Arriving at the University of Durban-Westville in the early 1990s with an interest in the left, I was immediately plugged into a heady environment that continued through much of the decade.
Figures such as Phyllis Naidoo and John Daniel from the radical side of the ANC tradition were around, along with Strini Moodley from the Black Consciousness tradition and David Hemson from the independent left. Radical clerics like Adam Habib were also there.
All these people have a lot to teach young intellectuals and do it with warmth and passion. I had the good fortune to learn first-hand from Daniel’s scientific guidance, activist imperatives and irreverent example.
There are many texts that only young people think they should read, such as the works of Samir Amin, Walter Rodney and CLR James. There are some important texts from the ANC tradition that are worth reading. One of them is Joe Slovo Has Socialism Failed? and rejoinder Pallo Jordan Crisis of Confidence in the SACP.
Another is Albie Sachs Preparing Ourselves for Freedom: Culture and Constitutional Guidelines of the ANC. But the text of the ANC’s favorite tradition in tatty photocopies is Gatsha Buthelezi: Heads With Dual Agendas published in London in 1988 and written by a mysterious author named only Mzala – Jabulani Nobleman “Mzala” Nxumalo – the subject of a new biography by Mandla J Radebe.
These were the years immediately following the war between Inkatha and the United Democratic Front, so we read Mzala’s excellent book with enthusiasm. In 1991 Buthelezi has forced the University of Natal to remove books from the library and the university has, despite the principle of resistance from the librarian Christopher Merrett, shamefully given to Buthelezi. This only made us more determined to read the book.
We don’t know much about the author except that he was a communist, worked with the intellectual heavyweight educator and the simplest devotion, John Daniel, in Swaziland and London, and coined the phrase “cooking rice in a pot.”, which means that the exiled ANC must complete its struggle in the struggle that took place at home in South Africa.
A few years ago, the Mzala Nxumalo Center was established at the University of KwaZulu-Natal but it has disappeared and now only a few young people know about Mzala. Radebe’s new book, The Lost Prince of the ANC: The Life and Times of Jabulani Nobleman ‘Mzala’ Nxumalowill change.
Percy Ngonyama, who was an important part of the left intellectual scene in Durban in the early 2000s, was associated with the Mzala Nxumalo Center, working on a biography of Mzala when he died in 2019.
Radebe, a professor at the University of Johannesburg, took the baton from Ngonyama. Radebe’s book is part of a flood of political biographies that have been written in the post-apartheid period. Some of these have been rushed, such as Sisonke Msimang’s book on Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, while others, such as Beverley Naidoo’s biography of Neil Aggett, are excellent.
Radebe’s contribution is above all the best. He is a talented writer, and his account of Mzala’s life and times is wonderful. This is a deeply researched book full of interesting details.
We get Mzala’s rich history as a precocious young intellectual always willing to speak truth to power and constantly engaging in spirited debate. Mzala emerged as a charismatic figure who made a deep and lasting impression on everyone he worked with. He also emerged as a rigorous scholar, like many others, moving from the political revival in Black Consciousness to Marxism and nonracialism.
Radebe is clear that for Mzala, the politics of elite nationalism cannot meet the challenges facing South Africa and that class must be a major factor in a real project of liberation.
In a direct challenge to the elites in the national struggle, Mzala stated that socialists must teach “the working class that its enemy is the bourgeoisie, including the national bourgeoisie itself”. He said the people should be armed, and Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) should integrate itself with the United Democratic Front project to build an organ of people’s power.
As Radebe’s book follows the life of Mzala it also presents an interesting and insightful window into the history of the ANC and MK. In popular discourse, MK tends to be romanticized rather than discussed as a historical fact. Thula Simpson’s new book on MK is full of useful details but difficult to read.
Radebe’s book is a more accessible entry into MK history, an account that reveals the bravery of MK soldiers and the internal challenges that the “people’s army” faced. One of the interesting aspects of this part of Radebe’s book is that it becomes clear that, as a young man, Jacob Zuma was a committed activist whose sincerity was beyond doubt. His degeneration into a vein kleptocrat is tragic and represents the degeneration of the ANC.
In the more detailed book, there are also, perhaps, small oversights. Radebe noted that Heads With Dual Agendas receiving a “scathing” review in a magazine is now gone The front linebut ignores the fact that the magazine is funded by the United States.
I have only one criticism of this excellent book. Radebe opened up about the contradictions and failures of the ANC and MK, including the mutiny by MK soldiers. The most famous one, led by Chris Hani in 1969, was prophetic. The first line of the memorandum published by the rebels states: “We, as original revolutionaries, are moved by the terrifying depth to which the rot in the ANC has gone.”
However, I am not convinced that Radebe deals with Mzala’s position on Aids. Hein Marais, an important leftist scholar, has pointed out that Thabo Mbeki’s conspiratorial approach to Aids, with the finger of the CIA, is nothing new, and Mzala had entertained similar arguments years earlier. Marais notes that in 1988 Mzala proposed that HIV was created in “laboratories of the US military industrial complex”.
When liberalism describes the disastrous and well-documented role that the CIA has played in undermining liberation movements and progressive governments around the world, it becomes complicit with Western imperialism.
But when radical politics, including radical nationalism, sees the CIA’s hand everywhere it becomes paranoia. Mzala, like Mbeki later, made a huge blunder in entertaining the idea that HIV is some sort of conspiracy and perhaps this should have been involved in more depth in Radebe’s book.
After all, as Radebe notes, Mzala insists on the need for “openness – bring everything to the open, hide nothing, no matter how painful, in order to overcome inertia and stimulate the extraordinary potential of people to reform the organization and life” .
Now that we have an excellent biography of Mzala, it is time for Mzala’s own book, Heads With Dual Agendaswill be reprinted and eventually available in our bookstore
Dr Imraan Buccus is a postdoctoral fellow at the Durban University of Technology and a senior research associate at the Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute.