Nelson Mandela Professor of Politics at Rhodes University and co-editor of Re-imagining the Social in South Africa, Peter Vale cuts a troubled figure as he marks the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. Where are we going as a nation? What have we lost and how can we get it back? he asks, in an article that ranges from Invictus to Jawaharal Nehru:
DESPITE the silken promises of the World Cup, South Africa has marked the 20th anniversary of FW de Klerk’s famous speech with distinct bleakness – a torpor close to despair.
To appreciate this requires a viewing of the film Invictus, Hollywood’s account of SA’s victory in another World Cup, rugby’s, 1995 competition. More than anything else, the movie highlights the sense of awe that South Africans felt as they searched for a new identity and their realisation that in order to achieve it, they would have to sacrifice.
Of course, this country is not the first to experience the rush and the excitement of a new national beginning. On the eve of Independence – August 14, 1947 – Jawaharal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, delivered a speech which began with two dramatic sentences: “Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.”
Re-imagining the Social in South Africa: Critique and Post-Apartheid Knowledge edited by Heather Jacklin, Peter Vale Book homepage EAN: 9781869141790 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
A penetrating exploration of affirmative action’s continued place in 21st-century higher education, The Next Twenty-five Years assembles the viewpoints of some of the most influential scholars, educators, university leaders, and public officials. Its comparative essays range the political spectrum and debates in two nations to survey the legal, political, social, economic, and moral dimensions of affirmative action and its role in helping higher education contribute to a just, equitable, and vital society.
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The Next 25 Years: Affirmative Action in Higher Education in the United States and South Africa edited by David Featherman, Martin Hall, Marvin Krislov Book homepage EAN: 9781869141851 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
In the past decade, hundreds of thousands of women from poorer countries have braved treacherous journeys to richer countries to work as poorly paid domestic workers. In From Servants to Workers, Shireen Ally asks whether the low wages and poor working conditions so characteristic of migrant domestic work can truly be resolved by means of the extension of citizenship rights.
Following South Africa’s “miraculous” transition to democracy, more than a million poor black women who had endured a despotic organization of paid domestic work under apartheid became the beneficiaries of one of the world’s most impressive and extensive efforts to formalize and modernise paid domestic work through state regulation. Ally explores the political implications of paid domestic work as an intimate form of labour.
From Servants to Workers integrates sociological insights with the often-heartbreaking life histories of female domestic workers in South Africa and provides rich detail of the streets, homes, and churches of Johannesburg where these women work, live, and socialise.
‘This is a must-read book for feminist scholars interested in gender, social change, and the state.’ – Michele Ruth Gamburd, Portland State University, author of The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle: Transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s Migrant Housemaids
‘In an analysis that is moving, subtle, and insightful, Ally reveals the peculiarities of this particular occupation where workers learn to juggle the complex intimacy of the relationship with their employers with a newly learned language of rights.’ – Raka Ray, Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies, Professor, Sociology and SSEAS, and Chair, Center for South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley
In South Africa the left shows no sign of vanishing as a political force, in marked contrast with places such as the former communist bloc countries.
In the form of Cosatu and the South African Communist Party it has a significant national presence that includes important Cabinet and ANC positions, plenty of union muscle and no shortage of media attention. The recent spat involving Julius Malema and Jeremy Cronin, and the booing of the former at the SACP’s December 2009 conference, increased this media attention.
Despite these signs of vitality, the decline of traditionally left-wing parties and organisations in many parts of the world makes it necessary to ask whether the left in South Africa really does have a significant future. If so, what kind of left would that be?
Trying to keep up with the octogenarian after his 2005 move to Durban dazed even the most Brutus-addicted staff at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society and Centre for Creative Arts, for which he served as a fixture at the Time of the Writer and Poetry Africa festivals.
At least one overarching impression sings out from the cacophony of warm memories: the Brutus philosophy that genuine liberation – not the half measures won in 1994, when class apartheid replaced racial domination – represents a war to be waged on many fronts, because as one battle is won and many more usually lost, there are still others on the horizon that make an engaged life fulfilling, that keep the fires of social change desire burning long into the night.
In his youth, Brutus was radicalised in part by the denial of opportunities to play sport across Port Elizabeth’s neighbourhoods.
He was restricted to competitions in the black townships, hence his first campaign was for athletic fairness. This was an entry point into revolutionary politics, initially with the Teachers League and then the Congress movement.
Writing on the Counterpunch website, Bond takes up the cudgels on behalf of filmmaker Annie Leonard’s Story of Cap and Trade, which outlines a near-apocalyptic disaster scenario should cap-and-trade measures become policy after Copenhagen.
Bond looks at the positions of both anti-green free marketeers and “Big Green” pro-cap-and-trade activists in his warning against allowing this so-called “solution” to take hold:
For example, Africa’s greatest political economist, Samir Amin, has just penned a damning attack on environmental markets, as has University of Oregon professor John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet. Either can assist Roberts to plug the gaping holes in his pro-market consciousness.
Roberts doesn’t seem to understand the severe dangers associated with an anticipated $3 trillion in carbon trades by 2020, which will become the basis for further trade in financial derivatives, for he derides the film’s warning about Wall Street speculation: ‘Leonard et al. seem instead to have decided that “market Goldman Sachs derivatives bugga bugga!” suffices.’
But Roberts, de Place and NRDC policy director David Doniger dare not trash the film’s proposed solutions, such as stronger EPA regulatory enforcement and citizen activism (e.g. West Virginia mountaintop defense). There is greater potential to push the EPA into action – in spite of misgivings by NewEnergyNews’ Herman Trabish – than to win legislation regulating carbon within ill-functioning, untransparent financial markets, in which ‘too big to fail’ deregulatory freedom was amplified by Bush-Obama’s 2008-09 bailouts.
UNISA’s Annie van Wyk provides a good summary of the issues and positions in Adèle Kirsten’s A Nation Without Guns:
A Nation without Guns? is a contemporary book that addresses the controversial matter of regulating and reducing the private legal possession of firearms to combat violent crimes and to create a safer environment in South Africa. Adèle Kirsten tells the story of the Gun Free South Africa (GFSA) movement from her perspective, both as an activist and as the director of the GFSA (1995–2002). She stresses the point that, through participatory democracy and organization, mobilization, and campaigning, ordinary people can bring about social changes that have a profound impact on their lives. GFSA illustrates this point through the efforts and commitment of a few full-time members and some volunteers, working in sometimes stressful and life-threatening conditions. These people work relentlessly to sensitize communities to the correlation that exists between private legal ownership of guns and the high levels of violence in the country. By raising communities’ awareness, the support for their campaign grew to such an extent that they were able to influence the laws of the country, resulting in a safer environment for people to live in. This valuable lesson serves as an inspiration and seems to be the ultimate objective of this book, as it is clear that the book was written for general readers and citizens in South African society.
There are many facets to the Joburg aesthetic. There’s the ‘minedumps and highways’ cliché that out-of-towners hold so dear when they deride SA’s biggest city. There’s the capitalist/consumerist synthesis expressed in corporate palaces, coffee shops and couture boutiques. There’s the leafy suburban street, complete with high walls and grassy pavements.
Driving along the roads of this heavily-treed metropolis and listening to the mild inanities of afternoon talk radio has its own particular appeal. But after hearing yet another show in which the host bemoans the lack of village cricket in Parkhurst, solicits ice-cream recipes, promotes the delights of Jacaranda blossom viewing from the Westcliff Hotel or panders in some other way to the petit- and haute-bourgeois ambitions of Gauteng’s denizens, one begins to think: surely there are other (more interesting) ways of representing Johannesburg, of exploring its multiple contradictions, of experiencing the city?
Towards Gender Equality: South African Schools during the HIV and AIDS Epidemic edited by Robert Morrell, Debbie Epstein, Elaine Unterhalter, Deevia Bhana, Relebohile Moletsane Book homepage EAN: 9781869141752 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
She noted that the editorial team, comprising academics Robert Morrell, Debbie Epstein, Elaine Unterhalter, Deevia Bhana and Lebo Moletsane, brought many case studies from schools into their work – which fill the book with anecdotes in addition to analysis. She also observed that the “scythe” of HIV/AIDS hangs over the work, commending the team on their “constant engagement with NGOs, policy groups and teachers” in the course of their research.
Burns noted that the book is not always hopeful in tone: rather, it portrays the vulnerability and confusion of teachers in SA, many of whom have sad stories to tell. On the other hand, there are many instances of humour in the book, albeit always girdled with a sense of responsibility, so that the research “moves across schooling spaces in complex ways”. She congratulated the team on their “clear, felicitous use of language, which obviates jargon” and said the book is an extraordinary account of “what is holding our country together”, commenting on its “almost novelistic” quality. In conclusion, she said, “it’s short, but big enough to move the cheese”.
Following on from Burns, editor Robert Morrell said that the book is about “hope, democracy and difficulty”. He said he wanted the teachers involved in the case studies to appreciate what was in the book, as their goodwill had been essential to the project. Deevia Bhana took over from here, saying that it had been difficult to talk to young children about issues relating to sexuality, but also extremely rewarding from a research perspective.
The launch was well attended, and smoothly facilitated by the Ike Books’s team.
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Towards Gender Equality: South African Schools during the HIV and AIDS Epidemic edited by Robert Morrell, Debbie Epstein, Elaine Unterhalter, Deevia Bhana, Relebohile Moletsane Book homepage EAN: 9781869141752 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Nelson Mandela Professor of Politics at Rhodes University and co-editor of Re-imagining the Social in South Africa, Peter Vale cuts a troubled figure as he marks the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. Where are we going as a nation? What have we lost and how can we get it back? he asks, in an article that ranges from Invictus to Jawaharal Nehru:
