Recently the editor of the M&G wrote a really damaging critique of new South African social movements. The piece was vicious and full of the nationalist politics that has quickly filled the vacuum of the departure of the liberal humanist politics that determined much of middle class South Africa’s opposition to apartheid. We wrote a really good response to her, but in the end it was limited because the nation still figured as the organizing principle of the article. Simply we were trying to make and win the debate on terms set by nationalist politics. We cannot win this debate unless we sacrifice our communism to the vacant stagist politics of the older left in which nationalist politics is a necessary point on the way to socialism. I may have dropped this philosophically while i was a student but like so many activists in the postcolonial world letting it go completely is strategically difficult and often means being confined to an even smaller political cell.

A friend of mine recently mused that although our politics was extremely radical and necessary at the local level, and the global level, when we look at it from the perspective of the nation it can be reactionary. I agree with this. But what does it mean? Should I, as Negri and Hardt (see their magna carter shit on this site) suggest, resolve to form an alliance with power in my own country so that we can deal with the monarch in the form of the US and hope Empire is better? Or do we go on struggling at every point where power renews its attack on autonomy? Any help on this problem is welcome?