The #Cyril_Ramaphosa Model
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/12/the-cyril-ramaphosa-model
The election Monday night of Cyril Ramaphosa as president of #South_Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) – with a razor-thin 51% majority of nearly 4,800 delegates – displaced but did not resolve a fight between two bitterly-opposed factions. On the one hand are powerful elements friendly to so-called “White Monopoly Capital” (WMC), and on…
#Afrique_du_sud ; à mon avis un bon papier sur les enjeux actuels de l’ANC, mais un peu déprimant… this shit ain’t over.
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2018/01/13/first-thoughs-ramaphosa-repudiates-zuma_a_23332514 sur le premier discours de Ramaphosa-élu
#South_Africa’s Very Own David Brooks
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/07/south-africas-very-own-david-brooks
Jonathan Jansen’s celebrity has always struck me as a bit of a throwback in contemporary South Africa, a final remnant of the preemptive post-racialism of the 1990s. To be fair, it was no mean feat for a black man to waltz into the University of the Free State, one of the country’s most notorious bastions…
The great opus of “Small Bobby”
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/06/the-great-opus-of-small-bobby
In the 1950s and 1960s, the South African magazine Drum gained an international reputation for innovatively revealing black urban life as told, in the main, by black writers and photographers. Ranjith Kally’s pictures and stories of the people of Durban, a city on #South_Africa’s east coast, were part of those circulated nationally, on the…
The moral imperative on South African farms
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/05/the-moral-imperative-on-south-african-farms
Yolanda Daniels is a domestic worker with three children. She has lived on a farm outside of Stellenbosch in #South_Africa’s Western Cape for more than 16 years with the white farm owner’s consent. Like many other women living on farms, overwhelmingly coloured and black, both the security of Ms Daniels’ employment and housing are…
These three examples illustrate a ubiquitous problem with respect to the precarity of farm workers in general, and women in particular, drawing attention to broader social issues and systems of oppression. First, women living and working on farms find themselves in dual patriarchal relationships: the relationships with their male partners and their relationships with farm owners and managers. Their employment is, by design, often seasonal (and therefore temporary and contract-based). As the cases of Klaase and Hattingh show tenure for them and their families has also been deeply insecure.
Second, the majority of farm owners and managers are white and the majority of farm workers and dwellers are black African or coloured: the legacies of colonialism and
Apartheid are alive and well on farms throughout South Africa.
Third, more than 20 years after the adoption of the constitution and nearly 20 years after parliament’s enactment of the Extension of Security of Tenure Act, legal representation and protection of farm workers’ rights remains the exception
Reckoning with the moral imperative on South African farms
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/05/reckoning-with-the-moral-imperative-on-south-african-farms
Yolanda Daniels is a domestic worker with three children. She has lived on a farm outside of Stellenbosch in #South_Africa’s Western Cape for more than 16 years with the white farm owner’s consent. Like many other women living on farms, overwhelmingly coloured and black, both the security of Ms Daniels’ employment and housing are…
We are all Helen Zille. Or, why the West thinks that #colonialism was not all bad.
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/03/we-are-all-helen-zille-or-why-the-west-thinks-that-colonialism-was-
In a series of tweets circulated earlier today, Helen Zille, who is Premier of the #Western_Cape (one of #South_Africa’s nine provinces) and the former leader of the country’s second largest political party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), asserted there are many positive aspects to colonialism. Zille, who is white, governs the Western Cape, which…
#POLITICS #Democratic_Allaince #Hellen_Zille #Hitler #Twitter
The end of colonialism, apartheid and Jim Crow have marked the global rise of liberal racism – what sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva calls “racism without racists”. Even when we do not openly endorse colonialism like Zille does, our works are filled with strategic silences, omissions and erasures that continue to sustain ideas of Western superiority.
Some scholars hint at the superiority of the political institutions of Western democracy. Others mention the “inevitable” rise of capitalism, seen always as a quintessentially Western achievement. Others still talk about the “advanced” cultural practices of “European modernity.” Even critical Western scholarship opposed to the neoliberal paradigm rarely acknowledges the persistence of whiteness and racial inequalities, often developing criticisms of the world of finance, the banks or the multinationals that underplay the role of race in these institutions. These coded forms of racism have contributed to consolidate white supremacy in the last few decades of neoliberal hegemony.
That edifice is now crumbling. The Zilles of the world are tired of beating around the bush. They want to speak openly about white superiority and do not want to feel uncomfortable for their views.
They believe that postcolonial countries have been given a chance but failed to assert their worth, denying the fact that neocolonial structures are just as sturdy as colonial ones. They are tired of “diversity talk,” it is all a sham in their opinion. They see a return to the “good old days” of fascism, colonialism, Jim Crow and apartheid as the way forward.
Story of a South African Farm School
▻http://africasacountry.com/2016/07/story-of-a-south-african-farm-school
The Elsenburg Agricultural College lies 50 km east of Cape Town, tucked among the quiet valleys of the Cape Winelands. This is one of #South_Africa’s most fertile regions, and for the past three centuries its surface has been dominated by thousand-acre plantations, its wealth extracted in the form of olives, fruit, and wine. Originally […]
#ESSAYS #Agriculture #education #History #identity #language
Julius #Malema’s Tailored Revolution
▻http://africasacountry.com/2016/05/julius-malemas-tailored-revolution
At the end of April this year, #South_Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), launched its local government elections manifesto in front of 40,000 people in Johannesburg’s Orlando Stadium. Julius Malema, who serves as both the party’s political and sartorial “Commander in Chief,” led the proceedings, sporting his now iconic red beret and jumpsuit. This carefully […]
#POLITICS #EFF #Fashion #Political_Aesthetics #Politics #The_Left
Julius #Malema’s Tailored Image
▻http://africasacountry.com/2016/05/julius-malemas-tailored-image
At the end of April this year, #South_Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), launched its local government elections manifesto in front of 40,000 people in Johannesburg’s Orlando Stadium. Julius Malema, who serves as both the party’s political and sartorial “Commander in Chief,” led the proceedings, sporting his now iconic red beret and jumpsuit. This carefully […]
#POLITICS #EFF #Fashion #Political_Aesthetics #Politics #The_Left
Student protests and postapartheid #South_Africa’s negative moment
▻http://africasacountry.com/2016/05/student-protests-and-postapartheid-south-africas-negative-moment
The political theorist #Achille_Mbembe, from the University of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, describes South Africa as experiencing a “negative moment.” Though protest and dissatisfaction with the terms of the “new” South Africa have been brewing for some time, there is a strong sense that the black majority is losing patience with the ruling African […]
#South_Africa’s Anarchist #hip_hop Collective
▻http://africasacountry.com/2015/12/south-africas-anarchist-hip-hop-collective
How do you make people realize they’re in chains? For Soundz of the South (or SOS) – an anti-capitalist resistance collective from Khayelitsha, Cape Town – you give them hip.....
Did Charlayne Hunter-Gault need to also publish an e-book on “Corrective Rape”?
▻http://africasacountry.com/did-charlayne-hunter-gault-need-to-publish-an-e-book-on-corrective-
Charlayne Hunter-Gault’s ‘Corrective Rape: Discrimination, Assault, Sexual Violence, and Murder Against #South_Africa’s LGBT Community’ is a rather verbose title for a mere 51 page e-book. Attempting to expand upon.....
Ruminations? Or, Ruinations? in the work of Santu Mofokeng
▻http://africasacountry.com/ruminations-or-ruinations-in-the-work-of-santu-mofokeng
Santu Mofokeng’s photographs and work as a photographer have been at the center of #South_Africa’s historiography and its representation. In part, scholars and activists have used his pictures to.....
Watch: #South_Africa’s ‘born frees’ gag on the rainbow nation pill they’ve been fed for the past 21 years
▻http://africasacountry.com/watch-south-africas-born-frees-gag-on-the-rainbow-nation-pill-theyv
Chimani Maxwele, a student at the University of Cape Town in South Africa caused a real stink earlier this month by flinging poo at the statue of #Cecil_John_Rhodes on.....
#AFRICA_IS_A_COUNTRY ##RhodesSoWhite #racism #Rhodes_University
#South_Africa’s #domestic_workers : Invisible labor in plain sight
▻http://africasacountry.com/south-africas-domestic-workers-bonded-labor-in-plain-sight
For South Africa watchers, two sets of statistics from a new comparative study of domestic workers in India and South Africa, A New Form of Bonded Labor makes for sobering reading......
#Dope_Saint_Jude messes with Cape Town’s head
▻http://africasacountry.com/dope-saint-jude-messes-with-cape-towns-head
As trending topics in local pop culture, Gender and Race can be vapid. Tired lambasts of #South_Africa’s patriarchal, racially oppressive, hegemonic society often make me want to renounce my.....
What if black people inverted #South_Africa’s #Township_Tours ?
▻http://africasacountry.com/what-if-black-people-invert-south-africas-township-tours
This #VIDEO piece below is just brilliant. Here’s the set-up: What if two black Capetonians (both photographers) went to Camps Bay doing “an alternative township tour” to invert the “township tour”? The video.....
It’s been one year since #Stuart_Hall passed
▻http://africasacountry.com/its-been-one-year-since-stuart-hall-passed
My early university education at the then-very white University of Cape Town coincided with #South_Africa’s transition from Apartheid to democracy. Stuart Hall didn’t feature much, despite the fact, as.....
Has the giant fallen? The split within #South_Africa’s largest trade union federation, #COSATU
▻http://africasacountry.com/cosatu-split-has-the-giant-fallen
Recent developments in the largest trade union movement in South Africa, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), have been nothing short of extraordinary and cataclysmic. It is now commonly accepted that the ‘giant’ whose arrival was so evocatively declared by (now South African Deputy President and then mineworkers’ union official) Cyril Ramaphosa in 1985 […]
What’s the matter with … Stellenbosch University
▻http://africasacountry.com/whats-the-matter-with-stellenbosch-university
One afternoon, during my final year of high school, I first found myself at Stellenbosch University (also known as #University_of_Stellenbosch) on a tour of potential #universities in the Western Cape, #South_Africa’s south-western province. Walking around the various buildings on campus and after a quick stopover in the Neelsie, the university’s mall, I […]
The Fingo Festival Revolution in #South_Africa’s Eastern Cape
▻http://africasacountry.com/the-fingo-festival-revolution
“You’ve got a car? It’s less than two hours from here” says a Rasta woman I’ve known for a total of ten minutes. In that time, she’s managed to convince me to travel with her to a town nearby (or was it me trying to convince her?) on a hunt for medicinal herbs. The ganja in […]
T.O. Molefe on #South_Africa’s “War on Women”
▻http://africasacountry.com/t-o-molefe-on-south-africas-war-on-women
The essayist T.O. Molefe (he is a contributor here too) has a new op-ed column up at nytimes.com. He writes about “South Africa’s War on Women.” The oped opens with a discussion of why South Africans appear so blase about gender violence. Molefe writes, “… crimes against black lesbians don’t register on the public’s radar amid the […]
#OPINION #After_The_New_South_Africa #Oscar_Pistorius #sexual_violence
“Miners Shot Down;” a haunting and emotional documentary
▻http://africasacountry.com/miners-shot-down-a-haunting-and-emotional-documentary
When Mzoxolo Magidiwana, a miner from #Marikana in #South_Africa’s Northwest Province, traces his family lineage of miners at #Lonmin Mines, he invokes in me memories of how I narrowly escaped becoming a miner, breaking the lineage from my father. I spent my early twenties in Sasolburg, a small coal-mining town in the Northern Free […]
#FILM #MEDIA #POLITICS #Cyril_Ramaphosa #Miners_Shot_Down #Miners_Strike #platinum
How much has really changed on #South_Africa’s wine #farms?
▻http://africasacountry.com/how-much-has-really-changed-on-south-africas-wine-farms
Sixty five years ago, Margaret Bourke-White traveled to South Africa, and spent some time in what are today known as the Worcester winelands, in the #Western_Cape. According to South African Tourism, still today “the largest wine growing area in South Africa, stretch from the Hex River Valley in the north to Villiersdorp in the […]
Mamphela had a Party
▻http://africasacountry.com/mamphela-had-a-party
A star that shone too brightly has been snuffed out before its time. On Tuesday, not even a year since its launch, and months shy of contesting its first – and #South_Africa’s fourth – democratic election, #Agang has announced that it will merge with the #Democratic_Alliance (DA), and its leader, Dr. #Mamphela_Ramphele, […]