Landless Militancy: A guide

We've a splendid new article over at the Voice of the Turtle, freshly posted. It's an overview of, and exhortation to, the political cadres that are formed within every Brazilian Landless Peasant Movement land occupation. And it's far more compelling than its title - The Training of Political Cadres: theoretical structure, experiences and present situation - suggests. Here's a sneak preview.

We will only give tenderness if we are tender.
We will only give hope if we continue being courageous and persistent.
We will only transmit conviction if our praxis is convincing, firm.
We will only be trainers if we are also prepared to be formed permanently through struggle, organisation, and study.
We will only be cadres if we do not lose our ability to learn, to study, to listen to people and struggle with them.

Fabulous.

Outposts of tyranny

Hmm. How odd. Today's mass action on campus, for which there were posters almost everywhere, didn't happen. Not only didn't it happen, but the posters were removed, only two people remember seeing them, and the major grievance of students who weren't excluded is that the espresso takes too long to queue for. There is no war. We have never been at war.

Meanwhile, some comment on Mbeki's denialism about Zimbabwe. The man has a bit of a history of denialism - his position on HIV/AIDS has been wonderfully deconstructed by my colleague, Mandisa Mbali here. And one can see similar reasons for his denialism around HIV/AIDS in his one-armed embrace of Mugabe. African sexuality is pathological, the bodies of black men and women turned bestial under a western gaze. The Africa-as-permanent-basket-case thinking that suffuses the Northern media is the corollary of this, only at a different level of analysis - the nation as crazed fiend, and innocent child. It's racist thinking, and Mbeki is right to have little patience for it.

But Mbeki is wrong to let his reactionary impulses smother his thinking. In fact, Mugabe is a fiend. He's a fiend not because he's black, but because what he instructs his government to do to Zimbabweans and other people living in Zimbabwe is bloodthirsty, totalitarian, brutal and vindictive. Mbeki's thinking isn't only smothered by reaction. He's also a good democrat, and he represents the concerns of South Africans. Not all, or the majority, but some South Africans nonetheless. Not least those South Africans who were once propertied Zimbabweans, but who've left for safer outposts. The South African and Zimbabwean governments have long been negotiating a treaty that would protect South African property-owners from expropriation. Last month, the fourth attempt to get the thing signed, the Zimbabwean government cancelled again. I'm sure this is infuriating for the lad Thabo. But if he's going to get the signatures on the parchment, he's going to have to be well behaved. And that means a slap on the wrist for Mugabe so gentle, it feels like a caress.

Life improved, ruined, by technology

Being the digital hoarder-type, I've managed to accumulate over 2GB of mail since, er, 1997. Much of it is trivial ephemera, but there are historically significant bits of ephemera too. Having a pretty poor memory, I'm not apt at keeping track of it all. Not to worry, you say. Delete it, and if it's important, someone will have stuck it up online. This may well be the case. But that would mean that I could get online. And I can't. The World Bank is to blame.

No really.

Here's the short story, and here's the photo-essay. Last year, the University of KwaZulu-Natal enrolled 43,000 students. This year, they enrolled 28,000. The University decided that it wasn't going to let students in who weren't paying their debts. This is an unfortunate decision, because there's no way that students *can* pay their debts. Unemployment is sky-high, and there's no market for students to exploit themselves like their counterparts in the global north. By the same token, parents, particularly working class parents, don't have enough cash to send their kids to university, and certainly don't have the requisite splodges of wonga to be able to bankroll the R20,000 or so per year tution and accomodation fees which the University seems to ask of its students. For comparison's sake, R20,000 is is a fraction more than the average annual per capita GDP, an average figure which in turn, because of the rampant inequality in South Africa, masks the fact that most people earn considerably less than that.

Of course, students haven't taken this lying down. They've taken it between the eyes. The Student's Representative Committee, the body intended to represent student concerns to the faculty, is a den of ANC supporters with a hair-trigger response to institutional racism. The SRC have been quick to observe that the overwhelming majority of students excluded by this policy are, in fact, black. Trouble is that the people doing the excluding are, for the most part, black as well. The distinguishing feature is that the management is considerably richer than the students they're kicking out. The SRC doesn't have the analytical skill to deal with this awkward situation - to protest a policy of exclusion based on income would be to take the first of two steps, the second of which would demand protest against the government that instituted this policy in the first place. And the ANC hacks aren't about to do that.

How to wriggle out of this? The management doesn't want student dissent. The SRC doesn't want to 'get political', but doesn't want to let it seem as if they're selling out their constituency, even if it turns out that this is exactly what they're doing. So. Last week, after the protest against management, the SRC and management met for three hours. An email was sent round to students and staff saying that all was well, and that everyone could return to their offices. We weren't actually told what the conclusion of the negotiations were for a couple of days. Long enough for a chunk of richer students to enroll away, and for poorer students to be told, 'wait to the end of the week and all will be well'. The end of the week was Friday, and that was when thousands of students seem to have found out that they wouldn't be attending University this year.

So, the SRC managed to defuse a troublesome week. And the management seems to have found a way not to blame the students for responding angrily to being excluded, but the introduction of scapegoats. Our vice-chancellor, Malegapuru William Makgoba, recently returned from a wedding and meetings in Washington DC made it clear on Friday that the protests last week were unacceptable, and has singled out 'trouble-making staff' who will come under disciplinary action. There were only three people who might fall under that category at the protest, standing to one side, talking to people. That'd be me, Richard Pithouse, and Fazel Khan. And, as far as I know, only Richard has received a nasty phone-call from the bosses. I look forward to mine with anticipation. Because Makgoba also made it clear that the University will be moving forward. And the World Bank will be helping the university with its problem with staff retention. I've little doubt they'll be triumphant- the Bank's policies have been deployed with great success to the problem of retaining too many students.

Okay, now that I've made you read about the protest - and there's going to be a follow-up tomorrow at 1pm and likely a report on Indymedia later in the day - here's the technology bit. Just as there's a two-tier educational system, there's an apartheid at work with the internet. There are, in fact, two internets, and a market for each. One which works fairly speedily, where you can do things like check your mail, go online and find emphemera, occasionally download an article and, if you're lucky, print it. And then there's the one that you get to use if your department decides that it can't pay for the good stuff. And it's bollocks. You can't do a damn thing on with it. It turns your ordinarily functioning computer into the Wailing Wall, against which you rock in transports of agony, praying for divine intervention, stuffing email like notes in the cracks, strongly suspecting that they'll be removed and thrown away at the end of the day unread, but hoping against hope that an intended recipient might get to see them. I don't know of a department that can afford the premium service. In fact, many departments are cutting back on things like paper for graduate students (bring your own), books, pens, pencils, and other sundry items that, apparently, are too expensive for the Provinces' premier educational institution.

Okay, this might not be the Bank's own handiwork. Could just be an inspired bit of dual market pricing instituted by the wankers over in administration, over which the wretched and understaffed folk in our IT department have no control. But it smells like neoliberalism.

Either way. This rather alters the economics of information access. All of a sudden, eight years of email looks less like a pile of shit, and more like a database. With the Google desktop search engine, and a day for it to index everything, I now don't need to be online to do research at all.

Course, there's still the problem of sending email. But, well, I'm sure google will figure out how to forward outrageous bits of news from the Bush, Mbeki and Mugabe administrations (and sometimes, all three) and then I'll never have to go online again.

Except, very intermittently, to blog.

Penguins

DK sends news of a German zoo importing four Scandinavian penguins in order to de-gay two of its male birds. The quotes from the zookeep are priceless - read em here.

Headman Harry

This is a little late, being an idea that struck me on the road to Makhathini, where I've been spending the last couple of weeks (more on that soon). The storm around Harry Windsor was dying down even then, but for no reason I can recall, I remembered a talk given by Nkosi Phathekile Holomisa, head of Contralesa (Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa). A man of royal blood, he had this to say about his title in society, and the history of British colonialism:

The British would not even allow that the traditional leaders be referred to by their proper titles such as king, prince, counts and so on, as such titles were the reserves of whites and the aristocracy of the English in Europe. Most African aristrocracy could at best be referred to as paramount chiefs, chiefs and headmen. This legacy lives on in the minds of some educated black intellectuals, who continue to call African royalty “chiefs” in spite of their stated objection to such a colonial title.

He's quite right, of course, that double standards operate here. He wants to be called a Prince, and wants his subordinates to be Lords and Counts (no mention, oddly, of princesses, ladies and countesses). Here, Holomisa has it ass backwards. "Chiefs" and "headmen" strike me as precisely the right terms to describe these feudal hangovers. The terms just haven't been applied consistently. Why not Chief Elizabeth and Headman Harry? The U.S.Americans don't have a problem with "hail to the chief", after all...

Bono, Blair, Gates, Clinton, Mbeki, Obasanjo.

Who'd have the imagination to photoshop this?

Busy day at the barricades

Right. Few words. Lots of pictures. A day at the protests today as students at the university somewhat unexpectedly decided that they'd had enough of being lied to by the administration. Photos here and analysis tomorrow, when I've more information. Too much hearsay to make much sense of it at the moment.

chant down babylon

Chris over at the Virtual Stoa has both a true anecdote and a splendid picture of Bob Marley in honour of the man's 60th birthday.

The Bob Marley Foundation doesn't burn the torch quite as brightly as it ought- and I believe Rita Marley has almost all the blame to shoulder. Today, they're holding a concert in Addis Ababa. Among the high flying sponsors you'll find those ganja kings of economic policy, the World Bank. Looks like Rita drew a bad card:

You a-go tired fe see me face;
Can't get me out of the race.
Oh, man, you said I'm in your place
And then you draw bad cyard -
A-make you draw bad cyard,
And then you draw bad cyard.

Propaganda spreading over my name;
Say you wanna bring another life to shame.
Oh, man, you just a-playing a game
And then you draw bad cyard (draw bad cyard);
A-make you draw bad cyard (draw bad cyard);
A-make you draw bad cyard.

I want to disturb my neighbour,
'Cause I'm feelin' so right;
I want to turn up my disco,
Blow them to full watts tonight, eh! -
In a rub-a-dub style, in a rub-a-dub style,
In a rub-a-dub style, in a rub-a-dub style.

'Cause we guarding the palace so majestic;
Guarding the palace so realistic!

Them a-go tired to see we face (oh yeah!),
Me say them can't get we out of the race;
Oh, man, it's just a big disgrace.
The way you draw bad cyard (draw bad cyard);
The way you make wrong moves (make wrong moves);
The way you draw bad cyard (draw bad cyard);
A-make you draw bad cyard (draw bad cyard);
A-make you draw bad cyard -
In a rub-a-dub style, rub-a-dub style...

Leaving cyberspace: report on an experiment

Right then. Back to blogging after my longest period away from email since, um, 1997. Two whole weeks. Because I am, as anyone knows, foremost a social scientist, I kept a diary of the entire experience. Initial response to email deprivation included dry mouth, slight tremors, anxiety and mild nausea. These symptoms soon abated when, four days into the experiment, books, music and conversation replaced the need for email. Nonetheless, a gnawing craving burst through on day six, and the subjects drove 100km over a dirt road in order to find a place that allegedly had internet access. The allegations proved to be false, and initial symptoms briefly returned. Days eight, nine, and ten saw a predominance of euphoric spells, with occasional singing to self, but as day fourteen, and the conclusion of the experiment, approached, initial symptoms returned, together with periods of foreboding and dread at the thought of clearing the impending accumulated email clutter. So now you know.