David Kitson, who served 20 years in Pretoria prisons, was a member of the High Command of Umkhonto we Sizwe while Nelson Mandela and his colleagues in the Rivonia Trial faced the prospect of the death penalty. He died in Johannesburg on 9 November, aged 91. On his release from prison in 1984, he was treated in a shameful way by the parties to which he had given a lifetime of brave support, the South African Communist Party (he had joined the CP in 1940) and the ANC.
In 1993, however, then living with his wife Norma in Harare , David spoke for himself in a letter to the London Review of Books, in which he poked fun at the ideological mare's nest of his sometime fellow political prisoner, Jeremy Cronin, the current deputy general secretary of David's old party, the South African Communist Party. The Thoughts of Comrade Cronin can be found on Politicsweb, here:
David's light-hearted comment appeared with other letters in the LRB, under the heading "The Paris Strangler." The title is because Jeremy Cronin's former tutor and inspiration at the Sorbonne, the philosopher Louis Althusser (1918-1990), had strangled his wife in 1980.
David had a purely private funeral. His words speak for the man.
The Paris Strangler
While I was in jail in Pretoria for two decades in consequence of my pursuit of the Marxist ideal, one of my fellow inmates, serving a mere seven years, had spent some time in the Sorbonne reading for an MA in politics. He had sat at the feet of Louis Althusser (LRB, 17 December 1992), and expressed his admiration for the maestro by running seminars on the thought of Althusser for us. Marxists are not merely concerned with a delineation of Communist society - an ideal which seems somewhat further away now since my release. In fact, Marx himself was rather coy about a detailed description of Communism for fear of being regarded as a utopian. Marxists also present a critique of capitalism in much greater detail. A part of this is the analysis of the state, which was particularly the concern of Lenin.
In prison, we discussed Althusser's notions of ideology and ideological state apparatuses. According to him, these serve to bolster the capitalist state, and he lists the family among other institutions as an ideological state apparatus. Thus, if one is opposed to capitalism, one can contribute to its downfall by undermining ideological state apparatuses. Therefore it might seem logical to destroy that foundation of capitalism, the family, by strangling one's wife.
My comrade was not impressed when I put this to him after we heard of Althusser's action. He continued in his respect for Althusser's erudition and incision by imitating his style to some effect, although not in spouse-strangling. In deciding whether Althusser was motivated by lunacy or logic, it would have helped if he could have strangled some children as well, but it seems that none came to hand.
David Kitson
Harare
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