Artistic ‘Freedom’ in the 80s and Now

Jane Duncan, The Con

The 1980s was a heady time in South Africa’s cultural history. Apartheid repression was at its height, but so was mass resistance. The independent label Shifty Records brought together a courageous, outspoken and rebellious group of artists who captured in their music the despair and hope of that turbulent period. It is this legacy that is being celebrated in Shifty September, and rightly so, as the label gave South Africa some of the most important contemporary local music ever made.

The lang-arm of the law is a deadly dance

Jane Duncan, Mail & Guardian

In his budget speech last month, Police Minister Nathi Nhleko promised to demilitarise the police, as proposed by the National Development Plan, improve the police’s crowd control skills and equip them with less lethal crowd-control equipment. He made these promises to reduce police violence against protests, which had led to several protester deaths.

These initiatives are much needed, but are they enough to arrest the authoritarian drift in protest policing? Unfortunately not. One reason for this is because the militarisation concept is understood very superficially in public debate, and because the government, journalists and many analysts have equated militarisation largely with the reintroduction of the military ranking system to the police.

Thapelo Lekgowa, Jane Duncan and Bheki Buthelezi on the media coverage of the Marikana strike and massacre

on MEDIA coverage x264 from marikanabuch on Vimeo.

Journalists failing South Africa on police violence

Jane Duncan, Sunday Times, 27 October 2013

Last month, 17 year old Nqobile Nzuza was shot dead by the police in a protest over housing and evictions in Cato Crest informal settlement, Durban. Another person was shot and wounded. The protest was part of a series of road-blockades organised by the shackdwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo.

The police maintain that they acted in self-defence. They say that they were called to the area to respond to a disturbance. Two policemen were attacked by a large crowd, which stoned their vehicle, breaking the windows, and attempting to pull them from it, and they shot at the crowd to prevent themselves from being killed.

The Regulation of Protests under Jacob Zuma - Jane Duncan 7 May 2013

The Regulation of Protests under Jacob Zuma

by Professor Jane Duncan

Faculty of Humanities Seminar Room
5:00 p.m. 7 May 2013

Death by a thousand pinpricks - South Africa’s ever-vanishing right to protest

A great deal of media coverage has been given to ‘violent’ protests. But it’s a narrow view just to assume that the protestors are being violent; abuse is a two-way street – especially if bureaucracy is being used to quash dissent. By ANDREA ROYEPPEN AND JANE DUNCAN. The Daily Maverick

Marikana and the problem of pack journalism

Jane Duncan

by Jane Duncan, SABC

The televised images of armed miners rushing towards the police in Marikana on the 16th August, and the police opening fire on the miners, will haunt South Africans for many years to come. 

Reporting from behind the police line in relative safety, journalists presented to the world images that on the surface of things vindicated the police’s view of events, namely that they shot in self-defence.But subsequent academic, journalistic and eyewitness accounts have called this narrative into question, with evidence having emerged of a second ‘kill site’ where miners were allegedly killed in a far more premeditated fashion by the police. 

Opinion Obituaries Neville Alexander: Revolutionary who changed many lives

by Brian Ramadiro, Salim Vally & Jane Duncan, The Mail & Guardian

The death of Neville Alexander on August 27, coming as it does in the wake of the massacre of mineworkers at Marikana, is a double blow. He had the breadth of intellect and depth of knowledge to help the world to understand the significance of these events.

Throughout his life Alexander,  who was born on October 2 1936, maintained the important combination of being both an activist and a scholar. His activism saw him imprisoned on Robben Island for 10 years and subjected to house arrest for a further six years.

Media underplaying police, state brutality

by Jane Duncan, Sunday Independent

South Africans are still reeling from shock after a clash between the police and striking mineworkers that left dozens of workers dead. The dominant narrative up to this point, supported by camera footage and other media accounts, has been that armed workers attacked the police, who retaliated in self-defence after at least one miner shot at them.

However, in the past week, an alternative narrative has emerged that suggests that, rather than being motivated purely by self-defence, the police killings of miners was more premeditated than initially thought.