Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400–1948

by Paul Landau, Cambridge, 2011

Popular Politics in the History of South Africa

Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400–1948 offers a newly inclusive vision of South Africa's past. Drawing largely from original sources, Paul Landau presents a history of the politics of the country's people, from the time of their early settlements in the elevated heartlands, through the colonial era, to the dawn of Apartheid.

Reflections on Human Rights Discourse and Emancipation in Africa in the Twenty-first Century

by Michael Neocosmos, Solidarity Peace Trust, Zimbabwe (undated)

At the very time when it most often mouths the word, the West has never been further from being able to live a true humanism – a humanism made to the measure of the world (Aimé Césaire).

Whoever is engaged in popular struggles for democratic emancipation in Africa today is confronted with an immediate problem concerning human rights.  While on the one hand a discourse of rights is seemingly necessary for thinking democratisation, given that the state regularly flouts these, on the other human rights seem to refer to a discourse mainly propounded by neo-liberal interests whether local or foreign.  Several repressive regimes in Africa and elsewhere (Zimbabwe, Sudan, maybe Cote D’Ivoire, Iran) oppose a discourse of nationalism to one on human rights.  As an activist, one finds oneself in a seemingly irresolvable discursive contradiction between human (predominantly individual) rights and national (or group or identity) rights.  At times this contradiction is central to government itself.  For exampling in Thabo Mbeki’s South African government, a central contradiction appeared in the form of a commitment to neo-liberal conceptions of rights on the one hand along with a sensitivity to national and racial oppression in Africa on the other. This was reflected in government reactions to a number of different issues including Zimbabwe. In fact this contradiction is arguably constitutive of the subjectivity of the new South African bourgeoisie itself.  On the one hand their private accumulation is premised on an adherence to neo-liberal precepts including human rights, on the other a sensitivity to racism and to a lesser extent to Western hegemony in African affairs is also evident.  The manner in which the vagaries of this contradiction were navigated explains much regarding Mbeki’s presidency (Neocosmos, 2002).

Strategies of Critique, York University

Africa's Pasts and Africa's Historians

by Frederick Cooper, 2002

This article....brings out the possibilities and difficulties of writing histories that neither impose a singular model of progress nor posit a kaleidoscopic world of disparate and fragmentary communities, whether fluid or rigid. It takes seriously critiques of a universality that turns out to be western, or of a
nationalism that replicates imperialist categories, but it argues that that engagement and struggle have shaped what citizenship, the nation-state, and human rights actually mean. This article does not seek to wall off an objective history from political argumentation; instead, it emphasizes the importance of historical analysis in countering other historical visions on which particular images of Africa are based.

National Liberation and Culture

by Amilcar Cabral, 1970 (Reprinted in the Journal of Pan-African Studies)

When Goebbels, the brain behind Nazi propaganda, heard culture being discussed, he brought out his revolver. That shows that the Nazis, who were and are the most tragic expression of imperialism and of its thirst for domination--even if they were all degenerates like Hitler, had a clear idea of the value of culture as a factor of resistance to foreign domination.

What does democracy name in South African politics?

by Michael Neocosmos, Church Land Programme

A living politics is the movement out of the places where oppression has assigned those who do not count (S’bu Zikode, Talk at CLP Fanomenal Event)

Democracy: what does it name?

I wish to begin by discussing the term democracy as deployed in public discourse in SA. My discussion is founded on and inspired by the ways AbM have questioned the term democracy as applied to the SA state. This questioning has not been picked up and debated by commentators, academic or otherwise. It has not been taken seriously, but I think it should be taken very seriously. Remarks by AbM have included at various times: ‘democracy is for the rich not the poor’, ‘we do not count’ (i.e. we are excluded from democracy) and ‘elections are only for politicians’ as well as the idea of ‘unfreedom’ (there is no freedom for the poor) and that of ‘dignity for all’. These are very important innovations in political thinking in a context where ‘democracy’ has become a fetish which is never questioned, and therefore they must be taken seriously. ‘Seriously’ here for me means thinking about them both theoretically and politically. Lets start by examining the term democracy.

A Seventh Man

A Seventh Man

by John Berger
Photography by Jean Mohr

New edition of this seminal exploration of migrant workers.

Why does the Western world look to migrant laborers to perform the most menial tasks? What compels people to leave their homes and accept this humiliating situation? In A Seventh Man, John Berger and Jean Mohr come to grips with what it is to be a migrant worker—the material circumstances and the inner experience—and, in doing so, reveal how the migrant is not so much on the margins of modern life, but absolutely central to it. First published in 1975, this finely wrought exploration remains as urgent as ever, presenting a mode of living that pervades the countries of the West and yet is excluded from much of its culture.

Frantz Fanon: His Life & Work

by William Strickland, United Nations Centre Against Apartheid, 1979

I have been asked to review the life and work of Frantz Fanon as the first presentation in this programme, but before doing so I feel compelled to make a small confession. I have been studying Fanon for a number of years--principally in an effort to clarify the relevance of his theories to the black freedom movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet though I am on familiar terms with the material of Fanon's life, I found this seemingly simple task of biographical commentary one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. It was difficult because it is not easy to put on paper the sense of admiration and appreciation that grows on one who is researching Fanon; a kind of unconscious kinship develops so that one begins to feel a certain. proprietary air about a man whom one has never met.

Fanon. Et après? / Is Fanon Finished?

L’Université Américaine de Paris a le plaisir d’accueillir une conférence internationale bilingue autour de la pensée de Frantz Fanon (organisation: Lisa Damon, Sousan Hammad, François Huguet). La conférence, ouverte à tous, aura lieu à AUP et au Lavoir Moderne Parisien.

Thoughts on various editions of Fanon's books

by Josh MacPhee, Just Seeds

I can't quite remember exactly when and where I was first introduced to Frantz Fanon. I do remember pulling down the pocket paperback to the right (Grove Press, 1968) off a shelf at a bookstore, and being intrigued by the orange and black mass in motion on the cover. I assume I knew who Fanon was, or picked it up because I had been told I should by someone, but those specifics have slipped away. Then again, if the title Wretched of the Earth didn't completely capture me, I suspect the subtitle added to this American edition—"The Handbook for the Black Revolution that is Changing the Shape of the World"—would have been more than enough to convince me to fork over the $3 it likely cost.

Rural poverty in the Eastern Cape Province: Legacy of apartheid or consequence of contemporary segregationism?

Ashley Westaway, Development South Africa, 2012

Poverty in South Africa in general has not declined since 1994, and it is particularly severe in the former Bantustans. This paper discusses two important issues related to rural poverty in the Eastern Cape Province. It questions the applicability of the notion of legacy to explain recent trends in rural poverty and constructs an argument that explains these trends in relation to post-1994 segregationism. It argues that the notion of legacy is not useful in explaining why rural poverty remains entrenched, long after 1994. Rural poverty today cannot be explained as something left behind after the end of apartheid, because its causes and drivers are the same now in 2012 as they were in 1970. The continuity between the pre- and post-1994 periods is best described by exploring and understanding post-1994 policy decisions and power configurations as an expression of contemporary segregationism.

Millions will lose their ‘citizenship’

by Nomboniso Gasa, Independent Online

'We need no mourners in our stride; No remorse, no tears. Only this: Resolve. That the locust shall never again visit our farmsteads.' The above excerpt from a poem by Odia Ofeimun at the end of the Biafra War in Nigeria comes to mind as I grapple with the contestation on constitutionalism, constitutional democracy, majoritarianism and legislative changes under consideration in South Africa.

Politics and aesthetics an interview with Jacques Rancière

Interviewed by Peter Hallward, 2003

For me, democracy isn’t a form of power but the very existence of the political (in so far as politics is distinct from knowing who has the right to occupy power or how power should be occupied), precisely because it defines a paradoxical power – one that doesn’t allow anyone legitimately to claim a place on the basis of his or her competences. Democracy is, first of all, a practice, which means that the very same institutions of power may or may not be accompanied by a democratic life. The same forms of parliamentary powers, the same institutional frameworks can either give rise to a democratic life, that is, a subjectivation of the gap between two ways of counting or accounting for the community, or operate simply as instruments for the reproduction of an oligarchic power.

Mahmood Mamdani, "State Formation and Conflict" (2007)

Remembering Frantz Fanon: McGill University

Hegel and Haiti

by Susan Buck-Morss

By the eighteenth century, slavery had become the root metaphor of Western political philosophy, connoting everything that was evil about power relations. Freedom, its conceptual antithesis, was considered by Enlightenment thinkers as the highest and universal political value. Yet this political metaphor began to take root at precisely the time that the economic practice of slavery-the systematic, highly sophisticated capitalist enslavement of non-Europeans as a labor force in the colonies-was increasing quantitatively and intensifying qualitatively to the point that by the mid-eighteenth century it came to underwrite the entire economic system of the West, paradoxically facilitating the global spread of the very Enlightenment ideals that were in such fundamental contradiction to it.

Green Zone Nation: The South African government’s new growth path

by Christopher McMichael, Open Democracy

In his February State of The Nation Address, South African president Jacob Zuma presented  a new government growth path based on a series of sweeping infrastructural projects, including the creation of five geographically centered development corridors across the country. This has been interpreted as part of an experiment with the Chinese model of state directed capitalism. But while South Africa’s business press has focused on the perceived economic pitfalls of this strategy there has been comparably little discussion of the political and social implications of the government attempting to emulate a regime which has combined a flourishing consumer society with an equally sophisticated police state.

Care Work and the Power of Women: An Interview with Selma James

by Julie McIntyre, Viewpoint Magazine, 19 March 2012

In their 1972 pamphlet The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, Selma James and Mariarosa Dalla Costa presented an original and influential analysis of “unwaged work.” This concept, which identified the care work that women do in the home as an essential element of the reproduction of capitalism, opened the door to powerful new forms of struggle among working class women and men. James founded the International Wages for Housework Campaign, based on the demand that women should be paid for their round-the-clock care work, since it reproduces labor-power day after day.

Capitalism: A Ghost Story

Mukesh Ambani’s 27-storey home on Altamont Road.

by Arundhati Roy, Outlook India

Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamont Road in Mumbai, exuding mystery and quiet menace, things have not been the same. “Here we are,” the friend who took me there said, “Pay your respects to our new Ruler.”

Thomas Sankara's Speech on Debt at the OAU in July 1987

 An excerpt from Radical Films

“Debt is also the result of confrontation.

When we are told about economic crisis, nobody says that this crisis didn’t come about suddenly. The crisis had always been there but it got worse each time that popular masses become more and more conscious of their rights against exploiters.”

Thomas Sankara, Addis Ababbaa, July 1987.

Fanonian Geographies: Emerson College

Feminist Praxis, Citizenship and Informal Politics

by Faranak Miraftab, 2006

This article focuses on the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) in Cape Town, South Africa, which is part of the larger anti-privatization movement, mobilized by disadvantaged township residents to assert their constitutional rights and resist evictions and service disconnections. It introduces the mutually constituted concepts of invited and invented spaces of citizenship and stresses the range of grassroots actions spanning those. The article also sheds light on the gender dynamics of the Campaign and how its patriarchal order is being destabilized. The AEC case study engages the pioneering feminist scholarship on citizenship that has embraced both formal and informal arenas of politics. The study points out the risk in constructing yet another binary relation between grassroots coping strategies (in invited spaces) and resistance strategies (in invented spaces). The article calls for a refinement of feminists’ extended notion of politics, recognizing the oppositional practices of the poor in order to construct an inclusive citizenship. It argues that doing so better reflects the practices of the grassroots and furthers a progressive feminist praxis.

Lecture by Jacques Depelchin

With Enough Bullets...

by Christopher McMichael, Think Africa Press

Ongoing revelations about the alleged ‘death squad’ activities of Durban’s Cato Manor organised crime unit have opened up a police scandal reminiscent of a crime conspiracy novel.

The South African police unit, according to a newspaper investigation last December, has been responsible for a range of extrajudicial assassinations throughout the province of KwaZulu-Natal including the Mexican drug gang-style assault on the SUV of taxi boss Magojela Ndimande in retaliation for the murder of another policeman. Subsequent reports suggested that the unit may have been involved in at least 51 other ‘suspicious’ deaths.

Capital, Interrupted Agrarian Development and the Politics of Work in India

 

By Viney Gidwani, 2008

With the Patel caste of western India as his central case, Vinay Gidwani interrogates established concepts of value, development, and the relationship between capital and history. Capitalism, he argues, is not based on the operation of a series of laws, but is rather an assemblage of contingent logics stitched together. Capital, Interrupted unsettles understandings of concepts such as hegemony and agency, and, ultimately, rethinks the constitution of capitalism.

Capital, Interrupted is an outstanding work of social and political critique. It brings razor-sharp intellect to the analysis of development and agrarian politics.

- Arun Agrawal

Social Movements and Leftist Governments in Latin America

by Gary Prevost, Critical Studies Seminar Series

The last decade in Latin America has witnessed two important simultaneous and interrelated developments: the rise in prominence of social movements, and the election of a number of left and center-left governments. The social movements have ranged from the broad, community organized “piqueteros” of Argentina that brought down three governments in the space of one month in 2001 to the indigenous-based movements of Ecuador and Bolivia that have been instrumental in toppling five governments in the two countries within the last decade, the Landless Movement in Brazil (MST), Afro-Colombians resisting displacement in a region coveted by investors, the Cocalaros and the mobilizations against water privatizations and gas pipeline investments in Bolivia, to the Zapatistas in Mexico, who burst on the scene to challenge the formation of NAFTA and the marginalization of the mostly indigenous peasants in Chiapas. The social movements of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia are complemented across the region by a myriad of organizations that engage on a range of issues from land rights to women’s rights to environmental concerns.

What if Fanon read Biko?

by Eric Harper, Fondation Frantz Fanon

Let’s begin with the question what if? What if Fanon and Biko were alive today, what questions would they be asking? What would they say to each other when South African’s speak of Afrika as if belonging elsewhere? Would they see any affinity between the new emerged elite in Afrika and the sense of ubuntu that prevailed in the days of struggle? What would they be thinking when they see a young black child on the tube in London turn to her mother with the words, ‘look a Muslim, I am scared’? At that moment the Muslim is hypervissible and invissble at the same moment. Both men knew what it was like when the black man was reduced to flesh and had to function as a screen of the white man’s projections. To be placed into a position in which the body becomes fixed, immobile and then made to speak on behalf of all. Finally, what would they say to each other about the images of prioner abuse in Iraq?

The Darfur diversion: “Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror”

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad The Electronic Intifada 8 June 2009

In Errol Morris’s 2004 film The Fog of War, former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recalls General Curtis LeMay, the architect of the fire-bombings of Japan during World War II, saying that “if we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” LeMay was merely articulating an unacknowledged truism of international relations: power bestows, among other things, the right to label. So it is that mass slaughter perpetrated by the big powers, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, is normalized through labels such as “counterinsurgency,” “pacification” and “war on terror,” while similar acts carried out by states out of favor result in the severest of charges. It is this politics of naming that is the subject of Mahmood Mamdani’s explosive new book, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror.

Sharra on Englund, 'Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor'

Harri Englund. Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. xi + 247 pp. $21.95 (paper), 

Reviewed by Steve Sharra (Michigan State University)
Published on H-SAfrica (June, 2007)

A Guest Who Brings Sharp Tweezers: Rights, Freedoms and Disempowerment in the New Malawi

For most Malawians, the biggest news story of 2006 was the adoption of the thirteen-month-old baby boy David Banda by the mega pop star Madonna. The adoption caused a storm both in Malawi and outside, but for very different reasons. Most of the views expressed in the mainstream media and on blogs in the West focused on whether Madonna was adopting David for reasons to do with enhancing her own media image; yet in Malawi, the debate was on why human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were opposing the adoption. As far as comments expressed in the Malawian media and on the street went, human rights NGOs opposing the adoption were doing so for reasons that had little to do with baby David's welfare, and everything to do with the NGOs' own image. Many Malawians saw the NGOs' actions as defending themselves from accusations that all they cared for was for their pockets and prestige, as evidenced by the conspicuous, sudden wealth acquired by NGO activists, from expensive SUVs to mansions in Malawi's big cities.