University of Cape Town – SOC1001F

Rationalisation of Society Essay

‘Oh, you better believe it…’:
The latent paradoxes of those happy neighbours, Bureaucracy and Tradition, in our New South Africa

On just a superficial consideration, contemporary South Africans might find it difficult to take Max Weber’s foreboding of the ‘Disenchantment of the World’ very seriously. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to name a nation that has ever offered so sincere a rebuke to his fears. Our post-Apartheid legacy of ‘democratic rationalisation’ has always been touted as following the dual ideals of economic modernity and enlightened diversity politics, such that just as the state has reformed itself into a secular, globalised, ‘post-ideological’ infrastructure, it has simultaneously sought to protect the ‘enchanted’ aspects of the country’s neglected heritage and current populace. What we have today, in short, is a kind of rationalised tolerance of ‘traditional irrationality’ forming a central clause of governmental doctrine. I know I’m not alone in my suspicions that such a state of affairs may be dangerously self- contradictory, but what’s interesting to note is that it’s not one that’s unique to the New South Africa. The prevailing developmental capitalism of the other BRICS nations too shares this split between the ambitions of state bureaucracy and its allowances for cultural preservation. Therefore, this essay will attempt, with some necessary subjective gusto, to explicate our paradigm as a symptom of this global neo-liberal leaning, as well as its existence as a particular problematic condition for the first egalitarian goals of the Freedom Charter. Furthermore, I’ll propose that it is this implicit departure from Weber’s conception of rationalised society that has played a significant part in stifling the fulfillment of the majority of our other post- Apartheid dreams. Sounds heady enough? Then let us begin…

So, in what sense, following Weber, can we actually label South Africa today a rationalised society? Well, we openly ascribe to Western capitalism for one thing, by which I mean that the majority of the nation’s needs and wants are met by “the appropriation of [the] physical means of production… as disposable property of autonomous private industrial enterprises.” (Weber, 1994: 152) And – besides parastatals and certain public institutions, of course – the majority of those enterprises are players in the globalised economy, either as multinational corporations or as local businesses depending on the corporate market. As such, we can see 1994- the first year of “true democracy”- as also being the year of the essential transition from the isolationist state hegemony of Apartheid to our current ‘open society’ of integrationism par excellence. It’s not just that our economy is integrated into the free market; it’s also that the majority of the populace is, for the first time, integrated into the economy. In this sense, we can look back on the Apartheid era as a kind of intermediate state of (arrested) development between the sway of British colonialism pre-1948 and today’s neo-liberal democracy post-1994. Under Apartheid, a ‘rational’ drive for urban modernisation co-existed with the stagnating colonial policy of excluding- via race laws- a swathe of rightful citizens from the cities, such that it became ideological doctrine to associate national progress with forced expulsions (i.e. District Six, Sophiatown). The government’s excuse for their totalitarian measures was, of course, to point out as consolation the tribal homelands they had themselves instituted so as to deny non-whites the full South African citizenship promised them by the notion of democracy the leadership still fostered. All of which is just a quick history lesson to clarify the fact that Weber’s theory of rationalisation has only truly become relevant in the last twenty years, as the citizens of those tribal homelands have been re-integrated into constituting the Republic we know today. What were once islands of ‘enchanted’ governance- lead, as the majority were, by disparate kings or chiefs- are now subordinate to the secular modernity of the state, which is itself subordinate to the supreme rationality of the market. Consequently, in fully rejecting Apartheid dogma, our current state ideology is a self-conscious celebration of difference, in every sense of the word. But the appropriate question here should be how it is that our enduring ideal of the Rainbow Nation can stem from the ‘pure rationality’ of our non-biased political center? The popular leftist philosopher Slavoj Zizek provides a theoretical answer: “Capitalism [as we know it] is the first socio- economic order which de-totalizes meaning: there is no global “capitalist worldview,” no “capitalist civilization” proper: the fundamental lesson of globalisation is precisely that capitalism can accommodate itself to all civilisations, from Christian to Hindu or Buddhist, from West to East.” (2010: 365) In this sense, if South Africa can be viewed, in itself, as an entire globalised civilisation of co-existing worldviews, the meaning of our secular state is simply that of a ‘de-totalized’ acceptance of all citizens under the banner of neo-liberal capitalism. Therefore, to my mind, what it means to be a South African today can be condensed into an updated version of Immanuel Kant’s dictum on the ‘Public and Private Uses of Reason’: ‘Believe whatever you will, but Obey your function in the economy!’ (1784: 2)

But moving on from my indulgent theoretical foundations, we should now contextualise Weber’s conception of rationalisation by discovering how such a ‘de- totalized ideology’ presents itself in everyday life. I believe we can recognize it in two classes of co-operative institutions which both seem to simply serve the functions of society: the first being the ‘faceless bedrock’ of our public institutions (schools, hospitals, police stations etc.), the second the national-brand service industries (Coke kiosks, Engen garages, Ster-Kinekor movies and so on) which quite often cater for distinct socio-religious communities despite having no recognisable worldviews to call their own. While, of course, we each may have our own opinions on the functional efficiency of the former, my point here is that, in stark contrast to the segregatory distinctions of Apartheid, our public institutions define themselves today by the openness of their admissions policies. We are meant to see them as ‘part of the scenery’ of our rational society, as being the bare unbiased minimum of social protection the government is constitutionally obliged to provide its citizens. Criticism of the ANC has mostly focused on the fact that its administration has, with the dissolution of the RDP and GEAR initiatives, so far failed to fulfill its post-1994 promises of providing any more than this to the impoverished mass of their supporters. With South Africa’s grand re-entry into the global economy, it was hoped that corporate investments would full in the gaps of our emerging dreams of prosperity, but what we have seen occur instead is a wholesale adaptation of the market to suit the pre-existing conditions of our class structure. That is, what it approximately still was in 1994: a political elite in Johannesburg and Pretoria; a white, Indian and Muslim bourgeoisie in the suburbs and a black and coloured proletariat and rural community throughout. This form of explicit economic stagnation has, in my opinion, a clear correlation with a sociological analysis of our ‘innocent doctrine’ of diversity politics: what began in the first post-Apartheid years as a necessary process of ideological revisionism and inculcated reverence for the Struggle generation has gradually morphed into a tragically regressive equivocation of tradition and modernity. Clear examples of this effect can be drawn straight from the front pages of the last two decades: President Thabo Mbeki and his Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang notoriously delayed for years the development and distribution of antiretroviral drugs while advocating the use of time-tested “traditional remedies”, such as “garlic and beetroot”, to counter the unprecedented costs of the AIDS epidemic (Stephens, 2007); current President Jacob Zuma has maintained a groundswell of more than 60% of the public’s democratic support despite the many independent reports that have vilified his lifestyle and charismatic political appeal as being equivalent to that of a 21st-century Zulu king (polygamy, nepotism, misappropriation of civil funds etc.) and the Protection of Information Bill’s recent passing in court has brought into play a provisional governmental censorship authority that cannot help but look like a compromise on the post- Apartheid mantra of ‘the freedom of the press’. It’s not that these conditions are necessarily inherently backwards or fallacious, it’s that they’re incommensurable with the project of both our 1996 Constitution and the concept of ‘African Renaissance’ that has haunted our reformative politics since the publication of the Freedom Charter in 1955.

To clear up any misinterpretations, I have specifically targeted the issue of our ‘politics of diversity’ throughout this essay not because I am in any way critical of the freedom of worship or representation, but because I believe it is what has allowed the aforementioned paradoxes to emerge in recent years. By equating race with culture, culture with tradition and tradition with national worth, sincere critiques of our paradigm have continually been obscured by diversions to racial disputes and laments for ‘the legacy of Apartheid.’ In favouring Weber’s form of societal rationalisation over the preservation of traditional thinking, I am specifically not implying the return of the kind of oppressive “iron cage” of Bureaucracy that typified Apartheid. (Hughes et al., 2003: 118) I am calling instead for a renewed belief in the Enlightenment ideal of the progressive society. Why it needs renewing is because I don’t think the current co-existence of our modern administrative government with the ‘diversity’ it advocates and protects is anything but a problematic stalemate in socio-political terms. My last and favourite example, in this case, is that of the proposed ‘Traditional Courts Bill’, which would constitutionally uphold the explicitly sexist and anti- democratic rulings of the local courts of the old Apartheid-era homelands. (Migiro, 2012) Is this surely not an issue of neo-liberal self-negation? When a democratic nation openly seeks to protect its implicit enemies, what does that say about the democratic cause? If I have an answer, it’s that the ‘shared vision’ of democracy we have espoused for twenty years now is in need of an amendment. Our conception of the Rainbow Nation has always been the belief that because of our differences as citizens of South Africa, we could eventually come to empathise with every fellow man and woman. The change we need to make today is to, on the contrary, feel that in spite of our essential differences we can have a true ‘shared vision’ that all South Africans can ascribe to. Only then can the dream of a rational egalitarian society- where ‘the people really will govern’- be mobilised and, just possibly, fulfilled.

In this essay I have attempted to collect and connect some of the applicable aspects of Max Weber’s sociological theories through, sequentially, a rough history of the New South Africa’s rationalization process, a general theoretical reflection on the state of rational thinking in the age of neo-liberal capitalism, a critique of the persistence of regressive irrational policies in the halls of parliament and an idealistic commentary on the future of South African political idealism. Hopefully the inner logic of my analysis has made clear the appropriate links between my political, economic and sociological commentaries but, of course, I leave it to the reader to make their own judgements as to its intrinsic value in this context. Long live the sociologists!

Word Count: 1823

Reference List:

Hughes, J.A. et al. 2003. Understanding Classical Sociology. London: Sage.
Kant, I. 1784. An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?. Appended as a

reading for Sociology Tutorial 1. UCT: 2014.

Migiro, K. 2012. South African women rights at risk as Zuma woos tribal chiefs.Available: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/04/us-safrica-rights-chiefs- idUSBRE8B300E20121204 [2014, May 17]

Stephens, J. 2007. “Dr. Garlic” and the Battle for AIDS Policy in Post-Apartheid Society. Available: http://web.wm.edu/so/monitor/issues/13-1/1-stephens.pdf [2014, May 17]

Weber, M. 1994. Sociological Writings. Wolf Heydebrand (Ed.). New York: Continuum. Various Extracts.

Zizek, S. 2010. Living in the End Times. London & New York: Verso Books.