At the beginning of October, Rhodes History professor, Julia Wells left her flourishing academic career to become one of five full-time councillors in the Makana municipality. Wells is widely respected as a historian specialising in the overlapping fields of oral history, public history, community history and applied history.
At the beginning of October, Rhodes History professor, Julia Wells left her flourishing academic career to become one of five full-time councillors in the Makana municipality. Wells is widely respected as a historian specialising in the overlapping fields of oral history, public history, community history and applied history.
She is widely published and has been involved in numerous initiatives such as the local Egazini heritage project. She receives frequent invitations to give talks and consult around the country .
Wells says she didn’t have to think hard about leaving Rhodes. Since joining the ANC 28 years ago she has grown accustomed to doing what her party tells her.
“I made my decision to stay in politics a long time ago. Any good comrade goes wherever they’re deployed,” says Wells.
Despite living most of her life in the US, Wells’ own roots in the ANC go back many decades, something which has always ensured her a lot of support within the party.
"People today look at the ANC and sometimes complain, ‘Why do these old-timers and activists think they deserve all the posts?’ My first question to myself is, ‘Well where were you? We know where we were.’"
During the struggle you had to be completely dedicated if you were in the ANC. Most of the activists I met in those days were highly intelligent and strategic thinkers. They were analysing, taking risks, and very unselfish. But fortunately conditions have changed and people are not required to make such huge sacrifices to be politically active today she said.
Wells argues that the ANC’s “liberation mindset” needs to be kept alive.
“What do we do now that is not related to the liberation agenda? The liberation is not finished; there are new ‘enemies’ and a lot of things to be liberated. Liberate us from racial thinking, gender-based thinking and xenophobic thinking. Liberate people from economic distress. Liberate people’s self-confidence and self-image.
Today we need to salvage and maintain as much as possible of the good parts of the struggle, to transfer some of the dynamics of that situation, and to keep extending the mandate.”
Wells was born and grew up in the small town of Monmouth, Illinois, in the United States. She became interested in South Africa during high school, and visited the country as an undergraduate student, an experience which affected her profoundly. She decided to do her PhD in history and teach other Americans about South Africa as her ‘bit’ in the fight against apartheid.
Wells was recruited into the ANC in 1980 on a research trip in Durban and was asked to start running missions for the ANC into Swaziland. Eight years later she married underground ANC operative Ebrahim Ebrahim, the commander of Umkhonto weSizwe, the ANC’s military wing, in Natal and Transvaal, by then based in Swaziland. Then Ebrahim was sentenced to 20 years on Robben Island for treason.
Wells was denied a work permit in South Africa, so moved to Zimbabwe, where she was elected to the ANC’s regional political committee. She would deliver messages to the prisoners on Robben Island when visiting Ebrahim. In 1991 she represented Zimbabwe ANC members at the first legal meeting of the ANC’s National Conference.
But then, in 1993, with democracy around the corner, it seemed like her political life was over. She moved to Grahamstown where she eventually became an associate professor of history at Rhodes University.
But retiring from politics was not that easy. She was given office in the local ANC’s town and campus branch, and has since moved steadily up the ANC ranks at each election time. She has served two terms as treasurer of the regional executive, was made a municipal councillor in 2000 and served as acting mayor of Grahamstown in May this year.
Wells acknowledges her political progress is a direct outcome of the ANC’s policies of racial and gender representation – she is one of the few white people, let alone white women who has been active in the Eastern Cape after 1994. But she has also carved out her own political niche. She has been known as a long-standing supporter of Jacob Zuma and has been a leader of the so-called “progressive movement” in the Makana ANC.
Wells believes the rise of factions in the ANC is directly linked to a new culture of self-interest and opportunism. An important part of the solution, she argues, is for the ANC to work harder to pass on its core values.
