One of the enduring memories I have of Adv Muzi Sikhakhane is bumping into him and his friend and long-time comrade, Aubrey Matshiqi, in Rosebank.
They were going into one of those restaurants that used to be popular with Johannesburg's black professional class before the Cyril Ramaphosa economy forced everyone to go further north of the city.
Sikhakhane, already a respected senior counsel, was relaxed in his informal attire − giving an air of a man who was on a well-deserved break from work.
Yet in one of his hands he had this thick book with a black cover, its title inscribed in gold and the name of its author written in green. Having spent most of my formative years in schools that had no libraries, I confess to this insatiable desire for reading books. So as I greeted the two of them, my eye quickly stole the title of the book as well as the author's name.
The moment lasted long enough for me to learn that the introduction to the book was by renowned jazz journalist and American cultural critic, Stanley Crouch. Crouch's pen first blew my mind when a friend introduced me to Premature Autopsies – a spoken-word sermon written by Crouch and delivered by progressive Rev Jeremiah Wright Jr as the opening to Wynton Marsalis's 1989 classic, The Majesty of the Blues.
I went straight back to the office and Googled the book. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual by Harold Cruse. Weeks later, I had an imported copy in my possession and was devouring it. A searing critic of the black leadership and intellectual traditions that had driven much of the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and the 1960s. The book was unforgiving in its reviews of African-American icons many of us grew up admiring – James Baldwin, Paul Robeson and novelist Lorraine Hansberry.
Although first published in 1967, and many of its essays were concerned with US politics, most of the points Cruse makes in his book could easily be applied to the black condition in modern-day SA. Perhaps like some of the political traditions that grew out of the liberation Struggle in this country, Cruse was deeply suspicious of interracial coalitions espoused by the Civil Rights movement and its embedded intellectuals at the time.
The book, if one were to borrow a term from the hip and happening, "was fire".
It was so radical in its claim that African-Americans can only assume their just place in the US society when they create their own independent institutions of economic and cultural influence that it made me ponder whether, here at home, black progressives are not wasting their time in trying to "transform" colonial and apartheid era institutions, instead of establishing new ones.
I was left wondering why a highly successful lawyer like Sikhakhane would have time for a writer like Cruse who, undoubtedly, would have questioned the very basis of the dominant intellectual traditions of the South African liberation Struggle and its outcomes.
Many in Sikhakhane's social position – especially those like him who spent their formative years fighting the real Struggle to end apartheid – do not worry themselves too much with such questions.
Although disappointed at the kind of SA we gained after decades of a bloody truggle, many convince themselves that they did what they could and the only contribution they can now make is to secure the future for their children and grandchildren.
Hence in a country that produced so many young and courageous political activists of different traditions in the 1970s and 1980s, we can hardly find anyone credible from those generations willing to rescue Johannesburg, eThekwini, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay from political hyenas draped in liberation clothes.
No wonder the historical beneficiaries of apartheid are fast gaining the confidence to push back against some of the gains made since 1994. They believe they have no worthy opposition.
Which is why this new initiative by Sikhakhane, Dr Allan Boesak, Arthur Fraser and Isaac Shai called Vuka Azania has to be given a chance. In an era where every Tsepang, Aphiwe and Ndivhuwo believes he must set up a new political party to make a contribution – the IEC says it has 620 parties registered for the upcoming polls – it is refreshing to come across people who think differently.
According to the little that I have read about Vuka Azania, it is going to be a civil society organisation and a think-tank that focuses on such issues as decolonisation, land reform, economic empowerment and psychological healing of black South Africans.
No matter what we may think about the specific politics and associations of the individuals leading this initiative, surely we agree that it is long overdue.
SA today finds herself having to fend off ridiculous accusations of "white genocide" and "reverse apartheid" simply because − as the main parties and government became discredited mouthpieces of the majority due to their corruption – there were not enough voices speaking out in defence of the transformation process.