The Ambiguous Role of the Intellectual as Statesman

Abstract

The book under review is a pocket-sized but thoughtful and closely argued political biography of Thabo Mbeki, the former President of the Republic of South Africa, whose presidency of his country served more or less as the denouement of his apprenticeship and later frontline role in the antiapartheid struggle in South Africa and the broader liberation movement in Southern Africa. A major objective of the book, we are told, is ‘to rescue Mbeki from the parochialism of South African perspectives and restore him to his rightful stature as an important pan-African political figure.

The Ambiguous Role of the Intellectual as Statesman

Le livre à l'étude est une biographie politique de poche mais réfléchie et très argumentée de Thabo Mbeki, l' ancien président de la République d' Afrique du Sud, dont la présidence de son pays a servi plus ou moins de dénouement de son apprentissage et plus tard de son rôle de premier plan dans la lutte anti-apartheid en Afrique du Sud et le mouvement de libération plus large en Afrique australe. L'un des principaux objectifs du livre, nous dit-on, est de «sauver Mbeki de l'esprit de clocher des perspectives sud-africaines et de lui redonner sa stature légitime en tant que figure politique panafricaine importante ».