Africa is still waiting for the dawn

Pumla Gqola

Pumla Gqola, Mail & Guardian

I want to conjure up an image of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe that is slightly out of focus in post-apartheid Southern Africa: we concentrate usually on the man who gave us the Pan Africanist Congress in 1959, was imprisoned in 1960 on Robben Island, a revolutionary whose vision, words, humaneness is known.

I want to talk about Sobukwe’s valuing of the imagination, the Sobukwe who took great pleasure in the nonobvious, who relished works of the imagination.

But he also understood the value of the imagination when unbounded, not limited to the pages of a novel or a performance on a stage.

That is what the iconic image of Sobukwe letting soil fall through his fingers is: recourse to the metaphoric, the poetic, the symbolic, when ordinary words were both unavailable and inadequate.

Maya Angelou: a titan who lived as though there were no tomorrow

Maya Angelou

Gary Younge, The Guardian

The first time I interviewed Maya Angelou, in 2002, I got hammered. What was supposed to have been a 45-minute interview in a hotel room near Los Angeles had turned into a 16-hour day, much of it spent in her stretch limo, during which we'd been to lunch, and she had performed. On the way back from Pasadena she asked her assistant, Lydia Stuckey, to get out the whisky.

“Do you want ice and stuff?” Stuckey asked.

“I want some ice, but mostly I want stuff,” said Angelou with a smile, and invited me to join her.

A reflection on T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting's 'Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms'

Ntombizikhona Valela      

After reading Frantz Fanon's three books (Black Skin, White Masks, A Dying Colonialism, The Wretched of the Earth) it is clear that he acknowledges the importance of the role women in the realization of freedom for colonized people. It is especially emphasized in A Dying Colonialism where we see women active in the liberation struggle in Algeria. I think Fanon is one of the first writers that acknowledges women and for a man writing at that point in history I view it as quite profound because he's not mentioning women at those moments in history where women's roles are undeniable, but he describes women's roles in such a way as to place them in the everyday moments of the struggle for liberation. I contrast his writing with the South African anti-apartheid history that seems to make the role of women an extraordinary event that pops up here and there such as the famous 1956 women's march to the Union Buildings and the less mentioned 1913 anti-pass protest led by Charlotte Maxeke. So I found it shocking that Fanon would face heavy criticism as anti-feminist or anti-black woman by some feminists that Sharpley-Whiting cites in this book. Sharpley-Whiting, without seeming biased offers clarity that clears Fanon's name.

A reflection on: Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting 'Fanon: Conflicts and Feminism'

 Deane Lindhorst

The aim of this essay is to write a reflection on Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting’s insightful study of a number of feminist scholars’ reading of Frantz Fanon and his works. Many of these scholars have denounced Fanon as being anti-feminist, and as having nothing to contribute to the discipline of feminist studies. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and a number of other feminist scholars, argue that through understanding Fanon’s conception of a new-humanism, achieved through emancipatory praxis, his life and his works can contribute to the emancipation of woman. This essay, rather than articulating the debate of Fanon’s positioning within feminist discourse, is going to argue that understanding Fanon’s commitment to praxis has and can be useful to the liberation of individuals which might be under numerous guises of oppression.

Rhodes University honours Neil Aggett

Beverly Naidoo

A month has passed since Rhodes University launched its Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), but the events remain etched in my mind. I feel hugely privileged to have been invited to Grahamstown to take part in this important 'struggle of memory against forgetting'. This was not about creating an 'icon' out of Neil. He would have hated that.

A Response to T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting’s Frantz Fanon: Conflicts & Feminisms

Jonis Ghedi Alasow

Few figures in history have been able to compete with Frantz Fanon when it comes to articulating the condition of the colonised subject. Fanon and his ideas have impacted people and movements across the world. As with most inventive and revolutionary ways of thinking, there has also been widespread critique of Fanon’s ideas. From across the academy there have been attempts to either trivialise or problematize the work of Frantz Fanon. T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting’s 1998 book, Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms provides an interesting and detailed engagement with feminisms as well as the works of Fanon. She takes a nuanced approach to discussing the relationship that has developed between the feminist school of thought and the canon left behind by Fanon. This response will discuss some of these nuances. I do not here attempt to summarise her arguments, but rather to discuss some of the main ideas that can be taken out of the book. I also wish to apply these ideas that Sharpley-Whiting deals with to the contemporary world. This essay therefore hopes to make some headway with respect to two questions. Firstly, what is the link between feminism and the work of Fanon; and secondly, how does this impact on our contemporary lives?

A response to 'Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms' by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting

Mikaela Erskog

“I shall speak about women's writing: about what it will do. Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies-for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text-as into the world and into history-by her own movement.” -  Hélène Cixous, (1976)

Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting is a feminist critique of feminist critiques of Frantz Fanon’s corpus of work. By evaluating how various feminist critics and their theoretical frameworks interpreted Fanon’s work, Sharpley-Whiting aims to strengthen feminist thought by revealing the limits of certain arguments and the potential strength of others.

I would argue that Sharpley-Whiting’s text places itself within the lineage of critical humanism as she, much like Fanon, does the important task of “questioning of the questioning of [humankind]” (Gordon, 1995: 10). In doing so, I believe Sharpley-Whiting acts in good faith to feminist thought, as she reveals the shortcomings of certain feminist critiques that tend to conceal themselves in order to develop a critical feminist approach that can facilitate the application of feminist values of the liberation, inclusion, self-creativity of women and oppressed humanity.

Comrades at war: the decline and fall of the Socialist Workers Party

Edward Platt, The New Statesmen

The supporters of the Socialist Workers Party who gathered in Trafalgar Square on a bright sunny day at the end of March could not agree how to define the relationship between their organisation and the rally taking place around them. One seller of the weekly Socialist Worker, who was down from Sheffield for the day, told me that Unite Against Fascism was a “front” for the SWP, but the man working on the stall selling party literature was more cautious: “It’s not an SWP event,” he said. “We’re part of it. But it’s bigger than us.”

Can we revive our democratic imagination?

Richard Pithouse, Mail & Guardian

Narendra Modi, a politician who combines a form of hypercapitalism that produces fabulous wealth for some at the cost of ruination for many others with a narrow and dangerously chauvinistic form of hypernationalism, will soon take office as the new prime minister of India.

The results of the election that bought Modi into office should give anyone who retains a naive faith that democratic processes will always favour democrats – or that the assertion of nationalist sentiment from those parts of the world trying to recover from colonial occupation is always a reaching towards justice – cause for concern.

Cape Town: A City Designed to Forget

 Ilham Rawoot, The Con

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” -      Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

 A few months ago, untroubled, the green signboard at the top of the Searle Street off-ramp used to read “Woodstock: left; Zonnebloem: right”. One morning, something was different. In the night, a ghost of the past had pasted over the sign, and it now read “District Six: right”. A few days later, Zonnebloem was back, only to be replaced again later that week by District Six. People in the area and commuters who were aware of the controversy being played out enjoyed the tit for tat, the back and forth. For many, it was exciting to know that someone was taking note of the fading history and the socioeconomic implications for those who have been left behind. The fight is on – resistant remembrance versus persistent change.

Lewis Gordon: PBS Conference October 26, 2013

Self Portrait at Twenty Years

Roberto Bolaño

I set off, I took up the march and never knew

where it might take me. I went full of fear,

my stomach dropped, my head was buzzing:

I think it was the icy wind of the dead.

I don't know. I set off, I thought it was a shame

to leave so soon, but at the same time

I heard that mysterious and convincing call.

You either listen or you don't, and I listened

and almost burst out crying: a terrible sound,

born on the air and in the sea.

A sword and shield. And then,

despite the fear, I set off, I put my cheek

against death's cheek.

A reflection on Lewis Gordon’s 'Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences'

Deane Lindhorst

Lewis Gordon’s, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences, is a well-argued and suggestive text that argues for what he deems redemptive qualities which human beings could embody in times that he has called misanthropic. In trying to articulate a “defence of a place for the human being” in these times, Lewis Gordon explores the possibilities of conceptualising an existential mode of being for humans beings; as opposed to the general trend of conceptualising human beings as having a fixed ontology. In articulating this mode of being, Gordon explores Frantz Fanon, his philosophies and life, as an individual committed to the ideal of defining oneself through action to the world. This essay, through expanding on Gordon’s argument, aims to explore the idea that Fanon’s existentialism and commitment to praxis could be said to be a form of humanism; as has been argued elsewhere.

Narendra Modi and the new face of India

Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian

In A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth writes with affection of a placid India's first general election in 1951, and the egalitarian spirit it momentarily bestowed on an electorate deeply riven by class and caste: "the great washed and unwashed public, sceptical and gullible", but all "endowed with universal adult suffrage". India's 16th general election this month, held against a background of economic jolts and titanic corruption scandals, and tainted by the nastiest campaign yet, announces a new turbulent phase for the country – arguably, the most sinister since its independence from British rule in 1947. Back then, it would have been inconceivable that a figure such as Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist chief minister of Gujarat accused, along with his closest aides, of complicity in crimes ranging from an anti-Muslim pogrom in his state in 2002 to extrajudicial killings, and barred from entering the US, may occupy India's highest political office.

Raymond Suttner: “The dream has become a nightmare”

http://www.bistandsaktuelt.no/nyheter-og-reportasjer/arkiv-nyheter-og-reportasjer/the-dream-has-become-a-nightmare

Bistandsaktuelt: My project here is to hear what people think about twenty years of democracy and freedom. After the election in 1994 my reading was that there was euphoria, a hopefulness that now seems to have disappeared. What is your comment?

Suttner: There was a promise. A dream of what we wanted to see. And in some ways, without being melodramatic the dream has become a nightmare. In one of my blogs I wrote that one of the reasons why I was grieving prior to Mandela dying was that Mandela represented a vision of a free SA, where leaders acted with integrity. It has turned into a nightmare in the sense that there is a lot of violence, and I think that some of it is fuelled by the rhetoric of the leadership with phrases like “shoot to kill”, militaristic songs and lots of sexual and gender based violence. And then there is the corruption and patronage.

A response to Frantz Fanon’s A Dying Colonialism

Jonis Ghedi Alasow

Frantz Fanon’s 1959 book, A Dying Colonialism, offers an insightful account of the Algerian War of Independence. In spite of its often gruelling subject matter, this book remains strangely optimistic. As the title suggest, Fanon is describing the end of a system. It is important to note that Fanon is not arguing that colonialism has indeed ended already, but rather that the end is coming soon. Simply put his book is a convincing argument for how colonialism is in decline. How there cannot be a future that sees Algeria under colonial rule. How “colonialism has definitely lost out in Algeria” (Fanon, 1959: 31). In this response I will discuss some of the reasons why Fanon is so certain that the end of colonialism in Algeria was imminent when he wrote in the late 1950s. Why was he so optimistic in spite of not having the benefit of hindsight that we have now?

Annual Teach-in: The 2014 Elections

Understanding Marikana Through The Mpondo Revolts

Sarah Bruchhuasen, 2014

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate some of the ways in which rural histories can enhance our understanding of both rural and urban resistance, both past and present, in contemporary South Africa. In order to do so, it explores two books in conversation with each other, Thembela Kepe and Lungisile Ntsebeza’s edited volume Rural Resistance in South Africa: The Mpondo Revolts after Fifty Years as well as Peter Alexander, Thapelo Lekgowa, Botsang Mmope, Luke Sinwell and Bongani Xezwi’s Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer. These two books provide a useful platform from which to engage in a re-examination of rurally based protest and repression in order to locate some of the suggestive links, particularly in regard to the transmission of repertoires of struggle, between the Marikana strike and the Mpondo revolts, as well as the on-going struggles of the organised poor in some of South Africa’s urban centres.

An Extract from Mahmood Mamdani’s Seminal Book on Rwanda from Africa is a Country

Mahmood Mamdani, Africa is a Country

I visited Rwanda roughly a year after the genocide. On July 22, 1995, I went to Ntarama, about an hour and a half by car from Kigali, on a dirt road going south toward the Burundi border. We arrived at a village church, made of brick and covered with iron sheets. Outside there was a wood and bamboo rack, bearing skulls. On the ground were assorted bones, collected and pressed together inside sacks, but sticking out of their torn cloth. The guard explained that the bones had been gathered from the neighborhood. A veteran of similar sites in the Luwero Triangle in Uganda roughly a decade ago, I felt a sense of déjá vu. Even if the numbers of skulls and sacks were greater in quantity than I had ever seen at any one site, I was not new to witnessing the artifacts of political violence.

Miners Shot Down: Grahamstown Screening

Donald Parenzee: Poetry, Politics & Everyday Life

Premesh Lalu: The Humanities After Apartheid

Michael Neocosmos: Thinking Political Emancipation and the Social Sciences in Africa: some critical reflections

Department of Politics & International Studies Seminar Series

Speaker: Professor Michael Neocosmos

Topic: Thinking Political Emancipation and the Social Sciences in Africa:

some critical reflections

Date:  Friday, 16 May 2014

Time: 1-2

Venue: New Seminar Room, Department of Politics & International Studies Seminar Series

The paper is online at:

http://www.ru.ac.za/politicalinternationalstudies/seminarsevents/archive/

How do we move towards an emancipatory politics in South Africa?

Raymond Suttner, Polity

Political analyst Steven Friedman correctly concludes (in Business Day, 9 May 2014) that the ANC may not face electoral defeat for the foreseeable future, though he, uncharacteristically, treats this as everything that may be entailed in the notion of politics. ‘What happens inside the African National Congress (ANC) remains more important to our political future than what happens outside it.’   If we want a sense of where our politics is headed, he says, ‘we need to look at the tensions within the ANC rather than the challenges it faces from outside.’

‘Outside’, here, refers to other electoral parties, not the whole of the ‘outside’. It is important to define our understanding of politics and its scope. It may well be that some who voted ANC will be on the streets protesting today or in the near future. It is reported, for example, that the ANC scored 60% of the vote in the Bekkersdal hotspot.

Reflection on 'The Wretched of the Earth'

Kyla Hazell

The Wretched of the Earth raises the question of how a revolutionary moment can be sustained in order to bring about true decolonisation. A theme of Fanon’s throughout the three works we have studied is the change that emancipatory action renders in a human soul, but this final book seems to introduce the issue of how to sustain that transformation beyond the moment in which the flag of independence is raised. In this text, Fanon speaks to his concerns about the years which follow liberation. He describes post-colonial societies which remain subject to the former colonial powers’ economic interests (aligned with the interests of the national bourgeoisie), while their people are rapidly depoliticised and see little concrete change (Fanon, 1961: 65). This demobilisation can be seen as a massive part of the failure to continue transformative projects beyond the revolutionary moment because motion and action are fundamental for Fanon. In describing the Manichean world of colonial society, Fanon (1961: 51) explicitly uses the descriptors “motionless” and “static” to denote how a frozen social space is one which stagnates. In contrast, it is always the movement towards ideals and the active struggle that contains creative potential and brings about individual and collective change. This essay will read Wretched as a warning against the stagnation of society after liberation and argue that one of the messages Fanon is attempting to convey is that forward-motion after emancipation needs to take the form of innovative, critical thought to reconstruct the very values of society in an inclusive manner. In order to do this, political education and mobilisation must continue and people must be brought in to the political project of nation building as thinking contributors.

Two New Book Series: Creolizing the Canon & Global Critical Caribbean Thought

http://www.rowmaninternational.com/news/two-new-series-creolizing-the-canon-global-critical-caribbean-thought

I am delighted to announce the launch of two book series dedicated to path-breaking work in the areas of Caribbean philosophy, creolization, and political theory. These are one result of an intellectual collaboration between Roman & Littlefield International and the Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA), of which I serve as Chair of Publishing Partnerships.

A Response to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth

by Jonis Ghedi Alasow

On his deathbed in 1961, Frantz Fanon dictated one of the most revolutionary texts of the twentieth century. The Wretched of the Earth is his most famous work and although it was published in 1961, the text has remained a quintessential text for understanding the postcolonial situation. It is important to note that the text does not take the form of a systematic argument that is leading towards proving/disproving some hypothesis. Les Damnés de la Terre is rather more of a soliloquy of Fanon’s thoughts and impressions. These thoughts and impressions can largely be categorised into three groups. Les Damnés de la Terre firstly offers an engagement with colonialism. Secondly, it offers Fanon’s thoughts and impressions on the process of decolonisation and lastly it lays down his thoughts and impressions on the post-colony.

Critical Response to Frantz Fanon’s 'The Wretched of the Earth'

by Musawenkosi Cabe

“Fifty years ago, Frantz Fanon died, leaving us with his last testimony, The Wretched of the Earth. Written in the crucible of the Algerian War of Independence and the early years of Third World decolonization, this book achieved an almost biblical status”

                                    …

“[The] Post-colonial nightmare Fanon predicted in [The]Wretched of the Earth has become our reality”

- Achille Mbembe, 2011

Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a classical text on the conditions of the colonial reality. It is one of Fanon’s widely considered books; hence it has “achieved an almost biblical status” (Mbembe, 2011). The text provides a critical analysis of an overwhelming number of issues drawing from racial formation identity, colonialism/decolonization, narratives of the liberation struggle, language, nationalism and violence and the various ways in which it shapes and it alters the relationship between colonizer and the colonized. Before I attempt to critically engage the book, it is significant for this paper to contextualize the Preface of the book by Jean Paul Sartre. In this paper I will briefly look at the chapter “On Violence”, and will look at violence as a force for change, and as a tool for social and political transformation. The critical response will focus on the chapter ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ This paper will also be relating the arguments of the chapter on contemporary times in an attempt to make them relevant and meaningful to our contemporary political reality.

The Wretched of the Earth: On Caliban and Revolutionary Theatre

Fezokuhle Mthonti

Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth has been described, in part, as a prophetic entry into the inner workings of a decolonised and decolonising state.  Without being reductive or essentialist, one could argue that the first three chapters of this book typify and chart the complexities that come with a people who have been denied their socio-political subjectivities and their subsequent struggles to liberate themselves and in so doing, try to maintain the sentiments of their revolution. However, as Fanon shows quite consistently throughout the book, the transition into self-governance is an inherently difficult position to navigate, especially, when your personhood and political subjectivity has been eroded by the structural mechanisms of colonialism. I would argue that it demands from the state and its inhabitants, an ability to see the position which they have come to occupy through repression and a further ability to see beyond that subjugation.  It is an attempt to reclaim and to grieve over that which was worn out by the European colony and forge out of that, a political and social identity that is backward, forward and sideways-looking.

Response to 'A Dying Colonialism'

Kyla Hazell

It is essential, in reading A Dying Colonialism, to give serious consideration to Fanon’s purpose in writing the book. Argentinian journalist Adolfo Gilly’s introduction to the text is elucidating in this regard. He describes Fanon’s intention as being “to go to the essentials” and show the spirit of the struggle, the initiative and capacity of the Algerians, and the extent of their commitment to liberation – a commitment which carries them even to the point of altering their own modes of existence where it is found that those do not accord with the fight for freedom (Fanon, 1959: 2). By discussing the wearing of the veil, the rejection of transistor radios, and the distrust of Western medicine (Fanon, 1959: 121), Fanon demonstrates more than simply the rational inner dialogue of a colonially objectified and oppressed people, but also a deep commitment to action and, most significantly, a message of inevitability: to France, he says that the Revolution is already won. This short essay will discuss Fanon’s project with reference to Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony and the role it plays in revolutionary struggle. Though the fact of direct coercive rule by the colonial power may seem to exclude notions of hegemony, it will be argued that A Dying Colonialism validates Gramsci’s argument about the role of hegemony in revolutionary struggles and that the underlying thread of Gramscian thought throughout the book might have affected its receipt in France, the country to which much of its message was directed. Furthermore, it will be contended that Fanon’s description of the French failure to establish true hegemony in pre-Revolutionary Algeria points towards certain limitations of Gramsci’s idea when applied in the colonial context.

Special Report on Farm Workers from De Doorns, Western Cape

The Hani Memorandum

This is an extract from The Hani Memorandum for which he and six others were expelled by the ANC NEC in exile in 1969 (and almost executed) but later reinstated. NUMSA

The ANC in Exile is in a deep crisis as a result of which a rot has set in. From informal discussions with the revolutionary members of M.K. we have inferred that they have lost all confidence in the ANC leadership abroad. This they say openly and in fact show it. Such a situation is very serious and in fact a revolutionary movement has to sit down and analyse such a prevailing (sic) state of affairs.

The situation is further aggravated by the fact that accredited members of the Organisation are no longer consulted or no longer participate in policy making decisions of the Organisation – there have been two or three conferences when the leaders met or did not consult or inform the membership of the resolutions. The inference is that we are no longer considered members of the ANC.

Dumbo Democracies

Vashna Jagarnath, The Con

“… There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.”

 ― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

  

Had Frantz Fanon lived to see the candidates in our upcoming general elections, he would have had very little trouble proving correct his pessimism about the abundance of idiots in this world. The festival of idiocy that is relentlessly paraded on our screens during election season is not unique to our shores. Across the Indian Ocean the vast subcontinent of India is also in the throes of an election season, and, given its massive population, the accumulation of idiots on parade in India far exceeds those we have to confront day after day. As in South Africa, electoral politics in India, where the ballot paper at least carries a “None of the above” option, generally comes down to the predicament of having to decide which party is likely to be the lesser evil. The many wonderful aspects of India today, and there are many, have everything to do with its people and very little to do with its politicians.

Liberation from the liberator

by Njabulo Ndebele, City Press

Two weeks ago, “Comrades” Essop Pahad and Ronnie Kasrils disagreed publicly on how members of the African National Congress should vote in next Wednesday’s election. This moment had long been coming.

The posture of the ANC as a united organisation with robust internal discussion of issues was yet again in question. The disagreement, spilling into the public domain will have a progressively corrosive effect on the ANC’s dominance of South African politics.

One fundamental reason for such corrosion is that South Africa today is no longer what it was in 1994. The ANC has restated this fact to good electioneering effect: “South Africa is today a better place to live in than it was in 1994.” These two statements can go with a third one: all South Africans are no longer who they were in 1994. We have changed.

South Africa: Understanding the turmoil

Gill Hart, Al Jazeera

Shortly after the 20th anniversary of liberation from apartheid, South Africans will go to the polls on May 7. Most pundits predict that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) will be re-elected, although with a reduced majority. Yet the tensions and turmoil roiling the country are likely to continue after the election, for reasons that go well beyond conventional understandings.

Eroding support for the ANC from within its ranks is dramatic. Prominent veterans of the liberation struggle are calling for people to spoil their ballots rather than vote for the ANC.

Victor Mukasa Speaks out against the misrepresentation of African activists in the USA