Class worrier

UnFreedom Day / Asikhululekile

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 16:24:00 +0000

The 27th April marks the day in South Africa on which the first free elections were held in 1994: Freedom Day, is how the government consecrated the event. The end of Apartheid has been followed by arrangements that are less detestable, but not by much. Inequality is up in what was, by state policy, one of the world's most persistently unequal societies. Not to worry, you might counter. If inequality is increasing, it's not because the poor are getting poorer, but that there's a few people getting richer - an augury of redistribution and high income for all. But the poor are getting poorer. As this report suggests, "50 percent of South African households lived on less than R2 899 per month for a household of eight in 2004, up from 40 percent in 1994."

In Durban this year, the 27th is being marked as UnFreedom Day by a number of Durban-based social movements, including the Shackdwellers, the South Durban Environmental Action Coalition and the Concerned Citizen's Forum. You can read more by downloading a bilingual flyer, a press release in English or Zulu, or an excellent 1.4MB pamphlet.

The Thornbirds, The Thornbirds, The Thornbirds, Dallas

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 13:13:00 +0000

I really think we need to be a little more surprised about this than we are. It's a link to the UK National Grid's top ten power spikes associated with TV viewing. The spikes tell of the action of people who, in TV ad breaks, collectively bugger off and make a cup of tea, causing trouble to electricity suppliers across the nation.

Since 1990, the list has been riddled with sporting events. The highest 'TV pick up' to date came after the 1990 World Cup Semi Final between Germany and England, rated at a healthy 2800 MW. Other high pick up matches include England vs Brazil, Juventus v Manchester United and, improbably, a 2002 Nigeria v England match.

The 1980s pickups are utterly different, dominated (with five years between the #1 and #2 slots) by The Thornbirds, The Thornbirds, The Thornbirds, and then Dallas. The only vaguely sporting event on the 1980s list was the 1981 Royal Wedding, (which I think the Windsors won on goal difference), causing a power spike which came #7 in the decade, hot on the heels of vastly more enjoyable Coronation Street / Blue Thunder double billing.

You have been part of the solution

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:45:00 +0000

Today, the Women of Ward 80 marched on their councillor, Bhekisisa Elliot Xulu. Like many councillors, Xulu is corrupt. The litany of allegations against him reads like a career in crime. You might wonder why the ANC allows so many corrupt councillors to operate so blamelessly. Well, it turns out that Xulu has struggle credentials: he was part of the United Democratic Front in the 1980s, and this, it seems, is his trump card. Having successfully associated himself with an (at the moment) unimpeachable moment in the New South Africa’s memory, he has bought himself immunity from prosecution.

Xulu preys on the old. A story that incensed many at the march today was the tale of his extorting R30,000 from a pensioner, in exchange for a one-roomed Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) house. Of this, R10,000 was for the house, and R20,000 was for ‘insurance’, for what “might happen to the man inside the house”.

Many of the pensioners at the protest today were from Mkhumbane - Cato Manor in English - Durban’s equivalent of Johannesburg’s Sofiatown, or Cape Town’s District Six. Like them, Cato Manor used to be a zone of non-racialism, a zone of liberation, creativity, and resistance. Like them, it was regarded as a threat to apartheid. Like them, Cato Manor was forcibly shorn of its residents, who were evicted in the 1950s and early 1960s.

When Xulu steals from them under the protection of his new masters, he makes flesh the preying of one history (of the 1980s struggle against apartheid) on another (the experience of, and resistance to, forced removals). And the latter history is one that the current city management would very much like us to forget. To remember it is to make possible the questioning of today’s “Slum Clearance Programmes”, which in language and action, replicates almost exactly the apartheid programmes. Well, not exactly. Under apartheid, people were moved to better houses than they are under the ANC.

And so people marched today. They marched against the councillor’s corruption. They marched for dignity. They marched in the memory of Monica Nomthandazo Ngcobo, a 23 year old woman, who was walking on the pavement on March 2, near a protest against Xulu, and who was killed by the police. Hit in the stomach and head by a rubber bullet, claimed the police. Except that she was shot in the back with 9mm pistol and an R1 rifle.

The march was plagued with difficulties. The Municipality, as ever, dragged its feet in issuing an acknowledgement of the right to march. Few South Africans realise that they live under some of the most progressive freedom of expression legislation on earth – all they have to do to have a legal march is inform the police seven days in advance. That’s it. The police can choose to negotiate the route, call a meeting, issue paperwork, or shoot people. But the right to march is more or less sealed with the handing of an appropriate form to an appropriate officer.

Unfortunately, because few people realise this (and because the government is reluctant to publicise it), many still hope for a march ‘permit’. And when it doesn’t come, people get anxious. The police confirmation arrived yesterday at 4pm. Soon after that, Xulu travelled the streets, announcing through a loudhailer that the march was illegal, and anyone who went would be shot.

Despite this, around 1000 people showed up today, in defiance of Xulu, in fear of being shot, certainly, but ready to fight anyway. It was a serious victory, and it gave people courage. The police then told the marchers that they were simultaneously both too early to march, and too late. Once it became clear that the police were clearly talking shit, the marchers got aggravated, and the police backed down.

The police tried to hustle the march along, and the marchers fought back. At a crucial intersection, with the police urging the march through, everyone just sat down. Plonk. In the middle of a major street. The police were not pleased.

On the way, they passed this sign.

It’s wonderfully ironic. The City has gone all out to stigmatise precisely the people marching here. They tried, hard, to get a new ANC councillor. One sign – “We Love the ANC, We Hate Bheki Xulu” sums it up nicely. Xulu was appointed as an ANC candidate in 1994, on the basis of his struggle credentials, elected, and then re-elected after his first term because the community felt he’d been insufficient time to ‘deliver’. Toward the end of his second term, in August last year, community representatives approached the ANC Branch Executive Committee (BEC), to ask that a different councillor be appointed. The BEC told them that the nomination had already happened. They then approached the Regional committee, who referred them back to the BEC. After pointing this out to the regional committee, the community was met with silence. They took their complaints to the provincial committee, which was equally unresponsive.

An independent candidate ran against him in the recent elections. It was a tough, and close run race, as you can see from the election results here. The election was held amid a number of irregularities. ANC staff were tending polling booths as IEC officials (Independent Electoral Commission, though some signs rewrote it as independent electoral crooks). After death threats for not voting ANC, physical attacks against the opposition, and some very fast and loose with the numbers, Xulu got 5330 votes, the runner-up independent candidate was 246 votes behind with 5046.

Xulu threatened individuals on the march. Monica Ngcobo’s uncle was one of the four people (and the only man) leading the march. He said that Xulu’s men had come by the night before. He said they’d kill him. And he said he didn’t care – there was a place waiting for him by his niece’s side. And a place for everyone else who stood up to them.

Unimpressed, Xulu came to the march:

Overlooking the rallying point at the end of the march was a girl’s school. The students chanted and sang along with the speeches. And, after one particularly loud chant, they shrieked and ran away. We looked up, and saw a lone man run up to the hill, and point a camera down. Soon after, three, four and then a dozen other men charged him, and kicked him to the floor. There were arrests.

The story, apparently, was that Xulu had brought the cameraman to find out who was at the march. Some of the younger members of the crowd had spotted Xulu’s tinted-windowed car prowling behind the march, and had run after it. The car had driven into the school, and they followed. When the cameraman got out, they jumped him. And then they in turn were jumped by the police, and the cameraman driven away, apparently to hospital (at least, I hope so, he got quite a kicking), by his boss.

But - now here’s a thing that doesn’t happen often – the police swept up about 20 men, bundled them into the back of the van, took them down to the station and then, and then, and then, let them go. And another thing. After the white and Indian police had left, a few African boys in blue took one of the police vans, and drove the elderly and overheated protesters back home.

Chinks in the armour of the state? Not sure. Most likely, though, from the way a couple of the uniforms were talking, they were as sick of Xulu’s immunity as everyone else. And if the ANC won’t let the police get him, perhaps the police are happy for the people to prevail. And if they do prevail, perhaps, once again, they will have been part of the solution.

NB Full photo story at Indymedia here.

Stanisław Lem enters deep cryogenic sleep

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 07:44:00 +0000

It takes the death of one of my favourite authors to coax me back, albeit briefly, into cyberspace. I’d never had known, but that a geek over at the BBC had seen Solaris, or possibly was just a big George Clooney fan, and noted Lem’s death.

Lem was science fiction’s Pole star and one of Polish literature’s most thoughtful practitioners. Although, like Borges, Le Guin and Philip K. Dick (who denounced Lem to the FBI), he could turn the present on its side, and look at it through the future, he broke with his peers in having a wicked sense of humour. His tales of Pirx the Pilot, Fiasco, and One Human Minute (in which he calculates the breadth and velocity of the jet of human sperm currently being ejaculated) are some of the most darkly comic meditations on philosophy and the Cold War to have made it out from behind the Iron Curtain. We was also deeply critical of American SF, which motivated Dick to mount an attack against him, and which got Lem expelled from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Among the handful to protest this travesty was Ursula K. Le Guin, people’s hero. Lem’s thoughts on the matter: “it would be a lie to say the whole incident has enlarged my respect for SF writers.” Also, he’s the only SF writer to win the Medal of the White Eagle. More at the seemingly official online Temple of Lem.

The Subaltern Studies Speaks

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 22:52:00 +0000

This month's Monde Diplomatique has a wonderful, concise and erudite introduction to what Subaltern Studies means and why it's important, written by Partha Chatterjee, one of the school's foremost scholars. Unfortunately, it's only available on the Monde Diplomatique site if you subscribe. Fortunately, it's also right here. You lucky people. Via FOIL.

He doesn't look black

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 21:39:00 +0000

Props to Dan Moshenberg, head of Women's Studies at George Washington University, good mate, and now a guest blogger over at BlackProf.com. His engagement with race and gender is deeply serious, non-self-exculpatory, angry and, as his positions at GWU and BlackProf suggest, chock full of insight and critical consciousness. Check his thoughts on the silence in the U.S. media on International Women's Day here.

Glen and Me, again

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 14:36:00 +0000

I've come across Superintendent Glen Nayager of the Sydenham branch of the South African Police service before, when he stole my camera and shot my mates.

Last week, we had rather a large protest in Durban, and I found myself in the shack settlements at 6 a.m., having a discussion with The Super about the jurisprudence of the Regulation of Gatherings Act. He was trying to ban the march, and I was trying to point out that he was in breach of the act. It took a High Court interdict to persuade him, and I've no doubt that, next time, he'll behave just as badly. But at least we won this time. Last time, the police opened fire, with live rounds. (They did this last week after the elections, shooting in the back, and killing, a passer-by.)

And Nayager has, of course, behaved far worse, having been at Chatsworth Police Station when a deaf man, coming into the nick to lay a charge, was mistaken as drunk and insubordinate, and then was beaten to death. (Richard Pithouse has stories of some of Nayager's colleagues here). It was this that got Nayager transferred from Chatsworth to Sydenham.

Shannon Walsh, who's down with us at the Centre for Civil Society, managed to capture the fun and games here, together with a photo that I'm so proud of, I've decided to nick it. Do read Shannon's account. It's gripping stuff. And the rest of her blog wins her a place in the blogroll there on the right.

Once more with feeling

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:27:00 +0000

In the same place where the Peoples' Power Revolution ousted Ferdinand Marcos twenty years ago today, there's turmoil again. Meanne writes:

A state of National Emergency or Proclamation 1017 has been declared by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The emergency rule gives the military and the police the power to arrest and use force against whosoever they perceive as ‘enemies’. There are now threats of more political repression and curtailment of peoples’ rights. And the situation is bound to get worse. Opposition Senator Aquilino Pimentel has called for an emergency session of the Senate to look into the latest actions of Malacanang.

Another group of protestors are currently massing up in Ayala, Makati City as the wave of protests calling for the ouster of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo continues.

Photo credit: Joseph Purugganan. For more, check Manila and Quezon City Indymedia.
http://manila.indymedia.org/
http://qc.indymedia.org/
[Via Meanne].

Cheney's Got A Gun

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 21:03:00 +0000

Good new things on the Ashwin Desai Struggle sub-site, including a recent spat in the pages of the Mail and Guardian here in South Africa, in which Makgoba opines that New Media is the " 'opiate'of the weak and disgruntled forces globally" and Desai responds by comparing the Vice-Chancellor to his aunty Ivy. Plenty worth reading here (scroll to the newest newspaper articles).

Luckily, I can't possibly be weak or disgruntled. I've not been blogging properly for over a week, and have successfully been conducting an off-line life with few withdrawal symptoms. Had I been more addictively online, I'd have noticed that this post didn't quite make it out of the Draft Post folder. It came in last week, following the news of the Vice President of the United States's drunken gun story. Aziz Choudry, comrade, activist, antipodean, and eighties junkie, has offered this hymn:

Cheney's Got A Gun
Cheney's Got A Gun
His dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
What did Harry do?
It's Cheney's last I.O.U.

He had to take him down easy
And put a bullet near his heart
He said 'cause nobody believes me
The man looked like a birdie
He ain't never gonna be the same

(c) Choudry/Aerosmith/Church of England.

Bread & Roses, Batons

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:11:00 +0000

A story for another time involves my only trip to Bulawayo, where several men desperately wanted me to be Jewish. In the meantime, more serious things are afoot in Bulawayo. Over 400 women from WOZA - Women of Zimbabwe Arise - were protesting for "Bread And Roses" this Valentine's. The roses, incidentally, symbolising dignity, and bread symbolising bread. And for this, they have been arrested. Read more here.

True or Horseshit?

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 04:14:00 +0000

"for centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks that protection can no longer offer it anything. Very well then, Gentlemen, my knowledge of our country leads me to believe that within 200 years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade."

These words, attributed to Ulysses S. Grant, have been bothering me. They seem to have begun life in Andre Gunder Frank's classic "Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America : historical studies of Chile and Brazil". The quote is accompanied by the following parenthesis: "cited in Santos 1959:125 and retranslated from the Spanish by the author". My 1969 edition, enlarged and revised, according to Monthly Review Press, contains no such reference. And, well, I'm not sure where to turn. With the uptick of Monthly Review readers and editors over here at Class Worrier, I thought I'd appeal to you, dear reader. Any thoughts on how to find out whether Grant ever said anything remotely like this?

Trajectories of technology

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 03:21:00 +0000

Props to Brainy. She works with maths and science students of color in the Bay Area, and she has been teaching them how to podcast. BusinessWeek just blogged the project, and it's well worth having a look-see, at Smashcast. It's tremendously heartening to hear the trajectory of the podcasts, from an initial 'hey, shit, we're podcasting', to product reviews for media players, to the racial politics of the Kentucky school system.

Strike struck dumb

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 15:50:00 +0000

We're on strike at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The university is offering a 4% salary increase for staff - not a penny more- but management is taking 12%. Negotiations have deadlocked, and we're taking it to the streets, or as near to them as the restrictive industrial action legislation will allow us to get. We were on strike almost the same time last year - but for the 2006 round, the four unions that represent staff on campus have assured their members that they're not going to sell us out. In 2005, we were on strike for barely a day, after which the ANC instructed NEHAWU and NTESU to settle, which they did. This didn't go down too well with the rank-and-file.. Promises have been made, this time, to bring all decisions to a mass meeting. I'll believe it when I see it.

The biggest source of worry, as ever, is management. Yesterday, we were sent a number of emails about how our strike would disrupt the students (don't we care about students?) and then, Dasarath Chetty, our censorship czar, sent out these velvetted instructions:

Public Affairs and Corporate Communications would like to request that all staff who receive any media query related to the impending industrial action refer these calls to Jennene Singh 260 2386 or Bhekani Dlamini 260 7115. We appreciate your assistance in this regard.
Professor Dasarath Chetty
Executive Director

Like Fight Club, the number one rule about the strike, apparently, is that one doesn't talk about it. Jimi Adesina, one of the continent's most thoughtful and engaged scholars, has written a lacerating response. Read it in full here, and study this example:

I have before me a copy of the ban order that the Government of the Republic of Transkei issued against Clarence Mlamli Makwetu on 7 December 1976; it carried the signature of KW Matanzima. CM Makwetu was asked by Matanzima to "immediately withdraws (sic) together with your wife, children and household effects from the said area in the said district [Tembuland] and proceed to NYANDENI AREA... And there to take up residence at a place to be pointed to you by the Magistrate, Libode." All nice and orderly, isn't it? "Proceed", "take up residence", etc. KW Matanzima could argue that he never used the word "ban" or "restriction", as I suspect you would argue that your e-mail to the staff of UKZN never used the word "gag" or said that UKZN staff could face disciplinary action if they flout your instruction. You could argue that it is an "injunction," an "advice" not an order or even an instruction. But Matanzima fooled no one; neither will you...

Toytowns

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 15:50:00 +0000

These are wonderfully delicate photographs. Trying to understand how it is that they look like pictures of model towns (they're not), the focus, and slight over-exposure certainly help. Mainly, though, I don't think I'd ever thought it possible to see cities at a distance through air this clear. [Via Li. ]

Ashwin Desai Struggle update (for Monthly review readers)

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 00:07:00 +0000

A warm Class Worrier welcome to those who've arrived here via this month's Monthly Review editorial. A timely missive it is too. It has prompted me to deliver on the promise of making a new Ashwin Desai Archive section in the sidebar up there (and also prompted a bit of housekeeping in the list of recommended reading: guess I never got around to adding "Monthly Review" above "New Left Review").

Right. Back to the AD-archive. It's the place to go for the latest information on Ashwin's struggle which, more than ever, is providing occasion for optimism of the will. For the annals of email, transcripts, articles, letters of support, and frequent buffoonery from the management of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, click here.

More Desai Correspondence

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 14:23:00 +0000

For those following the Ashwin Desai struggle, some more news, this time from the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa.After writing this , and having received a message in return to which I do not have access, they have responded by writing this.

Soon, I'll try to collect all these documents on one page. But for the moment, enjoy CAFA's crisp downsizing of Prof Makgoba:

You ask whether academic freedom operates above the laws of a country. We do not believe that the question of whether academic freedom has been violated can be answered by saying that the law requires one course of action or another. It has frequently happened, not least in apartheid South Africa, that violations of academic freedom have had the sanction of law. They were violations nonetheless.

The Sunday Times Reports Ashwin Desai's Reinstatement - in 2003

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 20:47:00 +0000

More news on Ashwin Desai's campaign. Turns out that the Sunday Times in 2003 printed an article celebrating Ashwin's reinstatement at the University of Durban-Westville (text-only version available here). And the then-deputy chair of council, now-attorney general of KwaZulu-Natal went on air last week saying that Ashwin had "most definitely" been "rehabilitated" in 2003. Which leaves our Vice-Chancellor in an awkward position. Always one to share, the Vice-Chancellor has left the country, putting on of his deputies in an awkward position too. But not without, yesterday, announcing in the Sunday Times that Noam Chomsky is possibly senile. The Chomskians in our linguistics department are very upset. As are the people he maligns and betrays at the beginning of the Sunday Times interview.

What goes 200mph and is full of shit?

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 19:49:00 +0000

It's A-1 Grand Prix time here in Durban. They've just finished building this track around large bits of public land on the beachfront, officially recognising what we knew all along - that public highways double rather nicely as racing circuits. Thing is, the A-1 is right outside peoples' homes. They can't get in because the entrances to their apartment buildings lie within the race perimeter. The police have helpfully suggested that they should buy tickets to the races, which will allow them unimpeded access to their bedrooms. Of course, all this private inconvenience is being justified in the name of the public good - mirroring a recent supreme court ruling in the US, to which activists have cleverly responded by petitioning for the demolition of the house of a supreme court judge, so that a leisure complex might be built there. I'm not sure what the response should be in South Africa. Building a racetrack around Tokyo Sexwale's house is likely futile - I suspect he's already got one.

Looking for Weil's Disease in All the Wrong Places

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 21:43:00 +0000

Top left, above the fold, in today's Mercury is a fascinating wee article. Blood tests for shack dwellers, we're told. Shack dwellers in Cato Manor had blood drawn last year, to test for diseases which they might have caught through contact with vermin.

"Blood and tissue samples from four species of rats and mice collected in Durban during the past two years all came up negative for bubonic plague, but in some parts of the city more than 30% of rats were found to be carrying leptospirosis [aka Weil's disease] and about 10% were carrying toxoplasmosis. Both diseases can be passed from rats to humans. Although healthy people are unlikely to suffer much more than flu-like symptoms, the sicknesses can be fatal for the very young or old, as well as people infected with HIV/Aids."

Meanwhile, at the Leptospirosis Centre, we discover that in 1995, two years into the Clinton presidency, the number of cases of Weil's disease in the United States dropped to zero. What's their secret? Say the researchers at Leptospirosis.org: "our conclusion has to be that the US reporting and testing system failed." It certainly has. At the World Health Organization, even with a vastly deficient reporting system, it seems the U.S. mortality rate from Weil's disease is higher than that of Madras.

Yes, alright, if the US figure is rubbish, the Madras one might be too.

But the bottom line is this: what the fuck?

Diseases that hop from one species to another are, of course, alarming. But in the case of bird flu, we'd not have to worry about it half as much if it weren't for the industrial farming conditions that provide the perfect environment for these diseases to incubate. And in the case of rats? One would have thought that the elementary sanitation clues, discreetly left across Europe by the Black Death, might have been picked up on by the European Union, who are funding this study. But are they coming to install sanitation for the shackdwellers? They are not. They are coming to measure how they might die, not how they live.

And besides. Having spent time in the shacks, I can say with some confidence that I've seen bigger rats in New York.

The Housing Policy That Dare Not Speak Its Name

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 20:50:00 +0000

Yes indeedy. This weekend the ANC tried to campaign in the shack settlements. The police were on hand to make the ground safe for democracy, but even then, the KwaZulu-Natal Premier couldn't get into the settlements safely.

Some of this is captured in an article in Durban's Mercury newspaper here which, although it has my byline, was definitely a team effort by the good people at the Centre for Civil Society, notably Stephanie Lane, Richards Pithouse and Ballard and, of course, S'bu Zikode and Mnikelo Ndabankulu.

As a gloss to the many of you from outside South Africa who visit Class Worrier, Jayraj Bachu is the councillor in one of Durban's more well-to-do mainly Indian neighbourhoods, in which there are a number of shack settlements. Bachu has recently been praised for his successes in clearing the poor out of the middle class ghetto. Bachu has the good sense to cloak his interventions in terms of "helping house prices". Other folk, notably the poisonous Amichand Rajbansi- a man who led the Indian collaboration with apartheid - have been embroiled in scandal over the past week, for wanting to keep certain areas "for Our Indians". Bachu wants to help the middle class. Rajbansi wants to keep Chatsworth Indian. But both are effectively calling for the same thing - out with the African poor. This is the post-apartheid housing policy that dare not speak its name.

ANC vs ANC

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 23:59:00 +0000

I know I'm stealing the title from this article in the Mail and Guardian, but it's hard to resist describing this weekend's confrontation between the ANC and the Kennedy Road shackdwellers in any other terms. ANC vs ANC captures it nicely. As does this quote from Mnikelo Ndabankulu of the Abahlali Base Mjondolo in the Foreman Road settlement: “The thing I want to clarify is that we are the ANC. We reject the current ANC nominee for our ward and we therefore have a policy of no vote for this election. We will vote in 2009 when we are happy with the nominee.”

The Year of Mobilisation for People's Power through Democratic Local Government

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 09:55:00 +0000

Goodness. The National Executive Committee of the African National Congress has a lot of free time. Their Statement on the Occasion of the 94th Anniversary of the ANC is a fine example of the sort of bureaucratese that aims to convince through stamina, rather than force of argument. The best bits are at the end where, among the salutes for the Royal dead, and an outline for women's transformation (scheduled between July and September) the ANC Salutes its best cadres, and declares 2006 The Year of Mobilisation for People’s Power through Democratic Local Government. Luckily there's an election this year, and the ANC has arranged ballot boxes for everyone's convience. Otherwise, the masses would have to think of creative ways of mobilising for accountable government.

WTO, Food and Dirt, Hong Kong and Koreans from the US.

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 22:40:00 +0000

The struggle against the WTO has become the struggle against the Hong Kong administrators. Fourteen people protesting against the WTO, mostly Korean, are now political prisoners in Hong Kong. Read more here.

The roar of its many waters

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 22:40:00 +0000

I've often seen the line, attributed to Frederick Douglass, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. ". These good folk have done their homework, sourcing the quote, and its context.

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others."

Source: Douglass, Frederick. [1857] (1985). "The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies." Speech, Canandaigua, New York, August 3, 1857; collected in pamphlet by author. In The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews. Volume 3: 1855-63. Edited by John W. Blassingame. New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 204.

Optimism of the will

noreply@blogger.com (Raj) — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 22:17:00 +0000

If there's one struggle that's looking on the up at the moment, it's the fight to get Ashwin Desai's job back at the Centre for Civil Society, where I work. Ashwin's one of few veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle who has neither self-destructed nor self-enriched. Click here for a fine interview with him in Z Magazine, and here for an excerpt from his excellent We are the Poors. The uncompromising honesty of his analysis might explain why, now, he's being banned from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, as the University refashions itself as a credentialing institution for the middle classes.

Here's the story.

Ashwin applied for funding earlier this year to undertake research on the history of race and sport in South Africa. He's clearly got the skills; his scholarship on the politics of poverty in Durban, his deep engagement with anti-apartheid struggle, and his history of research on sport in South Africa – including co-editing “Blacks in Whites - A century of Cricket Struggles in KwaZulu-Natal” - clearly mark him as qualified for the job. But the Vice-Chancellor, Malegapuru William Makgoba, instructed the selection committee at the University of KwaZulu-Natal not to consider Ashwin's application. Makgoba also prevented Ashwin from coming back to campus even as an unpaid honorary fellow.

Why?

It goes back to struggles in the post-apartheid academy, in which Ashwin fought against the then barely-reconstructed managerial forces at the University of Durban-Westville. In 1996, in a move that saved many of his fellow protesters their jobs, Ashwin made an agreement with the Vice Chancellor of UDW under which he resigned, and submitted to being banned from entering the campus. He then taught at the Workers College in Durban for a number of years, as well as continuing his activism, most famously with the Concerned Citizens Forum.

In 2003, Ashwin was appointed to the position of an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Natal's (UN) Centre for Civil Society. The University of Natal, clearly, had no objections to his appointment. Further, Saths Cooper, the then Vice-Chancellor of the UDW, lifted the ban against Dr. Desai from entering UDW. In 2003, the predominantly Indian UDW and largely white UN were merged to form the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

So this is where it gets odd. For a while, Ashwin was free to work on campus. But then, towards the end of this year, the university administration began to grumble. The source of the trouble was rather quickly identified as William Makgoba, the Vice-Chancellor, who had got it into his mind that, actually, the old banning order was in fact still valid, despite its being rescinded by his predecessors. So Ashwin became a persona non grata on campus. The Vice Chancellor made clear that if he wanted his job back, he’d need to supplicate in front of the university senate, and they would deliberate on it, with the matter being kicked to committee and, in the best case scenario, Ashwin getting six months back pay and no job. Makgoba’s tactic is, however, nonsensical – there are no grounds for demanding that Ashwin submit before the university senate, because he has done nothing that would demand such a move.

The question, then, is why the Vice Chancellor would want Ashwin out, and why he’d be prepared to draw such attention to himself to do it. Two answers suggest themselves. One traces Makgoba’s appointment to the Vice-Chancellorship to his connections with the ANC, and understands that he is the drone of the Ministry of Education, at which are employed a number of people against whom Ashwin protested while at UDW. This answer, in other words, sees Ashwin’s persecution now as the cold revenge of old adversaries.

The second answer lies in the Vice-Chancellor’s proposed R27 million (US 4.3 million) cut of staff salaries and bonuses next year. It’s going to be hard for Makgoba to make these cuts without staff discontent, and he may believe that Ashwin, ceteris paribus, is the only man with the right sort of experience to lead the fight against the management. In this, the Vice-Chancellor is mistaken. There are many among the staff who are prepared, and wise enough, to take him on. Tying up Ashwin with bureaucracy is a profoundly ill-advised move. Ashwin has already moved his research money elsewhere, and there are many folk among the staff who are prepared to take on the administration. Makgoba seems to have shot himself in the foot here. But he’ll only find out when staff get back from the holiday break in January. And when they do, the staff will have words. Of course, Makgoba’s tactic will be to buy the union leadership off, as he did last year. If he succeeds with this tactic two years in a row, it’s the union membership, not leadership, that deserves a good kicking. As President Bush tried to say a little while back – fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

These reasons for Makgoba’s behaviour are neither comprehensive nor mutually exclusive. But there’s a enough truth in both to be deeply worried. And many have already expressed their concern by writing to the Vice Chancellor. Among them, are David McDonald , The Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa , Issa Shivji and Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Noam Chomsky, Michael Albert, Naomi Klein, and Avi Lewis.

Do drop a line to Makgoba and let him know what you think. He’s at

Professor M.W. Makgoba
Howard College Campus
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Durban 4041
South Africa

fax: +27-31-262 1873

Update
You can now sign an online petition in support of Ashwin Desai here.

Update #2
Zackie Achmat, nominated for the Nobel Prize last year, Chair of the Treatment Action Campaign, has written in support of Ashwin here.

Update #3
As people trickle back to work, the number of signatures on the petition is on theup. Do sign if you haven't already. I'm not usually a fan of online petitions, but this is almost certainly a case where your signature will make a difference - our vice-chancellor is very sensitive to international opinion. And Makgoba has been sent two more letters, from Dennis Brutus and the Combined Staff Association of the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Update #4
From Richard Pithouse, on Jan 19th, who writes:

Last night there was a fantastic meeting in Wentworth - supported by people from Sydenham, Abahlali baseMjondolo, Meerbank, Chatsworth (Westcliffe) etc, etc. There was a petition against the banning of Ashwin Desai and lots of people spoke about their deep appreciation of Ashwin's commitment to struggles in Wentworth. Hundreds of people signed the petition last night and it will be taken door to door now. Des D'sa said that he's aiming at thousands of signatures.

In other news, Rhodes University has asked Ashwin to move his work on sport there, with the anticipation that "your presence on campus will add greatly to the critical intellectual environment that we are attempting to foster at Rhodes."

Update #5
The debate drags on, with Makgoba behind a shield of technicism. He took his dog and pony show to SAFm today. You can find a transcript of the show here. Makgoba's "I can't do anything about it, I'm just a bureaucrat" line is disingenuous, and it is pierced very effectively by this letter from UKZN's biggest union, the Combined Staff Association (COMSA).