Bongani Mayosi (picture: YouTube)
Dear Editor
I read Marlene van Niekerk’s poem, “Fallist art”, with, I hope, the attention the tragic subject matter deserves, and with the respect van Niekerk has rightfully earned as a lyricist of our country and times.
But I was dismayed at the interpolated words in these lines:
Is that why you can gaily hack
the Heines, Bachs and Becketts from
curricula – wait for the Mbembes,
Butlers, Lalus – as though they are
makwerekwere, best to be macheted
out of town?
The issue of curricula is urgently topical, and van Niekerk’s views on the culling of Western artists from African syllabi have resonance. However, she references three scholars in the words “wait for the Mbembes, Butlers, Lalus” in a most unfortunate juxtaposition – as if they (the actual scholars, not their works) are waiting to crowd forward and replace the colonial syllabus.
I am not going to bat for Butler – I assume that here, van Niekerk is referring to the feminist and queer theorist, Judith Butler, whose thinking has been guiding many, including myself, for over 25 years. With her being a North American professor of impeccable reputation, her many honours and publications mean that she is impervious to this kind of referencing.
But Achille Mbembe and Premesh Lalu are scholars who presently work (extremely hard) in South African universities. I know Achille slightly, and we have exchanged friendly words on domestic topics. Premesh is a valued friend and colleague with whom I have a much closer bond. I have some small knowledge of what both men, but particularly Premesh, endured during the Fallist troubles that convulsed the academy in 2016 and 2017, and which continue to pose urgent questions for higher education. They attempted to engage with and support their students and colleagues on both sides of the spectrum, and their scrutiny of what the university should be and mean became still more committed, viewed through a lens of anguish at the costs exacted, hidden, human and otherwise.
To put their names casually into a poem like this associates them with the more extreme and problematic elements of the Fallist movement, even though both have written nuanced critiques of these elements (for which they were excoriated by the far ends of each spectrum). Far more directly, it suggests that they and their work have been seized upon to replace elements of the Western canon – a claim that would dismay both men, who are known for eschewing crude or simplistic “fixes” in academia.
But this pales before the sandwiching of their names between images of the worst violence of xenophobia. The implication is that they are the beneficiaries of the “hack[ing]” and the “machete[s]”. This taint by proximity in the words of the poem is deeply unfair and distasteful, especially when one considers that Cameroonian-born Achille IS a “makwerekwere”, and therefore vulnerable in ways that native-born South Africans cannot comprehend; and that Premesh’s commitment, both personally and professionally, to refugee causes and projects is well known.
It is a pity that LitNet didn’t encourage van Niekerk to edit her poem to reflect her more usual insight.
It must not be forgotten that this poem was written to commemorate the loss of a much loved man, a respected academic and a stellar scientist, who must have suffered unimaginable agonies on his path to death. I should like to paraphrase the words of two professors from UWC: “We are all responsible for Professor Mayosi’s death. All of us. His colleagues, the Fallists, the University of Cape Town, even those of us at other South African universities. We are responsible for the loneliness and burdens we impose on black academics. We are not kind to one another. Let us commit to kindness.”
This poem was not kind in referencing Achille and Premesh. When we lash out like this, we forget that there are real flesh-and-blood people at the end of our scorn, decent people doing the best they can, as partners, parents, friends, colleagues, teachers and mentors, in a hideously exacting and punishing environment. Words hurt, and Bongani Mayosi paid the ultimate price for this kind of hurt. Let us be critical, by all means, but let us give more thought to how our words might affect one another. Let us be true to our feelings and our intellects, but above all, let us be kind.
Sincerely
Dr Helen Moffett
University Seminar 2016: Achille Mbembe on the new politics of the South African student
Kommentaar
Whatever the merits of the poem and its critique of forms of campus politics (and I don't think it is unproblematic), surely it should be clear Van Niekerk is not saying the Mbembes, Butlers and Lalus are waiting to crowd out the Heines, Bachs and Becketts, but that the former, too, will be hounded out in a kind of 'xenophobic' logic; and one assumes she is referring to an actual event a couple of years ago at UWC when Butler, Mbembe and Lalu indeed shared a stage and 'Fallists' intervened? I can't remember the details, but it is obvious Moffett is misreading Van Niekerk.
https://uwcjournal.wordpress.com/articles/
This was the scene at a panel at UWC where Butler at al were prevented by protesting students from concluding their discussions during question time. Professor Lalu had to close the meeting very hastily.
See also chrflagship.uwc.ac.za the last five minutes or so
This was a tweet by Andile Mngxitama: Is prof Achille Mbembe a Joseph Goebbels of Wits a henchman of @AdHabb? cf Twitter.com/Black1stLand1st
From the above I infer impatience with Mbembe at some strata of the student revolt.
I would like to make clear that I have only the greatest respect for professor Mbembe whom I know personally and whose speech on the African University at Stellenbosch I attended, the most rousing and passionate plea I have ever heard on the topic and I thanked him afterwards for the vision that he had shared. At this meeting the students questioned the presence and opinion of professor Sarah Nuttall who took part as a respondent to Mbembe's speech. "Why do we have to listen to a white woman here"?", one of the students complained. Student speakers at the same occasion also referred to "settler professors" in the audienceand they were admonished by Mbembe who advised that in a democratic country we call each other citizens. I was not able to assess how much of the contents of Mbembe's speech actually resonated with the students. One does not often hear elaborations by student leaders on Mbembe's aspirational horizons for academia in this country. As for Butler and Lalu, I read and admire their work and often refer to their texts in my teaching.
Maybe the syntax in the poem is not clear at this point. The poem suggests that the subtle, complex and penetrating thought of the intellectuals mentioned above might one day suffer the same fate as the subtle, complex and penetrating work of many Western authors and composers who are likely to be cut/have already been cut from curricula in the course of the decolonisation of the curriculum. At the protest at UWC referred to in the links above the complaint of the students apparently was that the speakers on the panel were "elitist".
The cost of higher education in the country is a shame and a scandal. The commodification of education is a blight. However, I reject the labelling, the name calling and the violence and destruction that characterised the protests and I also find deplorable the polarisation and suspicion in academic circles that in some cases ensued. I also reject the projected or already accomplished excision from curricula of certain elements of the cultural commons of the world on the basis of a narrow Africanist agenda. This is a point Mbembe himself often makes, western philosophy e.g. belongs to all of us to read and to critique, he says. I support a critical additive approach in the selection of what is taught, and I think that the development and inclusion of African/Asian/Indian content to curricula in the context of postcolonial critique is of an absolute necessity for instance in the field of philosophy and literature. What I do sometimes get wind of though is an aggressive rejection of anything that is "different" and "un-African", let alone the idea of "difference" itself. Lalu's reference to the alterity of sadness in the music of Abdullah Ebrahim as a chiffre of a certain very specific type of political sensibility of longing and resilience in the days of the struggle on the Cape Flats is an example of the kind of alterity (as a value) that I think is in danger of being scrapped, or forgotten in the course of redesigning the contents of courses in the humanities and the redesigning of campus public spaces. The removal and covering up of works of art by a committee under the chairmanship of Dr Anderson at UCT is a case in point. This is the point of the poem. Time will tell.
Given Helen Moffet's reading of Marlene van Niekerk's poem, her dismay is understandable, and her defence of the three named academics admirable. However, I think, with respect, that Helen has misread Marlene's poem. It seems to me that Marlene 'references' Mbembe, Butler and Lalu not as 'Fallist' academics whose 'work ha[s] been seized upon to replace elements of the Western canon', but exactly as examples of the kind of balanced, rational academic who is in danger of also, like Bach, Heine and Beckett, being displaced by the intolerance of the Fallists. Surely that is what is meant by the parallel construction? In short, I think Helen and Marlene agree on the status and value of these academics.
My understanding of the poem is precisely that Butler, Lalu and Mbembe face the threat of being run out of town in the same way that certain of those in the canon of western philosophy and art have already experienced. I agree that Helen Moffett has misunderstood the poem, and I think the "syntax" as Marlene puts it is entirely clear.
Misunderstanding is an interesting apprehension of the form because what does it speak to? Could it be that the critique of the Fallist movement leaves sympathisers (in which to some extent I include myself) with a feeling of uncomfortable ambiguity. Surely, this is the intention and power of the poem.
Thank you, Michiel. You explained my unease about the interpretation. I was rather sad about Helen Moffet's interpretation as I always make a point of reading her take on things. I sometimes disagree but I always learn from her. Maybe she misunderstood the tone. We must take great care in our time, as much of what is PC precludes the articulation of the truth, and we easily pounce or get pounced on for apparently stepping outside the acceptable narrative. Artists, among them poets, have always intuited and distilled the spirit of the times. What happened to freedom of speech and poetic licence, anyway?
Yes but , unfortunately, we cannot have it both ways; especially not in what once was known as une Université (A community of teachers and scholars). Having instigated, lead and educated for the culture war of all against all, the academe now faces, on every front, its own implosion. In the identitarian hunger games on campuses only two rules apply, and only two categories get to play; In it's reality, construed as mere perception, every word and every other thing becomes appropriated as armament, the clubs of perpetrators and victims alike.
In the #metoo mikado, to wit, Avital Ronell has supplanted Jacob Zuma, and in the victim-olympiad, Nimrod Reitman is her Khwezi.
Whilst the liberal left devours itself, it's worth noting that the search for Homo Univeralis has long left campus, and the burners of books have time on their side - and not much yet to lose.
I agree with Painter and Heyns. I think you've misinterpreted the poem, re how one should understand the word 'wait'. More interestingly, this also brings up the issue of what kind of education should displace the present curriculum: one that serves the self-image and mythologies of a new rising class, or one that is more critically poised, able to take on the issues of this continent and the world in a less immediately ideology-bound and self-interested manner? There are so many names of scholars missing from the present Fallist canon, and some often quoted are, I think, selectively read (like Fanon and Robin Kelley); as well as others who - believe it or not - were already being taught in our universities, pre-Fallist, in some places. And these come from all over the world.