Memorial CommendationProf Clive J. Napier (1950–2021)

Abstract

Clive Napier has had a very long and close relationship with the South African Political Studies Association (SAAPS) and its predecessor, the South African Political Science Association (SAPSA). He served for several terms on its council and during the period 2012–2014 also as the SAAPS President. When SAAPS decided to form research caucus groups in the association, Napier proposed a caucus for African Politics, and he acted as its coordinator for a number of years. It laid the foundation for the African Politics research committee in SAAPS, which followed later. In his presidential address at the 2014 SAAPS national conference, he concentrated on two important points. At that moment the Protection of State Information Bill (‘the Secrecy Bill’) had become a very controversial issue and SAAPS issued a public statement against it. In this context, Napier raised the relationship of professional associations, like SAAPS, with government as one of his concerns. He insisted that political scientists should be vigilant in guarding their freedom to conduct research and write on what ‘we believe is necessary and right’. This Act served as a catalyst for him revisiting the importance of academic freedom for political scientists. The second focus in his address was a brief assessment of Political Science in South Africa. He suggested that more attention should be given to the history of Political Science in the country. He took the audience back to when the discipline started in South Africa in 1925, in the form of a chair in Public Administration and Political Science at the University of Pretoria. As a practical step towards a stronger historical awareness and to create SAAPS archives, he announcement the agreement reached between SAAPS and the Unisa library during his term to host the association’s archives. In a number of articles, and also in this address, he continued to present his views on the importance of Political Science research and its teaching for the South African society. For him it had become an imperative that such teaching and research had to engage with ‘the new order and its institutions’. As a practitioner also, he expressed his concern that South African political scientists had been ‘very distant’ in their approach to the real world of politics. Prof Napier enrolled for his undergraduate studies at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, in the late 1960s. For his MA degree, he studied at the George Washington University in Washington, DC and received his degree in 1979. While already a lecturer at