Why what Sankara had to say about sovereignty still resonates

Vashna Jagarnath, The Conversation

The unfolding crisis in Greece has highlighted the extent to which we have bought into the idea that there is no alternative to the increasing subordination of society to capital. The democratic moment that excited so many people around the world soon passed.

Even Yanis Varoufakis, the lone Greek hero taking on the medusa-like power of the European Union, has capitulated.

Thomas Sankara: United Front Against Debt

Schedule of Public Events for Silvia Federici's Visit to Rhodes University 18 – 21 September 2013

18 September

Launch of Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle and seminar presentation on Reproduction and Women's Struggles in an era of 'Primitive Accumulation.' - 5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m., Humanities Seminar Room

19 September

Seminar for postgrad students on 'Feminism & the Commons' - 10:00 a.m. – 12: 30 p.m., New Seminar Room, Politics Department

Academic Freedom Lecture “Academic freedom and the enclosure of knowledge in the global university” - 6:00 pm, Eden Grove Blue

20 September

Workshop with activists hosted by the Unemployed Peoples' Movement – 2:00 p.m., UPM Office

21 September

Student organised seminar - 2:00 pm. - 5:00 p.m. Sociology A

Permanent Reproductive Crisis: An Interview with Silvia Federici

by Marina Vishmidt, Mute Magazine, 7 March 2013

On the occasion of the publication of an anthology of her writing and the accession of a  Wages for Housework NY archive at Mayday Rooms in London, Marina Vishmidt interviewed Silvia Federici on her extensive contribution to feminist thought and recent work on debt activism (with contributions by Mute, Mayday Rooms and George Caffentzis)

Today's loan shark feeding frenzy, tomorrow's revolution

In Grahamstown, there’s a woman who only gets R120 from her monthly social grant of R1,200, because the rest is 'eaten up' by loan sharks. In a country where close on half of all credit-active people are impaired, the rampant growth in unsecured lending and illegal lenders is creating a real context for insurrection. By MANDY DE WAAL, The Daily Maverick

Thomas Sankara's Speech on Debt at the OAU in July 1987

 An excerpt from Radical Films

“Debt is also the result of confrontation.

When we are told about economic crisis, nobody says that this crisis didn’t come about suddenly. The crisis had always been there but it got worse each time that popular masses become more and more conscious of their rights against exploiters.”

Thomas Sankara, Addis Ababbaa, July 1987.

Political Work with Women and as Women in the Present Conditions: Interview with Silvia Federici

by Maya Gonzalez and Caitlin Manning, Reclamations, 2010

You have written about university struggles in the context of neo-liberal restructuring. Those struggles responded to attempts to enclose the knowledge commons. Do you see the university struggles of the last years as a continuation of the struggles against the enclosure of knowledge? Or as something new? Has the economic crisis altered in some fundamental way the context of university struggles? 

The debt crisis, Africa and the new enclosures

by Silvia Frederici, 1990, Libcom

In that brief moment the world seemed to stand still, waiting. There was utter silence. The men of Umuofia were merged into the mute backcloth of trees and giant creepers, waiting. The spell was broken by the head messenger. "Let me pass!" he ordered. "What do you want here?" "The white man whose power you know too well has ordered this meeting to stop."
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart