Duke University Press Log

An Excerpt from Nelson Mandela’s “Statement from the Dock,” 1964

Nelson Mandela gave a stirring speech to the court before his conviction on charges of sabotage and treason in 1964. This excerpt from its conclusion appears in The South Africa Reader: History, Culture, Politics, edited by Clifton Crais and Thomas V. McClendon (Duke University Press, 2014). 

"How many more Sharpevilles would there be in the history of our country? And how many more Sharpevilles could the country stand without violence and terror becoming the order of the day? And what would happen to our people when that stage was reached? In the long run we felt certain we must succeed, but at what cost to ourselves and the rest of the country? And if this happened, how could black and white ever live together again in peace and harmony? These were the problems that faced us, and these were our decisions… .

I have always regarded myself, in the first place, as an African patriot. After all, I was born in Umtata, forty-six years ago. My guardian was my cousin, who was the acting paramount chief of Tembuland, and I am related both to the present paramount chief of Tembuland, Sabata Dalindyebo, and to Kaizer Matanzima, the Chief Minister of the Transkei. Today I am attracted by the idea of a classless society, an attraction which springs in part from Marxist reading and, in part, from my admiration of the structure and organization of early African societies in this country. The land, then the main means of production, belonged to the tribe. There were no rich or poor and there was no exploitation. It is true, as I have already stated, that I have been influenced by Marxist thought. But this is also true of many of the leaders of the new independent States. Such widely different persons as Gandhi, Nehru, Nkrumah, and Nasser all acknowledge this fact. We all accept the need for some form of socialism to enable our people to catch up with the advanced countries of this world and to overcome their legacy of extreme poverty. But this does not mean we are Marxists.

Mandela (center) in Algeria for military training. Courtesy of the Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives.

Indeed, for my own part, I believe that it is open to debate whether the Communist Party has any specific role to play at this particular stage of our political struggle. The basic task at the present moment is the removal of race discrimination and the attainment of democratic rights on the basis of the Freedom Charter. In so far as that Party furthers this task, I welcome its assistance. I realize that it is one of the means by which people of all races can be drawn into our struggle.

From my reading of Marxist literature and from conversations with Marxists, I have gained the impression that communists regard the parliamentary system of the West as undemocratic and reactionary. But, on the contrary, I am an admirer of such a system. The Magna Carta, the Petition of Rights, and the Bill of Rights are documents which are held in veneration by democrats throughout the world. I have great respect for British political institutions, and for the country’s system of justice. I regard the British Parliament as the most democratic institution in the world, and the independence and impartiality of its judiciary never fail to arouse my admiration. The American Congress, that country’s doctrine of separation of powers, as well as the independence of its judiciary, arouses in me similar sentiments. I have been influenced in my thinking by both West and East. All this has led me to feel that in my search for a political formula, I should be absolutely impartial and objective. I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism. I must leave myself free to borrow the best from the West and from the East… .

Our fight is against real, and not imaginary, hardships or, to use the language of the State Prosecutor, “so-called hardships.” Basically, we fight against two features which are the hallmarks of African life in South Africa and which are entrenched by legislation which we seek to have repealed. These features are poverty and lack of human dignity, and we do not need communists or so-called “agitators” to teach us about these things.

 South Africa is the richest country in Africa, and could be one of the richest countries in the world. But it is a land of extremes and remarkable contrasts. The whites enjoy what may well be the highest standard of living in the world, whilst Africans live in poverty and misery. Forty per cent of the Africans live in hopelessly overcrowded and, in some cases, drought-stricken Reserves, where soil erosion and the overworking of the soil makes it impossible for them to live properly off the land. Thirty per cent are labourers, labour tenants, and squatters on white farms and work and live under conditions similar to those of the serfs of the Middle Ages. The other 30 per cent live in towns where they have developed economic and social habits which bring them closer in many respects to white standards. Yet most Africans, even in this group, are impoverished by low incomes and high cost of living… .

The complaint of Africans, however, is not only that they are poor and the whites are rich, but that the laws which are made by the whites are designed to preserve this situation. There are two ways to break out of poverty. The first is by formal education, and the second is by the worker acquiring a greater skill at his work and thus higher wages. As far as Africans are concerned, both these avenues of advancement are deliberately curtailed by legislation… . Africans want to be paid a living wage. Africans want to perform work which they are capable of doing, and not work which the Government declares them to be capable of. Africans want to be allowed to live where they obtain work, and not be endorsed out of an area because they were not born there. Africans want to be allowed to own land in places where they work, and not to be obliged to live in rented houses which they can never call their own. Africans want to be part of the general population, and not confined to living in their own ghettoes. African men want to have their wives and children to live with them where they work, and not be forced into an unnatural existence in men’s hostels. African women want to be with their menfolk and not be left permanently widowed in the Reserves. Africans want to be allowed out after eleven o’clock at night and not to be confined to their rooms like little children. Africans want to be allowed to travel in their own country and to seek work where they want to and not where the Labour Bureau tells them to. Africans want a just share in the whole of South Africa; they want security and a stake in society. Above all, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy.

 But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division, based on colour, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one colour group by another. The anc has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs it will not change that policy.

This then is what the ANC is fighting. Their struggle is a truly national one. It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live. During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Julie Livingston Wins MacArthur "Genius" Grant

This week we are extremely excited for Julie Livingston, author of Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic (2012). On September 23 we learned that she won the Wellcome Medal for Anthropology as Applied to Medical Problems. The medal, which comes with a prize of £600, is awarded biennally by the Royal Anthropological Institute. Today we have even bigger news: Livingston is one of 24 MacArthur fellows for 2013! The MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the "Genius Grant," recognizes "creative individuals with a track record of achievement and the potential for even more significant contributions in the future." 

Livingston's book, an affecting ethnography, tells the story of Botswana's only
dedicated cancer ward, located in its capital city of Gaborone. The MacArthur Foundation says that "by unflinchingly detailing an over-extended medical infrastructure and the families and health care providers who navigate it, Livingston exposes the limits of biomedicine and the unlikelihood that technology alone will fix health issues in Africa or anywhere else. Such in-depth examination of physical impairment and terminal disability is challenging global health partners to address a very real but largely ignored crisis of care in Africa."

Winners of the grant are nominated anonymously and don't find out they have won until shortly before the public announcement. Livingston tells Rutgers Today that while she was attending a conference in South Africa, several calls from an unrecognized number came to her phone, but she didn't check her voicemail until she was returning home from the airport back in the U.S.  “I screamed out loud in the taxi,” she says.

Livingston says of her work, “We in the global North look at Africa and, where health care is concerned, we say, 'We will go there and help them.' But if we look closely at a place like Botswana, we might learn something about cost, equity of care, death and existential angst. I want to break up the idea that Africa is so different and only an object of our pity or our salvation complex. I just don’t see it that way.”

Congratulations to Julie Livingston on these amazing honors. We can't wait to see what she does next.

Remembering Martin Bernal

We were sad to learn of the death of scholar Martin Bernal this weekend. We were proud to publish Black Athena Writes Back in 2001. Bernal's  three-volume Black Athena trilogy produced such debate and rancor that Bernal felt the need to write another book responding to his critics. The book provides additional documentation to back up Bernal's thesis, as well as offering persuasive explanations of why traditional scholarship on the subject remains inaccurate and why specific arguments lobbed against his theories are themselves faulty.

Bernal's editor at Duke University Press was J. Reynolds Smith, who offers these comments about the book : "Although Black Athena rankled more than a few conservative scholars, at it roots it was for me simply a fuller reading of history that ultimately reflected plain common sense. It also challenged many of the same demons exposed by postcolonial scholarship on other areas of the world and in other disciplines. Martin's views on the colonization of academic thought by western biases had many champions, not the least of whom were a whole new generation of Latin Americanists. Black Athena Writes Back was his patient response to many of the slings and arrows that threatened to distract us from the fundamental justice in his positions."

On Bernal himself, Smith says, "For someone who so inflamed his critics, as a person Martin was always the epitome of the gentleman. Sometimes laconic but never spiteful, and always extremely amusing, he was a completely delightful, wonderful human being." 

Jesse Weaver Shipley Talks Hiplife at South by Southwest

Jesse Weaver Shipley, filmmaker, anthropology professor, and author of Living the Hiplife: Celebrity and Entrepreneurship in Ghanaian Popular Music, was at South by Southwest last week to talk about digital media and music in Africa. He appeared on a panel with several African DJs and then did a popular booksigning event.  To hear some of the artists Shipley discusses in his book, check out this podcast created by DJ Rab and DJ Black, both Ghanaian musicians. They're pictured below along with some of Weaver's other African music contacts. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Left to right: Jesse Weaver Shipley, Nigerian media executive Michael Ugwu of iROKOtv, Nigerian musician  Ice Prince Zamani.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jesse Weaver Shipley ready to sign his book

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Left to right: DJ Black of Joy FM in Accra, Ghana, Jesse Weaver Shipley, DJ Rab Bakari of Universal Music Group.

Looking to the Past to Explain the South African Mining Murders

Today in South Africa a judicial inquiry into the killings of 34 platinum miners by police at the Marikana mines begins. Retired judge Ian Farlam toured the site of the killings and has four months to uncover his final findings. The massacre of striking mine workers at Marikana is being hailed as something like the infamous shootings at Sharpeville—a moment in which perceptions of the nation are fundamentally transformed.  But if so, the underlying social realities go much deeper. In Violence in a Time of Liberation, a historical ethnography of a South African gold mine, Donald L. Donham has argued that black nationalism has obscured the political transition of 1994.  Donham says, "Unions like the NUM are not just organizations from below; they are, in some real sense, the creation of South African capitalists.  The pact between the ANC and international capitalism has produced continuing and extreme inequality, and this pattern forms the backdrop to events like Marikana." Violence in a Time of Liberation was reviewed in South Africa's Mail and Guardian last week. Reviewer Matthew Willhelm-Solomon writes that the book "offers a prescient narrative of mine violence. Based on a study of a mine called Cinderella, it provides a piercing and lucid exposition of the path to this violence in a post-1994 moment." He concludes, "Violence in a Time of Liberation offers an exemplary example of how historical ethnography can be used to study violence. It probes us to give time and labour to understand better what has happened, even if its meanings remain elusive. For violence, too, is a way of remembering our disappointed hope." The book contains photographs by Santu Mofokeng, some of which can be viewed on our Tumblr blog.

Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art Virtual Roundtable Discussion

Cross-posted from Nka's new blog, where you can follow the entire virtual roundtable discussion over the course of the next few weeks:

Nka Roundtable III: “Contemporary African Art and the Museum”

Over the next several weeks curators and directors of major museums in the United States, Germany, Japan, South Africa and the UK will engage in spirited but substantial discussion on the relationship between contemporary African art and the museum. I expect excursions into the history of this relationship, its crucial moments, state of affairs, and challenges that remain. In the process, we shall debate issues of presenting this material in art and ethnology museums; the politics of acquisitions and display; museums and scholarship; and the place of contemporary African art–relative to the “traditional” and western contemporary. I suspect that there will be surprising turns in the course of our discussion, but I am certain that the deliberations of this diverse, unprecedented and distinguished panel of curators will surely be of immense value to students and scholars working or interested in this exciting, dynamic field. Please join us!

Convener: Chika Okeke-Agulu (Princeton University)

 

Participants: Marla Berns (Director, Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles), Christa Clarke (Senior Curator, Newark Museum, Newark, NJ), Laurie Ann Farrell (Director of Exhibitions, Savannah College of Art & Design Gallery, Savannah, GA), Khwezi Gule (Chief Curator, Hector Pieterson Memorial, Johannesburg), Kinsey Katchka, Yukiya Kawaguchi (National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka), Clive Kellner, Karen Milbourne (Curator, Smithsonian National Museum for African Art, Washington DC), Raison Naidoo (Director Arts Collections, Iziko: South African National Gallery, Cape Town), Enid Schildkrout (Chief Curator/Director of Exhibitions, Museum for African Art, New York) Chris Spring (Curator, British Museum, London), Ulf Vierke (Director, Iwalewa-Haus, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth), Okwui Enwezor, Salah M. Hassan.

World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day, founded by the United Nations in 2004 as a way to raise awareness about the global disease, commemorate those who have died from it, and celebrate new medial advances. Although we still have a long way to go before curing the deadly disease, many sufferers around the world, even in poor nations, now take medication allowing them to live relatively normal lives. But when antiretroviral drugs were first discovered in the 1990s, treatment was mostly reserved for wealthy Westerners. Vinh-Kim Nguyen's new book The Republic of Therapy: Triage and Sovereignty in West Africa’s Time of AIDS argues that during the years when antiretroviral medicines were scarce in Africa, triage decisions were made determining who would receive lifesaving treatment. Nguyen explains how those decisions altered social relations in West Africa. In 1994, anxious to "break the silence" and "put a face to the epidemic," international agencies unwittingly created a market in which stories about being HIV positive could be bartered for access to limited medical resources. Being able to talk about oneself became a matter of life or death. Nguyen's book is an important cautionary tale for those continuing to work on HIV in Africa. If you're in the New York area, you can hear him talk about his book and pick up a copy for yourself. He'll be speaking at the New York Academy of Medicine tomorrow, December 2, at 5:30 p.m.

Duke Authors at the ASALH Annual Meeting

This last weekend, we attended the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) 95th Annual Convention in Raleigh, NC. A few of our authors had booksignings during the conference, and we were able to get photos of a few of them.

Karla FC Holloway, author of Passed On: African American Mourning Stories, A Memorial, stopped by to sign copies of her book.

 

 

 

 

Sonia Sanchez, author of "I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't" and Other Plays, took a quick break from her booksigning to pose for a picture with Jacqueline Wood. Wood edited the book and provided an introduction.

Thanks to our Exhibits Manager, Helena Knox, for taking these photos!

The View from Sudan

The Sudan is in the news today, as the president of South Sudan has warned of a widespread return to violence if the region’s independence is not upheld in the nation-wide referendum, which is now 100 days away. The Obama Administration supports the election and has said that it is “inevitable” that the South will declare independence.

A recent issue of the South Atlantic Quarterly, “What’s Left of the Left?: The View from Sudan,” looks closely at the region in question, and particularly focuses on the historical struggle of the Sudanese Communist Party.  Editor Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf urges commemoration of progressive politics in Sudanese society as we look ahead to the region’s future, she says: “This task is even more critical when we take into account the current state of affairs: charges of ethnic cleansing and genocide, the specter of secession, and the everyday suffering that engulfs the country.”

Read the introduction to this issue, "Writing the Dialectic," by Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf for free.

Bob White wins Joel Gregory Prize

Congratulations to Bob W. White, author of Rumba Rules: The Politics of Dance Music in Mobutu's Zaire, for winning the 2010 Joel Gregory Prize. The Joel Gregory Prize is awarded by the Canadian Association of African Studies to the best book published in African Studies in the social sciences and humanities, written by a Canadian, a landed immigrant, or an African who has completed a Ph.D. program in Canada or has worked in a Canadian organization devoted to the promotion of knowledge of Africa. The award was announced at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies on May 5th.

In Rumba Rules, the first ethnography of popular music in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bob W. White examines not only the economic and political conditions that brought this powerful music industry to its knees, but also the ways that popular musicians sought to remain socially relevant in a time of increasing insecurity.