By Ziyad Motala
In the marketplace of ideas, there are merchants who peddle goods of substance, and then there are those who deal in illusions. William Gumede, judging by his recent writings, has committed himself resolutely to the latter vocation.
In two recent contributions in the Sunday Times, “Africa played a major role in Christianity” (20 April 2025) and “South Africa must forge rapprochement with Israel” (27 April 2025), Gumede reveals himself not as a serious public intellectual, but as an ideological hack, prone to distortion, mischief, and a peculiar species of selective amnesia. He struts under the banner of “professor of practice,” yet his practice seems to consist chiefly in the art of strategic forgetfulness.
Historical Sloppiness and Islamophobic Misadventure
In his article “Africa played a major role in Christianity,” Gumede begins competently enough, highlighting the deep roots of Christian tradition on the African continent. Yet his treatment quickly derails into distortion when he ventures into describing the Islamic period. Gumede alleges that the Muslim conquests “forced many Christians to convert to Islam by imposing heavy taxes and marginalising them.”
Serious historians, however, tell a far different story. Hugh Kennedy, in The Great Arab Conquests (2007), states unequivocally that “there was no general policy of enforced conversion to Islam; indeed, early Muslim rulers often preferred to govern large populations of non-Muslims, who were taxed but otherwise left to their own affairs.” Marshall Hodgson, in The Venture of Islam (1974), likewise documents that Christian communities remained vigorous and populous for centuries under Islamic rule.
The jizya tax, presented by Gumede as a uniquely evil imposition, was in fact a standard practice of pre-modern governance, comparable to the burdens levied under the Christian Byzantines against theological dissenters. Far from being instruments of mass persecution, early Islamic states institutionalised religious pluralism, offering protection to Jews and Christians as “People of the Book,” a historical reality Gumede airily brushes aside.
When he references the Almohads and Al-Hakim’s erratic reigns, Gumede does not provide numbers of conversions and also neglects to mention that these episodes were condemned even within Muslim circles as deviations from Islamic norms. He offers an isolated caricature in place of serious analysis, the intellectual equivalent of smuggling contraband through the reader’s front door.
The Transactional Myopia of a Posture Merchant
In his second article, “South Africa must forge rapprochement with Israel,” Gumede’s ideological project comes fully into view. He argues that South Africa must mimic the likes of China, India, and Russia, states that have mastered the art of reducing foreign policy to naked economic self-interest. He advises that moral considerations, historical solidarity, and principles forged in the crucible of apartheid’s horrors should be discarded like yesterday’s newsprint. In their place, he proposes a barren calculus of “growth” and “employment creation.”
This counsel is not merely cynical, it is suicidal. It would turn South Africa’s hard-won reputation for principled leadership into the equivalent of a discounted listing at a diplomatic flea market. Gumede’s paean to transactionality stands in direct contradiction to the vision articulated by Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and others, leaders who understood that moral credibility, once bartered away, is almost impossible to reclaim.
That Gumede makes these arguments while enjoying the very freedoms secured by principled solidarity, rather than sterile calculation, is a rich irony. One wonders what sort of intellectual malnourishment is served to students at his “School of Governance”? Does he teach that conscience is a liability, and that principle must always yield to profit?
The Method Behind the Mischief
Gumede’s distortions are not accidental. They appear part of a larger ideological posture, one that seeks to rehabilitate and propagate a conservative, divisive narrative under the thin veneer of “realism.” His foreign policy prescriptions mimic the most unreflective forms of neoconservative thought: discard solidarity, embrace transactionalism, and reduce all relationships to economic utility.
In the realm of religious history, he exhibits a similar impulse: flatten complexities, revive ancient grievances, and manufacture division between Africa’s Christian and Muslim legacies, precisely when historical nuance calls for integration and mutual respect.
What emerges from his writings is a portrait of a man less interested in scholarship than in stoking anxieties, less devoted to analysis than to ideological mischief-making. His conservatism is of the most brittle kind: allergic to nuance, and suspicious of pluralism.
A Sloppy Pen in a Serious Age
At a time when public discourse demands rigor and honesty, Gumede offers only sloppiness. He cherry-picks convenient facts, omits inconvenient realities, and substitutes ideological dogma for serious interrogation. His writings are not merely mistaken; they are reckless. They mislead, they polarize, and they do so under the banner of scholarship, a disservice both to history and to South Africa’s public life.
One might forgive a casual columnist for such offenses. But a “professor of practice” at a School of Governance ought to be held to higher standards, which Gumede conspicuously fails to meet.
His treatment of Israel and Palestine reduces genocide allegations to a negotiable item on a commercial ledger. His treatment of Islam and Christianity reduces complex centuries of interaction, coexistence, conflict, and creative exchange into a crude morality play. In both cases, principle is subordinated to profit; history is distorted to serve ideology.
Conclusion: The Cost of Intellectual Dishonesty
South Africa’s struggle against apartheid was predicated on the belief that justice is not merely a commodity to be traded, but a value to be defended. To abandon that ethos in favour of the transactional cynicism Gumede champions would be to betray the very meaning of our freedom. Likewise, to allow lazy Islamophobic narratives to poison our understanding of Africa’s religious history is to import into our discourse the very prejudices that liberation was meant to overcome.
William Gumede has every right to his opinions. But readers and students have every right to demand better: more rigour, more honesty, and less ideological ventriloquism. In a serious time, we can ill afford unserious minds.
* Ziyad Motala, Professor of Law, Howard Law School.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of or Independent Media.
