Johannesburg — WILLIAM Gumede and Leslie Dikeni's fascinating new collection of essays, The Poverty of Ideas, sheds fresh light on the changing role of intellectuals in post-apartheid SA.

Chapters by a dazzling array of public thinkers argue that democracies depend upon active and engaged public intellectuals to flourish, and that SA, especially under former president Thabo Mbeki , has failed to cultivate or nurture them.

Intellectuals often find it hard to retain ordinary citizens' sympathy. First, it is difficult to understand exactly what they are saying. In this volume, Grant Farred asks "What good is an African Renaissance if it has no epistemological purchase outside itself?" (The answer "not much" suggests itself, but one cannot really be sure if one is on the right track.)

Second, it is increasingly hard to identify intellectuals. It should be possible to visit, say, the University of Johannesburg and observe them roaming in their natural habitat. However, some intellectuals (especially when alienated by capitalism) do not come into the office very often. When they do so, many of them dress like normal people.

Some intellectuals are apparently reprehensible. Dikeni singles out "celebrity intellectuals" who never decline a media interview even if they know nothing about the subject in question . Farred focuses on the "meta- intellectual", who "constructs her or his intellectual life from a location that is proximate to, if not at the very centre of, power" (I think this means they work in government).

The book's unlikely hero is the "progressive intellectual". Noam Chomsky has accurately observed that the historic role of intellectuals has been "to support power systems and to justify their atrocities" -- this is certainly not progressive. It is also not fully progressive to desist from criticising ministers simply in order to protect lucrative consultancies or training contracts (although this is less clear cut because even progressive intellectuals are morally entitled to their consultancies).

Ordinary citizens' third challenge is to sympathise about progressive intellectuals' persecution under Mbeki. Joking aside, Gumede makes the crucial point that the retreat of intellectuals from critical policy analysis matters because the poor pay when bad policies fail.

There were indeed some savage smears and character assassinations. However, it is surely overstating the case to claim that "dissent, difference of opinion or even mild constructive criticism was not tolerated" or that demands for "absolute loyalty to the cause" left critics of Mbeki's regime "wondering if they would have their passports confiscated".

A chapter on progressive economists laments that after 1994 these mostly white, male and English- speaking thinkers were either "absorbed within the state machinery as functionaries or consultants" or "sidelined or silenced". The editors, however, pointedly observe that "progressive intellectuals have not offered any credible alternatives" to Mbeki's policies. Moreover, as Vishnu Padayachee and Graham Sherbut note in their illuminating essay, the government nevertheless consolidated a "world class" technical elite in the Treasury and Reserve Bank.

Fourth, some ordinary folk may discern an unattractive entitlement culture among the progressive intelligentsia. SA in the 1980s was an aberration, a decade in which some progressive thinkers enjoyed prestige, influence, and a flood of no-strings-attached donor funding. During these years some of them became rather smug - take Albert Nolan's claim in this volume that an intellectual possesses an "inner spirituality" and "serves others by dedicating his or her life to the pursuit of truth".

It is no longer clear on what grounds self-styled "progressive" intellectuals can claim to speak on behalf of the poor, still less whether they should be entitled, as the editors insist, to determine government spending priorities. It is unfortunate that this thoughtful book does not give space to "nonprogressive" intellectuals in the African churches, among traditional leaders, and in black business organisations, who arguably give clearer expression to the values and ideas of the wider society.

Butler teaches politics at Wits University.