From earth to heaven: South African sociology in the international context

Abstract

This has been a wonderful SASA meeting, with greater attendance than ever, with so many young and new faces, developing new perspectives for South Africa's second transition. A new generation of sociologists is taking over and SASA, one feels, has turned a corner. It reminds me of the first meeting of your association that I attended. It was 1990 in Stellenbosch. Blade Nzimande, then General Secretary of ASSA (Association of Sociologists of Southern Africa) invited me to address sociologists on the matter of the collapse of state socialism. I gave a rather optimistic address, “Painting Socialism,” the way socialism sows the seeds of its own destruction, by generating demands from below for a democratic socialism. I may have been deluded about the survival of socialism in Hungary but in South Africa I'm delighted to say the imagination of socialism is still alive. From the panels I have attended I see the critical imagination is thriving in SASA, even in the adverse conditions of contemporary South Africa. But it is a critical imagination that is grounded in the realities of South Africa.