Radical Thinking in South Africa’s Age of Retreat

Abstract

This article traces the rise and fall of radical praxis in South Africa and offers a critique of the prevailing practices of former Marxists under post-apartheid conditions. Western Marxism emerged in the 1970s in South Africa and Marxist activists became deeply involved in the liberation movements. With the unravelling of apartheid, the main liberation forces made a social pact with capitalist forces and former Marxists embraced a statist project. In the context of the rise of ‘new’ social movements, radical thinking of a more Libertarian kind is emerging in contemporary South Africa.

South Africa’s ‘Africa Renaissance’ Project: Between Rhetoric and Practice

“…South Africa had grounds to believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the neo-liberal economies that dominated the world offered pertinent lessons. Post-apartheid South Africa adopted neo-neoliberal policies while paying lip service to social democratic development with a view to redressing the historical legacy of inequality and social injustice (Helliker and Vale, 2012;. In reality, the country has snubbed Marxism in its economic practice since 1994.…”