(This is a private communication from Patrick Bond that he agreed to share publicly with some minor editing.) Hi Louis, just a few minor corrections... > He is also the co-author of "Township Struggles". editor, merely, of "Township Politics" (but author of Uneven Zimbabwe, which I think might restore your faith in my interest in marxian problems, including the positioning of social and labour movements.) > As > you will recall, Engels referred to the South Africans as "kaffirs", a > racist term. Common lingo in the 1800s, and indeed there was a section of SA known as British Kaffrafria. If you like, I'll send you a quick historical review I did of the Xhosa people's resistance in a particular small town which has famously reinvented itself, but in the much the same image as 150 years ago. It puts much more meat on the marxist bones about articulations of modes of production and the like than what I've found in the Zulu case... Also, my guess is that most of the folk you worked with in Lusaka were ANC exiles of Xhosa heritage, right? > South Africa is important to me for two reasons. On one hand, it helps to > illuminate the nature of the process that took place in the US. I would > maintain that it is utterly impossible to view the Afrikaners as being on a > civilizing mission. Ahem, the Boers (as they were known before around 1910) were also colonised (by Brit invaders in the early 1800s), before making their way north on the Great Trek. The Brits' claims to bringing civilisation (eg, prohibiting the Boers from slaveholding) deserve more attention and critique if you are looking at the late 1800s. > The reason for this is that the disparity between their > small numbers and that of the oppressed black population would make such an > attempt laughable. The numbers aren't the issue here, are they? The Rhodesians in Zimbabwe were also outnumbered (far more than in SA) but actively played the game of civilising agent in their own agit-prop. > The other reason that South Africa is important is that it helps me to put > the Indian wars of the 1870s into the context of what was taking place > globally: the consolidation of imperialism. From the 1870s to the end of > the century, Great Britain and the United States were in the process of > bringing large portions of Africa, Asia and Latin America into their > spheres of influence. The really big fight, of course, in Berlin in 1885, was between Britain, France, Portugal and Germany. There's a terrific analysis of this in a paper on uneven development and the role of the City of London, in a paper by Ian Phimister that I have summarised and expanded upon a bit in Ch2 of Uneven Zimbabwe. > The Afrikaner regime in South Africa was closely > linked to the interests of the imperialist powers, despite the occasional > war. No man, they would definitely not see it this way. The Anglo-Boer was a very serious anti-imperialist struggle by Boer peasant and petty-administrative stock. This is important as the centenary of the war approaches next year. There is a movement of progressives here who want to remind people of how widespread the opposition to British imperialism (and the British bankers who were truly on the front line of oppressing Afrikaner peasants, as many studies show). That "gigantic devilfish" (as the Broederbond called), the Standard British Chartered Bank, had to drop British from its name in the 1880s. Again, I have references to this anti-financial character of Boer anti-imperialism (which I also talked about at the Brecht Forum when I met you a year ago) in Uneven Zimbabwe, and in a chapter in a book called Money, Power and Space (Blackwell, 1994, edited by Corbridge et al). > Cecil Rhodes is the symbol of this process. One of the things that > has not gotten the attention it deserves is how important the wars against the > American Indian were as well in this process. The Spanish-American war and > Wounded Knee go hand in hand. My goal is to show that what was being > consolidated in the last quarter of the 19th century was not some shining > citadel on the hill, but a vampire monster that sucks blood everywhere it > goes. > Fair enough. I think linking the political dynamic to the accumulation cycle is also a useful exercise, as I've noted above. Let's stay in touch on it and I'll see if there's anything else from SA that might parallel your work... Thanks for the references. I'm a very very minor figure here, of course. Afficionados of the African Communist (the SACP journal) would dispute your attribution of debate as the main journal to the ANC's left! Yours, P. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
