Radical thinking in South Africa’s age of retreat

This article traces the rise and fall of radical praxis in South Africa and offers a critique of the prevailing practices of former Marxists under post-apartheid conditions. Western Marxism emerged in the 1970s in South Africa and Marxist activists became deeply involved in the liberation movements. With the unravelling of apartheid, the main liberation forces made a social pact with capitalist forces and former Marxists embraced a statist project. In the context of the rise of ‘new’ social movements, radical thinking of a more Libertarian kind is emerging in contemporary South Africa