Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Note
- FIRST KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Fragmentation and Cohesion in the ANC: The First 70 Years
- SECOND KEYNOTE ADDRESS: A Continuing Search for Identity: Carrying the Burden of History
- Chapter One One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Struggle History After Apartheid
- Chapter Two Religion And Resistance In Natal, 1900–1910
- Chapter Three Christianity and African Nationalism in South Africa in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
- Chapter Four Charlotte Maxeke: A Celebrated and Neglected Figure in History
- Chapter Five Imagining the Patriotic Worker: The Idea of ‘Decent Work’ in the ANC's Political Discourse
- Chapter Six Popular Movements, Contentious Spaces and the ANC, 1943–1956
- Chapter Seven Unravelling the 1947 ‘Doctors’ Pact’: Race, Metonymy and the Evasions of Nationalist History
- Chapter Eight The Politics of Language and Chief Albert Luthuli's funeral, 30 July 1967
- Chapter Nine Robben Island University Revisited
- Chapter Ten Shishita: A Crisis in the ANC in Exile in Zambia, 1980–811
- Chapter Eleven Comrade Mzwai
- Chapter Twelve Revisiting Sekhukhuneland: Trajectories of Former UDF Activists in Post-Apartheid South Africa
- Chapter Thirteen Regeneration of ANC Political Power, from the 1994 Electoral Victory to the 2012 Centenary
- Chapter Fourteen The ANC: Party Vanguard of the Black Middle Class?
- Chapter Fifteen Globalisation, Recolonisation and the Paradox of Liberation in Southern Africa
- Contributors
- Index
SECOND KEYNOTE ADDRESS: A Continuing Search for Identity: Carrying the Burden of History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Note
- FIRST KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Fragmentation and Cohesion in the ANC: The First 70 Years
- SECOND KEYNOTE ADDRESS: A Continuing Search for Identity: Carrying the Burden of History
- Chapter One One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Struggle History After Apartheid
- Chapter Two Religion And Resistance In Natal, 1900–1910
- Chapter Three Christianity and African Nationalism in South Africa in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
- Chapter Four Charlotte Maxeke: A Celebrated and Neglected Figure in History
- Chapter Five Imagining the Patriotic Worker: The Idea of ‘Decent Work’ in the ANC's Political Discourse
- Chapter Six Popular Movements, Contentious Spaces and the ANC, 1943–1956
- Chapter Seven Unravelling the 1947 ‘Doctors’ Pact’: Race, Metonymy and the Evasions of Nationalist History
- Chapter Eight The Politics of Language and Chief Albert Luthuli's funeral, 30 July 1967
- Chapter Nine Robben Island University Revisited
- Chapter Ten Shishita: A Crisis in the ANC in Exile in Zambia, 1980–811
- Chapter Eleven Comrade Mzwai
- Chapter Twelve Revisiting Sekhukhuneland: Trajectories of Former UDF Activists in Post-Apartheid South Africa
- Chapter Thirteen Regeneration of ANC Political Power, from the 1994 Electoral Victory to the 2012 Centenary
- Chapter Fourteen The ANC: Party Vanguard of the Black Middle Class?
- Chapter Fifteen Globalisation, Recolonisation and the Paradox of Liberation in Southern Africa
- Contributors
- Index
Summary
Populations that are multiply wounded as a product of permanent stress lose their capacity to make decisions and plan for the future due to the excess suffering they have lived through and not processed … Reconstructing the sense of our national and personal histories … allows us to go forward in life. But going forward is only possible if people can find new energy.
The centenary of the African National Congress (ANC) presents a unique opportunity to interrogate the ideals that spawned and sustained a movement that has assumed the status of a towering giant in the consciousness of South African society and humanists further afield. Whilst our reflections are about history, the subliminal question exercising our minds is whether there should be, and indeed whether there will be, another hundred years. Are South Africans able, in the words of Nicaraguan psychologist Martha Cabrera, to transcend the ‘excess suffering’ and ‘find new energy’?
Historians are better able to organise and articulate the detailed facts about the evolution of the movement and their significance. Out of such disciplined scholarship we will be able to understand the ANC's historical narrative and how it is intertwined with the evolution of South African society. However, in the discourse on the centenary, we should be inspired by more than just inquisitiveness about the mysteries of the past. Though that in itself is a noble undertaking, this exercise should help us draw lessons that will help South African democrats find new energy.
This address tries to examine some of the current challenges facing the ANC against the backdrop of relevant developments in its evolution. The fact that the ANC is able to reach the one hundred-year milestone with its organisational integrity intact – a feat that few political organisations have attained – is deserving of serious intellectual reflection. The central argument in this brief treatise is that survival and success are the product of a continuing search for identity and thus a healthy uncertainty. A few themes in current debates which intersect with the ANC historical narrative have been selected here. The choice of these themes is subjective and has been inspired by the following question: how, in its theory and praxis, should the ANC define its identity and project itself into the future?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- One Hundred Years of the ANCDebating Liberation Histories Today, pp. 13 - 28Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2012