Archie Mafeje wrote on revolutionary theory and politics as a politically engaged exiled South African intellectual. In the 1960s and 1970s, South Africans were engaged in the liberation struggle while the rest of the African continent was also decolonising rapidly. Mafeje was not content with repeating buzzwords and slogans in Marxist theory. His intellectual integrity inclined him to interrogate theory and concepts before using them to make sense of the world.

I divide Mafeje's work on revolutionary theory and politics into two parts, his early work and his later work. Except for the paper ‘Soweto and Its Aftermath’, his earlier contribution to revolutionary theory and politics is much broader in scope and focus insofar as it centres on the African continent specifically, but also on the global South generally. Mafeje was engaged in a sustained conversation not only with African revolutionary scholars, but also with radical scholars from other parts of the world.

The demarcation between Mafeje's earlier and later contributions to revolutionary theory and politics may give the false impression that there is no connection between the two – far from it. There is in fact a strong connection and consistency in his work. The only difference between earlier and later is that the latter focuses on South Africa specifically and southern Africa generally. His attention was on issues in the postindependence state: neocolonialism, underdevelopment, state capitalism and the evaluation of the notion of dual theories of economic growth.

Neocolonialism and underdevelopment

To the extent that international capitalism appropriates surplus in underdeveloped countries, and the desire by underdeveloped countries to put in place ‘an independent base for internal appropriation and reproduction’, Mafeje considers nationalist struggles to be justified. He observes that the distinction between such terms as ‘neocolonialism’ and ‘revolution’ remains elusive in social scientific studies; the terms have assumed the status of antonyms. Yet neocolonialism admits both continuity and change. I believe that what Mafeje means is that in underdeveloped countries remnants of colonialism linger on, post-independence, after the liberation struggle has ended. Although there is a difference between the two terms, it is often missed because of the overemphasis on continuity. Mafeje concedes that neocolonialism hinges on various forms and methods of control to continue the old relations, yet it is well within the competence of African governments to change these adverse relations between African and Western countries.