New meanings of Panafricanism in the era of globalisation

continent, which is being spearheaded by the South Africa-based Eskom Enterprises.
This analysis should also be viewed against the background of the fact that the very
transition to a liberal democratic polity in South Africa was to a large extent the result of
the realisation (since the mid-1970s) by the major capitalist interests in South Africa that
the ideological and institutional fetters of the apartheid paradigm were preventing the
expansion of their profit-seeking enterprises. Hein Marais, in various contributions (most
recently in 2002:95-96) has shown irrefutably – adopting a kind of j’accuse stance – that
the marriage between the ANC leadership and big business in the early 1990s at the latest
was a deliberate match 14 .
The African Renaissance and NEPAD: continuing the great tradition?
There can be no doubt, if one accepts the analysis I have offered hitherto, that the
economic basis for President Mbeki’s attempt to spearhead the revival of Africa exists in
South Africa itself. The interests of the South African state and capital converge and
coincide on this domain.
The old adage, “cometh the time, cometh the man”, has never been more apt. The
Africanist credentials of Nelson Mandela, the first president of a democratic South
Africa, go back to the foundation of the African National Congress Youth League in
1944, which, in its origins, was conceived of and established as an organisation with a
panafrican mission. Like most of the leaders of the ANC before him, President Mbeki,
too, is driven by the original vision of Edmund Blyden, who, like most of the first
panafricanists was from the Caribbean diaspora, and one of the first black people to
define the meaning of the panafrican vision. His stress on racial pride and on
acknowledgement of the humanity of people of African descent laid the foundations of
the subsequent anti-racist ideology which has characterised the approach of virtually all
14 “The ANC government’s embrace of economic orthodoxy was designed precisely to help steer South
African capital out of … (the) cul-de-sac. Rather than a grudging surrender to the vagaries of the ‘real
world’, its economic policies represent a conscious and expectant attempt to rescue – and importantly, help
restructure the operating conditions for – South African capital, and thereby hopefully enabling it to
address some of the key demands and rights of the South African majority. (Marais 2002:95) That this is
indeed the case has recently been confirmed by Terblanche 2002. See especially pp. 96-103
14