Politics at stake: a note on stakeholder analysis
In what Partha Chatterjee calls 'most of the world' the state and capital have two defences against grassroots political society - the police and civil society (especially NGOs and the academy). The first protect oppression with violent repression, the second do the same by throwing up a spongy wall around it in which grassroots political society is absorbed via individualising technocratic 'public participation' processes and educated to accept domination via all kinds of workshops and training that teach people to know their place. This article is an important attempt to think with grassroots militancy against civil society.
A return to repression in Durban: activist shot in the back
Submitted by red jack on Mar 31 2017 10:51
After the conviction and sentencing of two ANC councillors for the murder of an Abahlali baseMjondolo activist in May 2016 there was a marked decline in the repression faced by Abahlali baseMjondolo. But the recent shooting of an activist in the Bhambayi land occupation seems to mark a return to repression.
A Short Course in Politics at the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo
Raj Patel on participatory democracy in Abahlali baseMjondolo in Durban, South Africa.
“... we are being left to burn because we do not count”: Biopolitics, Abandonment, and Resistance
Anna Selmeczi on popular resistance to the lethal segmentation of the urban order in South Africa.
Dis/placing political illiteracy: the politics of intellectual equality in a South African shack-dwellers’ movement
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. Such discursive moves imply and reinforce a conception of the poor black majority as unable to think and practice their own politics; that is, as politically illiterate group of people.
Educating Resistance
by Anna Selmeczi, 2010
While deeply sympathetic to David Harvey’s commitment to a politics that can move to a new and more just order this paper, based on the experience of a period of immersion in the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, asks if Harvey’s commitment to scaling up the level of political action, alongside a project of political education, risks removing politics from the grasp of the people who are currently struggling, with a considerable degree of success,to restore their right to political speech and imagination.
South Africa: class struggle, 'xenophobia' and the local elite
Submitted by red jack on May 21 2015 11:49
This article offers a brief case study of how grassroots self organisation enables communities to resist xenophobic violence in South Africa.
Escalating Political Violence in South Africa
An article from the mainstream media in South Africa on escalating political violence including assassinations, police murders and violence from local party structures.
Another Abahlali baseMjondolo comrade has just been assassinated in Durban
Submitted by red jack on Sep 29 2014 18:43
South African shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo have just announced that Thuli Ndlovu, their Chairperson in KwaNdengezi has been assassinated. As the statement below indicates there had been serious threats against another comrade, Ndabo Mzimela, but the hammer of oppression fell elsewhere. The Marikana Land Occupation has been attacked by the ANC since this statement was issued. It seems that the Land Invasions Unit stood back and let the party members do the work. A women who tried to resist was attacked and injured with a spade.
They are using Facebook for live updates.
Land occupations continue in Durban
Submitted by red jack on Sep 15 2014 15:15
South African shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo report on the illegal eviction of shacks in an occupied settlement by municipal authorities.
