Listening to the silent majority

[97]

Sam Mabe wrote, for instance, ‘My belief is that strategies, including our struggle for freedom, should be reviewed from time to time. Strategies must be adopted to new realities. For instance, when we adopted at

[p. 132]

The Sowetan our concept for nation building in 1988, it meant to look at other angles of the struggle of liberation. We wanted another approach. We said to ourselves, while we are involved in the struggle to liberate this country, the cardinal question still is, how are we going to handle the power that we presently want to get? Do we have sufficient trained cadres? So, our general idea was: let's prepare ourselves for post-apartheid and liberation.’

I asked him what he meant by writing about traditional methods of struggle. He seemed to believe that people do not want to shift away from the way things have always been done. It is not that traditional methods are wrong; but, in the opinion of moderates one has got to look from time to time at current realities. You have constantly to adapt yourself to these. This is the tactic thinking blacks advocate. In our conversation, I quoted from psychiatrist Alexander Mitscherlich's book, ‘Society without Father,’^76. in which he states that traditions, and traditional thinking for that matter, should be always reviewed as to whether they maintained their meaning in relation to changed realities in this world. Several of my interviewees, however, believed people are becoming very conservative. They want things done as they have always been done, even when some of them realize that that will not yet get us anywhere. ‘Do you mean to say,’ I replied ‘that most people are inclined to be against the use of violence?’ Sam gave me a most illuminating and straight answer on this question, which I taped, but am not allowed to reproduce here. I do not feel, from talking to him, that Sam is against violence in principle. I got the impression from our talk, that in a most reasonable way, he, and interviewees that think as he does, want to review strategies and to approach the struggle of liberation from different angles. In other words, to study additional options to attain the ultimate goal of liberation.

76. Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York (1963)