Fear and Loathing in the ANC

by Niren Tolsi

A year after the African National Congress held its national conference in Mangaung, which returned president Jacob Zuma to its top position, The Con republishes a two-piece special that examines the Fear and Loathing in South African politics which first appeared in Rolling Stone magazine.

Shit. Why Not? If Marry-Wanna presents herself, you can’t refuse the dance.

Especially if, at that moment, the cops are gathered upwind around a police Nyala ten metres away in one of the most securitised parts of the country.

Insouciance demanded it. Even if it was kak Limpopo majat.

 December 2007. Everyone who matters in the African National Congress (ANC) is in Polokwane for the elective conference that will see Jacob Zuma rise to the party’s presidency.

Marikana: One Year After the Massacre

by Niren Tolsi, Mail & Guardian

The supplement to the M&G on the anniversary of the Marikana Massacre is online at: http://marikana.mg.co.za/

What happened during the fatal miners’ strike in Marikana in August 2012 did not end there. Thirty-four people were killed in the massacre on August 16. Those miners who survived and were arrested say they were tortured and brutalised by the police. People also died, violently, before and after that date.

Families were left without husbands, brothers, sons and fathers. And a daughter and mother: Pauline Masuhlo was an ANC councillor in the Madibeng municipality and a campaigner for better social conditions in the squalid informal settlements around Lonmin’s shafts. She died from injuries visited upon her during a government clampdown of Nkaneng informal settlement on September 15.

Activists decry talk of 'third force' at Marikana

by Niren Tolsi, Mail & Guardian

The suggestion, presented with a sprinkling of muti, is that the 34 miners would not have been shot dead if some unseen hand had not been at work.

The Marikana dust appeared to have just settled on the bodies of the 34 dead miners last week when the spin machines started whirring out the spectre of a "third force", whispering of "agents provocateur" and "criminal elements" at work.

It's time to occupy, my friends

by Niren Tolsi, Mail & Guardian

The wind is blowing from downtown Manhattan towards the Brooklyn Bridge. From Thomas Paine Park, named after the author of Rights of Man, the clouds moving past the United States Courthouse across the road create the illusion that its 30-storey tower is falling, keeling over, as if deaf to the inscription on the New York County Supreme Court next door that reads: "The administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good governance."

Heeding the call to capture

Cedric Nunn outside the KwaMuhle
Museum in Durban (Rafs Mayet)

 by Niren Tolsi, Mail & Guardian

Cedric Nunn's 30-year career retrospective at Johannesburg's Museum Africa is a powerful reminder that South Africa's history haunts the present.

In clear black and white it charts several stories with no seeming end, such as the defiance and humanity exuded by farm labourers facing forced removal in the 1980s, similarly mirrored in 2011 by shack-dweller struggles against evictions to "temporary relocation areas".

Shooting the festival in the back

by Niren Tolsi, The Mail & Guardian

As the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown reaches its final weekend there is a growing urge to do a Meursault-on-the-Beach and pop a cap in its ass.

And then pump four more into its dead body.

The relentless cycle of watching shows, scrambling from lectures to interviews to shack settlements like Ethembeni which were flooded after an early morning deluge on Tuesday, and then, writing, constantly, leaving one bereft.