and those with ideas is useful to both. If the government were serious about intellectuals and respected them, it wouldn't be playing the race card or trying to enlist them. The black intellectuals of the Native Club should have seen this.


 * From: http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3245266**

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