Will the new Thabo Mbeki please speak up?

Former president Thabo Mbeki is creeping back into the intellectual spotlight. His pronouncement on the issue of knowledge production at the University of Stellenbosch Business School’s Knowledge Management Conference recently has generated much heat and light.

His utterances have, rightly, put a critical spotlight on the role of academia and business in not only generating knowledge but using it to manipulate society for their own agendas. There has always been suspicion of the real purpose of education or knowledge production, and development and its incestuous relationship with the moneyed class, if you like.

The eminent Mbeki has, of course, raised pertinent questions about this relationship but he does not take us very far in understanding the nature of the problem. There are more straightforward and objective truths and facts that Mbeki could have said but chose not to say. Instead, he asked a lot of intelligent and penetrating questions to which he has answers.

What he did not spell out, for instance, is the incestuous relationship that exists between capitalism and the professional class or intelligentsia. That knowledge production and control of what people ‘know’ is linked to protecting and preserving the economic status quo is so real that it cannot be denied. And Mbeki knows that!

Perhaps there has never been a time when knowledge and power have been like Siamese twins. In today’s information age those who control knowledge production hold the power, thus the saying “knowledge is power”. But what, exactly, is the relationship between the intelligentsia and capitalist power? The inextricable link between capitalist oppression, economic injustice and failure to satisfy the aspirations of the African majority is something that everyone with eyes has seen over the last 18 years. Knowledge producers know that even when they are asleep.

Those who produce knowledge are neither trained nor permitted to critically engage with the capitalist superpower structure for fear that they may pose a threat. Their role is to uphold the system. But in their hearts of hearts they know that South Africa, in its current political and economic setup, is a failed human experiment. It promotes and perpetuates racial inequality and economic injustice in the name of democracy. This constitutional democracy is not only anti-black but anti-human.

But a man like Mbeki and those who produce knowledge cannot say this truth from the rooftops because they are trapped in cocoons of influence, position, prestige and power they wallow in. They have to pretend not to be aware of the contradictions in the economic system.

But there is reason to be hopeful. In fact, there are stirrings of knowledge of these realities within the ruling African National Congress. After all, Mbeki is a senior member. It was only last Friday that Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe publicly acknowledged at the University of South Africa that the ANC has no control over those who control knowledge or capital. Significantly, he urged society, especially the intelligentsia, to begin to engage the dysfunctional model of democracy and capitalism. You cannot have equality and greed at the same time.

There is something wrong when a state that pushes for equality and justice relies on those who serve capitalist interests for policies and information. This does not, and will not, exactly contribute to genuine transformation.

Thus you find that voices like Mbeki, for instance, are suddenly muted when they know that we need honest and open discourse on this unworkable solution of capitalism and democracy. This is because far many people who know the truth around knowledge production have allowed themselves to be manipulated by the capitalist system to remain silent in the face of this economic contradiction. We have every reason to be afraid when a man of the calibre of Mbeki cannot, as John Milton put it, “speak freely according to conscience”. He has lost everything, now, and has nothing more to lose. He has no business to be preoccupied with self-interest, position, status, power and prestige. He should just speak as his conscience dictates to him.

It is clear as daylight that knowledge producers have an incestuous relationship with power that makes them wary of fulfilling their historical mission which, presumably, is to be the conscience of the nation and thus have no holy cows.

Instead those who know, like Mbeki, now want to mince their words and rarely gravitate towards an open and honest discourse that will sober everyone up about what is wrong about this country. He is skirting around issues because maybe he is too embarrassed or afraid to speak truth to the moneyed classes and what they have to offer.

People who conduct themselves this way, unavoidably, become part of the problem that constrains freedom of thought, expression and knowledge. We have to speak truth according to conscience. Mbeki is the last man who should be pussyfooting around the truth. He does not have to scramble for the crumbs. Yes, he should be pushing the boundaries of unimagined possibilities towards transformation and change to the economic system.

Mbeki must not just tell us that a “small but powerful minority controls knowledge”. He must show how they do that and reveal how this undermines democracy in South Africa.

The perspective Mbeki presented on knowledge production is a tip of the iceberg. As a result, it unwittingly reflects the social and cultural values of those who control the economy and use their power to undermine government initiatives to bring justice and equality to society.

Mbeki needs to drop his diplomatic mask and speak for that man who is not in high office. He is lucky that he is still held in high regard but he is an ordinary man, now. As an ordinary man it is his responsibility to make all citizens of this beautiful nation realise that as long as wealth monopoly is concentrated among a handful and charges of land dispossession remain, South Africa will not cease to be a house divided against itself.

Also, as an exponent of Pan-Africanism, Mbeki must remind everyone that as much as this is the era of globalisation, this remains an African country. Yet we need to remind ourselves that Mbeki is a product of Sussex University in the West where he was educated and trained by knowledge producers in the West to become part of the very system. Maybe he cannot overtly be seen to be opposed to a system that made him.

Essentially, what Mbeki did not say is that as long as the knowledge producers are beholden to capitalist sponsors and preoccupied with status, power and prestige, their role becomes not only dysfunctional but anti-poor and anti-African.

The knowledge producers, just like everybody else, cannot be opposed to a history and an economic setup that benefits them. We have to acknowledge that the intelligentsia is now the new opium of the people. They espouse intellectual claptrap and other theories that prick thought processes but will not lead you to an understanding of where power lies or how the world works.

One thing is very clear: there is more to what Mbeki did not say than to what he said. Will the new Thabo Mbeki please speak up?