THE REVOLUTIONARY STORY OF MY MOTHERS PRESCRIBED READINGS In the course of my life my mother gave me two books which she explained would be life changing. Upon retrospective reflection both books at their various times in my life appear to be dialectically binary in terms of its political irony. The first book was a yellow-paged 1964 copy of Herbert Marcuses ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN she gave me in 1983 which is still in my possession. There is only one passage in this book that she underlined which drew my attention back then and it reads as follows: As historical process, the dialectical process involves consciousness: the recognition and seizure of the liberating potentialities. Thus it involves freedom. To the degree to which consciousness is determined by the exigencies and interests of established society, it is unfree; to the degree to which established society is irrational, the consciousness becomes free for the higher historical rationality only in the struggle against established society. The truth and the freedom of negative thinking have their ground and reason in this struggle. My mother gave me this book, without knowing the true extent of my political involvement, during my first year of being recruited into Umkhonto We Sizwe, the peoples army(ANC). The political irony of its timing and context at that stage of my revolutionary becoming lay in the implied caution that militancy and resistance without revolutionary consciousness degenerates into political adventurism. The second book was Henri Charriéres PAPILLON, a 1969 novelised true account about the escape of two prisoners from the French prison named Devils Island. This book my mother gave to Wally Rhoode, David Fortuin and I while we were awaiting trial on terrorism charges at Pollsmoor prison shortly before some of us served our sentences on Robben Island. This one was handed to Wally and I during one of my mothers prison visits with a clear message/written therein by her that we must use the lessons taught in the book to escape before being sentenced. She even visited us a few weeks later and asked us whether we read the book and got the message. We did not follow her instructions and some of us landed up in Robben Island prison. I am re-reading my mothers copy of Herbert Marcuses ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN again, but this time with my mothers three dimensional political wisdom, in the hope that I finally grasp what she probably really would have wanted me to understand about the relevance of the passage she underlined to the politics of South Africa today, and the Western Cape in stark particular.
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 16:27:53 +0000
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