Popular Struggles Then and Now - Second Panel (27 March 2015)

Colloquium: Popular Struggles Then & Now

The 'Third Force': A Fanonian critique

Vuyolwethu Toli

When South Africa achieved her political independence in 1994, the masses had high hopes that they were now going to elect a government of their own choice. This government was going to rule based on the will of the people and their aspirations. In order to heal the injustices of the past and restore confidence to the masses, the ANC government was resolute on the path that it needed to take moving forward, in order to free the masses from the shackles of colonialism and slavery. One of the paramount interventions that the government had to do was that of using the state as the vehicle for transformation and give value and meaning to the democratic constitution. Chapter 2 in the Constitution, which is the Bill of Rights,  is quite clear on the duties of the state with regards to issues of social security and delivering basic necessities to its people. The failure or rather the inadequacy to fully deliver these constitutional obligations on the part of the state, can thus be said to be one of the reasons for the violent protests that have unfolded in South Africa recently.

A review of Nigel Gibson’s 'Fanonian Practices in South Africa'

Vuyolwethu Toli

Frantz Fanon, the Algerian theorist of revolution and social change, is dead but alive: he continues living through his profoundly luminous work that remains influential to the thinking and actions of many a people across the world even today.

- Munyaradzi Mawere

Nigel Gibson’s book, offers us a critical analysis of the post-colonial society. Inspired by Frantz Fanon, the text is peppered with references to Fanon’s texts such as Black Skin White Masks, and the Wretched of the earth. Fanon was a philosopher and a liberation thinker who emphasised the importance of the masses being the deciders of their own fate. Gibson draws very much from Fanon’s work and his text stresses the importance of shifting of the geography of reason. Post-colonial South Africa has been an anti-thesis of the colonial South Africa, whereby the masses played the decisive role in bringing the pernicious ideology of apartheid to its knees. This paper will therefore look at the failures of the transition period, and also argue that these failures led to this current crisis we are currently experiencing-of the masses of our people being not taken seriously by the government. The paper will also discuss the notion of ‘shifting the geography of reason’, to actually start recognising the voices of the marginalised.