After the Water War

Oscar Olivera, ROAR Magazine

In Latin America, the struggle for water as a common good is present in almost all environmental conflicts—sparked by extractive, industrial, highway and energy projects—but also forms part of the agenda of urban and labor movements rallying against privatization, shortages, sanitation problems, and so on.

This does not come as a surprise, since water—as a common good and as a human right—is an essential part of our lifeworld, of how we relate to the planet and to each other. Water to be consumed and managed by humans; water for the reproduction of life; water as a living entity that flows and evolves; water as a sacred being or territory: all the above are perceptions radically opposed to water as a commodity, to water as a “resource” or financial asset.

Thapelo Mohapi (Abahlali baseMjondolo) speaks to issues of anti-xenophobia solidarity

Praxis & the Work of Building Counter-Power

Richard Pithouse

In the ‘70s and ‘80s the idea of praxis was often taken seriously in the process of building the organisations, movements and unions that undertook the work of developing the counter-power of the oppressed. Praxis was often understood as more than just the idea that effective political work required reflection on action, and action guided by reflection. It was also an idea with democratic and ethical dimensions.

No investigation, no right to speak?

No investigation, no right to speak?

Richard Pithouse

In January last year I was in Harare for a conference organised by the people around the journal Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy. There were lots of interesting people and papers, and interesting visits to flourishing farms, but one of the things that really struck me was a paper by a Brazilian scholar who has worked with and on the MST in Brazil, as well as the Landless Peoples’ Movement (LPM) in South Africa.

Constituent Power in the Modern World: A Brief Introduction

Department of Politics & International Relations, Rhodes University

Constituent Power in the Modern World: A Brief Introduction

A post-graduate course to be taught by Richard Pithouse in the first semester, 2015

Throughout the modern era … constituent power has been in conflict with constituted power, the fixed power of formal constitutions and central authority. Whereas constituent power opens each revolutionary process, throwing open the doors to the forces of change and the myriad desires of the multitude, constituted power closes down the revolution and brings it back to order. In each of the modern revolutions, the State rose up in opposition to the democratic and revolutionary forces and imposes a return to a constituted order, a new Thermidor, which either recuperated or repressed the constituent impulses. The conflict between active constituent power and reactive constituted power is what characterizes these revolutionary experiences.

-         From the introduction to Antonio Negri’s Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State (1999)

Thuli Ndlovu, the Abahlali baseMjondolo Chairperson in KwaNdengezi, was Assassinated last Night

Tuesday, 30 September 2014

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Thuli Ndlovu, the Abahlali baseMjondolo Chairperson in KwaNdengezi, was Assassinated last Night

Between half past six and seven last night an armed man burst into Thuli Ndlovu’s home in KwaNdengezi while she was watching TV. He shot her seven times and she died on the scene. There were two other people in the house at the time. One was Sphe Madlala, an 18 year old neighbour. He finished matric last year and did very well in physics and maths. Our movement has been trying to help him to get into university. He had come to the house to help Thuli’s 17 year old daughter, Sli, with her matric studies in maths and science. Sphe was also shot twice in the stomach but he survived. He underwent surgery at RK Khan Hospital at one this morning and remains in a critical condition. Thuli’s one year old son, Freedom, was also in the house at the time of the shooting. He was not physically harmed. Sli was in a separate outside room with her grandmother at the time of the shooting.

Rhythms of the Pachakuti

Rhythms of the Pachakuti by Raquel Gutierrez Aguilar by Duke University Press

The pedagogy of road blockades

Anne Harley, Interface

Road blockades have long since been a tool of struggle, and in recent months have featured in protests in South Africa, Guinea, Mozambique, Nigeria,  Palestine, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, India, Canada, Turkey, and probably in  most other countries in the world. Whilst some road blockades might be considered spontaneous eruptions of anger, with little reflective thought  involved, others are clearly part of conscious praxis, a tactic reflecting Gramsci’s ‘war of manoeuvre’. However, I argue, road blockades are also used as a counter-hegemonic pedagogical tool in a ‘war of position’, as one of the associated pedagogies within the “multi-faceted praxis and political strategy” of Subaltern Social Movements (Kapoor, 2011). The article uses two such movements, Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa, and the piqueteros in Argentina, to explore this claim.

Dis/placing political illiteracy: the politics of intellectual equality in a South African shack-dwellers’ movement

Anna Selmeczi, Interface

This paper starts out with the claim that the contemporary spatio-political  order of the South African “world class” city is conditional upon constructing  many lives as superfluous and disposable. This construction partly rests on the  inherited topography of apartheid displacement which continues to push the  poor black majority into zones of invisibility and inaudibility. Beyond this  physical distancing, the production and abandonment of surplus people also  depends on rendering them as improper political subjects. In the prevailing  political discourse, poor people’s struggles are deemed less than political  through notions such as the idea that all protest is related to the pace of  “service delivery” or accusations of violence, as well as often explicit characterizations of dissenting people as ignorant.

Dear Mandela (full documentary now online)

"There is Marikana everyday in South Africa" - an interview with Abahlali baseMjondolo

Despite the state's violence, our fight to escape the mud and fire of South Africa's slums will continue

S'bu Zikode, UnFreedom Day, Kennedy Road, 27 April 2009

S'bu Zikode, The Guardian

Our movement of shack-dwellers – Abahlali baseMjondolo, representing some of South Africa's poorest people – was formed in 2005 in Durban and now has more than 12,000 members in more than 60 shack settlements. We campaign against evictions, and for public housing: struggling for a world in which human dignity comes before private profit, and land, cities, wealth and power are shared fairly.

When Abahlali baseMjondolo members take our place in cities we take it humbly, but firmly. We have won many important battles in court, including the overturning of the anti-poor Slums Act – but the law has not bought justice. Despite that victory, thousands of shack dwellers were forcibly removed to make way for developments ahead of the 2010 World Cup. Most were dumped in transit camps, left to rot without basic services. Some camps – such as Isipingo, south of Durban – were built on flood plains.

S'bu Zikode's full talk on repression in Durban, Rhodes University, 10 October 2013

'Unlearning' hegemony : an exploration of the applicability of Alain Badiou's theory of the event to informal learning through an examination of the life histories of South African social movement activists.

Anne Harley, 2012

This thesis argues that it is both necessary and possible to change the world. Changing the world requires engaging with, to try to understand it from the basis of lived reality, and then acting. Our ability to do this is, however, affected by hegemony, which attempts to convince us that the way things are is either normal and natural and the only possible way they could be, or that it is impossible to change them. Nevertheless, there is always resistance to this and I suggest that we might learn something useful by examining how this happens. The thesis thus explores Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, and its applicability to our current world; and also considers resistance to this. I argue that the nature of capitalism has shifted, and discuss how this shift has impacted on hegemony, identifying three current interlocking hegemonic ideologies. I consider current resistance to this hegemony, including the role of social movements. Much resistance, and many social movements, I argued, cannot properly be called counter-hegemonic in that, although it/they may critique the dominant economic system, it/they remain trapped within hegemonic logic. However, it is clear that there is existing truly counter-hegemonic resistance, including some social movements, and I argue that Abahlali baseMjondolo is one such counter-hegemonic movement. Thus it is possible that those who join/align themselves with this movement might be considered to have ‘unlearned’ hegemony and be useful subjects for this study. I thus consider the life stories of seven people who have aligned themselves to this movement, in order to determine whether they have indeed ‘unlearned’ hegemony, and if so, how.

“We Are Poor, Not Stupid”: Learning From Autonomous Grassroots Social Movements in South Africa - Anne Harley

“WE ARE POOR, NOT STUPID”: LEARNING FROM AUTONOMOUS GRASSROOTS SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN SOUTH AFRICA by TigersEye99

Welcome to Marikana

The Marikana Land Occupation, Cape Town, 17 May 2013

'Shock and awe tactics' used on shack dwellers

by Jared Sacks, Mail & Guardian

On April 27, while political parties were spending fortunes to celebrate freedom, the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo commemorated – or "mourned" – what it called UnFreedom Day in Sweet Home, the shack settlement in Philippi on the Cape Flats.

On the same day, a group of shack dwellers from the Philippi East area increased their occupation of a piece of land just off Symphony Way, between Stock and Govan Mbeki roads. But a day later, the City of Cape Town decided to show them exactly how unfree they still are.

Marikana Land Occupation Evicted on Workers' Day: Reports from ENCA & the Daily Maverick

There are also various statements, reports etc on the Abahlali baseMjondolo website.

'Marikana' UnFreedom Day land occupation ends in violent Workers’ Day eviction

I found myself among a community of homeless and backyard-dwellers on Sunday through connections with the shackdwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, which held its controversial UnFreedom Day rally on 27 April in the settlement of Sweet Home Farm in Philippi, Cape Town. What follows is a personal account of the beginnings of the 'Marikana' land occupation. By JARED SACKS. The Daily Maverick

Zowi Zulu berates the police after they threw her and her new born child out of their shack

Critical Studies Seminar: Richard Pithouse - Conjunctural remarks on the political significance of 'the local'

The weekly Critical Studies Seminar Series, which is held jointly by the departments of Sociology and Political Studies, is presenting the following seminar:

Topic: Conjunctural remarks on the political significance of 'the local'
Presenter: Richard Pithouse
Venue: Politics Seminar Room
Date & Time: Friday April 26th from 1 pm to 2:30 pm

We Created Chávez: by George Ciccariello-Maher

We Created Chávez by George Ciccariello-Maher by Duke University Press