Hein Marais: Toolsmith for Change
By Jason Joseph

Political analyst Hein Marais is fuelled by his belief in an egalitarian society that supports social change, and most importantly, empowerment. On Friday 4 March 2011, at Rhodes University he spoke about his latest book: South African Pushed to the Limit: The Political Economy of Change. From the get-go he takes a leftist stance on politics that can foster change and equality.

Marais quotes Bertholdt Brecht’s poem – Parade of Old New – in a bid to set the tone in attempting to answer the question as to why exactly he wrote this book. “What I attempted to do with the book is provide readers with tools with which to look at our history,” says Marais, “– our recent history in particular – with new lenses.” From his leftist point of view Marais makes “an attempt to look at things with quite, hopefully, clear lenses,” says Marais. “We owe it to ourselves in trying to figure out what to do about these realities, to understand them in ways that go beyond what we have become used to.”Marais book is the result of 9 months of research and he acknowledges that research with the many footnotes and references throughout the book.

Ani DiFranco once said: “Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right”. It would seem that Marais seeks to equip his readers with the most powerful tool of all – knowledge. “Its really important when we make arguments, when we analyse reality, try and understand what is happening to our society, that we don’t just do it on basis of opinion, that we use the information, the data that is there,” says Marais, “We need to be able to refer to actual data and show with these statements come from. I think that is the one challenge I set for myself in the book.”

South African Pushed to the Limit: The Political Economy of Change can be seen as an equipper of tools for the necessary that needs to happen in South Africa. But, as Marais said “it is up to you, the reader to decide if I have succeeded in what I set out to do in this book.”