Even though Archie Mafeje published a paper in 1978 on the Soweto uprising, much of his work on South African politics appeared from the mid-1980s up to the late 1990s. In making the distinction between Mafeje's earlier and later contribution to revolutionary theory and politics, I am not suggesting that the two are theoretically or politically distinct; I separate them purely on the basis of scope and focus, for there is in fact a strong connection and consistency between the earlier and later work.

In contributing to revolutionary theory and politics, Mafeje wanted fellow African intellectuals to avoid being dictated to by Euro-American scholars. He resisted derivative ideas and dogmas – succumbing to these weaknesses would alienate African intellectuals not only from the very same societies they are trying to understand, but also from each other as a community of intellectuals. In short, those African scholars who overemphasise ‘universal texts’ cease to be ‘authentic interlocutors’. Mafeje was interested in understanding the nature of the relationship between universal texts (referring to theory) and the ‘vernacular’ (referring to the historically concrete). Sometimes he spoke of nomothetic versus idiographic inquiry. He was interested, too, in the theory of society and theory of revolution.

For Mafeje, ‘authentic subjects’ are neither automatically assumed to exist nor fully formed in the process of historical development of social formations. Instead, they exist in contradiction because ‘in any given situation there is more than one truth’. Mafeje also maintains that ‘interacting subjects mutually create one another, whether in the positive or in the negative sense’. In the struggle for liberation, ideological standpoints imply diversity of opinion only insofar as they may be ‘collective as well as exclusive or inward-looking’. It is important to remember, too, that in the struggle for self-discovery and self-assertion, there is the question of symbols, which are as important as the substantive issues they represent. In this instance, the matter of language immediately comes to mind. Mafeje argues that former colonial countries had to grapple with the distinction between universal languages and vernacular languages and, furthermore: ‘In the context of domination, universal languages are a supreme instrument for indoctrination and in the context of liberation “vernacular” languages are a powerful instrument for self-assertion and self-rediscovery.’