OPINIONISTA: Adam Habib’s search for a pragmatic radicalism By Imraan Buccus
Adam Habib’s political roots lie in the Unity Movement. The Unity Movement never achieved anything like the scale of mobilisation associated with the United Democratic Front or the trade union movement. It also never became as fashionable as the Black Consciousness Movement, which, although it attracted significant student support, never became a mass movement.
Habib, as a progressive, is deeply sympathetic to the two main concerns that led to the emergence of the #FeesMustFall movement. He wants university education to be accessible to all and he wants university workers to be treated fairly. He is also very clear that social progress often requires mass mobilisation and that mobilisation often has to be disruptive to win real gains.
Like many commentators, Habib argues that the movement had wide social legitimacy when it marched on the Union Buildings in 2015.
But at times what Habib describes is actually quite funny. The idea of a bunch of white academics, some of them expats, bursting into a council meeting and hectoring people like Habib and Barney Pityana about “whiteness” is so farcical that it will make many readers burst out laughing. The primary question that he asks in this book is “how to respond to a legitimate social struggle on the one hand, while avoiding an eventual decline in the university’s academic standards on the other”. This is a principled and rational question. Habib’s reflections on it are always interesting and important for our future.
However, he doesn’t explore the already established links between some student leaders and state intelligence. David Mhlobo, the then Minister of State Security, admitted that Mcebo Dlamini was a regular visitor to his home.
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