Remember Marikana - A screening of 'Miners Shot Down' & a Talk by Ayanda Kota

From Steve Biko to Thuli Madonsela

This week the Public Protector was called a CIA agent. The ruling party’s tactic of labeling its critics foreign agents is counterproductive, has a bloody history and is damaging the country, writes Ayanda Kota. The Con

  

When Steve Biko galvanized young black intellectuals into an explosive new political awareness, Mac Maharaj called Steve Biko a CIA agent. In his recent biography on Biko, Xolela Mangcu recalls that in Ginsburg in the 1980s, “UDF crowds would in their hundreds go and sing in front of Steve Biko’s house: U-Steve Biko, I-CIA – alleging Steve had worked for the CIA. We would confront the crowds to defend Steve’s name, at the risk of our lives.”

The people are not part of the political process

Ayanda Kota, Mail & Guardian

Elections should be a season of hope. Steve Biko declared that our fight was for an open society, a society in which the colour of a person's skin would not be a point of reference or departure, a society in which each person has one vote.

We have the vote, but the political parties do not represent the aspirations of the people. Millions of black people remain poor and oppressed. When we organise outside of the ANC we are violently repressed.

This election is not a season of hope. It is a season of deception, slander, gutter politics and lies. There are campaigns to encourage our people, and in particular young people, to vote. We are being told every day that voting is the way to express our hopes and to build a better society. Politicians are leaving the comfort of their fortresses and frequenting our townships. They all say that they are disgusted that we are still living below the poverty line in squalid conditions, with no water and electricity.

Is a commitment to human rights sufficient for an emancipatory theoretical praxis?

by Kayla Hazell

“They didn’t ask us why we are washing cars. They didn’t ask us anything.”

This essay adopts the position that formal human rights, such as those encoded in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (hereafter, the Constitution), are potentially emancipatory in the sense that they embody our society’s commitments and aspirations with regard to the treatment of individuals and groups. That said, it will be argued that a formal commitment to human rights does not automatically translate into practice and that this has largely been the South African experience. Human rights are subject to constant balancing, particularly where interests conflict, and such balancing occurs according to a particular rationality. It will be contended that, if rights are to become a reality for all, the rationality governing our commitment to human rights in South Africa, currently largely economistic, will need to be renegotiated in light of the fact that our formal rights have stood watch while extreme inequality continues.

Revitalizing the Black Consciousness Tradition

We are lifelong activists in the Black Consciousness Movement. We have noted the press statement announcing the merger of AZAPO and SOPA. We are committed to the unity of all BC organisations and individuals committed to the BC project. However we have concerns about the way that this merger has been planned and the content of the announcements surrounding it.

There have been serious disagreements within BC since the death of Biko. Since 1998 there have been a number of splits in the BC movement. There have been constant talks about unity but they have always failed. During these years many BC stalwarts have been operating independently, some pushing the question of unity and some getting involved in the new generation of popular struggles.

The Education Crisis is a Disgrace to the Nation

A Young Ayanda Kota

The Education Crisis is a Disgrace to the Nation

The ANC‘s hatred for poor black people can never be forgiven

As I set my foot in the prison cell I am confronted by two men in their late thirties and five young boys who seem to be between seven and thirteen years old. I reach up to them in horror and assure them of their safety as long as I am around. They immediately tell me that they are being sodomised by the two men. I ask them why are they are in prison and not at school. They tell me that they dropped out because their parents are unemployed and broken, that the school is short of teachers and those that are employed there spend most of their time outside classroom. They tell me that they were arrested for burglary, caught eating inside a house. I wake up crying. Yes this was a dream. A nightmare that is all too real in this country where the lives of people who are poor and black count for nothing – this country where strikers are massacred by the police, people die trying to find work, people die in shack fires year after year, lesbians are raped, beaten and murdered and activists are chased from their homes by the thugs of the ruling party. And millions of children are denied a decent education and condemned to lives of unemployment or occasional bits of degrading, exhausting and always precarious work.

KPFA Radio Interview by Walter Turner with Richard Pithouse & Ayanda Kota on Marikana

Africa Today - October 1, 2012 at 7:00pm

Click to listen (or download)

The Marikana Mine Worker's Massacre – a Massive Escalation in the War on the Poor

8 August 2012

The Marikana Mine Worker's Massacre – a Massive Escalation in the War on the Poor

by Ayanda Kota

It’s now two days after the brutal, heartless and merciless cold blood bath of 45 Marikana mine workers by the South African Police Services. This was a massacre!

South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. The amount of poverty is excessive. In every township there are shacks with no sanitation and electricity. Unemployment is hovering around 40%. Economic inequality is matched with political inequality. Everywhere activists are facing serious repression from the police and from local party structures.

Students for Social Justice Statement on Ayanda Kota's arrest

Students for Social Justice

(The original UPM statement is here, the AbM statement is here, the DLF statement is here and the Mandela Park Backyarder's Statement is here.)

We, the Students for Social Justice condemn in the strongest possible terms the vicious police attack on our friend and comrade Ayanda Kota of the Unemployed People's Movement, which occurred on Thursday the 12th of January 2012.  Ayanda Kota was assaulted in barbaric and cowardly fashion in front of his 6 year old son at the Grahamstown police station by Constable Zulu and several other officers.

Short Film on the Unemployed People's Movement in Grahamstown by Andiswa Leve

ANC Centenary: A Display of Elite Power

by Ayanda Kota

The centenary celebrations of the African National Congress (ANC) are being used to persuade the people that a movement that has betrayed the people is our government, a government that obeys the people, instead of a government of the elites, for the elites and by the elites. It is a hugely expensive spectacular designed to drug us against our own oppression and disempowerment.

South Africa on the Global Occupy Map

01:33 Download: Occupy South Africa:Ayanda Kota:KPFA:November-13-2011.mp3

KPFA Weekend News, 11.13.2011

Transcript:  KPFA Weekend News 

Host:  South Africa is the only African nation yet to appear on the Global Map of actions by the Occupy Movement. KPFA's Ann Garrison spoke to Ayanda Kota, Chair of the Grahamstown, South Africa Unemployed Peoples' Movement about Occupy South Africa.

The Rebellion of the Poor Comes to Grahamstown: A photographic essay on the UPM by Tim Gabb

A protester salutes the cause with a fist in the air.

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.

SA, we cannot say we are free

by Ayanda Kota, Mail & Guardian

On April 27 1994 the people of this country stood in long queues for many hours, waiting to cast their vote for the first time. In some parts of the country the weather was hostile, freezing cold, while in other parts it was scorching hot.

Our people were voting for the first time, voting for an end to racism and for democracy and a better life -- for jobs, free education and decent housing. Over and above their vote for their material needs to be met, they were voting for their freedom. Or so they were made to believe.

Ayanda Kota on Julius Malema & the Pitfalls of National Consciousness in Contemporary South Africa

Julius Malema is a Demagogue and his Nationalization Would be Nothing but a Massive Public Subsidy for the Rich

The mass movements that have raised progressive governments to power in Latin America, the global financial crisis, the recent uprisings in the Arab world and the ongoing rebellion of the poor in our own country have all created more space for the left. The days when so many people believed that there was no alternative to capitalism and imperialism are passing. Socialism is back on the agenda. It is clear to many people that we cannot continue to organise our economy around the interests of big capital while leaving the people to suffer as they are.

A Better Life for All Remains a Dream for the Poor and the Unemployed

by Ayanda Kota, Unemployed People's Movement, Grahamstown (via the Students for Social Justice blog)

The eThembeni informal settlement was erected in 1992, before the dawn of our democracy. It was called eThembeni, “place of hope”, because the birth of a new nation, the birth of democracy was inevitable. But today people remain unemployed, living without income in mud houses.