Publication: The Star Issued: Date: 2006-12-14 Reporter: Tanya Farber

Pityana Backs Mbeki's Stand on Zuma

 

Publication 

The Star
Date

2006-12-14

Reporter

 Tanya Farber

Web Link

www.thestar.co.za

 

Barney Pityana, the principal and vice-chancellor of Unisa, has taken the complicated debates regarding South African identity into an academic public forum.

On Tuesday he delivered his hard-hitting paper, On being South African today: the politics of identity and national consciousness, at King's College in London, where he is a visiting lecturer.

Pityana's paper |grapples with a broad spectrum of issues as it looks at his own personal history of the struggle for liberation, of living in exile, and of returning to a country fraught with the challenges of undoing an oppressive past.

It looks at rainbow nationalism, crime and corruption, social cohesion, and the challenges of the Aids pandemic.

Pityana also explores in detail the notion of "being African" as it was forged in the early post-apartheid days, and refers specifically to President Thabo Mbeki's "I am an African" speech in the National Assembly on May 8 1996.

Describing Mbeki's speech as an "elegiac poem", Pityana says: "Sitting in the public galleries of parliament that day, I remember how proud I was to be South African and just how complicated it was to make something out of all these identities."

But, he argues, "The best place to start in understanding identity politics of South Africa is the constitution".

His paper explores various parts of the constitution, and in conclusion he says: "I have come to believe that as a society evolves, it is vital that the organising principle be set, as it does |in South Africa, through a constitutional principle."

A big section of Pityana's paper is taken up with an analysis of what he refers to as "the Zuma affair".

Here, he says the abovementioned "constitutional consensus" is a central pillar of South African identity that is currently under major strain.

He goes on to applaud Mbeki's decision to remove Zuma from his post as deputy president, and the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions' decision to charge him on various counts of corruption.

What Pityana points out, however, is that "what would have been|a straightforward criminal investigation has been turned into a massive political campaign".

In his closing statements, Pityana emphasises the major importance of the next generation.

"It seems to me that a society like South Africa should be investing in its children in ways imaginative and innovative enough to stem the tide towards becoming a people devoid of all moral understanding.

"If the government can muster enough resources to do just one public policy initiative, that has to be it," Pityana says.

With acknowledgements to Tanya Farber and The Star.