Open Letter to James Nxumalo, Senzo Mchunu & Jacob Zuma on the Repression in Cato Crest, Durban

To:

James Nxumalo, Mayor, eThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa
Senzo Mchunu, Premier, KwaZulu-Natal
Jacob Zuma, President, Republic of South Africa

We are writing to you to express our grave concern at events unfolding in the Cato Crest shack settlement in Durban.

After an illegal eviction in Cato Crest by the eThekwini Municipality in March this year, shackdwellers occupied an adjacent piece of land. They named the settlement “Marikana”. Since then, two activists have been assassinated -Thembinkosi Qumbelo and Nkululeko Gwala. A third, Nkosinathi Mngomezulu, is in critical condition after being shot by the Land Invasions Unit. A number of activists have been seriously beaten by the police. Other activists, including Bandile Mdlalose and S’bu Zikode of the shack dweller movement Abahlali baseMjondolo who have been supporting the residents, have been threatened with death. 

Paul Gilroy: After the great white error....the great black mirage

Paul Gilroy: After the great white error....the great black mirage by TigersEye99

Fanon and the Value of the Human

by Paul Gilroy, Johannesburg Workshop in Theory & Criticism

Why should we care about humanism: rejected as it has been so virulently in the academy and the media, co-opted into the service of western military secularists, while simultaneously being rendered empty and compromised by UNESCO-style liberalism? In order to achieve what Sylvia Wynter calls "humanism's re-enchantment", Paul Gilroy argues for a return to the non-racial, anti-colonial, and ultimately reparative humanism articulated by Franz Fanon - unfashionable though this may be in many contemporary scholastic circles.