It's time for faithful defiance

Intellectualls then and now are easily attracted to the neat and handy phrase bequeathed to us by the brilliant Afrikaans poet and thinker, NP Van Wyk Louw , lojale verset.

At least one former presenter of the NP Van Wyk Louw Lecture, the late Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, invoked the phrase in the title of his address, Dis Tyd vir Lojale Verset. It does not quite translate with the same poignancy into English: "loyal resistance". Yet the phrase retains its seductive attraction in our transition, caught as many intellectuals are between an instinctive loyalty to a government that represents our hard-won democracy and an equally instinctive resistance to any authority (including governmental authority) that threatens the values on which this new democracy was established.

What then does lojale verset mean in this perplexing period of transition from the iron cage of white Afrikaner nationalist rule to an uncertain and rather turbulent democracy under a black ANC-led government? How and why do intellectuals position themselves within this transition? How do universities enter the pressure-cooker debates on everything from media tribunals to state interference in institutional affairs? Is it lojaal or verset that triumphs in the variegated attempts to speak truth to power? What does this tension between two seemingly rival concepts do to human actors within the South African drama and, more importantly, how does that tension shape institutions themselves? And what can we learn about how Louw himself navigated his way through the treacherous waters of another incipient nationalism of his day?

I am decidedly not an expert on Louw, but I do wish to position some of his intellectual thought within contemporary debates in the country we shared.

It is clear from even a cursory reading of the debates on lojale verset that the phrase had different meanings for different audiences: depending on how you read the earlier or the later Louw, he emerges at one extreme as nothing more than an apartheid intellectual or, at the other extreme, as "South Africa's Milton".'

It is this "ambiguity" in evaluating the legacy of Louw that is reflected in the rich contributions in an issue of Die Suid-Afrikaan (October 1994), which included the response of Njabulo Ndebele to Breyten Breytenbach.

It soon becomes clear Louw has been appropriated by the Right and the Left at various points in the past, both to nail him and to praise him, and sometimes both. Some warn of the appropriation of lojale verset within prevailing political cultures of the time, and others of the domestication of this construct to "tame" restless intellectuals.

My generation grew up with a romantic view of the liberation movements. We longed for the day when the apartheid state would be smashed and all the ideals of democracy, freedom and redistribution would fall neatly into place. Our moral and political sense of right and wrong were crystal clear. Everything that was evil was represented in the previous government; everything pure and noble, in its replacement.

The violence in then Natal was the IFP's fault alone, the party of collaboration. The necklacing in the townships could be justified in the context of the people's anger. There were no Quatros in the pre-1994 mind; only noble exiles who sacrificed their lives for our freedom. All freedoms would come and live within the new Azania once liberation was achieved. It was as simple as that.

The 1994 elections came and went. We all could now vote. The terror of apartheid was gone. The liberation icons were in power. The right laws and policies were developed. The people govern. We have a Constitutional Court and a Bill of Rights. Amandla.

Soon the wheels come off. Corruption, scandals, theft, bribery and more afflict not only politicians and parliament at the top, but government departments and civil servants down the line. Mandela departs after one term (a noble African achievement) but then things seem to go south. A sitting president is removed by angry members of his party, and it seems as if the words of one sage have come true: "In Africa, when you eat the king, you remain hungry."

Things regarded as sacred are now vilified by the new people in power: judges are ridiculed if their judgments go against the powerful; university principals must be given performance contracts by the government; anyone who stands in the way of the new elite are dubbed "counter-revolutionaries" by youngsters with little education; public behaviour by the powerful is scandalous, the most powerful calling for machine guns while their protégés bear their backsides in public displays of hubris; in several provinces political rivals are hit by assassins; protests are the same as before, angry and unrelenting, as teachers are dragged from classrooms and nurses from emergency wards; old people die in welfare queues; some of our heroes go to prison; others are kept out of jail.

How then do citizens and intellectuals and, in particular, university-based thinkers, locate themselves between these tensions of loyalty and resistance?

One of the best examples of this tension is found in the response of the committee of vice-chancellors, called Higher Education South Africa, in response to the Protection of Information Bill.

Rather than take a strong and undiluted stand against what is dangerous to our democracy, the wording of the organisation's leadership is cautious, even co-operative: "As much as it is the duty of higher education to speak truth to power, it is also necessary for our universities to find solutions to impasses." The statement also expresses support for initiatives that "work collectively towards a nuanced piece of legislation that is acceptable to both government and society".

My purpose is not to judge our press statement. It is, rather, to point at the tension between loyalty and resistance. In another time and place, academics and academic leaders would have made strong statements about the dangers and threats posed to universities and our democratic freedoms when the state assumes powers to control and punish those in the media directly.

To understand the tension inherent in lojale verset it is important to understand the social, cultural and political context in which the idea itself resides. Louw lived in a time when the Afrikanerx identity was still fluid and Afrikaner power not fully established. The '30s were a time of turmoil, and white poverty and memories of defeat still occupied the minds of many Afrikaners. This was a period in which Afrikaner nationalism was spreading, a powerful movement that would reach its high point in the coming to power of the Nationalists in 1948. This new language of Afrikaans was growing stronger, replacing Dutch and vying for cultural presence and political authority with English.

This was the context in which Louw lived and spoke.

He strongly supported his people, and made moral arguments for the separation of the races. At the same time, Louw raised critical questions of those in power, took a stand for those harmed by the state, and on occasion even supported segments of the broader black population. He was constantly caught between lojaal and verset.

Many of us are timid. The last thing you want is your name in the paper, or some scoundrels with imaginary power calling for you to lose your job or your position - whether it be a cushy position in parliament or a income-securing job in a municipality. That is why most normal people go to extraordinary lengths to stay out of the newspapers. To be called names - like racist or bourgeois or counter-revolutionary - can fray the nerves of most ordinary people, especially when you know there is no (easy) recourse to justice when such reckless name-calling can do irreparable harm to your reputation.

Anyone with doubts about this should simply have seen what happened to teachers or nurses who thought differently about the protracted public servants' strike.

There has been a silent revolution in our universities since the '90s, a revolution that has changed the face of higher education and the prospects for democracy, by reducing the necessary intellectual ferment.

Universities must push back if lojale verset is to have any meaning in the lives of institutions and the society in which they reside.

As the state seeks to assert and insert itself aggressively into the sacred spaces of institutional autonomy and media freedom, we need to push back (verset) and express loyalty (lojaliteit), not to governments that come and go, but to the principles on which they were founded. We know the darkness that comes with retreat.

In the words of a determined fish in the film Finding Nemo, as it dangled from the beak of a pelican: "We did not come this far to be breakfast."

• Jansen is the vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State. This is an edited version of an address he gave at the University of Johannesburg last weekend