Part 1: political public intellectuals: introduction

Abstract

Like those political public intellectuals included in the first volume in this series, The Fabric of Dissent: Public Intellectuals in South Africa, the individuals selected for Part 1 of this volume have contributed in several different ways, and have played multiple roles. Some have been key actors behind the establishment of major political organisations, including the formation of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) and liberal political parties, while most have been leaders of the key political organisations that emerged in the country in the second half of the past century and during the post-apartheid era. Several of the public intellectuals included in Part 1 initiated and/or led campaigns such as the sabotage campaign in the early 1960s, military actions until the early 1990s, the campaigns against detention without trial and the death penalty, the campaign to build Black Consciousness, the Release Mandela Campaign, the United Democratic Front's (UDF) Million Signatures campaign in the early 1980s, the campaign against military conscription, and others. The public intellectuals included here have made significant intellectual contributions in the form of speeches, lectures, newspaper articles, journal articles and books, while a few are credited as authors of key political documents of the organisations they led.