Cry the beloved country? Revisiting Mamdani's South African moment through Chief Albert Luthuli's self-narrated alliance politics

Abstract

Mamdani posits that the nation-state, an institution inextricably linked to violence and exclusion, creates and politicizes racial and tribal identities, inscribing some as permanent majorities and others as minorities within the political community so constructed. Mamdani avers that in the “South African moment” in the 1970s and 1980s, South Africa decolonized the political by reconstituting the political community without reference to race. This article revisits Mamdani’s analysis through Chief Albert Luthuli’s autobiography Let My People Go, suggesting that the South African moment was birthed earlier than Mamdani argues. Autobiography, which is part of history-making, inscribes one’s personal identity and subjectivity, challenging imposed identities and implicating the lives of others by framing them as friends or strangers in the narrative. In this way, autobiographies create associations or distance between the self and others, resulting in entrenched or contested hierarchies, and the possibility of reconstructing or fabricating social realities and political communities.