Primitive Times

Abstract

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other-except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the author.The author has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.Cover design Clair Durow. Front image: Roman Rock Lighthouse, False Bay -Wikipedia. Back cover image: Uvongo.Imagination withdrew and returned to Africa ... where Dutch and English profit by the Negro millions, those hosts were stirred by vague dreams of freedom. Peering beyond the whole bulge of Africa, beyond cloud-spread Table Mountain, I saw the Southern Ocean, black with storms. -Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker Contents Preface vii Introduction x Critique (2021) and offers a philosophical and literary perspective. More generally, it looks to the work of those who have tried to discover what Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, described as 'the hidden mechanics' behind 'the mere process of disintegration [that] has become an irresistible temptation, not only because it has assumed the spurious grandeur of "historical necessity," but also because everything outside it has begun to appear lifeless, bloodless, meaningless, and unreal' (1951: xxvi). 1My contribution is to focus on the historical and symbolic importance of South Africa in connection with these issues, and to draw lessons that might contribute to understanding the current situation. The topicality of the phrase 'global apartheid' to describe the process of globalisation that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union-but whose contours were already discernibleprovides the theoretical opening. As the rest of the world catches up with South African levels of inequality, the South Africanisation of the globe suggests that the former polecat of the world community may represent the future rather than the past. 2 Unmoored from its native soil, the global 'South-Africanisation of society' (Gorz 1989: 151) denotes minority rule in international decision-making and implies a parallel between Bantustans and the poorer states in the world. It also suggests the utilisation of bioweapons. 3 This is why the building blocks of separate development are relevant, as are the strategies used to defeat legislated apartheid. If '"the Final Solution to the African problem"' (Dick 1962: 30) is indeed becoming the planetary template, then the colonial and imperial precedents of this country might be usefully revisited.The current situation can usefully be viewed through the lens of its colonial and imperial preconditions. Taking the long view, the course towards what we now call globalisation has been charted by predecessors making their own plea for a rational world order. For a relatively recent example, consider The Great An...