CHALLENGES FACED BY SOUTH AFRICAN INTELLECTUALS: A GRAMSCIAN PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The  purpose  of  this  paper  is  to explore  the  relevance  of  one of Antonio Gramsci’s ideas, namely, intellectuals, to a different context from that in which his writings were conceived.  It has been over seventy years since Gramsci’s death in 1937; perhaps the time is appropriate to question whether the ideas of one of the most ingenious thinkers and theorists of the twentieth century still has currency in the transformed circumstances of the twenty-first century. I aim, in fact, to prove the continuing relevance of Gramsci’s writings to a context other than early twentieth-century Italy by analysing, interpreting and assessing the ways in which his ideas on intellectuals still speak to us in the circumstances of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa.Gramsci is important to South Africa as conditions in this country are notably similar to those prevailing in Italy in Gramsci’s time. I will show that South African intellectuals, like the Italian intellectuals described by Gramsci, also face numerous challenges. I will examine the views  of  various  commentators  on  the  roles,  functions  and  challenges  that  South  African intellectuals face in a post-apartheid society.