Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: Mandela and Mbeki: Two great lures for ‘Republicans’
- Chapter 1 What is ‘greatness’ exactly? The peculiarities of Mandela and Mbeki
- Chapter 2 What makes ‘Republicans’ Republicans? ‘We would still have chosen Frank and Lucille!’
- Chapter 3 When Mandela and Mbeki descend wildly into ‘novelistic’ fiction ‘Imagined communities’ and the stereotypes of Calpurnia and Julius Caesar
- Chapter 4 ‘Who first’ and who is the ‘martial captain’ of the class? Of the ‘commoners’ and ‘bourgeois’ people
- Chapter 5 ‘This thing of us is more than a comrades’ club’ The ‘medieval’ mentality of the ANC
- Chapter 6 ‘The Prince William inheritance’ of Thabo Mbeki ‘Oh by the way, I have decided that you will be my Deputy President’
- Chapter 7 ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t’ ‘Hyphenation’, ‘dehyphenation’, and the ‘modern presidency’
- Chapter 8 Stuck on the wrong and right side of history Why Mr Mbeki lost his Presidency and why Mr Mandela did not
- Chapter 9 Reflections on the problems of paternal power and nostalgia Why Mr Mbeki was clearly a ‘patriarchalist’ and why Mr Mandela was clearly a ‘Republican’
- List of sources
- Index
Chapter 4 - ‘Who first’ and who is the ‘martial captain’ of the class? Of the ‘commoners’ and ‘bourgeois’ people
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: Mandela and Mbeki: Two great lures for ‘Republicans’
- Chapter 1 What is ‘greatness’ exactly? The peculiarities of Mandela and Mbeki
- Chapter 2 What makes ‘Republicans’ Republicans? ‘We would still have chosen Frank and Lucille!’
- Chapter 3 When Mandela and Mbeki descend wildly into ‘novelistic’ fiction ‘Imagined communities’ and the stereotypes of Calpurnia and Julius Caesar
- Chapter 4 ‘Who first’ and who is the ‘martial captain’ of the class? Of the ‘commoners’ and ‘bourgeois’ people
- Chapter 5 ‘This thing of us is more than a comrades’ club’ The ‘medieval’ mentality of the ANC
- Chapter 6 ‘The Prince William inheritance’ of Thabo Mbeki ‘Oh by the way, I have decided that you will be my Deputy President’
- Chapter 7 ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t’ ‘Hyphenation’, ‘dehyphenation’, and the ‘modern presidency’
- Chapter 8 Stuck on the wrong and right side of history Why Mr Mbeki lost his Presidency and why Mr Mandela did not
- Chapter 9 Reflections on the problems of paternal power and nostalgia Why Mr Mbeki was clearly a ‘patriarchalist’ and why Mr Mandela was clearly a ‘Republican’
- List of sources
- Index
Summary
Claims to have consulted the ‘community’ are automatically problematic, since they assume that this entity has a single mind. In reality it is composed of a range of interests and values: to ensure that they are all heard is a daunting task. The very term ‘community’ is subject to growing criticism from analysts, who argue that it embraces so diverse a set of interests and values as to be meaningless … The ability to mobilise general opposition to discrimination does not automatically translate into an ability to express development priorities on behalf of entire communities. (Steven Friedman)
All I want, all I am suing Strijdom for, is a chance to sit down with him over a glass of brandy and talk to him man to man. I reckon I have a few things to tell him. It may very well be that after the umpteenth drink .. the man may see reason .. I want to show the Prime Minister how magnanimous I can be. (Can Themba)
THE STORY OF CHAPTER 4 IS A SEGMENT OF MY EFFORT to explore groups of people self-identified by race and occupational status as well as variations in their experience of apartheid and post-apartheid history. By ‘social groups’ I have in mind the following: (1) the urban black working class, who were torn from their rural roots by the pull of city life and by the cataclysm of World War II; (2) the calm and dignified Africans of the countryside (the rural poor), who carried out their work within the boundaries and frames of dominant discourses; and (3) the African upper stratum, who were distinguished by their bilingual literacy, moderation, frugality, and rationality (the African upper stratum had an agenda which implied the need for political change; this is the class that challenged dominant systems of black representation, which were what apartheid history had imposed on them for almost seven decades).
The importance of knowledge as regards to variations in the black experience of apartheid and post-apartheid history lies in what it tells us about the historical context in which the invention of Mandela's legend and charisma happened – it also provides important insight into the historical context in which Mbeki's narrative of ‘Victorian Prince’ was replicated.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Mandela and MbekiThe Hero and the Outsider, pp. 109 - 158Publisher: University of South AfricaPrint publication year: 2012