Podcast: Enocent Msindo on his recent book 'Ethnicity in Zimbabwe'

Enocent Msindo

Africa Past & Present

Enocent Msindo (History, Rhodes U.) on his recent book Ethnicity in Zimbabwe: Transformations in Kalanga and Ndebele Societies, 1860-1990. He explores chiefly politics, class, language, and local sources to show the creation of ethnic identity in southwestern Zimbabwe was not solely the result of colonial rule or African elites. Ordinary Africans created and shaped an ethnic consciousness based on precolonial histories and 20th-century innovations, while much-neglected Kalanga identities resisted both colonial and Ndebele hegemony.

Django Unchained, or, The Help: How “Cultural Politics” Is Worse Than No Politics at All, and Why

Adolph Reed, Jr.

by Adolph Reed, Jr., Nonsite.org

Django Unchained, or The Help

On reflection, it’s possible to see that Django Unchained and The Help are basically different versions of the same movie. Both dissolve political economy and social relations into individual quests and interpersonal transactions and thus effectively sanitize, respectively, slavery and Jim Crow by dehistoricizing them. The problem is not so much that each film invents cartoonish fictions; it’s that the point of the cartoons is to take the place of the actual relations of exploitation that anchored the regime it depicts. In The Help the buffoonishly bigoted housewife, Hilly, obsessively pushes a pet bill that would require employers of black domestic servants to provide separate, Jim Crow toilets for them; in Django Unchained the sensibility of 1970s blaxploitation imagines “comfort girls” and “Mandingo fighters” as representative slave job descriptions. It’s as if Jim Crow had nothing to do with cheap labor and slavery had nothing to do with making slave owners rich. And the point here is not just that they get the past wrong—it’s that the particular way they get it wrong enables them to get the present just as wrong and so their politics are as misbegotten as their history.

Paulo Freire on the influence of Fanon

“I remember, for example, how much I was helped by reading Frantz Fanon. That is great writing. When I read Fanon I was in exile in Chile. A young man who was in Santiago on a political task gave me the book, The Wretched of the Earth. I was writing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and the book was almost finished when I read Fanon. I had to rewrite the book in order to begin to quote Fanon” (Horton & Freire, 1990, p.36).

Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Dear Mr Zuma, it’s time for you to go

Barney Pityana

by Barney Pityana, The Sunday Independent

This week I addressed a letter to the President of the Republic of South Africa, Jacob Zuma. I asked Zuma to resign his office in the interests of progress and development of our country. I charged that since he assumed office in 2009, the fortunes of our country have hit their lowest ebb on every possible indicator.

No end in sight for police brutality in South Africa

Justice Malala

by Justice Malala, The Guardian, 22 February 2013

People thought they would see no more peaceful protesters shot by police, but the force is turning violent again.

In July 2009 South Africa's then new police commissioner, Bheki Cele, told a newspaper he wanted the law to be changed to allow police to "shoot to kill" suspects without worrying about "what happens after that".

Two months later a young woman, Olga Kekana, was going out with three friends in a Pretoria township when she was shot through the head. The car she was travelling in was "mistaken" by police for one driven by car hijackers.

The Durban Moment Forty Years On

by Richard Pithouse

January marked the fortieth anniversary of the 1973 Durban strikes. In commemoration of the strikes, and their wider political context, Omar Badsha's South African History Online project and Rhodes University are hosting a conference on the Durban Moment from the 21^st to the 23^rd of February.

Remembering Phyllis Naidoo

Michael Neocosmos

by Michael Neocosmos, The Daily Maverick

Phyllis Naidoo divided the world into “comrades” and “assholes”. She was dismissive of the corrupt leadership of the ANC, and though it saddened her that many around her betrayed the principles of the struggle, she remained fundamentally committed to the idea of human equality. She was a mother to all.

Phyllie, as I used to call her, was my “mum”. Like several others, most of them highly placed cadres in the ANC today, I was adopted as her son, something I am extremely proud of. One of the advantages of choosing a mother or a son is precisely that choice is central, you do not inherit the social burdens of family and commitment must be renewed.

This Thing on Dialectic

James - This Thing on Dialectic

Pumla Gqola's talk at One Billion Rising (Wits & Constitution Hill)

Loudrastress

I am a feminist, a WITS Professor, a member of the African feminist and global feminist movements, and a member of the 1in9 Campaign, a feminist campaign – now organization – started to provide support to the woman we call Khwezi, who laid a charge of rape against the man who is now President Zuma, 1in9, an organization which supports other survivors of sexualized violence.

Peter Hallward: Stifling Democracy in Haiti, 2000-2012

The Criminal Injustice System

Jane Duncan

by Jane Duncan, SACSIS

At the end of January, an all too familiar pattern of events played itself out in the Pinetown Magistrate’s Court in Durban. Four member of the shack dwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, were arrested after a protest against problematic practices in a housing development in KwaNdengezi. They were accused of public violence, robbery, damage to property, and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming

Comaroffs - Millenial Capitalism by Daena Funahashi

Crowd Renting or Struggling from Below? The Concerned Citizens' Forum in Mpumalanga Township, Durban, 1999-2005

by Buntu Siwisa, Journal of Southern African Studies, 2008

This article considers the problems of water in Mpumalanga Township in Durban, South Africa, and examines the emergence and activities of the Concerned Citizens Forum (CCF), for whom activism around water services was centrally important. It contributes to the debate over the backlog in municipal services delivery and the attendant emergence of new social movements in post-apartheid South Africa. Set against a background of changes in water policy, a profile of the water industry and the drive to cost recovery, the article provides an account of collective action in Durban, by investigating the history and activities of the CCF. The article questions the standing of the movement and argues that the CCF is given to ‘crowd renting’, lacks transparency, and is prone to disorderly decision-making and racial and leadership crises. The article contextualises CCF’s collective action programmes, including its activism over water disconnections, by situating them in Mpumalanga’s neighbourhood politics. By doing so, the reader encounters councillors of the ruling and opposition parties, CCF city-based intellectual-cum-activists, African township youth activists and local council officials and bureaucrats. The collusion and conflicts between these various parties highlight political opportunism, careerism, and the ruthless pursuit of self-enrichment, revealing the complexities of collective action and the contentious politics of new social movements. The article also highlights the looming crisis of the breakdown of social citizenship in relation to cost recovery and the struggles over water services.

Legacies of Apartheid Wars Conference, Rhodes University, 4-6 July 2013

Call for Abstracts

"Addressing, Archiving and Accounting for Legacies of the Apartheid Wars in

Southern Africa"

Twenty years since the establishment of democracy in South Africa, the people, land and politics of Southern Africa continue to be imprinted and
influenced by the legacies of the wars fuelled by the apartheid era. The aim
of this cross-disciplinary conference is to invite diverse views and
perspectives on addressing the legacies of these wars. Scholars and
activists are invited to present papers and engage in conversations about
their work, their contexts and their insights.

Detritus in Durban: Polluted Environs and the Biopolitics of Refusal

Detritus in Durban: Polluted Environs and the Biopolitics of Refusal by TigersEye99

The Battle of Algiers transposed into a Palestinian key

by Jacob Norris, Open Democracy

In May 1989, Edward Said arrived at the Rome apartment of Gillo Pontecorvo, eager to press the Italian filmmaker on the connections between The Battle of Algiers and the First Intifada that was then raging in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In his account of the interview, Said presents the discussion of these connections as the climax of his conversation with Pontecorvo: “Finally…I was able to get to what seemed to me to be the logical contemporary extension of the political situations represented in The Battle of Algiers”.

In his eagerness to relate Pontecorvo’s 1966 masterpiece to Palestine, Said was voicing a much wider fascination among both Palestinians and Israelis with establishing the film’s relevance (or irrelevance) to the contemporary Middle East. The potential parallels are there for all to see. From the brutality of France’s colonial occupation (complete with checkpoints, house demolitions and separation barriers), to the FLN’s targeting of civilians and urban warfare tactics, The Battle of Algiers seems to invite comparison with Israel’s on-going military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Phyllis Naidoo: 5 January 1928 - 13 February 2013

Phyllis Naidoo

SA History Online

Phyllis Naidoo was born in Estcourt, Natal (now kwaZulu-Natal) on the 5th of January 1928. She was the daughter of Simon David, a teacher and principal. His occupation prevented him from being politically active but he was a ‘Methodist agnostic.’ As a result there were many interesting debates in the house and Phyllis developed a questioning attitude. From her early years her experiences did not allow her to simply take things for granted. When she was ten years old, her father took her to an Institute of Race Relations Conference in Pietermaritzburg at which she was to serve tea. At the meeting someone asked her to go and call the boy. She went outside and when she asked for the boy a very dignified, traditional Zulu woman confronted her. “The boy you want is my husband.” The woman’s regal presence made Phyllis realise that she had given tremendous offence and she was mortified. She was so upset that she sobbed hysterically for a long while afterwards. This incident awakened her, more than any event or speech at the meeting, to the evils of racism.

From Delhi to Bredasdorp

by Richard Pithouse, The Mercury & The Daily Dispatch

In December last year Jyoti Singh Pandey,  a student on the cusp of her adult life, stepped into a bus in Delhi. She was with a friend. They had been to see the film version of the Life of Pi and were on the way home. And then, without warning, their passage through the night suddenly dropped out of the flow of ordinary life and into hell.

The bus went off the expected route, the doors were closed and Jyoti's friend was beaten unconscious by the six men in the bus. In what sounds like a ritual performance of absolute domination and absolute sadism Joyti was raped and attacked with such violence that most of the entrails were ripped from her body.

Two Articles on Public Housing in Durban: Enrichment, Violence, Exclusion & Resistance

The Uganda Transit Camp, Isipingo, Durban

Uganda Transit Camp, Durban: A report from the frontlines of the struggle for democracy

Just two decades after the dawn of democracy, an old horror is revisiting the new South Africa. Transit camps are back, and they are back with a vengeance, writes JARED SACKS, Daily Maverick

Close to midnight and you can still hear babies wailing, couples quarrelling and house music blaring through the razor-thin zinc sheets that the eThekwini Municipality calls “walls” in Uganda Transit Camp near Isipingo, Durban. Getting a decent night’s sleep is a struggle in and of itself. And yet, that’s only the beginning.

Onwards with Integrity

Njabulo Ndebele

by Njabulo Ndebele, City Press

Quest for an honest society necessitates an honest struggle for it. You are the way you struggle

Amílcar Cabral, the great African revolutionary who led Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde’s struggle against Portuguese colonialism, combined a strong ­intellect with a deep passion for his country and its people.

Although his admirers are probably aware of the saying “tell no lies . . . claim no easy victories”, they might not be aware of the full context from which it is extracted.

“Hide nothing from the masses of our people,” begins the full quote. “Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy ­victories.”

Judith Butler's Remarks to Brooklyn College on BDS

Judith Butler

Editors Note: Despite a campaign to silence them, philsophers Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti spoke at Brooklyn College on Thursday night. In an exclusive, TheNation presents the text of Butler's remarks.

Usually one starts by saying that one is glad to be here, but I cannot say that it has been a pleasure anticipating this event. What a Megillah! I am, of course, glad that the event was not cancelled, and I understand that it took a great deal of courage and a steadfast embrace of principle for this event to happen at all. I would like personally to thank all those who took this opportunity to reaffirm the fundamental principles of academic freedom, including the following organizations: the Modern Language Association, the National Lawyers Guild, the New York ACLU, the American Association of University Professors, the Professional Staff Congress (the union for faculty and staff in the CUNY system), the New York Times editorial team, the offices of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Brooklyn College President Karen Gould whose principled stand on academic freedom has been exemplary.

American Blowback

by GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER and MIKE KING, CounterPunch

Yesterday was not simply a day like any other, and yet an entire system is grinding into motion to ensure that the peculiarities of the day be promptly forgotten: another crazy person lost it and committed unthinkable acts. The act of killing stands in and speaks for the person: look what he has done, of course he must be crazy. Case closed.

What they want you to see is just another Adam Lanza, just another inexplicable act, and when the act speaks for the assailant, words are secondary and there is no need to listen. But this is not, and has never been, a good way to understand reality.

As long as we exist, we will be raped

Sisonke Msimang

Anene Booysen's rape will happen again. She was raped and mutilated because she was a girl, and they wanted to destroy her, writes Sisonke Msimang. Mail & Guardian

I read an article on Thursday morning. It said: "The victim had been sliced open from her stomach to her genitals and dumped." The radio is full of this story. Full of politicians and posers, trying to outdo one another. Like funeral criers. But it will end, the show. And there will be marches and petitions. There will be statements and rage. But it will happen again. Until we are inured to shock. It will happen again. Until our bones are worn into dust and our teeth crushed into the sand. It will happen and happen. Until we invent a way to stop being women. Until we find a way for our blood to no longer bleed between our legs. As long as we exist, we will be raped.

The Politics of the Black Middle Class

Mandisi Majavu

by Mandisi Majavu, SACSIS

Before the 2009 general elections, political pundits predicted that a shift of black electoral support from the African National Congress (ANC) to Congress of the People (COPE) was inevitable. It was further pointed out that this shift was going to occur along class lines; we were told that the black middle class perceived COPE as the political party that could represent its class interest. Although COPE won about seven percent of the national vote in the 2009 elections, the internecine feud among its leaders has effectively made the party politically irrelevant.

African Modernity and the Struggle for People's Power: From Protest and Mobilization to Community Organizing

Xolela Mangcu

by Xolela Mangcu, The Good Society, Volume 21, Number 2, 2012, pp. 279-299 

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Populism has been a controversial term in South African public discourse in recent years precisely because it has been used as a tool in the lexical armoury of the combatants in the battle for the leadership of the ruling African National Congress. In order to understand why populism has been denigrated to great effect by the political, economic and social elite one has to have some idea of the historical resistance to popular democracy by African elites going back to the nineteenth century.

Conference Programme: The Durban Moment - Revisiting Politics, Labour, Youth and Resistance in the 1970s

Rhodes University  21–23 February 2013

Thursday 21st February	Venue: Centre for Continuing Education
First Session
9.00 – 9.30	Registration
9.30 – 9.45	Welcome by Professor Saleem Badat, Vice Rector
9.45 – 10.00	Welcome and announcements by Omar Badsha
10.00 – 11.30	The Meaning of the Durban Moment Now
	Richard Pithouse: The Meaning of the Durban Moment Now
11.30 – 11.45	Tea

How Mining Companies Steal Africa's Wealth

Public Lecture: Mahmood Mamdani on the Arab Spring

Neil Aggett: 6 October 1953 – 5 February 1982

Neil Aggett

Preventing the truth

Njabulo Ndebele

by Njabulo Ndebele, City Press

While the buildings at Nkandla cry out for an explanation, government seems content to gloss over the evidence

Nkandla is carving its place in our history as a major test of a people’s character. Few things in recent times will test the capacity of the people of South Africa to honour the truth. Public and private institutions all face the test.

The highest tree of the land, the president of the republic and head of state, is at the centre of it all. Will he, his government and the Parliament his party numerically dominates give the truth a place of honour? Or will they honour the lie?

Truth, honesty and trust have ­become the most radical values in South Africa; lying, dishonesty and distrust, their reactionary opposites.

Unions: a need to get back to first principles

Terry Bell

by Terry Bell, Tery Bell Writes

On January 31, exactly 40 years ago, the modern trade union movement arrived on the South African scene. Its birth was heralded by a wave of strikes in Durban that had gestated over 22 days from the time 2 000 workers at Coronation Brick and Tile downed tools.

These strikes, that culminated in nearly 5 000 workers at three major plants declaring a dispute on that fateful day in 1973 were not only to demand better pay and shopfloor conditions; they also had a broad, anti-apartheid, political dimension. And, like the worker committees that emerged during the recent turmoil on the platinum belt, they had no fixed leadership or bureaucracy.

Arundhati Roy on the Protests Against Rape in Delhi

"Long Distance Revolutionary": Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Journey from Black Panthers to Prison Journalist

Squatter movements in the Vaal Triangle

A talk by Dr Noor Nieftagodien (University of Witwatersrand) at the African Studies Centre on 8th March 2012.

Click here to listen to this lecture.

Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics

Michael Ekers (Editor), Gillian Hart (Editor), Stefan Kipfer (Editor), Alex Loftus (Editor) 

This unique collection is the first to bring attention to Antonio Gramsci’s work within geographical debates. Presenting a substantially different reading to Gramsci scholarship, the collection forges a new approach within human geography, environmental studies and development theory.

• Offers the first sustained attempt to foreground Antonio Gramsci’s work within geographical debates
• Demonstrates how Gramsci articulates a rich spatial sensibility whilst developing a distinctive approach to geographical questions
• Presents a substantially different reading of Gramsci from dominant post-Marxist perspectives, as well as more recent anarchist and post-anarchist critiques
• Builds on the emergence of Gramsci scholarship in recent years, taking this forward through studies across multiple continents, and asking how his writings might engage with and animate political movements today
• Forges a new approach within human geography, environmental studies and development theory, building on Gramsci’s innovative philosophy of praxis

Alain Badiou: The Philosophical Concept of Change Within Politics (2012)

The riotous underbelly of the new normal

by Richard Pithouse, The Daily Maverick

Here we are, almost 20 years after Apartheid and, from the prisons to the shack settlements and the farms, the riotous underbelly of our society is on television most nights. We’re not even a full month into the year and it’s been reported that the police have killed another protester in the Boland and, depending on which newspaper you read, three, four or six people in Zamdela in Sasolburg.

The new normal that we are being asked to accept after Mangaung has won consent in some quarters by replacing a demagogic populist with an oligarch and putting an end to the discussion about nationalisation.  Its basic logic – crony capitalism greased with corruption, wrapped in an escalating conflation of both the nation and the state with the ruling party and defended with growing authoritarianism – can work well enough for capital. In fact international capital often finds authoritarian states to be its most attractive destinations for investment. And it’s not unusual for the middle classes to be quite comfortable with forms of authoritarianism that restrict the basic democratic rights of the popular classes in defence of the domination of society by an alliance between business and political elites – after all, just look at how many South Africans think Dubai is a great place to live.