Public sociology: South African dilemmas in a global context

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Abstract
Thirteen years ago I returned to South Africa at the invitation of Blade Nzimande to address what was then ASSA—: the Association of Sociologists of Southern Africa. Much had changed since my previous sojourn to South Africa in 1968. It was then 1990. Nelson Mandela had just been released from Robben Island and the ANC had been unbanned. My two teachers, Harold Wolpe and Jack Simons, both prominent intellectuals of the liberation movement, had just returned to South Africa. I, at least, had benefited from their exile but they had been sorely missed in South Africa. At Wits a talk by the mythical Harold, renown among other matters for his daring escape from jail, was advertised as: “: Harold Wolpe—: Live.”: While I was in South Africa, that July, I also witnessed the (re)launch of the South African Communist Party to a tumultuous crowd in Soweto. Notwithstanding escalating violence in the townships and civil war in Natal, the winter of 1990 was surely one of the more optimistic moments in South African history. The optimism was reflected in the 1990 ASSA conference itself. Held at Stellenbosch it was not huge but it was active. I was struck by the engagement of sociology, much of it Marxist, with the issues of the day—: the vibrant labor movement, the expansion of civic associations, violence in the township, the civil war in Natal, poverty, health and education. Everywhere there were sociologists acting as organic intellectuals of the home-grown liberation movement. How different South African sociology was from the hyperprofessionalized American sociology!

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