of this book ends in 2013. The ‘controversial decision’ referred to here was Abahlali’s call, after years of insisting on not voting at elections, on their members to vote for the Democratic Alliance (DA) during the May 2014 parliamentary elections in South Africa on the grounds that such a vote would help to remove the African National Congress (ANC) from municipal power. They have stressed that this decision was purely tactical. Given the democratic character of that organisation, it seems to me that their decision, whether one agrees with it or not, should be respected and that they should be allowed to make their own mistakes without being vilified by the self-appointed guardians of Left orthodoxy (see e.g. Mail & Guardian, 23–29 May 2014). See also e.g. Abahlali (2008). However this date clearly denotes the beginning a new sequence in Abahlali’s conception of politics. The use I make of Abahlali in this book is marked by their thinking prior to this date.
Acknowledgements
The thought of universal humanity, of the idea of the human as such, is not pervasively present in the academic social sciences: much as in other state institutions this simple idea has to be fought for. Over the years during which this book was written it has been quite difficult to encounter the principled foregrounding of the human in the universities with which I have been associated, for the majority of academics have been transfixed with and constantly focused upon promoting their personal interests as consumers – an orientation which is invariably accompanied and enhanced by rubbing shoulders with state power in whatever guise. At he same time, universities have become, to a great degree, obstacles to critical thought; in fact today it is practically impossible for novel thinking in universities to emerge in the absence of popular struggles beyond academia – in this sense, politics is definitely a condition of thought. As a result of intellectual inertia, the habitual simply continues and cynicism in relation to ideas prevails, particularly in a context where the commercialisation of knowledge is now endemic. The people mentioned below, on the other hand, are all exceptions to this trend; they have all shown in their thought and practice, to various extents to be sure, that there is indeed a close connection between intellectual rigour, inventive thought, political commitment to a better world and the idea of the human itself. So one can also sense in universities small shoots of a yearning for something new. Clearly the idea of the human is not forever buried. Most of this book was written under difficult conditions of intellectual isolation, given that it was always marginal to the dominant narratives on one side or the other. This constitutes an additional reason why I am so grateful to the people mentioned below, it being understood, of course, that I am solely responsible for all errors and omissions herein.
I am deeply grateful to Jacques Depelchin and to Pauline Wynter for their friendship and for extremely stimulating conversations and insights around many of the issues discussed in this work over a number of years. Despite Jacques’ frequent disagreement with many of my positions, his comments on my work have always been reflective and constructive and located within this warm friendship.
I also wish to thank Achille Mbembe for his intellectual generosity. He has been instrumental in the publication of this book despite my disagreements with some of his work. Achille’s enthusiasm contributed enormously to providing intellectual support over the last two years of getting the text together.
I must thank Premesh Lalu and the staff and students of the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at the University of the Western Cape who in 2010 criticised many of my formulations and helped me sharpen my conceptions. Premesh generously hosted me at the CHR in 2010 and has been providing critical support and friendship over many years now.
I am grateful to all the coffee-loving people at the Church Land Programme (CLP) in Pietermaritzburg for discussing with great openness the idea that people think.
I must also thank Lewis Gordon, Nigel Gibson and Peter Hallward, all three of whom are major thinkers of the politics of emancipation, whose generosity in encouraging and supporting my work intellectually has been invaluable.
I wish to thank Louise Balso for taking time to meet with me in Paris for stimulating conversations around the thought of politics. I am also grateful to Judith Hayem who hosted me at the Université de Lille1 in France on two occasions to lecture on various aspects of my work. Our detailed conversations on thinking politics have always been extraordinarily mutually beneficial and extremely productive.
I am beholden to colleagues at UNISA, in particular to Derek Gelderblom, and subsequently to Greg Cuthbertson and Mamokgethi Pakheng who provided me with employment and support from 2011 to 2013 without which this book could never have been written … and to Peter Clayton at Rhodes University who unhesitantly provided financial support towards its publication.
I am also grateful to the students at UHURU, the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University, who have kept me on my intellectual toes, particularly Camalita Naicker, Fezi Mthonti, Sarah Bruchhausen, Mikaela Erskog, Jonis Alasow and Paddy O’Halloran. Together we have been able to build an intellectually stimulating and vibrant space.
I also wish to thank my publishers at Wits University Press, Veronica Klipp, Roshan Cader and Andrew Joseph, for believing in this project and to Karen Press for her incisive and always pertinent comments on the manuscript. We have become great friends. I am also grateful to Russell Martin for his skills at polishing my often cumbersome use of language,
One of the most important influences on this book has been the critical thought and political practice of Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba whose intellectual and political commitment to freedom in Africa has been unwavering and gone largely unrecognised. I am privileged to have had numerous conversations with him over many years. I am extremely grateful to him for taking the time to write the foreword despite his often failing eyesight.
I am especially thankful to my friend Richard Pithouse for his on-going support and critical engagement with my work; his comments and help have been particularly invaluable for the development of the ideas in this book. His steadfast and principled commitment to popular politics, to critical thought and to our students has been unwavering throughout.
Finally I must thank Khulukazi Soldati profusely for ‘hanging in there’ during difficult times. This work would have not been possible without her extraordinarily high levels of tolerance, generosity and support.
A number of the chapters of this book have been based on previously published material; in most cases the material has been systematically revised for inclusion here. The following publishers and editors are hereby gratefully acknowledged: The Nordic Africa Institute for excerpts from The Agrarian Question in Southern Africa and “Accumulation from Below”: Economics and politics in the struggle for democracy, Uppsala: SIAS, 1993 and “People’s Politics to State Politics: Aspects of national liberation in South Africa” in A. Olukoshi (ed.) The Politics of Opposition in Contemporary Africa, NAI, Uppsala Sweden, 1998; The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) for “The Contradictory Position of ‘Tradition’ in African Nationalist Discourse: Some analytical reflections”, Africa Development, Special Issue on “Globalization and Citizenship in Africa” Vol. 28, Nos 1&2, 2003, pp. 17-52; “Development, Social Citizenship and Human Rights: Re-thinking the political core of an emancipatory project in Africa”, Africa Development, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2007; From ‘Foreign Natives’ to ‘Native Foreigners’, Second Edition 2010; “Thinking Political Emancipation and the Social Sciences in Africa: Some critical reflections”, Africa Development, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2014; Sage Publications for “Analyzing Political Subjectivities: Naming the post-developmental state in Africa today”, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol. 45, No. 5, October 2010; “The Nation and its Politics: Fanon, emancipatory nationalism and political sequences” in N. Gibson (ed.) Living Fanon, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011; “Are Those-Who-Do-Not-Count Capable of Reason? Thinking political subjectivity in the (neo-)colonial world and the limits of history,” Journal of Asian and African Studies,
