Vincent van Breda
Twenty one years after the inauguration of our non-racial, non-sexist, liberal economic state of 1994, it may well be too early to begin to ask why political events post-1994 did not unfold as expected.
We are still in the middle of the transition from apartheid to non-racism as our core organising principle in our social experiment. The transition is messy to say the least. It may appear to some of us as if nothing has changed. For others it may even appear as if we have regressed.
Can we continue to hold on to the fundamentally legitimate expectation that life after apartheid ought to be better than life under apartheid?
In recent times attempts at explaining this nagging awareness that things did not unfold as expected included the introductory line “because we did not march into Pretoria as military victors”, completed with, “we had to compromise”.
On hearing this, I am always left with the questions: What were we required to compromise on? And, in taking this explanation as given, what does it mean for political activity going forward?
Were we – especially those politically active in the mid-eighties – expected to retire into private life and leave the political work to professional politicians in the centre of formal political formations who, it is suggested, know best how to do the politics of compromise?
Are we only to make a contribution when we are required to vote in elections? More importantly, can we continue to hold on to the fundamentally legitimate expectation, then, that life on the other side of apartheid was going to be the complete opposite of life under apartheid?
It is on this note that the perception that nothing has changed or that we have regressed are unacceptable options. What other ways of explanation can we draw on to make sense of our “required” political inactivity when political events post-1994 are unfolding in unexpected ways? Given our British colonial history, I suspected that an alternative way of making sense of our current place in our social experiment was to be found there.
I happened upon an “incident” that took place as far back as 1736 on the plains of Prestonpans, Falkirk, Derby, and, finally, Culloden Moor. Here the last of the rebellious Scottish Highlanders met their brutal end at the hands of the Duke of Cumberland of England.
It was to be the last time the Scots attempted to change their political lot through military means because their defeat was total.
We have come to know these events in recent years through the movie Brave Heart, with Mel Gibson in the blue-painted lead role.
According to the historian, George Macaulay Trevelyan (1945) the connection between the Scottish intellectual awakening and their complete military defeat at the hands of the Duke of Cumberland in April 1736 is an underemphasised fact of world history.
Another historian, Simon Schama, holds the position that the Scots in the university cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow turned to the world of ideas to reassert their national pride and the result was to “conquer” England through capitalism.
Within a generation of their defeat at Culloden Moor, Adam Smith (one example) with his Wealth of Nations (1776) presented a novel way in which exchange between large groups of people, “nations”, ought to be understood.
Instead of war and conquest he proposed the equalising influence of “the market” as the instrument that should regulate relationships between them.
This was the initial content of what we call today, in a common sense manner, the nebulous, impersonal, inhuman market, with its brutal and brutalising market forces, traders, raiders, robber barons and captains of industry.
This was what motivated the initial explorers of this new idea as they set about inventing, innovating, discovering, creating, developing and impacting on their environment with good effect - in the process creating things we take for granted in the world we live.
This idea led to a different revolution – the Industrial Revolution. This process of innovation is still in motion today. The Digital Revolution is a present-day manifestation of it. There is life on the other side of colonialism/apartheid.
We can continue to hold on to the fundamentally legitimate expectation of pre-1994 that life is going to be better after apartheid – but only if we invent, innovate, discover, create and develop it.
l Van Breda writes from Mitchells Plain in his personal capacity