State of emergency 2.0

by Christopher McMichael, Thought Leader

Last week, a fully armed contingent of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) soldiers were enrolled to perform guard duties at the new Khayelitsha district hospital. The reason for the deployment of combat-ready troops in a civilian environment? To patrol a silent protest by 50 members of the Khayelitsha Development Forum. As constitutional law expert Pierre De Vos has pointed out, such an action may violate constitutional restrictions which reserve the internal usage of the SANDF for exceptional circumstances.

A review of Jacques Depelchin's, 'Silences in African History: between the syndromes of discovery and abolition'

by Professor Martin Legassick
History Department
University of the Western Cape

The last time I saw Jacques Depelchin I drove him (together with Ibrahim Abdullah) around the townships of Cape Town. We drove along a road bordered by shacks in Khayelitsha and Jacques commented "this is worse than anywhere I have seen in Africa." Some of those shacks were the so-called QQ section of Khayelitsha which, along with a number of areas in the Cape Town metropolis this last winter, rose in revolt at the lack of delivery of services and housing, putting up barricades of burning tyres to close the road that Jacques and I had driven on, and throwing their garbage across the road.