Over the past few days some have queried the near universal sadness and admiration with which the left is responding to Mandela’s death. His government was to the right of its voters, they point out, and co-existed with rather than challenging neoliberalism. They are right, but miss the point.
The American philosopher Lewis Gordon, in an essay on affirmative action: There are those who praise South Africa for making the transformation to a supposedly post-Apartheid society nonviolently. Without violence?…..