Since the coming of the nineties, things seem to change within [South Africa]. A new culture arrived with the nineties. It brought and legitimated the “market”. And in a very short space of time it took control of practically every aspect of our lives. Though the market had been with us for a long time it remained condemned, the domain of decadent white society. And whereas some of us were quite sceptical about it at the beginning, we eventually succumbed. Today it regulates and controls all of our lives. It determines how we conduct our politics. It writes the scripts of our locally produced soapies. Increasingly our young minds at school are imprinted with the dictates of the market. Drilling them in the art of selling themselves. It influences the way we play sports, the way we speak, the way we dress. Our public appearances are carefully choreographed. These are the requirements of the market. It demands that we present ourselves as saleable commodities. As functionaries we are required to possess a certain measure of exchange value, like any other commodity for sale. Such are the dictates of the “market”.

And more better if it is “packaged” in an Italian-designed suit and driven in a German-produced automobile. And if so, the exchange value increases and the market rewards a higher premium. But on the market not all goods up for sale are sought. Similarly, some of us discover that we are not appropriately packaged. And we begin to doubt our own worth, our own self-worth. Others seem to find somewhat more expedient ways, albeit criminal ways, to appropriate what the market has to offer. In our market society everyone looks out for himself – and only himself. Nobody is his brother’s keeper. Very different from the tenets held and forged during the camaraderie of the eighties. Very different from the values that inspired the likes of Vuyisile Mini, or Mntuli ka Sezi, or Neil Aggett, or Anton [Fransch]. The new values emerging within our nascent democracy are at the opposite pole of those prevalent during the times of the UDF. We can hardly expect the values, which came with the nineties, to give rise to those selfless deeds seen during the time of the UDF.

–Johnny Issel, renowned South African political leader who played a key role in the formation of the United Democratic Front in 1983 in Mitchell’s Plain, Cape Town and who died of heart failure this week, speaking in a 2003 interview. The UDF was the most important political movement inside South Africa during the 1980s before it was disbanded by the ANC. RIP.