tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/steve-biko-18184/articlesSteve Biko – The Conversation2022-10-20T14:07:58Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1924252022-10-20T14:07:58Z2022-10-20T14:07:58ZSouth Africa’s struggle songs against apartheid come from a long tradition of resistance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490044/original/file-20221017-21-qtbypn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions sing political songs in 1987 in Johannesburg. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Walter Dhladhla/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Struggle songs, also known as protest music or liberation songs, are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007768308591202">defined as</a> “expressions of discontent or dissent” used by politically disenfranchised protesters to influence political conversations and express emotions. </p>
<p>Some scholars <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007768308591202">argue</a> that these songs date back to ancient biblical times when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and “the Hebrew people sang their lamentations”. </p>
<p>In the American context, researchers <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Sinful_Tunes_and_Spirituals.html?id=OvQLVneUgHkC&redir_esc=y">contend</a> that protest music can be traced back to transatlantic slaves. But others <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1">note</a> that the use of these songs <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1">goes back even further</a>.</p>
<p>In modern Africa and in other colonised contexts, such as Latin America, protest music was an <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/attachments/jps-articles/jps_2003_32_3_21.pdf">important tool</a> used by oppressed peoples in their quests to overthrow oppressive regimes. </p>
<p>In South Africa, struggle songs were critical in the strategies used to depose the oppressive race-based <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> state. They became effective instruments of confrontation used by the black majority against the white oppressors.</p>
<p>They were also used as a means of keeping alive the memory of political icons who had been killed, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-steve-bikos-remarkable-legacy-often-overlooked-82952">Steve Biko</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-south-african-struggle-hero-chris-hani-lessons-for-today-64715">Chris Hani</a>, and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/solomon-kalushi-mahlangu">Solomon Mahlangu</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time they helped ensure that those resistance leaders who were imprisoned, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/mandela-was-a-flawed-icon-but-without-him-south-africa-would-be-a-sadder-place-142826">Nelson Mandela</a>, or exiled, like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a>, were not forgotten. These people, the dead and the living, represented the country’s political struggle.</p>
<p>The songs were also a way of marking moments of grief, of which there were many, and the occasional moments of hope, as black South Africans looked forward to the apartheid regime’s demise.</p>
<p>As a researcher whose work looks at the intersection of rhetoric, language and media, I <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780367823658-26/persuasion-songs-protest-sisanda-nkoala">have</a> <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC-20c6b555ff">examined</a> the appeal of struggle music as an persuasive means of engaging in political communication in the South African context. </p>
<p>These texts are relevant even in the post apartheid context because they continue to be an important way in which people deliberate on issues. </p>
<p>Even though the lyrics are relatively simple, and the music can be viewed as straightforward and repetitive, the depth of the ideas they capture makes a case for reading texts like struggle songs at a level much more profound than what they literally denote. </p>
<h2>A brief history</h2>
<p>Different styles of music characterised different periods in South Africa’s struggle for liberation. The change in political and social conditions did not just prompt a change in the lyrics of the songs; it called for a change in the form to capture the tone of the times. </p>
<p>From the late 1800s into the early 1900s, the strong influence of missionaries on black South African literary culture influenced the tone and lyrics of protest music. It resulted in struggle songs that were characterised by a hymn-like sound. This was in the context of a shared Christian belief system. </p>
<p>For example, Biblical and ancient studies scholar, J. Gertrud Tönsing (2017) <a href="https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/4339">talks about</a> how the emphasis of prayer as a tool against the apartheid regime was rooted in the missionary influence. This, in turn, influenced the lyrics and melodies of the struggle songs that emerged so that they featured rhythmically static music and words written like prayers. </p>
<p>From the 1940s and 1950s the violence against black South Africans was written into law through the passing of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/group-areas-act-1950">Group Areas Act</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">“pass laws”</a>. These restricted the movement of black people in certain areas. </p>
<p>Music began to incorporate musical elements inspired by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113919#metadata_info_tab_contents">American jazz and kwela penny whistles</a>. Kwela is a <a href="https://ukzn-dspace.ukzn.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10413/9106/Allen_Lara_V_1993.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">pennywhistle-based street music with jazzy underpinnings and a distinctive, skiffle-like beat</a>.</p>
<p>This merger of musical elements was indicative of the cultural diversity that characterised the townships. Music historian Lara Allen <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113919#metadata_info_tab_contents">argues</a> that the music found resonance and gained popularity because the sound expressed a “locally rooted identity”. </p>
<p>Another feature of the struggle songs from this era was the topical subject matter. Lyrics spoke to current events as they affected black people – kind of “singing the news”. As Allen <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113919#metadata_info_tab_contents">puts it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this regard vocal jive enjoyed an advantage … in that lyrics, through reference to current events and issues of common concern, enabled listeners to recognize their own interests and experiences more concretely.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The 1960s marked an intensification of the apartheid government’s heavy-handedness on any form of protest and resistance. On 21 March 1960, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> occurred, where 69 people were killed while staging a protest against pass laws. In response, the struggle approach changed from a non-violent to an armed struggle with the establishment of the militant wing of the African National Congress, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">uMkhonto we Sizwe</a>. </p>
<p>The upbeat vocal jive style <a href="http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/265/the-sounds-of-resistance-the-role-of-music-in-south-africas-anti-apartheid-movement">was increasingly replaced</a> by militaristic rhythms and chants accompanied by marching actions. </p>
<p>Some of the songs from this period were simply chants. Nevertheless, they were still musical in the way in which they used the beat and other vocal sound effects to evoke emotions. They were often accompanied by the toyi-toyi, a high-stepping ‘dance’ that Allen describes as a march that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03057070902920015?casa_token=IJZ5nO8NssYAAAAA:WTltYQHaHlYg6ZvMtFriNwlAyF-CADEhEmDcxyV32iauPXJbrCVK0Vnl2xkrU0Hmws5O9K9FrD6rLg">mimicked the movement of soldiers in training</a></p>
<p>As musicologist and expert in struggle music Michela Vershbow <a href="http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/265/the-sounds-of-resistance-the-role-of-music-in-south-africas-anti-apartheid-movement">describes them</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The power of this chant builds in intensity as it progresses, and the enormity of the sounds that erupt from the hundreds, sometimes thousands of participants was often used to intimidate government troops.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>In a post-apartheid world</h2>
<p>In the late 1980s academic and expert on Latin American revolutionary songs Robert Pring-Mill <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/853420#metadata_info_tab_contents">wrote about how</a> songs that featured prominently in many oppressive cultures retained their power and currency over time.</p>
<p>This is true in South Africa too where songs from the struggle continue to hold an established place as part of South Africa’s political communication heritage. Examples include songs of lament, like <em>Senzeni na?</em> which bemoans the unjust treatment of marginalised South Africans. Another is the more confrontational <a href="https://www.newframe.com/political-songs-ndodemnyama-miriam-makeba/">Ndodemnyama we Verwoerd!,</a> which was written by Vuyisile Mini and sung by him and his compatriots while walking to their death in the apartheid gallows.</p>
<p>Pring-Mill argues that struggle songs endure because they reflect historical </p>
<blockquote>
<p>events recorded passionately rather than with dispassionate objectivity, yet the passion is not so much that of an individual singer’s personal response, but rather that of a collective interpretation of events from a particular ‘committed’ standpoint. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s noteworthy that in recent years, some of these songs are now said to be hate speech. There have even been calls <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/politics/political-parties/equality-court-grants-afriforum-leave-to-appeal-kill-the-boer-ruling-20221004">to ban them from being sung</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192425/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sisanda Nkoala receives funding from the National Research Foundation and has previously been awarded an AW Mellon-UCT Graduate Scholarship in Rhetoric </span></em></p>Struggle songs are relevant even in the post apartheid context because they continue to be an important way in which people deliberate on issues.Sisanda Nkoala, Senior Lecturer, Cape Peninsula University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1843932022-06-08T13:57:35Z2022-06-08T13:57:35ZRobert Sobukwe: equal status in the pantheon of South African activists is long overdue<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466930/original/file-20220603-23-zlf9xk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Robert Sobukwe in his cell at the prison on Robben Island.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The mortal fight against apartheid is usually cast in terms of good versus evil, a simple schism in which there are heroes and villains, or racially, in a white against black equation that blots out pretty much all else in between. But of course, this is hardly ever the case. </p>
<p>Apartheid – and the racial segregation it was based on – thoroughly tested ethical principles and stances, made unlikely heroes of some and improbable scoundrels of others. It besmirched moral lenses more often than not. And because the sight it proffered isn’t usually pretty – and to protect the collective sanity of South Africans – there had to be neat ethical resolutions for untidy political and moral dilemmas. </p>
<p>The result was that many individuals fell through the cracks in the unfolding story of apartheid’s collateral damage.</p>
<p>One such figure is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Robert-Sobukwe-ebook/dp/B08N6YXKL8/ref=sr_1_7?qid=1654258886&refinements=p_27%3ADerek+Hook&s=books&sr=1-7">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a>, the formidable founder of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pan-africanist-congress-pac">Pan Africanist Congress of Azania</a> (PAC). He is the subject of a May 2022 Robben Island Museum hosted exhibition <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7eIiRcnP8Q">titled</a>, “Remember Africa, Remember Sobukwe”</p>
<p>Sobukwe, in very trying times, remains an unsung hero in the epic moral fight against the evil that was apartheid. He was a political leader, a social activist and genuine humanist who stood undaunted and undefeated by the deadly curveballs apartheid threw at him.</p>
<h2>History written by the victors</h2>
<p>Sobukwe casually subverts apartheid’s assumed ethical linearity by adding what is now unjustly viewed as a minority voice. Dubbed “Biko before Biko”, he was once perceived to possess more revolutionary potential than Nelson Mandela. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a> was the charismatic leader of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) during apartheid. He rallied South African youth in collective rebellion while at the time lavishing them with much-needed hope.</p>
<p>In attempting to dismantle apartheid’s vice-grip, Sobukwe discountenanced suggestions and methods of integrationism, a stance that saw him part ways with the African National Congress (ANC). This led <a href="https://roape.net/2022/06/01/remember-africa-remember-sobukwe/">to the formation</a> of his own still surviving movement, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania in 1959.</p>
<p>There’s an African proverb that speaks directly to what many perceive to be Sobukwe’s undervalued status in South African political history. The proverb, popularised by author and poet <a href="https://www.biography.com/writer/chinua-achebe">Chinua Achebe</a>, goes like this: that lions need to become historians in order to truthfully narrate their own history otherwise the tale of the hunt would always end up glorifying the hunter.</p>
<p>The ANC – and not the PAC – emerged victorious at a winner-takes-all contest that marked the end of apartheid. Due to this outcome, Sobukwe’s historical significance naturally receded.</p>
<p>Even under apartheid, Sobukwe could have had a much easier life if he chose. In 1954, he was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Bantu Languages at the historically white University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The importance of education was instilled in him as a boy together with his siblings by his struggling parents. Even in imprisonment, Sobukwe would acquire a degree in economics and another in law after he was released. Understandably, he was called “Prof.” by his associates and well-wishers.</p>
<p>However, Sobukwe was not content to live within the comforts provided by academia. He had joined the radical wing of the Youth League of the African National Congress. He subsequently became the editor of the uncompromising periodical, The Africanist. </p>
<p>Within the ANC, an ideological crisis occurred between those who were deemed moderates and the radicals. The moderates favoured an integrationist and gradualist approach to the sociopolitical impasse created by apartheid. Radicals such as Sobukwe supported an African revolution driven by Africans and for Africans without any accommodationist overtones. </p>
<p>The unresolved crisis meant he had to abandon the ANC and form the PAC instead.</p>
<h2>Incarceration and banishment</h2>
<p>In 1960, Sobukwe launched the Positive Decisive Campaign to peacefully protest the apartheid pass laws. He had informed the apartheid authorities of his non-violent protest. Nonetheless, the authorities responded <a href="https://theconversation.com/survey-shows-ignorance-about-big-moments-in-south-africas-history-like-the-sharpeville-massacre-157513">by massacring 69 individuals at Sharpville</a>. Applying the Criminal Law Amendment Act with criminal intent, Sobukwe was sentenced to three years of incarceration with hard labour served at Pretoria Central and Witbank Prisons.</p>
<p>When the time for his release came, parliament promulgated the Sobukwe Clause which saw him serve another six years at the notorious Robben Island. But he refused to be broken. He studied, taught, exercised and kept up steady correspondence with family and friends. </p>
<p>After he was eventually released, he was banished to Kimberley where he had no family and friends which must have felt like another spell of solitary confinement. Indeed his life was never the same after his indictment and incarceration. From that time until his eventual death from lung cancer in 1978, he was severed from family, friends, medical care and economic opportunities. </p>
<p>The intention of the apartheid regime had been to annihilate him psychologically and physically. They humiliated and starved him and also denied him permission to take up opportunities offered to him in the US. Indeed the systematic torture and horror meted out to him by the apartheid authorities were simply mind-blowing. They created a concatenation of arid dungeons for which there was no escape specifically for him.</p>
<p>When he died, his burial was arranged by the <a href="https://azapo.org.za/">Azanian People’s Organisation</a> (Azapo) at Graaff-Reinet and was attended by 5,000 people. Evidently, Sobukwe, even under the most intolerable conditions, had been effective in inspiring an ever loyal corps of freedom fighters who continued his invaluable work. </p>
<p>Sobukwe was principled, uncompromising, dedicated and courageous. When hope faltered and died, he resurrected it, where the enervated cried out for help and succour, he provided them. And as many of his faithful followers at the Robben Island Museum exhibition testified, he was undoubtedly a man for all seasons.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Robert Sobukwe was once perceived to possess more revolutionary potential than Nelson Mandela.Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/976192021-12-26T07:13:40Z2021-12-26T07:13:40ZArchbishop Desmond Tutu: father of South Africa’s ‘rainbow nation’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304935/original/file-20191203-67028-uqkr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Archbishop Desmond Tutu</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Epa/Ian Langsdon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu has <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2021/12/26/breaking-news-archbishop-desmond-tutu-passes-away">died</a> at the age of 90. </p>
<p>Archbishop Tutu earned the respect and love of millions of South Africans and the world. He carved out a permanent place in their hearts and minds, becoming known affectionately as “The Arch”. </p>
<p>When South Africans woke up on the morning of 7 April, 2017 to protest against then President Jacob Zuma’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/world/africa/south-africa-pravin-gordhan-jacob-zuma.html">removal </a> of the respected Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archbishop-emeritus-desmond-mpilo-tutu">Archbishop Tutu</a> left his Hermanus retirement home to join the protests. He was 86 years old at the time, and his health was frail. But protest was in his blood. In his view, no government was legitimate unless it represented all its people well.</p>
<p>There was still that sharpness in his words when <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/04/07/tutu-makes-rare-appearance-to-support-anti-zuma-march">he said that</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will pray for the downfall of a government that misrepresents us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These words echoed his stance of ethical and moral integrity as well as human dignity. It is on these principles that he had fought valiantly against the system of apartheid and became, as the Desmond Tutu Foundation rightly <a href="http://www.tutufoundationusa.org/mission-vision/">affirms</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>an outspoken defender of human rights and campaigner for the oppressed. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archbishop-emeritus-desmond-mpilo-tutu">Archbishop Tutu</a> didn’t stop his fight for human rights once apartheid came to a formal end in 1994. He continued to speak critically against politicians who abused their power. He also added his weight to various causes, including HIV/AIDS, poverty, racism, homophobia and transphobia. </p>
<p>His fight for human rights wasn’t limited to South Africa. Through his <a href="http://www.tutufoundationusa.org/mission-vision/">peace foundation</a>, which he formed in 2015, he extended his vision for a peaceful world “in which everyone values human dignity and our interconnectedness”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archbishop Tutu with the Dalai Lama at the Tibetan Children’s Village school in Dharamsala, in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Sanjay Baid</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He also became relentless in his support for the Dalai Lama, whom he considered his best friend. He condemned the South African government for refusing the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader a visa to deliver the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archbishop-emeritus-mpilo-desmond-tutu">“Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture”</a> <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/8807080/Tutu-South-African-government-is-worse-than-apartheid-after-Dalai-Lama-visa-row.html">in 2011</a>. </p>
<h2>Early years</h2>
<p>Archbishop Tutu came from humble beginnings. Born on 7 October, 1931 in Klerksdorp, in the North West Province of South Africa where his father, Zachariah was a headmaster of a high school. His mother, Aletha Matlare, was a domestic worker.</p>
<p>One of the most influential figures in his early years was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/father-trevor-huddleston">Father Trevor Huddleston</a>, a fierce campaigner against apartheid. Their friendship led to the young Tutu being introduced into the Anglican Church. </p>
<p>After completing his education he had a brief stint teaching English and History at Madibane High School in Soweto; and then at Krugersdorp High School , west of Johannesburg; where his father was a headmaster. It was here that he met his future wife, Nomalizo Leah Shenxane. </p>
<p>It is interesting that he agreed to a Roman Catholic wedding ceremony, although he was Anglican. This ecumenical act at the very early stage in his life gives us a hint of his commitment to ecumenical work in later years. </p>
<p>He quit teaching in the wake of the introduction of the inferior <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bantu-education-and-racist-compartmentalizing-education">“Bantu education”</a> for black people in 1953. Under the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/bantu-education-act-act-no-47-1953">Bantu Education Act, 1953</a>, the education of the native African population was limited to producing an unskilled work force. </p>
<p>In 1955 Tutu entered the service of the church as a sub-deacon. He got married the same year. He enrolled for theological education in 1958 and, after completing his studies, was ordained as a deacon of Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg in 1960, and became its first black dean in 1975. </p>
<p>In 1962 he went to London to pursue further theological education with funding from the World Council of Churches. He earned a Master of Theology degree, and after serving in various parishes in London, returned to South Africa in 1966 <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archbishop-emeritus-mpilo-desmond-tutu">to teach</a> at the Federal Theological Seminary at Alice, Eastern Cape. </p>
<p>One of the lesser known facts is that he had special interest in the study of Islam. He had wanted to pursue this in his doctoral studies, but this was not to be. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and his wife Tutu at the Youth Health Festival in Cape Town in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The activities he was involved in in the early 1970s were to lay the foundation for his political struggle against apartheid. These included teaching in Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland and, thereafter, a posting to London as the <a href="https://www.tutu.org.za/founders-journey/">Associate Director for Africa</a> at the Theological Education Fund, and his exposure to <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222016000100033">Black Theology</a>. He also visited many African countries in the early 1970s. </p>
<p>He eventually returned to Johannesburg as the dean of Johannesburg and the rector of St. Mary’s Anglican Parish in 1976. </p>
<h2>Political activism</h2>
<p>It was at St Mary’s that Tutu first confronted the then apartheid Prime Minister John Vorster, writing him <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/letter-desmond-tutu-p-w-botha-letter-pretoria">a letter</a> in 1976 decrying the deplorable state in which black people had to live. </p>
<p>On 16 June <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto went up in flames</a>, when black high school pupils protested against the forced use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, and were mowed down by apartheid police.</p>
<p>Bishop Tutu was thrust deeper and deeper into the struggle. He delivered one of his most passionate and fiery orations <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bikos-imprisonment-death-and-aftermath">following the death in detention</a> of the black consciousness leader, Steve Biko in 1977.</p>
<p>His role as the <a href="http://sacc.org.za/history/">General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches</a>, and later as the rector of St. Augustine’s Church in Orlando West in Soweto, saw him become an ardent critic of the most egregious aspects of apartheid. This included the forced removals of black people from urban areas deemed to be white areas. </p>
<h2>A target</h2>
<p>With his growing political activism in the 1980s, the Arch became a target of the apartheid government’s full scale victimisation and faced death threats as well as bomb scares. In March 1980 <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/04/16/South-Africa-revokes-bishops-passport/8490356245200/">his passport was revoked</a>. After much international outcry and intervention, he was given a “limited travel document” two years later to travel overseas.</p>
<p>His work was recognised globally, and he was awarded <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1984/summary/">Nobel Prize for Peace</a> in 1984 for being a unifying leader in the campaign to resolve the problem of apartheid in South Africa. </p>
<p>He went on to receive more distinguished awards. He became the Bishop of Johannesburg in 1984, and the Archbishop of Cape Town <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archbishop-emeritus-mpilo-desmond-tutu">in 1986</a>. In the following four years leading up to the release of Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison, the Arch had his work cut out for him. This involved campaigning for international pressure to be brought on the apartheid through sanctions.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archbishop Tutu received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Obama in 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Shawn Thew</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Democracy years</h2>
<p>After 1994, he headed the <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a>. Its primary goal was to afford those who committed human rights abuses – for or against apartheid – the opportunity to come clean, offer legal amnesty to deserving ones, and to enable the perpetrators to make amends to their victims. </p>
<p>Two greatest moments in his personal life took his theological outlook beyond the confines of the Church. One was when his daughter Mpho declared she was gay and the church refused her same sex marriage. The Arch <a href="http://www.capetownmagazine.com/whats-the-deal-with/desmond-tutu/125_22_17533">proclaimed</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn’t worship that God. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The second was when he declared his <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/07/archbishop-desmond-tutu-asks-for-the-right-to-an-assisted-death/">preference for assisted death</a>.</p>
<p>South Africa is blessed to have had such a brave and courageous man as The Arch, who truly symbolised the idea of the country as a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-10734471">“rainbow nation” </a>. South Africa will feel the loss of the moral direction of this brave soldier of God for generations to come. <em>Hamba kahle</em> (go well) Arch.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>P. Pratap Kumar receives funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa. </span></em></p>Archbishop Desmond Tutu didn’t stop his fight for human rights once apartheid came to a formal end in 1994. He continued to speak critically against politicians who abused their power.P. Pratap Kumar, Emeritus Professor, School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1538032021-01-22T17:30:01Z2021-01-22T17:30:01ZSouth African minister’s COVID-19 death unites friends and rivals in tribute<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380165/original/file-20210122-21-i0shrv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jackson Mthembu is the most prominent South African politician to succumb to COVID-19.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The death of <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/minister-jackson-mthembu%3A-profile">Jackson Mphikwa Mthembu</a>, Minister in the Office of the President of South Africa, has been met with sorrow across the country. Tributes have come from across the political spectrum for the country’s first government minister to succumb to COVID-19. He was 62.</p>
<p>Mthembu’s integrity, dedication to his job and sense of humour explain the response to his death.</p>
<p>President Cyril Ramaphosa <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/press-statements/statement-president-cyril-ramaphosa-passing-minister-jackson-mthembu">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Minister Mthembu was an exemplary leader, an activist and life-long champion of freedom and democracy. He was a much-loved and greatly respected colleague and comrade, whose passing leaves our nation at a loss. I extend my deepest sympathies to the Minister’s family, to his colleagues, comrades and many friends.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The leader of the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance, John Steenhuisen, <a href="https://www.polity.org.za/article/the-da-mourns-the-passing-of-jackson-mthembu-2021-01-21">said</a> to Mthembu’s family, friends and the governing partty, the African National Congress:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You have lost a generous man with a big heart and an even greater sense of humour.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Corne Mulder, leader of the right-wing <a href="https://www.vfplus.org.za/">Freedom Front Plus</a>, <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/jackson-mthembu-dies-of-covid-19-related-complications-20210121-2">said</a> “Jackson Mthembu was an excellent chief whip of Parliament. He stood strong on principle when Parliament came under attack during the Zuma years.”</p>
<p>He was referring to the <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/richard-calland-the-zuma-years/lwlk-1845-g5a0">tenure of former President Jacob Zuma</a>, from May 2009 to February 2018, characterised by populism and <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-democracy-or-a-kleptocracy-how-south-africa-stacks-up-111101">rampant corruption in government</a>. </p>
<p>Jessie Duarte, the deputy secretary-general of the African National Congress, enthused about how Mthembu had been a dedicated, committed activist with “an unbelievable work ethic” who was meticulous about his work and believed that the democratic project could work.</p>
<p>She <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2021-01-22-in-quotes-jessie-duarte-jackson-mthembu-leaves-behind-a-legacy-of-honesty/">said</a> Mthembu had a great sense of humour and an “amazing” ability to interact with people:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have lost a person who put the country first, at all times. For us who have lost a brother and a friend, this is a very great loss. He leaves a legacy of honesty and integrity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His death drives home the seriousness of the <a href="https://mg.co.za/news/2021-01-21-stern-warning-against-covid-greets-mthembus-death/">COVID-19 pandemic in the country</a>.</p>
<h2>The early days</h2>
<p>Mthembu’s life mirrored the daily toils black South Africans had to endure under colonialism and apartheid. His life was also synonymous with the struggle for freedom by the young activists who picked up the baton from leaders like <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Sobukwe</a>, among others, who were either jailed or banned or, like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a>, paid the ultimate price at the hands of the apartheid regime.</p>
<p>Mthembu was born in the eastern Transvaal, today’s Mpumalanga province, in the east of the country. He was raised by his grandmother and uncles. From the age of seven, he had to help his grandmother working in the family’s maize fields. He was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jackson-mthembu">kicked out of school</a> several times because his family could not afford school fees, uniforms or school books.</p>
<p>He was a student leader during <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">the 1976 school revolt</a>, sparked by the imposition of the Afrikaans language as a medium of instruction. The revolt spread throughout the country. The harsh response of the apartheid regime, shooting and killing unarmed children, led to revulsion around the world, further isolating the apartheid government. </p>
<p>He was expelled from <a href="https://www.dpme.gov.za/about/Pages/Minister.aspx">Fort Hare University in 1980</a> owing to his political activities. In 1980 he got a job at Highveld Steel and Vanadium, and became one of the first Africans to be promoted to production foreman. Between 1984 and 1986 he became a senior steward of the Metal and Allied Workers’ Union, which is today called the <a href="https://www.numsa.org.za/">National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>During the 1980s struggle years it became almost a norm that unionists also became community leaders. In 1980 Mthembu became chair of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jackson-mthembu">Witbank Education Crisis Committee</a>. He also served on the eMalahleni Civic Association; the local branch of the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/cis/omalley/OMalleyWeb/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03208.htm">National Education Crisis Committee</a>, which campaigned for a “people’s education”; and the <a href="http://www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/keywords/detainees-parents-support-committee-dpsc">Detainees’ Parents Support Committee</a>.</p>
<h2>Defiance amid persecution</h2>
<p>The Special Branch (the apartheid political police) repeatedly detained him for months of solitary confinement during the <a href="https://www.saha.org.za/ecc25/ecc_under_a_state_of_emergency.htm">1980s states of emergency</a>, tortured him in police stations, and petrol-bombed his home. Mthembu was prosecuted for sabotage, treason and terrorism with 30 other activists in the <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/presidency/jackson-mthembu-mr">Bethal terrorism trial of 1986-1988</a>. He was acquitted.</p>
<p>After this acquittal, the apartheid security police continued with their harassment and intimidation. This led him to move away from Witbank, to the east of Johannesburg, and find refuge in Soweto and Alexandra in the Gauteng province as an “internal exile”, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/press-statements/statement-president-cyril-ramaphosa-passing-minister-jackson-mthembu">seriously disrupting his family life</a>.</p>
<p>He was elected deputy regional secretary for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging-complex">Pretoria-Witwatersrand- Vereeniging</a> region (today’s Gauteng) of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/united-democratic-front-udf">United Democratic Front</a>, the above-ground home for supporters of the then-banned African National Congress during the 1980s.</p>
<p>Mthembu worked with the South African Council of Churches, and in 1988 led a convoy of 300 minibuses as the SWAPO Support Group to help them during Namibia’s first democratic elections. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-west-africa-peoples-organisation-swapo">SWAPO (South West African People’s Organisation)</a> went on to win the elections, and has governed Namibia since independence from South Africa <a href="https://theconversation.com/namibias-democracy-enters-new-era-as-ruling-swapo-continues-to-lose-its-lustre-151238">in 1990</a>. </p>
<h2>Life of public service</h2>
<p>Mthembu’s career was as one of the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2006-08-28-his-legacy-should-not-be-forgotten/">“inziles”, as opposed to the exile generation</a> and the generation jailed on Robben Island. This has a two-fold significance. First, generational. The Robben Island generation, such as Mandela, and the exile generation, such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a>, are now almost all retired. Zuma straddles both the Robben Island and exile experiences. Second, the “inziles” of the United Democratic Front had a less authoritarian and more participatory political culture than the islanders and the exiles, and this characterises their subsequent career.</p>
<p>In 1994 Jackson Mthembu was elected to Parliament and participated in the drafting of the South African constitution. Between 1997 and 1999 he was a member of the Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature, and served as Member of the Executive Committee for Transport. </p>
<p>He was elected to the national executive committee in 2007, and worked at the ANC head office, Luthuli House in Johannesburg, where he and then secretary-general Gwede Mantashe defended Zuma over the scandal involving the use of public money for expensive renovations to his private home at <a href="https://cdn.24.co.za/files/Cms/General/d/2718/00b91b2841d64510b9c99ef9b9faa597.pdf">Nkandla</a>. In 2014 he became an MP in the National Assembly, chairing the portfolio committee on environment, becoming ANC Chief Whip in 2016. </p>
<p>As the tide within the ANC was beginning to turn against Zuma,
he worked with the <a href="https://www.da.org.za/">Democratic Alliance</a> to <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/mthembu-slams-anc-mps-accusations-that-he-colluded-with-da-in-state-capture-motion-20171128">schedule a parliamentary debate</a> on <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">“state capture”</a> – large-scale corruption – during Zuma’s presidency. </p>
<p>Mthembu took part in the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-08-26-how-ramaphosas-campaign-spent-r400-million-and-why-it-matters/">CR17 campaign</a> to get Cyril Ramaphosa elected as the successor to Jacob Zuma as president of the ANC. In 2019 Ramaphosa appointed him Minister in the Presidency.</p>
<p>Mthembu, sometimes affectionately referred to by his clan name, Mvelase, is survived by his wife Thembi Mthembu and five children. His first wife, Pinkie, and one of his daughters predeceased him. His death was greeted with ringing tributes across the floor in parliament.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153803/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is a member of the ANC, but writes this in his professional capacity as a political scientist and historian.</span></em></p>Jackson Mthembu’s death drives home the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1482652020-10-16T13:34:56Z2020-10-16T13:34:56ZNew threats to media freedom come from unexpected directions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363914/original/file-20201016-19-jqz8wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Percy Qoboza, editor of The World, second from left, being arrested by apartheid police following the banning of the newspaper in 1977.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arena Holdings Archives </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Media Freedom Day in South Africa marks the anniversary of a brutal crackdown by the apartheid state on the media and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-consciousness-in-south-africa-demands-a-much-wider-historical-lens-125238">Black Consciousness Movement</a>.</p>
<p>The 1977 killing of Black Consciousness icon <a href="https://www.apartheidmuseum.org/exhibitions/biko-the-quest-for-a-true-humanity">Steve Biko</a> in police custody drew widespread rage and the state responded by closing newspapers, banning organisations and detaining journalists and activists. That was on October 19 of that year, which became known as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/black-wednesday-banning-19-black-consciousness-movement-organisations">Black Wednesday</a>.</p>
<p>Since then, South African journalists have used Black Wednesday to draw attention to the importance of media freedom. As the country and the world changed around them, they have highlighted the enduring importance of that most basic of rights: the citizen’s right to information.</p>
<p>Over the years, the nature of the threats to media freedom has changed. The possibility of naked state repression has receded, at least in South Africa. The recent <a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/zimbabwe-well-known-journalist-arrested-his-harare-home">arrest of Hopewell Chin’ono</a> in Zimbabwe is a stark reminder that journalists in other countries are not as fortunate.</p>
<p>But other threats have emerged, some from unexpected directions.</p>
<h2>Coronavirus and journalism</h2>
<p>This year, the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic are top of mind, and the media have been among the sectors profoundly affected. A <a href="https://www.icfj.org/news/new-global-survey-raises-red-flags-journalism-covid-19-era">new global study by the International Center for Journalists</a> shows the extent of the damage: media organisations have suffered extensive revenue losses, and journalists have felt the physical and emotional strain of reporting a health crisis that endangers them too.</p>
<p>South Africa has seen all of these impacts, which affect journalists’ ability to do their work and thereby harm media freedom. The new <a href="https://journalism.co.za/resources/state-of-the-newsroom/"><em>State of the Newsroom</em> report</a> by Wits Journalism, about to be released, will chart the closures, job losses and other devastation suffered in the media.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-makes-blunders-but-still-feeds-democracy-an-insiders-view-146364">Journalism makes blunders but still feeds democracy: an insider's view</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In many ways the COVID-19 crisis has merely exacerbated trends that have long been visible. The traditional media business model was in terminal decline long before the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in Wuhan, China <a href="https://www.livescience.com/first-case-coronavirus-found.html">in November 2019</a>. As audiences find it easier to get information online, advertising money has moved from newspapers and other legacy media to the giant platforms like Facebook and Google. Studies like the 2018 Rhodes University report <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c8PfDb2VYjPiPNLvFciYXCx8F2NPcnpC/view?ts=5af04336"><em>Paying the Piper</em></a> have shown how media sustainability affects the quality of journalism.</p>
<p>On the positive side, the International Center for Journalists report has found increased levels of trust in journalism since the start of the crisis. Similar findings emerge in the Reuters Institute’s <a href="http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/"><em>Digital News Report</em></a>. It found that people around the world have relatively high levels of trusts in media coverage of COVID-19 – more than twice as high as for social networks, video platforms or messaging services.</p>
<p>This is welcome news, as these have become the purveyors of misinformation and disinformation – often called fake news. Difficulties in differentiating between reliable and unreliable information online has certainly contributed significantly to the general decline in public trust in journalism.</p>
<p>This is perhaps the most profound threat to media freedom that journalism faces. The relationship of trust between the news media and their audiences is central to the very idea of journalism: there really is little value to reporting that is disbelieved.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, journalists have scored too many own goals.</p>
<h2>Journalism own goals</h2>
<p>Veteran journalist Anton Harber’s new book, <a href="https://www.graffitiboeke.co.za/en/a/Search/0/date_publish%20DESC/Anton%20Harber"><em>So, For the Record: Behind the Headlines in an Era of State Capture</em>,</a> unpacks in great detail how a combination of factors led the <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/">Sunday Times</a>, the country’s largest newspaper, to publish a series of stories that he describes as </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-makes-blunders-but-still-feeds-democracy-an-insiders-view-146364">journalistic fiascos</a>. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These included extensive reporting that the South African Revenue Service was running a “rogue unit”, which the paper <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/news/2018-10-13-we-got-it-wrong-and-for-that-we-apologise/">later retracted</a>. The factors included manipulation by elements of the state security apparatus, a newsroom denuded of skills because of business pressures and an arrogant newsroom culture that refused to admit mistakes.</p>
<p>Harber also describes the fascinating backstory behind the <a href="https://amabhungane.org/stories/special-report-the-guptaleaks-and-more-all-our-stories-on-state-capture-2/">Guptaleaks</a>, in which a trove of emails provided unanswerable evidence of <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-09-14-00-definition-of-state-capture/">state capture</a> under the administration of former president Jacob Zuma. This was undoubtedly a high point of South African journalism.</p>
<p>More recently, there have been other missteps that damage audience trust. The brief flurry of speculation about the possible arrest of African National Congress secretary general Ace Magashule on corruption charges was seen as <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-10-07-if-ace-magashules-arrest-story-was-to-test-the-waters-they-look-chilly-for-him/">a manoeuvre by Magashule himself</a> to test the waters and mobilise political support. It seems that governing party factionalists and politicians are still able to find journalists willing to peddle misinformation for political gains.</p>
<p>And there have been other examples, like instances of victims being identified in politically tinged cases of sexual abuse despite clear rules protecting them.</p>
<h2>A more complex world</h2>
<p>The world has become infinitely more complex for journalists since the 1977 crackdown. They face a collapsing business model that is steadily destroying the capacity of news organisations to do thorough work and a torrent of weaponised misinformation, working together to undermine public trust.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sexism-is-rife-in-the-nigerian-kenyan-and-south-african-press-and-its-left-unchecked-143358">Sexism is rife in the Nigerian, Kenyan and South African press. And it's left unchecked</a>
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<p>These are the new threats to journalism and to media freedom. In response, practitioners need to focus on their relationship with audiences. In his book <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2008/04/27/can-you-trust-the-media-by-adrian-monck-book-review/"><em>Can You Trust the Media?</em></a>, journalism professor <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/people/academic-staff/charlie-beckett">Charlie Beckett</a> writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Trust is a relationship, not a fact.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>More than anything, journalists need to hold firmly to the ethical standards that tell audiences their work is reliable and credible. This is what will ensure trustworthy journalism stands out from the noise around it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148265/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Franz Krüger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Journalists need to hold firmly to the ethical standards that assure audiences their work is reliable and credible.Franz Krüger, Adjunct Professor of Journalism and Director of the Wits Radio Academy, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1459532020-09-10T16:05:24Z2020-09-10T16:05:24ZGeorge Bizos: heroic South African human rights lawyer with a macabre duty to represent the dead<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357456/original/file-20200910-20-1k68bhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Human rights lawyer and anti-apartheid activist George Bizos at Freedom Park, Pretoria, in 2013.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/george-bizos">Advocate George Bizos</a>, who has died at the age of 92, stands in the pantheon of South African human rights lawyers and anti-apartheid activists.</p>
<p>Throughout his lengthy lifetime, he doggedly used the courts as his chosen terrain to fight back against a police state that blatantly violated the rule of law. His lifelong commitment to human rights left a legacy in South Africa’s <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution and bill of rights</a>. He knew that democracy is not a destination but a lifelong quest: eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.</p>
<p>Bizos was among a number of young white people who arrived in South Africa as refugees from Europe, only to find themselves forced to align themselves with the oppressed black majority against apartheid. This company includes <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/joe-slovo">Joe Slovo</a>, Lithuanian by birth, and also an advocate by training, who became leader of the <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">South African Communist Party</a>.</p>
<p>Bizos was born in 1927 in the Greek seashore village of Kirani. During the Nazi occupation of World War II, when 13 years old, he and his father helped seven New Zealand soldiers try to escape to Crete (at that time still under Allied rule). Adrift at sea in a boat, they were rescued by a British destroyer, and he and his father <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/george-bizos">arrived as refugees in Johannesburg</a>.</p>
<p>George graduated in 1950 with a law degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, where he also served on the Student Representative Council. The university described him as one of its greatest alumni, <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/general-news/2020/2020-09/a-hero-has-fallen---rest-in-peace-advocate-george-bizos.html">adding that</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>We remember him as a man of courage who always sided with the truth and who spent his lifetime fighting injustice and prejudice. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bizos became aware of the racism in the country early on, and after 1948, the apartheid system. However, he focused his support for the liberation movement on serving as their lawyer in court, not himself becoming involved in political party actions.</p>
<h2>Legal practice</h2>
<p>Bizos practised as an advocate from 1954 to 1990.</p>
<p>He was soon advising <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/father-trevor-huddleston">Father Trevor Huddleston</a>, the anti-apartheid Anglican missionary, and defending the leaders of the ANC and allied organisations, among them Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, during the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/treason-trial-1956-1961">treason trial that ran from 1956 to 1961</a>. </p>
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<p>Among the charges was that they had conspired to draw up the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>, the ANC’s blueprint for a free, non-racial South Africa. All the accused were eventually acquitted after the judges agreed the state had failed to show that the charter was a communist document. It was the longest treason trial in the country’s history.</p>
<p>Bizos also defended Mandela, Sisulu and eight others who were charged with sabotage in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia trial of 1963-64</a>. He advised Mandela on the wording of his famous statement from the dock. Mandela stated that a non-racial South Africa was an ideal he hoped to live for, but if necessary was <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/i-am-prepared-to-die">prepared to die for</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/people-involved-rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Eight of the 10 accused</a> were eventually sentenced to life in prison. All but <a href="https://theconversation.com/denis-goldberg-rivonia-triallist-liberation-struggle-stalwart-outspoken-critic-137670">Denis Goldberg</a>, who was white, were sent to Robben Island. Goldberg went to Pretoria Central prison. The apartheid laws of the time prohibited “inter-racial” mixing, even in jail.</p>
<p>Bizos outlived the longest-surviving of the triallists, <a href="https://theconversation.com/denis-goldberg-rivonia-triallist-liberation-struggle-stalwart-outspoken-critic-137670">Goldberg</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/andrew-mlangeni-1925-2020-south-africa-loses-the-last-of-the-rivonia-triallists-143276">Andrew Mlangeni</a>, who passed away earlier this year. </p>
<h2>Macabre duty</h2>
<p>In a police state such as apartheid South Africa, a lawyer will all too often have the macabre duty of representing the dead. On behalf of their families, Bizos represented at inquests and at the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> several government opponents who died at the hands of the apartheid regime – either in its prisons or outside. Among them were <a href="https://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/">Ahmed Timol</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dr-neil-hudson-aggett">Neil Aggett</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thembisile-chris-hani">Chris Hani</a>, Ruth First, <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/steve-biko-the-black-consciousness-movement-steve-biko-foundation/AQp2i2l5?hl=en">Steve Biko</a>, <a href="https://www.mgslg.co.za/content/matthew-goniwe.html">Matthew Goniwe</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/fort-calata">Fort Calata</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/sparrow-mkonto">Sparrow Mkonto</a>, and <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/sicelo-mhlauli-1949-1985">Sicelo Mhlauli</a>.</p>
<p>He also defended the 22 accused in the <a href="http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.nuun1989_04_final.pdf">Delmas treason trial</a>, which ran from 1985 to 1989. </p>
<p>Bizos was a life-long campaigner against the death penalty. He also took part in the negotiations to release Mandela. In 1990 he joined the ANC legal and constitutional team which helped draft the interim constitution. He was an advisor through the negotiations to end apartheid (<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">Codesa</a>) and helped write laws such as the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/1995-034.pdf">Truth and Reconciliation Act</a>.</p>
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<h2>Life of activism</h2>
<p>He helped found the Legal Resources Centre in 1978 and joined its constitutional litigation team in 1991: he led its team at the <a href="https://www.sahrc.org.za/home/21/files/marikana-report-1.pdf">Marikana Commission of Inquiry in 2013</a>. The commission, headed by <a href="https://justice.gov.za/comm-mrk/index.html">Judge Ian Farlam</a>, investigated the tragic incidents that culminated in the killing of 44 people, and injury to 250, in August 2012.</p>
<p>Also, <a href="https://www.news24.com/News24/Chinese-qualify-for-BEE-20080618">during 2008</a>, he represented the Chinese Association of South Africa in winning a ruling that Chinese people living in South Africa before 1990 must be designated as “previously disadvantaged” in terms of affirmative action and <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/legis/consol_act/bbeea2003311.pdf">black economic empowerment</a> proceedings.</p>
<p>He helped found the National Council of <a href="https://www.lhr.org.za/">Lawyers for Human Rights in 1979</a>. He served on the <a href="https://nationalgovernment.co.za/units/view/64/judicial-service-commission-jsc">Judicial Service Commission </a> between 1994 and 2009. The commission interviews candidates for judicial positions, makes recommendations for appointment to the bench and handles complaints brought against the judges. </p>
<p>He was an acting judge of the High Court in South Africa, and a judge in the <a href="http://www.unesco.org/culture/laws/pdf/cv_bizos.pdf">Botswana Appeal Court 1985-1993</a>. He also defended Morgan Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean opposition leader, in a Zimbabwe trial <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/200211111010.html">in 2003</a>.</p>
<p>Bizos authored three books: <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/george-bizos-no-one-to-blame/nlyj-120-g220">No One to Blame? In Pursuit of Justice in South Africa</a> (1998); <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/odyssey-freedom/9781415200957">Odyssey to Freedom </a>(2011); and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36386027-65-years-of-friendship">Sixty-Five Years of Friendship</a> (2017). </p>
<h2>Post-apartheid</h2>
<p>George Bizos remained steadfast in his commitment to human rights after South Africa became a democracy in 1994. His appearance on behalf of the families of mine workers shot by the police at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry was merely the most high-profile of his efforts to seek justice for the poor and marginalised.</p>
<p>According to Nicole Fritz, CEO of <a href="https://www.freedomunderlaw.org/">Freedom Under Law</a>, Bizos represented what law can and should be: essentially humane, principled, decent, just. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The evocation of the rule of law upheld by Bizos and those like Mandela, Sisulu, Arthur Chaskalson, as expansive and merciful, a means to secure equal rights for all, ultimately defeated the law of the apartheid state: cruel, merciless, oppressive. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>While Bizos helped usher in a new constitutional democracy, he showed in the aftermath that the struggle to perfect justice continued, that it is the work of a lifetime, says Fritz:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>His commitment to justice was inexhaustible. He continued to work and serve justice even when he could, with every good reason, have sought a well-deserved and restful retirement. And that commitment to justice extended beyond South Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She recalls how, travelling with him to Harare a few years back, at both O.R. Tambo International Airport and at Harare airport, he was virtually mobbed by fellow travellers: “There’s George Bizos!”, “There’s Madiba’s lawyer!” And later in a Harare magistrate’s court, the reception was similar: and not just from the accused facing politically motivated charges and whom he had come to support and stand with in solidarity. He got the same reception from the court officials. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>That huge affection in which he was held by so many, not just in this country but across the region, is testimony to the enormous contribution he made: to his unceasing commitment to justice. His example will stand as a light – an example of the role one can play, and the difference to be made, even in the darkest of days.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Accolades</h2>
<p>His <a href="https://www.ukzn.ac.za/wp-content/noticeFiles/Advocate_George_Bizos_Invite_Final_Final.pdf">awards</a> include the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/george-bizos">Order for Meritorious Service</a> (1999); the <a href="https://www.ukzn.ac.za/wp-content/noticeFiles/Advocate_George_Bizos_Invite_Final_Final.pdf">International Trial Lawyer of the Year</a> (2001) from the International Academy of Trial Lawyers; and in 2004 the International Bar Association honoured him with the Barnard Simons Memorial Award.</p>
<p>He married Arethe Daflos in 1948; she passed away in 2017. George Bizos is survived by three sons and seven grandchildren.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145953/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is a member of the ANC, but writes this obituary in his professional capacity as a political scientist and historian.</span></em></p>His appearance on behalf of the families of mine workers shot by the police at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry was just one of his efforts to seek justice for the poor and marginalised.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1415552020-07-07T10:45:22Z2020-07-07T10:45:22ZBlack Lives Matter: four lessons in white allyship from the South African anti-apartheid movement<p>As Black Lives Matter protests, triggered by the killing of George Floyd, spread across the world in response to systemic racism and police brutality, questions are being asked about how white people can lend their support. Our <a href="https://www.dundee.ac.uk/people/matt-graham">previous</a> and <a href="https://www.city.ac.uk/people/academics/leonie-fleischmann">ongoing research</a> into the South African anti-apartheid movement provides four key lessons we can draw on today in the fight against racism. </p>
<h2>1. Use privilege to support the oppressed</h2>
<p>The first lesson is that privilege, conferred to some by the system, can be used to support the oppressed. </p>
<p>The African National Congress (ANC) launched its <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/defiance-campaign-1952">Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign</a> in 1952. Although the campaign did not succeed in overturning repressive legislation, it boosted the membership of the ANC, cemented the leadership of people such as Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, and created close cooperation between different racial groups against apartheid. </p>
<p>Black activists called on white activists for support, ranging from using their telephones, hosting meetings, to providing financial resources. In 1961, activist Harold Wolpe, using a front company, <a href="https://www.biznews.com/ceo-sleepout/2018/06/21/nic-wolpe-1963-liliesleaf-farm-raid">helped</a> the South African Communist Party buy Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Activist Arthur Goldreich <a href="http://www.liliesleaf.co.za/">then moved with his family</a> to Liliesleaf, which became the secret headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s armed-wing, where the banned leadership would secretly meet. Disguised in a white suburb, there was initially little suspicion that the farm was used for anti-apartheid activities.</p>
<p>A further tangible act of opposition to the regime was the refusal to serve in the armed forces. By the 1980s, more than 23,000 young men had <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03200.htm">refused to be conscripted</a> into the South African Defence Force, which was increasingly deployed to suppress uprisings in <a href="http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdfo/AK2145/AK2145-B2-1-4-001-jpeg.pdf">townships</a>. As a constructive alternative to military service, the <a href="http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdfo/AG1977/AG1977-A7-2-20-001-jpeg.pdf">End Conscription Campaign</a> proposed a range of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/construction-not-conscription">community development programmes</a>, such as painting a hospital ward or clearing a plot of land, in support of and in consultation with township civic groups.</p>
<p>In drawing on their privilege to support the struggle, white anti-apartheid activists were frequently ostracised by other white people. Bram Fischer is a prime example. Born into a prominent Afrikaner family, <a href="https://theconversation.com/mandelas-lawyer-bram-fischer-a-man-who-paid-the-ultimate-price-116436">Fischer rejected Afrikaner nationalism</a>. He later defended Mandela at the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/nelson-mandelas-speech-i-am-prepared-to-die-at-the-rivonia-trial">Rivonia Trial</a> in 1963, where Mandela was convicted to life imprisonment, narrowly avoiding a death sentence. Fischer was later sentenced to life imprisonment for his anti-apartheid activities. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mandelas-lawyer-bram-fischer-a-man-who-paid-the-ultimate-price-116436">Mandela's lawyer Bram Fischer: a man who paid the ultimate price</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<h2>2. Educate others</h2>
<p>The second lesson is that those with privilege have a responsibility to educate others who hold that same privilege.</p>
<p>While white allies did offer <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/94/376/442/21501?redirectedFrom=PDF">benefits to the movement</a>, some black activists felt white activists were shirking the more difficult task of confronting racial attitudes in their own neighbourhoods. They preferred the excitement of travelling to the townships, where they <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/nonracialism/the_shape_of_things_to_come.htm">were welcomed with</a> “big cheers from the people”. </p>
<p>Steve Biko, founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, rejected this perception that white people were allies. In 1971, <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/confronting-apartheid/chapter-3/steve-biko-calls-black-consciousness">he argued that</a> it was “impossible” for white liberals to totally identify with oppressed black people “in a system that forces one group to enjoy privilege and to live on the sweat of another”. Instead, he said: “The liberal must fight on his own and for himself.”</p>
<p>In the 1980s, white activists, most notably through the <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/collections/johannesburg_democratic_action_committee_jodac_collection.htm">Johannesburg Democratic Action Committee</a>, an affiliate of the non-racial <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/united-democratic-front-udf">United Democratic Front</a>, did pay greater attention to the white population. They made <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/94/376/442/21501?redirectedFrom=PDF">important gains</a> in educating and mobilising white people against apartheid through the <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/image/udf-public-meeting">Call to Whites Campaign</a>, which helped to weaken the power of the regime. They were also able to continue to mobilise when their black counterpart organisations were restricted. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345095/original/file-20200701-159811-cw6aph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C17%2C1407%2C870&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345095/original/file-20200701-159811-cw6aph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345095/original/file-20200701-159811-cw6aph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345095/original/file-20200701-159811-cw6aph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345095/original/file-20200701-159811-cw6aph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345095/original/file-20200701-159811-cw6aph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345095/original/file-20200701-159811-cw6aph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anti-apartheid artwork at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nagarjun/8666937531/in/photolist-ecSjzr-VKJZYx-2ijRe1R-2j9zUv2-4JSUAq-75zm5A-CvLT98-29uT4Pa-T7a6Fq-2ityE5D-2iswqw2-fHPXvR-dFtUFS-4z7oUs-75g5iX-fPCZEx-5yeAY3-2isz2jh-22dvod5-pXScJW-GN9Rrx-YYJPrf-6FK1Uz-cnaqRJ-KPtJqf-7HtxpB-YVV78a-rt11bP-e18Ep9-JgvRJ4-gTBMUz-23LLL1e-yQc7fh-2iswp9n-Qpqpho-QBzrQd-i7GneA-i7CRQk-5ALewh-ySw3v-rGaifQ-nxvtgY-nzyyWA-dVE8X9-4DYnqA-ni4wdN-KxF45U-28YhzBA-XYYDrZ-98Csj7/">Kandukuru Nagarjun/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. Put your bodies on the line</h2>
<p>The third lesson is that two people, in the same space, taking the same actions will not be treated the same. And that those with privilege can put their bodies on the line for the sake of others. </p>
<p>Throughout the anti-apartheid struggle a number of white activists including Denis Goldberg, Jeremy Cronin, and Raymond Suttner were imprisoned for a range of activities in the struggle against injustice. Out of the 156 people charged at the <a href="http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/?inventory/U/collections&c=AD1812/R/">Treason Trials</a> which began in 1956, 23 were white, including prominent activists Joe Slovo, Ruth First, and Helen Joseph. Ironically, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=O2Jxes0JT0MC&pg=PA192&lpg=PA192&dq=Inter-racial+trust+and+co-operation+is+a+difficult+plant+to+cultivate+in+the+poisoned+soil+outside.+It+is+somewhat+easier+in+here+where+...+the+leader&source=bl&ots=MNXZFFu1-y&sig=ACfU3U37O9WDPtRe09ved4qTsweDF8C1UA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjVt93zpprqAhUSVRUIHU97AEsQ6AEwAXoECAwQAQ#v=onepage&q=Inter-racial%20trust%20and%20co-operation%20is%20a%20difficult%20plant%20to%20cultivate%20in%20the%20poisoned%20soil%20outside.%20It%20is%20somewhat%20easier%20in%20here%20where%20...%20the%20leader&f=false">according to Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein</a>, one of the accused, the trial strengthened the personal and political relationships across racial divides – the opposite purpose of apartheid legislation. </p>
<p>As one of us, Leonie Fleischmann, argued in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2019.27">research on Israel and Palestine</a>, the physical presence of members of the ruling population at protests has clear advantages. Lethal weapons are less likely to be used when Jewish-Israelis are present at Palestinian protests and they are unlikely to be treated badly if detained. Parallels can be found in South Africa, where conditions for white prisoners were markedly better than those for their black counterparts. </p>
<p>Helen Joseph <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/side-side-autobiography-helen-joseph">described her arrest</a> in 1956 alongside her black partner in the Federation of South African Women, Lillian Ngoyi. Joseph describes how she had a bed, sheets and blankets, whereas Ngoyi slept on a mat on the floor. Joseph had a sanitary bucket with a lid, whereas Ngoyi had an open bucket covered with a cloth. As Ngoyi <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/chapter-x-trial-detention">exclaimed to Joseph</a> as they were carted off: “You are better off with your pink skin”. Apartheid remained even in prison.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340950/original/file-20200610-34688-mbxdcx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340950/original/file-20200610-34688-mbxdcx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340950/original/file-20200610-34688-mbxdcx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340950/original/file-20200610-34688-mbxdcx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340950/original/file-20200610-34688-mbxdcx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340950/original/file-20200610-34688-mbxdcx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340950/original/file-20200610-34688-mbxdcx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the Federation of South African Women in 1955.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hindu_women_in_Sarees_part_of_South_African_federation_protesting_against_Apartheid_in_1955.jpg">Nagarjun Kandukuru via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Don’t expect to lead</h2>
<p>The fourth lesson is that members of oppressed groups <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/nonracialism/authors_reflections_september_2015.htm">must be the ones to lead the struggle</a> and decide the role of allies. </p>
<p>The involvement of white activists in the anti-apartheid struggle was not universally welcomed. The Congress Alliance, a multi-racial coalition of anti-apartheid organisations was established in the 1950s. Yet, to mobilise the black population, the ANC initially felt it necessary for these <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/94/376/442/21501?redirectedFrom=PDF">congresses to remain separate</a>. </p>
<p>At joint meetings of the Congress Alliance, the white Congress of Democrats was <a href="https://theasiadialogue.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/asjul59.7.pdf">criticised for dominating</a>. And in 1959, the Pan-Africanist Congress split from the ANC because it feared the struggle would be dominated by white communists. <a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/37493/1/__libfile_repository_Content_Hook%2C%20D_Retrieving%20Biko%20a%20black%20consciousness%20critique%20of%20whiteness_Retrieving%20Biko%20A%20Black%20Consciousness%20critique%20of%20whiteness%28LSE%20RO%29.pdf">Others argued</a> that there was no place for white people in their struggle.</p>
<p>Still, the adoption of the <a href="http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdfo/AD1137/AD1137-Ea6-1-001-jpeg.pdf">Freedom Charter</a> in 1955 at the Congress of the People, a large multi-racial gathering of the Congress Alliance, had showed that most anti-apartheid activists recognised that “black and white” should “strive together” until “the democratic changes … have been won.” Alongside this message of non-racialism and joint struggle, it was made abundantly clear that freedom for the African people was at the heart of the movement. </p>
<p>As A B Ngcobo, a member of the ANC Youth League <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/nonracialism/dynamic_irresistible_force.htm">asserted</a> in 1987: “The Africans, that is their struggle in the first place, and they’ve got to lead that struggle.” </p>
<p>Those who do not experience oppression are not best placed to make decisions on how to overcome it. </p>
<p>As the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa shows, mobilising white privilege can be a useful tool for advancing the struggle against racism. Yet, the fight must be led by those who are oppressed by it. White allies must show up, listen and put their bodies on the line.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Correction: This article originally stated that Arthur Goldreich and Harold Wolpe bought Liliesleaf Farm themselves, but it has since been clarified.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141555/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leonie Fleischmann has previously received funding from the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Graham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africa’s history shows that mobilising white privilege can be a useful tool for advancing the struggle against racism.Leonie Fleischmann, Lecturer in International Politics, City, University of LondonMatthew Graham, Senior Lecturer in History, University of DundeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1404952020-06-23T14:14:15Z2020-06-23T14:14:15ZBetter access to stories can improve adolescent lives in Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342470/original/file-20200617-94086-1nij44m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of South Africa's Zip Zap Circus.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Washington Post/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Across cultures, the self-making powers of storytelling are widely recognised. <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/steve-biko-the-black-consciousness-movement-steve-biko-foundation/AQp2i2l5?hl=en">Steve Biko</a>, the South African <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-bikos-black-consciousness-philosophy-resonates-with-youth-today-46909">Black Consciousness</a> thinker, once <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=Aq5PJWaSTzUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">said</a> that we need to speak from where we stand. Seeing the impact of our environment on our thinking about ourselves can change our thinking, he suggested. Telling our stories is an important way of doing so.</p>
<p>Though stories are universal, access to them is not. We are involved in a project that’s trying to address this. The <a href="https://www.ukri.org/about-us/">United Kingdom Research and Innovation</a> fund’s <a href="https://www.acceleratehub.org">Accelerate project</a> is working with adolescent groups in Africa to understand how young people see their lives in terms of story. And how inequality configures their relations to storytelling. </p>
<p>We’ve found that the stories young people on the continent encounter – in films, web content and even young adult literature – tend to be about others, from elsewhere. There are barriers to having their own stories heard, and those stories tend to be undervalued. </p>
<p>Our aim is to design appropriate interventions geared to improving adolescent lives through the activity of storytelling.</p>
<h2>What we found out</h2>
<p>To get closer to the issues we ran a workshop in Cape Town, called <a href="https://www.acceleratehub.org/files/narrativeandadolescencehubworkshopreport27042020pdf">Narrative and Adolescence</a>. </p>
<p>Professional storytellers, performers and young people’s groups explored how storytelling approaches might allow adolescents to feel more positively centred in their contexts. We also wanted to discover more about the access young people had to stories.</p>
<p>Using performance, drawing, and role-play, our workshop explored how storytelling provides a platform for thinking about our environments in new, self-aware ways. We immediately found that there are many different ways of thinking about story. There are “negative” stories – tales of gangsters and pregnant teenagers – and “positive” stories – tales of breakthrough and survival featuring sparky trend-setters and valiant underdogs.</p>
<p>We noticed many of the young people felt that the stories imposed on them by the media or chiding parents tended to be negative. We also noticed that they often saw positive stories as coming from elsewhere. Breakthrough stories in many cases involved an escape from their communities to affluent places abroad.</p>
<p>Clearly, the young people felt motivated by different kinds of story, not only a particular set of stories, such as about national heroes, but an accessible spectrum of stories ranging from Cinderella tales through to self-help narratives. They also enjoyed the creativity of storytelling. Their enjoyment supported our sense that such activities might help improve their lives.</p>
<h2>The power of stories</h2>
<p>Our thinking about having your story heard correlates with research on narrative approaches in various fields, including <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/narrative-medicine-9780195340228?cc=us&lang=en&">medicine</a> and <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691182292/narrative-economics#preview">economics</a>. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114786/">Many</a> <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/viral-modernism/9780231185752">studies</a> show how art can help structure experiences like illness, even when that experience seems to lack structure. Experiential psychology provides ample <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=R3QcCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">evidence</a> that “how we see the world” is as important as “how the world is”. So, the activity of storytelling can itself make an impact on how we see the world.</p>
<p>A newspaper <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Opinion/opinion-sa-youth-were-asked-what-they-needed-during-the-pandemic-heres-what-they-said-20200510">report</a> in which young South Africans were asked what they needed during lockdown underlines the importance of story as a platform to articulate their needs. They enjoyed hopeful stories of recovery involving people “like them”.</p>
<p>Our workshops bore out these ideas. They pointed to our need to feel that wherever we are in the world, our storytelling is worth supporting.</p>
<h2>Uneven geographies of storytelling</h2>
<p>However, economic, social and other factors condition the way people access storytelling platforms such as theatre, spoken word events and reading groups. The geographies of storytelling are uneven. Which in no way means that African countries suffer a dearth of stories. </p>
<p>Quite the contrary. It’s the platforms for such creativity that are circumscribed. This means that where you come from affects the narratives you have available to feed your imagination. Though creativity is clearly not correlated to wealth, there are people whose material conditions limit their access to a range of possible narratives. Particularly to those narratives involving people like them speaking from where they stand.</p>
<p>The interactions we have with young people in our ongoing research project suggest that reasons for narrative inequality include a lack of representation in global popular culture. They are not seeing enough of themselves in the stories they can access. Moreover, dominant value-systems tend to associate individual freedom with consumption.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342488/original/file-20200617-94049-1phpu48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342488/original/file-20200617-94049-1phpu48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342488/original/file-20200617-94049-1phpu48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342488/original/file-20200617-94049-1phpu48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342488/original/file-20200617-94049-1phpu48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342488/original/file-20200617-94049-1phpu48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342488/original/file-20200617-94049-1phpu48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342488/original/file-20200617-94049-1phpu48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Audience members watch a screening of the film Black Panther in Nairobi, Kenya.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In South Africa, education and, increasingly, entrepreneurship, form the primary narratives of social aspiration. Other stories are not as strongly validated. Resources for storytelling are also lacking. These inequalities are exacerbated by factors like <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/lifestyle/family/talk-white-and-well-be-friends-1529977">language</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971X.2008.00538.x">accent-marking</a>.</p>
<p>A 2016-18 <a href="http://www.myrainbowbooks.com/index.php/en/">Nigerian creative writing competition</a>, organised by Accelerate researcher Isang Awah, interestingly <a href="https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/294520">demonstrated</a> the reluctance of some young Nigerians to view themselves as central protagonists in their own stories. Awah suggests that a lack of stories featuring ordinary young Nigerians conditions the stories they consider valuable.</p>
<p>As the writers <a href="https://granta.com/how-to-write-about-africa/">Binyavanga Wainaina</a> and <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story">Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie</a> argue, if we only have access to certain stories, we imagine in less exploratory ways. These two African authors insist on the need to throw off colonial models and to free imaginations. Biko, similarly, argued for the vital need for people to shape their own forms of consciousness.</p>
<h2>Expanding storytelling</h2>
<p>If we think stories matter, then two other things matter – not just what stories we tell, but also how stories are accessed. If individuals are empowered by hearing stories that speak to their own conditions, then there is an excellent case for policy-makers and researchers on Africa to intervene to make more stories and more storytelling facilities available to more young African people.</p>
<p>Alongside designing development interventions, we can expand the infrastructures of storytelling, for example by funding community radio stations and storytelling slams.</p>
<p>We need to support adolescents on the continent with infrastructures that will enable them to tell their stories. The infrastructures of storytelling can be a powerful force for change.</p>
<p><em>Zimpande Kawanu and Archie Davies are co-authors of this article. Zimpande, a Mandela Rhodes Scholar, is currently enrolled in the MFA programme at the University of Cape Town. Davies is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140495/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elleke Boehmer receives funding from the United Kingdom Research and Innovation research fund through the UKRI GCRF Accelerating Achievement for Africa’s Adolescents Hub.</span></em></p>An ongoing study shows that storytelling can positively increase self-awareness in young people, especially if they can relate to the stories. But in Africa access to story platforms is limited.Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1321312020-02-20T13:24:49Z2020-02-20T13:24:49ZWhy South Africa’s white leaders shouldn’t get into comparative politics of sin<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316408/original/file-20200220-92518-xhlzyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former South African President FW De Klerk at the opening of parliament recently. The Economic Freedom Fighters objected to his presence.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Reuters Pool</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>FW De Klerk, South Africa’s last apartheid-era president, and his foundation, have learnt the hard way the dangers of the comparative politics of sin. He recently gave an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBE844vDkx4">interview</a> to mark his <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv02103/05lv02104/06lv02105.htm">historic speech</a> to parliament on 2 February 1990 when he announced the freeing of Nelson Mandela and unbanning of political organisations. During the interview on the national TV broadcaster he was asked for his thoughts on the declaration by the United Nations that apartheid was a crime against humanity, he replied:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t fully agree with that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He went on to assert that he was not justifying apartheid in any way whatsoever, saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>But there is a difference between calling something a crime. Like genocide is a crime. Apartheid cannot be, for instance, compared with genocide. There was never a genocide.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He added that more black people were killed by other black people than by the National Party government. But in making this statement he conveniently chose to forget that a great deal of violence was <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media/1998/9810/s981029z.htm">fomented by the government’s security forces</a>.</p>
<p>De Klerk was immediately engulfed in controversy. Condemnation of his statement came in thick and fast. Big names entered the fray, including former president <a href="http://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/mbeki-condemns-statement-made-by-de-klerk/">Thabo Mbeki</a> and Anglican Archbishop Emeritus <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2020-02-16-tutu-takes-on-de-klerk-withdraw-your-statement-about-apartheid/">Desmond Tutu</a>. The South African Council of Churches <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/sacc-calls-on-de-klerk-to-retract-and-apologise-for-his-apartheid-remarks-20200215">issued a statement</a> as did the governing African National Congress (<a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/gauteng/anc-condemns-fw-de-klerk-foundation-for-denying-apartheid-was-a-crime-against-humanity-42809984">ANC</a>). And the opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters called for his ejection from parliament when President Cyril Ramaphosa was waiting to deliver his State of Nation speech. </p>
<p>De Klerk’s foundation <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/fw-de-klerk-foundation-responds-to-effs-attack">responded</a> by dismissing the UN’s statement as a product of Soviet-style “agit-prop”. This aroused yet more popular fury. </p>
<p>Such was the outcry that De Klerk opted for an immediate and humiliating retreat, <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2020-02-17-fw-de-klerk-apologises-for-statement-that-apartheid-was-not-a-crime-against-humanity/">issuing an abject apology</a>, and insisting that he remained firmly committed to the politics of national reconciliation. His foundation also backtracked. It issued an apology for any anger and hurt caused. In its <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/fw-de-klerk-foundation-withdraws-apartheid-statement-apologises-to-sa-20200217">statement</a> it said it agreed with the International Criminal Court’s definition of a crime against humanity as acts</p>
<blockquote>
<p>committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But it’s unlikely the incident has brought about a sea-change in De Klerk’s personal beliefs, or the political assumptions that guide his foundation. Indeed, it is not unlikely that his twin beliefs – that apartheid was not a crime against humanity and that apartheid cannot be equated with genocide – are shared by many white South Africans, even though they are rarely so incautiously stated in public. </p>
<p>This is why it’s important to take a little time to challenge them. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VBE844vDkx4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Former President FW de Klerk on unbanning of political parties and Mandela’s release.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Immoral argument</h2>
<p>Let’s start with the issue of apartheid’s killings not amounting to genocide. </p>
<p>If the body count is the only criterion for mass killings to qualify as genocide, then it has to be acknowledged that there is truth in De Klerk’s statement. The thousands killed under apartheid cannot reasonably be compared to the millions systematically exterminated by, most notoriously, the Nazis during the <a href="https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/what-was-the-holocaust/">Holocaust of European Jews</a> between 1941 and 1945.</p>
<p>But is the argument that “we weren’t so bad as the Nazis” really one with which De Klerk really wants to be associated? Can that be regarded as a moral defence, especially if we recall that apartheid was implemented in the wake of World War II, following the revelation of the horrors that had taken place in the Nazi death camps in the name of racial supremacy? </p>
<p>It is, in any event, of no great comfort to people suffering brutality of any kind to be told that there is always someone else who is suffering worse than them. </p>
<p>Now to the question of the description of apartheid as a crime against humanity.</p>
<p>De Klerk might well respond that his <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">National Party</a> implemented apartheid in good faith in 1948, believing it to be a moral course of action whereby the white minority and black majority could live peacefully and productively alongside one another, without either one dominating the other.</p>
<p>He might back this up by adding that this benevolent view of apartheid was shared and propagated by the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002200946700200404?journalCode=jcha">Dutch Reformed Churches</a> and that the National Party of the time was confident it was pursuing a genuinely Christian policy. </p>
<p>But De Klerk would also need to engage with the fact that this position was challenged by such outstanding individuals as the anti-apartheid theologian and fellow Afrikaner <a href="http://www.sun.ac.za/english/faculty/theology/bnc/beyers-naud%C3%A9-the-person">Beyers Naude</a>. And, the Dutch Reformed Church belatedly confessed that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/11/world/main-white-church-in-south-africa-says-apartheid-is-sinful.html">apartheid was a sin</a>.</p>
<p>Despite all these qualifications, it seems that De Klerk continues to find it hard to accept that apartheid was a crime against humanity. But, the position that <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/1973-un-convention-on-apartheid-as-a-crime-against">apartheid was a crime against humanity</a> was established and pursued by the UN because, first, apartheid entrenched racial superiority and inferiority, and second, it systematically enforced the inferiority and oppression of black South Africans through law. </p>
<h2>Questions for philosophers and historians</h2>
<p>It is also now well established, even if De Klerk professes not to have known about the atrocities committed by apartheid security forces at the time, that these were a systematic accompaniment of apartheid law, and that in any case, the law was broken by the regime’s operatives if and when they found it convenient to do so. </p>
<p>It was not legal to torture people in detention. But the state did just that, resulting in the deaths of hundreds. Among them were the trade unionist <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/neil-aggett-inquest-court-hears-how-detainees-were-tortured-to-brink-of-death-42550420">Neil Aggett</a>, activist <a href="https://theconversation.com/ahmed-timol-the-quest-for-justice-for-people-murdered-in-apartheids-jails-116843">Ahmed Timol</a> and black consciousness movement leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-bikos-black-consciousness-philosophy-resonates-with-youth-today-46909">Steve Biko</a>. </p>
<p>De Klerk should accept that doubting the criminality of apartheid is an insult to their memories and their families. </p>
<p>He has apologised for causing hurt and offence to South Africans. </p>
<p>Let us accept that this apology was genuine. Nonetheless, we are left with the impression that the former president remains insensitive to the feelings of the mass of South Africans. He is simply out of touch. If he learns nothing else from this incident, it is that he should leave assessments of the moral qualities of apartheid to the philosophers and historians – and shut up.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132131/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall has received funding from the National Research Foundation</span></em></p>It seems that former president FW De Klerk continues to find it hard to accept that apartheid was a crime against humanity.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1252382019-10-18T12:44:47Z2019-10-18T12:44:47ZBlack Consciousness in South Africa demands a much wider historical lens<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297669/original/file-20191018-56224-194znt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Steve Biko is widely considered to be the father of Black Consciousness in South Africa. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Sowetan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year marks the 44th anniversary of <a href="http://www.apartheidmuseum.org/sites/default/files/files/BIKO%203b.pdf">Black Wednesday</a>, when the apartheid regime banned 18 civic organisations in a targeted attack on media freedom and civil society. Many of these organisations were aligned to the <a href="http://azapo.org.za/about-azapo/black-consciousness/">Black Consciousness Movement</a>. The high number of organisations outlawed by the nationalist government speaks to the breadth of impact Black Consciousness had on South Africa. </p>
<p>South Africans often think with simplistic historical narratives. For example, the historical role of Black Consciousness (or BC) is primarily seen in its renewed challenge to the apartheid state in inspiring the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto Uprising of 16 June 1976</a>. A fuller appreciation of its history and impact transcends this narrower focus.</p>
<p>The craft of historians has been summed up in the so-called <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2007/what-does-it-mean-to-think-historically">five Cs of historical thinking</a>: context, complexity, contingency, causality and change over time. Historians apply these principles to study the past as accurately as possible. This is also known as the principle of <a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Historicism">historicism</a>. </p>
<p>Using these principles I have studied South African civil society in the late 1960s and 1970s. While this time was seen as a lull in the opposition to apartheid, closer examination emphasises the importance of ideas, debates and movements in the period.</p>
<p>My <a href="http://ukznpress.bookslive.co.za/blog/2018/05/03/black-consciousness-and-progressive-movements-under-apartheid-presents-an-intellectual-history-of-black-consciousness-in-sa-in-the-comparative-perspective-that-biko-originally-called-for/">book</a>, “Black Consciousness and Progressive Movements under Apartheid”, shows how activists drew on global movements of social change in their responses to the oppression of apartheid which they debated, often heatedly. To understand Black Consciousness historically, and its wider impacts, we need to understand this broader context. Black Consciousness changed blacks and whites. </p>
<h2>Origins of Black Consciousness</h2>
<p>Firstly, Black Consciousness emerged together with a growing global Christian challenge to apartheid. The World Council of Churches set an early benchmark at the <a href="http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.ydlwcc2079_final.pdf">Cottesloe Consultation</a> (7-14 December 1960) in response to the Sharpeville Massacre of 21 March 1960. At the Consultation the South African churches, including Afrikaans churches, effectively rejected apartheid. </p>
<p>The final statement <a href="http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.ydlwcc2079_final.pdf">read</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>all racial groups who permanently inhabit our country … have an equal right to make their contribution towards the enrichment of the life of their country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The <a href="https://www.oikoumene.org/en/about-us">World Council of Churches</a> became even further radicalised. By 1970 it authorised the first of a series of <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0018-229X2017000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso">financial grants</a> to the banned African National Congress and other liberation movements. The influence of this Christian challenge to apartheid would be felt in many ways, not least in their financial support.</p>
<p>Secondly, my book helps to place Black Consciousness in the wave of protests that spread throughout the world in 1968. <a href="https://uct1968sitin.wordpress.com/">The sit-in</a> by white students that took place at the University of Cape Town is normally given pride of place. But the protest by black students at the University of Fort Hare in 1968 led to a wider mobilisation across South African universities.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>During their sit-in Fort Hare students sang the anthems <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/4631?lang=en">“Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika”</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/216482943/the-inspiring-force-of-we-shall-overcome">“We Shall Overcome”</a>. Their choice showed how their desire for national liberation and the influence of the Global Sixties merged. I also show how the radicals within the mainly white National Union of South African Students (Nusas) were quick to recognise the legitimacy of the challenge of Black Consciousness and pushed for a change in Nusas accordingly.</p>
<p>Thirdly, I locate Black Consciousness in the rebirth of the labour movement. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-student-organisation-saso">The South African Students’ Organisation</a> had their headquarters in Durban in the early 1970s. This placed Black Consciousness activists in close proximity to people like the philosopher <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/richard-albert-turner">Richard Turner</a> at the University of Natal and his circle of New Left activists. </p>
<p>My <a href="http://ukznpress.bookslive.co.za/blog/2018/05/03/black-consciousness-and-progressive-movements-under-apartheid-presents-an-intellectual-history-of-black-consciousness-in-sa-in-the-comparative-perspective-that-biko-originally-called-for/">book</a> points to the limits of the binary that Biko and Turner have often been cast in. </p>
<p>I argue for their common understanding of economic exploitation as the basis of apartheid. They agreed on the need for drastic structural change to address South African society’s social ills but they disagreed on how to achieve this. Pointing to Biko’s thinking on the economic rationale of apartheid unsettles the pigeonhole that he is often placed in as a theoretician of race.</p>
<p>Fourthly, my book acknowledges the tension between Black Consciousness and feminism. I show how female activists within the Black Consciousness Movement appropriated the liberation that their male comrades laid claim to. They also distanced themselves from the white feminist movement.</p>
<p>Lastly, my book evokes the metaphor of “shock waves”. I use the term to describe the impact of Black Consciousness on organisations like Nusas as well as the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03064228308533602?journalCode=rioc20">Christian Institute</a>. The Christian Institute was an ecumenical organisation that had been established by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/reverend-beyers-naude">Reverend Beyers Naudé</a> and a small group of Dutch Reformed clergy in August 1963.</p>
<p>Naudé’s contacts with Biko and the Black Consciousness activists in 1971, together with the conclusions they drew from the <a href="https://www.aluka.org/struggles/collection/SPROCAS">Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society</a> (Sprocas), helped change the orientation of the organisation. The first sign of this change was when the second stage of Sprocas, began funding the <a href="https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/Br1973.0376.4354.000.000.1974.18.pdf">Black Community Programmes</a>, an independent, black-run community development organisation.</p>
<p>It also established a White Consciousness Programme that acknowledged and tried to address the problem of white racism in white society. These were organisational expressions of the success of the arguments of Black consciousness. </p>
<h2>Recovering histories</h2>
<p>It is vital to study the past as “an inventory of alternatives” as the British historian, John Tosh, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/22557305/John_Tosh_-_The_Pursuit_of_History">has encouraged</a>. Although the optimism of the post-apartheid <a href="http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/3761/thesis_tshawane_n.pdf">rainbow nation</a> has long since evaporated, South Africa has important and often forgotten histories that must be recovered. The frustrations that are manipulated by populists in the country, and across the world, need to be channelled correctly. South Africans need to remember the organisational and ideological efforts of their country’s noblest daughters and sons and strive to follow in their footsteps.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Macqueen received funding from the National Research Foundation and the University of Pretoria. </span></em></p>Black consciousness in South Africa changed blacks and whites.Ian Macqueen, Lecturer, Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1248132019-10-18T10:01:31Z2019-10-18T10:01:31ZOnkgopotse Tiro: revolutionary who paid a heavy price for shaking apartheid to its core<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297643/original/file-20191018-56215-1hgbigw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Onkgopotse Tiro</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Book cover</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The book, <a href="https://www.takealot.com/parcel-of-death/PLID55073335">“Parcel of Death”</a>, is a journey to a revolutionary past. It is a journey but not a return to the past. Former journalist <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.co.za/blogs/news/writing-the-little-told-story-of-onkgopotse-tiro">Gaongalelwe Tiro</a> has written a book about his uncle Onkgopotse Tiro – a revolutionary spirit who powered the student <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">uprisings of June 1976</a> in Soweto, Guguletu – Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Umlazi – Durban, Bloemfontein and Pietermaritzburg. </p>
<p>It is the same spirit that was to galvanise another generation decades later in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/feesmustfall-the-poster-child-for-new-forms-of-struggle-in-south-africa-68773">fees must fall</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/it-will-take-critical-thorough-scrutiny-to-truly-decolonise-knowledge-78477">decolonisation </a> movements at the turn of the century.</p>
<p>Tiro was a student leader at the University of the North, now <a href="https://www.ul.ac.za/index.php?Entity=Home">University of Limpopo</a>, in the early 1970s and one of the early exponents of the revolutionary Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. He fled to exile in Botswana, where he was killed by a parcel bomb in 1974. It has always been suspected that it was sent by the apartheid security forces.</p>
<p>The book begins with a chapter entitled: “Blown to Smithereens”. The power and emotion contained in this chapter is enough to stop you from continuing. Even though I know the events that are described in the chapter and, had my own emotion and response on the morning of the day in February 1974 when the news of Tiro’s assassination came through, I still read the chapter over and over and hesitated to face up to subsequent chapters.</p>
<h2>Onkgopotse Tiro</h2>
<p>Onkgopotse Tiro was born in Dinokana Village outside the small town of Zeerust, in what is now known as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/north-west">North West Province</a>, South Africa. These origins automatically define him as son of poor parents.</p>
<p>Like other African young men and women, Tiro somehow managed to make it to university. For him, being of a particular tribal origin, it could only be University of the North, also known as Turfloop, a blacks-only university for students designated for the Tswana, Sotho, Pedi, Venda and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/tswana">Shangaan tribes</a>, located east of Polokwane. This, in line with the Apartheid racist segregation policies of the white minority state of the time.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>The family and social background and experiences that Onkgopotse brought to the university immediately came into conflict with the colonial and racial texture inscribed in every facet of the university life. The critical, questioning mind of the soon to be born philosophy of <a href="http://azapo.org.za/about-azapo/black-consciousness/">Black Consciousness</a> soon showed its real character when Tiro and other black students immersed themselves in debates about how they should organise themselves around their own reality, black reality.</p>
<p>Political existentialism was the core mark of the strategy of black resistance by university students in those early days of black consciousness. Tiro was a key leader in this regard and, this is how this revolutionary edge catapulted him to the helm of student political organisation.</p>
<p>The anger of the white racist administrators and staff at the university and on behalf of all other white racists was provoked beyond measure when Tiro <a href="http://azapo.org.za/graduation-speech-by-onkgopotse-tiro-at-the-university-of-the-north-29-april-1972/">delivered a graduation speech</a> in 1972, that ignited black student political uprising throughout the land.</p>
<p>Thus in the first chapter the author details the events preceding, surrounding and, following the assassination of Tiro. The book depicts how Tiro’s time at Turfloop amounted to a revolutionising political script for generations to come. It is particularly helpful to have this history of the Black Consciousness Movement which provides background to the later assassination of <a href="http://azapo.org.za/azapohistory/bantu-stephen-biko/">Steve Biko</a>, who similarly died brutally at the hands of agents of a white racist regime.</p>
<p>The message is simple: White supremacists murdered Onkgopotse Tiro. They also murdered his associates, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/mthuli-ka-shezi">Mthuli Ka Shezi</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mapetla-mohapi-1947-1976">Mapetla Mohapi</a> and Steve Biko. The list is long.</p>
<p>Students of Black Consciousness need to grasp this in order to understand the movement and the people that Tiro died for. Deliberately, or not, the author’s choice of the starting point for the biography of his late uncle is inspired by the same spirit that shook the foundations of a racist settler-colonial regime.</p>
<p>The rest of the book walks back to the events that led to Tiro’s assassination. It is a biography that refuses to engage in political narcissism. Its story comes back to us from the future. We understand who Tiro was through the lens of what happened long after he was no more.</p>
<p>It is well written and does not confuscate, not even politically or ideologically. Through the chapters that follow the first one, we come to meet and know the people who gave birth to a movement and died for a country. We also come to understand how relationships change even among the closest of comrades. Readers will be served with the truth of events and intricacies that professional historians and ideologues <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-steve-bikos-remarkable-legacy-often-overlooked-82952">conceal for no good reason</a>.</p>
<p>The biographer is more than a family member. He is himself a player, activist and combatant in the theatre of struggle in which his uncle’s extinction was plotted and carried out. He navigates the terrain professionally and does so like a revolutionary.</p>
<p>The writer shares the initial circumstances that surrounded the moment of political ignition that led to expulsion of Tiro from the University of the North and set the country on fire. This discussion happens, rightfully, later in the book. It helps to remove the temptation to write the story chronologically. As we have said, the story of Onkgopotse Tiro comes to us from the future. For indeed, in his life story, to borrow from <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/18th-Brumaire.pdf">Karl Marx’s unforgettable words,</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>the phrase does not go beyond the content; the content goes beyond the phrase.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is a story that draws its “poetry from the future”.</p>
<p>The book, therefore, shares snippets of the famous graduation speech that led to Tiro’s expulsion from Turfloop and subsequently galvanized black students in all the black campuses to solidarity action. </p>
<p>The rest is history.</p>
<p>The real pity, though, is that the biographer deprived the readers of Tiro’s speech in its totality. It is not enough to have quoted parts of it. It is a classic by itself and in its own right.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124813/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Itumeleng Mosala has received funding from universities for his research. He is a patron of the June 16, 1976 Foundation and the owner of Still Nascent Ventures (Pty) Ltd. He is a member of the Azanian People's Organisation and the party's past president. </span></em></p>The book depicts how Onkgopotse Tiro’s time at Turfloop amounted to a revolutionising political script for generations to come.Itumeleng Mosala, Research Associate professor, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1168432019-05-14T13:49:35Z2019-05-14T13:49:35ZAhmed Timol: the quest for justice for people murdered in apartheid’s jails<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274128/original/file-20190513-183089-6ka6yi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ahmed Timol's funeral in 1972.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/photo-gallery">ahmedtimol.co.za</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On 27 October 1971, the parents of South African anti-apartheid activist <a href="http://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/about">Ahmed Timol</a> were informed that their son had committed suicide by throwing himself out of the window of room 1026 of John Vorster Square, the notorious police headquarters in central Johannesburg. </p>
<p>Timol was a member of the South African Communist Party. He was also a well-loved teacher. His family was convinced that he was murdered by the security police. This view was widely accepted by everyone who opposed the apartheid state at the time. </p>
<p>Writing under his pen-name “Frank Talk”, the black consciousness leader Steve Biko <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/sajan72.pdf">expressed</a> his disdain for the patently fabricated claims: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The late Ahmed Timol was ‘prevented’ from dashing through the door but it was found impossible to stop him from ‘jumping’ through the 10th floor window of Vorster Square to his death. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Biko’s article appeared in the widely-circulated newsletter of the South African Students Organisation in early 1972. Not long after that the banned African National Congress (ANC) submitted a <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/memorandum-submitted-by-the-african-national-congress-of-south-africa-to-the-un-decolonisation-committee">memorandum</a> to the United Nations calling for South Africa’s expulsion from the world body and for the denunciation of apartheid as a crime against humanity. </p>
<p>The memorandum asserts what was common-knowledge at the time – Timol’s death was not the result of suicide but of murder. A short time later Magistrate JJL de Villiers ruled at an inquest that no one was responsible for Timol’s death.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ahmed Timol.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/photo-gallery">ahmedtimol.co.za</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It took 46 years for the truth about Timol’s murder to be <a href="https://ewn.co.za/Topic/Ahmed-Timol">recognised</a> in a <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-apartheids-victims-bring-the-crimes-of-south-africas-past-into-court/">court of law</a>. Although there have been significant cases that have provided evidence of the transformation of South Africa’s criminal justice system post-1994, this case is the first to enact what can be properly understood as restorative justice.</p>
<p>A judge has ordered that Joao “Jan” Rodrigues, a Security Branch clerk and ostensibly the last person to have seen Timol before his death, be charged with Timol’s murder and with defeating or obstructing the administration of justice. Rodrigues has sought a <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-02-20-no-reason-not-to-prosecute-joao-rodrigues-argues-timol-family/">permanent stay of prosecution</a> and the judgement in the matter has been reserved. </p>
<p>If the stay is granted it will apply not only to Rodrigues but to all former Security Branch and former state agents who would effectively be exempted from being held to account for their actions in the future. Rodrigues’s defence has argued that a trial against him would be unfair due to the time that has lapsed since Timol’s murder. </p>
<p>In another recent development South Africa’s Minister of Justice announced the re-opening of the inquest into the death of trade unionist <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/another-apartheid-era-inquest-to-be-opened-by-police-20190426">Neil Aggett</a>, who allegedly committed suicide after being detained and tortured by the Security Police in 1982. </p>
<p>In a similar way to those who committed crimes as part of the National Socialist regime in Germany during the Second World War, almost all of the apartheid-era perpetrators have been absorbed into civilian life and have not been punished. </p>
<p>The re-opening of these cases creates the possibility for the perpetrators to be tried for committing crimes against humanity. This has the potential to radically shift how people think about what apartheid was, how it continues to affect the present, and how people experience and understand impunity and injustice.</p>
<h2>Victims of violence</h2>
<p>In 1995 a court-like body called the <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> (TRC) was assembled in South Africa. Anybody who felt they had been a victim of violence during apartheid could come forward and be heard. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from prosecution. Hawa Timol testified about her son’s murder.</p>
<p>However, not one of the Security Police officers involved in Timol’s arrest and interrogation came forward. Nor did anyone ask for amnesty for their part in Timol’s murder. In 1971 he was the 22nd person to die in detention at the hands of the Security Police since the introduction of detention without trial. Timol was the seventh person to have allegedly committed suicide.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ahmed Timol was a teacher at the time of his death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/photo-gallery">ahmedtimol.co.za</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Following the TRC hearings, Imtiaz Cajee, Timol’s nephew, vowed to seek justice for his family. His extensively researched book, <a href="http://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/publications">“Timol: Quest for Justice”</a>, was published in 2005. </p>
<p>In 2017 the Timol inquest was finally re-opened. On 12 October Judge Billy Mothle <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/ahmed-timol-was-murdered--justice-billy-mothle">delivered</a> a landmark judgement and overturned the findings of the 1972 inquest. The judgement affirmed what the Timol family had maintained all along – Ahmed Timol did not commit suicide but was murdered by members of the Security Branch of the South African Police after being interrogated and tortured. </p>
<h2>Justice delayed</h2>
<p>In 2003 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/report/">final report</a> was released. Three hundred cases involving gross violations of human rights were handed over to the National Prosecuting Authority on the understanding that they would be investigated and that those responsible would be prosecuted. </p>
<p>In 2015, the state’s failure to pursue the TRC cases was exposed when Thembi Nkadimeng sought to compel the National Prosecution Authority to prosecute the Security Branch officers accused of torturing and murdering her sister, Nokuthula Simelane, an anti-apartheid activist who was abducted in 1983. It emerged that ‘political interference’ ensured that the matter was blocked.</p>
<p>On 5 February 2019 ten TRC commissioners wrote a <a href="https://www.ijr.org.za/2019/02/08/ijr-endorses-letter-by-former-trc-commissioners/">letter</a> to President Cyril Ramaphosa. They called for a commission of inquiry to investigate why the TRC cases have not been pursued. In their letter, the commissioners argue that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The failure to investigate and prosecute those who were not amnestied represents a deep betrayal of all those who participated in good faith in the TRC process. It completely undermines the very basis of South Africa’s historic transition. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The re-opening of the Timol and Aggett cases deepens public knowledge and understanding of the many cases of people who were tortured and murdered under apartheid. It also serves as a reminder that those responsible for committing atrocities have almost without exception evaded responsibility and have never been held accountable for their deeds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116843/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kylie Thomas receives funding from the National Research Foundation, South Africa. </span></em></p>In South Africa’s criminal justice system post-1994, the Timol case is the first to enact what can be properly understood as restorative justice.Kylie Thomas, Associate Researcher at the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice at the University of the Free State, University of the Free StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1157172019-04-24T13:50:30Z2019-04-24T13:50:30ZWhy nonfiction books dominate bestseller lists in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270457/original/file-20190423-175510-1w4md7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pieter-Louis Myburgh's "Gangster State" is one of South Africa's top sellers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Charles Leonard</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Books in South Africa don’t often make headline news. But a controversial subject, protests and disruptions at a book launch, and threats of book burning are sufficient to get South Africans talking about the place of books in society once again. </p>
<p>This is exactly what has <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2019/04/09/gangster-state-book-launch-disrupted-by-protesters">happened</a> with investigative journalist Pieter-Louis Myburgh’s latest book <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/gangster-state-unravelling-ace-magashule%E2%80%99s-web-capture/9781776093748">“Gangster State”</a>. </p>
<p>“Gangster State” is an exposé of current African National Congress (ANC) Secretary General Ace Magashule’s alleged murky dealings as premier of the Free State province, and his rise to one of the governing party’s most influential positions. The book has stirred up passionate reactions, both for and against its contents. </p>
<p>This last happened in late 2017 when another investigative reporter Jacques Pauw published a similar book, <a href="http://www.nb.co.za/books/20140">“The President’s Keepers”</a>. That book dealt with South Africa’s previous head of state, Jacob Zuma, who’s been closely <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/people/jacob-zuma.html">linked</a> to massive corruption. Zuma <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/zuma-corruption-case-another-attempt-to-tarnish-my-name-20181120">denies</a> the allegations.</p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/two-books-that-tell-the-unsettling-tale-of-south-africas-descent-87044">Two books that tell the unsettling tale of South Africa's descent</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Clearly, this kind of book touches a certain chord in South African society. A quick glance through the top-selling books in the past few years shows that non-fiction, and particularly political non-fiction dealing with very topical events, is the most popular genre. </p>
<p>The trend can be traced back through a number of years, with nonfiction consistently dominating the Nielsen’s BookScan <a href="http://www.sapnet.co.za/nielsenbookdatarecordsupplyservice.php">sales charts</a> - the most comprehensive figures collected on book sales through commercial booksellers. This raises the question: why do political books do so well in South Africa? </p>
<h2>Celebrities</h2>
<p>This isn’t a uniquely South Africa phenomenon. Nonfiction is popular around the world. Celebrities’ memoirs or biographies, as well as history titles, are more likely to become bestsellers than any other kinds of nonfiction. Indeed, Michelle Obama’s memoir “Becoming” caused a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/books/paper-printers-holiday-sales-books-publishers.html">paper shortage</a> in the US towards the end of 2018, as it was reprinted in such large quantities and at short notice to keep up with audience demand. This title has now sold more than <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47704987">10 million copies</a> worldwide. </p>
<p>Where South Africa differs is in the balance of sales between nonfiction and fiction. In most of the largest publishing markets, fiction is bought at much higher rates than nonfiction. In the US, for instance, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4622404.pdf">average sales</a> for fiction titles are between 4 000 and 8 000 copies, while the nonfiction average is lower, at 2 000 to 6 000 copies.</p>
<p>In South Africa, it’s the reverse. Nonfiction <a href="https://qz.com/africa/874444/south-africas-bestselling-books-are-mostly-about-south-africas-political-dysfunction/">outsells</a> fiction. This is not a new trend, either: political books found a ready audience throughout the apartheid period. </p>
<p>There are a few categories of nonfiction that do particularly well: political nonfiction, South African history (especially political history), religious books – and the ubiquitous cookbooks. The authors that have the edge tend to be journalists rather than academics, probably because their writing is so much more accessible. </p>
<p>Statistically, too, men write more nonfiction than women in South Africa, and so are more likely to produce top-selling titles, as was found by one of my post-graduate students, Kelly Ansara, in her Master’s study of the gender balance in SA publishing.</p>
<h2>South African trends</h2>
<p>In analysing the publishing lists and sales figures of the local nonfiction publishers – Pan Macmillan, Jonathan Ball, Penguin SA, Tafelberg and Jacana, on the whole – another difference becomes apparent. Books by and about celebrities are not as popular in South Africa as in the US and UK. Their sales are thus less predictable. </p>
<p>For instance, while former Springbok rugby coach Jake White’s “In Black and White” sold more than 60 000 copies in a week in 2008, star rugby player Joost van der Westhuizen’s “Man in the Mirror” was less successful. Comedian Trevor Noah’s memoir, “Born a Crime”, has been extremely successful, but titles by local musicians and actors such as Bonang Matheba and Somizi Mhlongo have sold comparatively few copies. </p>
<p>The raft of competing titles that hit the shelves after the murder conviction of former Paralympian athlete Oscar Pistorius did not take off as well as expected. Excellent titles on topics as diverse as climate change and South African art sell a respectable number, but don’t make the bestseller list.</p>
<p>Many of the country’s nonfiction titles sell several thousand copies very quickly, but few of them have staying power. Current interest is intense in topics like <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/group/State_Capture/">state capture</a> and corruption scandals. But it fades quickly, leading to a short shelf-life for a number of political books. Only a few gain the perennial interest and staying power of a title like “I Write What I Like” by Steve Biko or Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom”.</p>
<h2>Making sense</h2>
<p>Many commentators suggest that the interest in political and current affairs titles reflects a nation trying to make sense of its tumultuous political environment. The huge political and social shifts of the past 20 to 30 years are still influencing South Africans’ daily lives. With one corruption scandal following another, trust in the authorities is low. But citizens still seek authoritative overviews and answers - in the nonfiction titles that line our shelves.</p>
<p>There is little reason to predict that the trend will change. However, if the threats mount, then we may see authors and publishers shifting to less controversial topics. For now, it’s great to see books in the news again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115717/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beth le Roux does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Political books touches a certain chord in South African society that makes them bestsellers.Beth le Roux, Associate Professor, Publishing, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1151852019-04-16T08:50:58Z2019-04-16T08:50:58ZStudent resistance in South Africa: the SASO nine trial and Steve Biko<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268575/original/file-20190410-2924-s9w28l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C34%2C897%2C738&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of the founders of South African Students' Organisation, Steve Biko.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> South African History Online</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Student protests swept across South African campuses in 2015 and 2016 under the banner of <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/feesmustfall-21801">#FeesMustFall</a>. The protests revitalised public interest in student politics. </p>
<p>My recently published book, <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/limpopos-legacy/">Limpopo’s Legacy</a> offers a historical perspective on these events. In it I analyse regional influences that have underpinned South African student politics from the 1960s to the present. </p>
<p>Student organisations in the Northern Transvaal (today Limpopo Province) have influenced political change in South Africa on a national scale, and over generations. At the centre was the University of the North at Turfloop (now called the University of Limpopo). The institution played an integral role in building the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) in the late 1960s and propagating Black Consciousness in the 1970s. </p>
<p>There are lessons from half a century ago for South Africa’s most recent student uprisings. Profound insights can be drawn from the trial of nine SASO activists, in particular what was said in the witness stand by one of the founders of SASO, Steve Biko.</p>
<h2>SASO and black consciousness</h2>
<p>SASO was an organisation launched by university students on the segregated campuses of so-called “non-white” universities. It created an organisational space for black students. It argued that other student organisations, such as the multi-racial National Union of South African Students (Nusas), were dominated by white interests. </p>
<p>SASO students developed the philosophy of Black Consciousness, arguing that psychological liberation was necessary for political liberation. They offered a new way for black South Africans to think about themselves and their place in their country.</p>
<p>In this SASO offered a new approach to liberation, led by a new generation, that differed from older groups like the African National Congress and the Pan African Congress. </p>
<p>In ways that still <a href="https://www.news24.com/Opinions/biko-lives-in-fallism-20160909">resonate with student activists today</a>, SASO criticised these older organisations for being quiescent and failing to achieve the promise of liberation.</p>
<h2>The state’s response</h2>
<p>The apartheid state initially saw SASO as racially separatist, and allowed it to organise on campuses in the early 1970s. But by the middle of that decade the state began to crack down on these student activists. </p>
<p>In July 1975 the trial of nine young activists began. Known as the SASO Nine, or the Black Consciousness Trial, it was to be a milestone in the politics of the era, and beyond. </p>
<p>Thirteen members of SASO and other Black Consciousness-affiliated organisations were arrested on charges of treason. This was after they defied a police ban and held rallies at Turfloop and in Durban to celebrate the independence of Mozambique, which was achieved in September 1974. </p>
<p>Of the 13 students and young activists, the state <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/trial-nine-bpc-and-saso-leaders-ends">charged</a> nine under the Terrorism Act, initiating what became one of the longest political trials in South Africa at the time. </p>
<h2>The trial</h2>
<p>South Africa’s longest terrorism trial played out over the course of 17 months and garnered substantial press coverage. </p>
<p>The nine young men charged in the trial came to play a pivotal role in the broader public conception of SASO. They were also to have a catalytic politicising affect across the country. And their names live on as veterans of the fight against apartheid. They were Zithulele Cindi, Saths Cooper, Mosioua Lekota, Aubrey Mokoape, Strini Moodley, Muntu Myeza, Pandelani Nefolovhodwe, Nkwenke Nkomo and Gilbert Sedibe.</p>
<p>Legal historian Michael Lobban argued in his book, <em>White Man’s Justice: South African Political Trials in the Black Consciousness Era</em>, that the trial offered particular insights into how the South African state sought to,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>use a political trial to control its opponents. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In <em>Limpopo’s Legacy</em> I argue that the trial also demonstrates the way that young activists used the court system and attendant press coverage to propagate their own political agenda. This was especially important for defendants who were students from Turfloop, who were under a gag-order on campus, and for those who were banned from publishing or public speech. </p>
<p>These defendants came to be the public face of student resistance at the outset of their trial in 1975. It provided a platform to highlight their cause. </p>
<h2>The court room as theatre</h2>
<p>Historian Daniel Magaziner has said in the book <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/The+Law+and+the+Prophets"><em>The Law and the Prophets</em></a> that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the trial was more farce than tragedy, and, reasoning that some sort of conviction was inevitable, the defendants treated it like theatre. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>While theatricality did play a role in how the defendants presented themselves on the stand, there were serious motives behind this performance. </p>
<p>More than a stage, the defendants used the stand as a microphone, and indeed a pulpit from which to propagate their message. Famously, Steve Biko, SASO’s founder and figurehead, took his opportunity on the witness stand to expound on the philosophy of Black Consciousness as the guiding principle for SASO and the Black People’s Convention (BPC). The BPC was an affiliate of SASO that organised non-students around the ideals of Black Consciousness. </p>
<p>In his explanation to the presiding judge Biko stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Basically Black Consciousness refers itself to the black man and to his situation, and I think the Black man is subjected to two forces in this country. He is first of all oppressed by an external world through institutionalised machinery: through laws that restrict him from doing certain things, through heavy work conditions, through poor education, these are all external to him, and secondly, and this we regard as the most important, the black man in himself has developed a certain state of alienation, he rejects himself, precisely because he attaches the meaning white to all that is good, in other words he associates good and he equates good with white. This arises out of his living and it arises out of his development from childhood… This is carried through to adulthood when the black man has got to live and work. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Redressing this psychological conditioning formed the core thrust of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/black-consciousness-movement-bcm">Black Consciousness movement</a>. </p>
<p>Over the course of five days of testimony in May 1976 Biko ranged from discussing the psychological grounding of the SASO slogan “Black is beautiful” to the importance of disinvestment in South Africa by foreign firms. </p>
<p>Fifty years after the founding of SASO - and nearly 45 years since the historic trial of the SASO Nine - the tactics, strategy, and ideas of this anti-apartheid student movement remain a model for student activists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Heffernan received funding during the conduct of this research from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Wits University Research Council. </span></em></p>Fifty years after the founding of South African Students’ Organisation this anti-apartheid movement remains a model for student activists.Anne Heffernan, Assistant Professor in the history of Southern Africa, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1124392019-03-04T13:33:49Z2019-03-04T13:33:49ZLetters reveal Africanist hero Robert Sobukwe’s moral courage, and pain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262378/original/file-20190306-48438-1ny6tjw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Between 1963 and 1969 Robert Sobukwe spent six years of near-complete solitary confinement on Robben Island.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Book cover</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>On 21 March 1960 the apartheid police <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">opened fire on unarmed marchers</a> protesting against a law that forced black people to carry identity documents. Over 200 were injured and 69 killed. The following edited excerpt is from a new book featuring the prison letters of Robert Sobukwe, who organised and led the march.</em></p>
<p>In a letter of condolence written on 5 August 1974 to Nell Marquard, a friend who he had been corresponding with since his time on Robben Island, South African pan-Africanist leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a> made a telling observation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I learnt some time ago that one cannot put oneself in another’s position. We may express sympathy, feel it and even imagine the pain. But we cannot feel it as the one who suffers it. They have a saying in Xhosa that the toothache is felt by the one whose tooth is aching.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sobukwe, who clearly knew about suffering, loneliness and the impossibility of ever fully communicating one’s pain to another, was writing just after the death of Nell’s husband, the noted Cape liberal, author and historian, Leo Marquard. Given that Leo was a prominent liberal, and that white liberals had not always been friendly to the aims and agendas of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) – the organisation that Sobukwe led from 1959 until his arrest in 1960 – one might have expected coolness from Sobukwe. Not at all. He, as always, was gracious:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am thankful that I was able to talk to you two years before Leo’s death and more thankful that he died knowing how much his contribution had been appreciated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Touching as this acknowledgement of his contribution would have been for Marquard, the real poignancy of Sobukwe’s letter comes a little further on, when he starts speaking of the myriad difficulties he has faced since leaving <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/916">Robben Island</a>, where most of South Africa’s liberation struggle leaders were jailed. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It has not been a good year for me. I had planned to leave [from Kimberley] … by car on the 31st May and make straight for Cape Town. But these boys [apartheid security police] beat me to it. They came on the 30th May, 1974 to serve the fresh lot of bureaucratic output. Well it’s good to know that our security is entrusted to such alert people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite the fact that he makes light of it, one senses in Sobukwe’s letter that the constant surveillance and harassment of the security police was taking its toll. Behind the ironic salute to the astuteness of the police, there is also a disturbing foreshadowing. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a>, in many respects Sobukwe’s most direct political heir, would be stopped and arrested on a not dissimilar road trip from Cape Town four years later, an event which would lead directly to his death at the hands of the Security Police. Sobukwe continues: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Veronica (Sobukwe’s wife) has had a major operation as you probably read in the papers. She should have had this operation last year, but did not and the condition got worse. She has made a remarkable recovery, thanks to my very efficient and tender nursing, and has now gone back to Joh’burg for a check up. From there she will be in Durban to spend a week or so with her sister before proceeding to Swaziland to see the children.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Between May 1963 and May 1969 Sobukwe was to spend six years of near-complete solitary confinement on Robben Island.</p>
<p>These circumstances had their origins in a momentous historical event organised by Sobukwe himself. On 21 March 1960, he had led the Pan Africanist Congress in what he called a “positive action” campaign, protesting against the oppressive pass laws that governed the movements – and indeed the lives – of black South Africans. </p>
<p>This mass action resulted in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> later that same day, in which at least 69 people were killed when the South African police opened fire on a crowd of protesters. This event, which drew international attention to the injustices and brutality of apartheid, was a watershed moment in the history of South Africa. It led to a three-year jail sentence for Sobukwe for inciting people to protest against the laws of the country.</p>
<p>Not content that by 3 May 1963 Sobukwe would have served his sentence, the apartheid government passed an amendment to the General Law Amendment Act, the notorious <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-mangaliso-sobukwe">“Sobukwe Clause”</a>, which enabled the Minister of Justice to prolong the detention of any political prisoner year after year.</p>
<p>He was then relocated to Robben Island, and kept apart from other prisoners, where he remained for six years. The clause – never used to detain anyone else – was renewed annually by the Minister of Justice.</p>
<p>Sobukwe, in a very significant sense, was never a free man again after his 1960 imprisonment. The apartheid government unleashed a series of bureaucratic cruelties upon him after his May 1969 release from Robben Island. They forced him to live in the geographically remote town of Kimberley – far removed from any friends, family or associates. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The house where Sobukwe was held on Robben Island .</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flcker/Daniel Mouton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They insisted he take on a low-ranking job that would have made him complicit in the apartheid policies that he went to jail protesting. He refused. They repeatedly refused to allow him to leave the country to take up job offers he had received from the United States; and they obstructed his attempts to get the medical treatments that he needed, and that would have extended his life (he died of lung cancer on 27 February 1978).</p>
<p>This then is the background to the consolations that Sobukwe sought to offer Nell Marquard in his 1974 letter. It’s only on the last page of that letter that he seemed to finally find the words that suited both his emotions and the note of commiseration that he wished to convey to Nell:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Xhosa have standard words of condolence. They say
<em>Akuhlanga lungehlanga lala ngenxeba</em> (There has not occurred what has not occurred before … lie on your wound).
God bless you. Affectionately, Robert.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This resonant phrase – which also appears in Sobukwe’s letters to his friend Benjamin Pogrund – applies equally, if not more so, to Sobukwe himself. “Lie on your wound(s)” is a call to bide one’s time, to heal, and to reconstitute one’s self despite evident suffering. It is a call to have courage, to bear the moral burden of pain, and it provides an apt title for what was the most difficult period of Sobukwe’s life, namely his time on Robben Island, which the selection of letters collected in this <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/lie-on-your-wounds-2/">book</a>, published by Wits <a href="http://witspress.co.za/">University Press</a>, represents.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112439/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek Hook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A collection of prison letters provides a peek into the suffering of South African liberation hero, Robert Sobukwe.Derek Hook, Associate professor of Psychology, Duquesne University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1101002019-01-18T12:26:59Z2019-01-18T12:26:59ZHugh Lewin: South African journalist, author, militant and prisoner<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254506/original/file-20190118-100261-1k7xtdw.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Lewin served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Institute for the Advancement of Journalism</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hugh Lewin, who provided a unique voice on the South African story over many decades as militant, prisoner, journalist, author and much else, has <a href="https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2019/01/17/hugh-lewin-1939-2019-rip/">died</a> in Johannesburg at the age of 79.</p>
<p>Lewin is perhaps best known for two books that arose from his early involvement in the anti-apartheid underground. <em>Bandiet, Seven years in a South African Prison</em>, which has been described as a remarkable piece of prison literature, and <em>Stones against the Mirror</em>, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2011-06-28-a-life-of-constant-reckoning">published</a> decades later, in which he describes grappling with the betrayal of the man whose testimony sent him to jail.</p>
<p>But his poetry, his children’s books and his work in publishing and the training of journalists and refugees leave as big a legacy. An outpouring of tributes has greeted news of his death. He has been called “an incredible writer and courageous soldier” by <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/ramaphosa-expresses-heartfelt-condolences-following-death-of-hugh-lewin-18858097">President Cyril Ramaphosa</a>. and “a courageous stalwart” by Lord Peter Hain.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1085873804914688000"}"></div></p>
<p>I first encountered him when he ran the small publishing house Baobab Books in Zimbabwe. Later I worked with him at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in Johannesburg, and will mainly remember his gentle humour, a sharp intellect that was never cutting, his ability to listen and his concern for others. It made him a great friend and outstanding teacher and mentor to many.</p>
<p>I will also remember the quiet dignity with which he dealt with his gradually failing health over the past decade, cared for by his partner Fiona Lloyd. His wit was still on clear display when I saw him just about a week before his death, despite frailty and struggling with the words that were his life – “I keep bumping against empty sentences,” he had previously said. </p>
<h2>Radical politics</h2>
<p>Lewin was born in the small town of Lydenburg in 1939 into an Anglican missionary family. He studied at Rhodes University before entering journalism at the <em>Natal Witness</em> in Pietermaritzburg. </p>
<p>He was quickly drawn into anti-apartheid politics of an increasingly radical kind, and got involved in the National Committee of Liberation, later renamed as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/african-resistance-movement-arm">African Resistance Movement</a>. This group of activists grew out of the Liberal Party and embarked on a campaign of sabotage of infrastructure targets, which it carried out between 1961 and 1964.</p>
<p>In July 1964, Lewin, then 24, was sentenced to jail for seven years for sabotage. He served this time in Pretoria Central prison, where he kept notes of his experiences in his Bible. After his release, he left the country on a “permanent departure permit”, to begin life as an exile in London.</p>
<p><em>Bandiet</em> was published during this time. It manages both to provide harrowing detail of life in an apartheid jail and to use prison as a metaphor for the system as a whole. Reviewer Daniel Roux <a href="http://slipnet.co.za/view/reviews/doing-time-under-apartheid/">described</a> the book as deserving, “its place in the global canon of prison writing”. Roux called it an,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>understated, elegant and honest memoir that resists self-pity and self-glamorisation, and shows in careful detail what it feels like to drop out of one reality and to enter a completely different world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Long banned in South Africa, the book was republished in 2002 as <em>Bandiet – out of jail</em>, including additional later material.</p>
<h2>Anti-apartheid causes</h2>
<p>His family remember an additional result of the prison years: his skill at sewing, from sewing mailbags in jail. His stitching was apparently large but very neat. </p>
<p>During 10 years in London, he worked as a journalist and for the International Defence and Aid Fund, a support organisation for anti-apartheid causes. </p>
<p>Another 10 years of exile followed, this time in Zimbabwe, where he worked as publisher and wrote a series of children’s stories, the Jafta series, whose simple narratives spoke to the ordinary reality of Southern African children.
Hugh returned to South Africa in 1992 and began work at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism, the institution founded by Allister Sparks to train journalists for the new democracy. </p>
<p>He served on the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hugh-lewin">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> before returning to the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in 1998 as its executive director. It was during this time that he was involved in the early initiatives that led to the establishment of the journalism programme at Wits University.</p>
<p>But processing of the traumatic events of his youth was clearly not complete, and after retiring from the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism, he worked on the memoir that became <em>Stones against the Mirror</em>. Published in 2011, the book deals with a friendship that <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/lifestyle/2013-04-15-my-betrayer-my-friend/">ended in betrayal</a>. Adrian Leftwich was the man who gave his name to the security police and testified against him in court, and the book describes Lewin’s 40-year search for some kind of resolution. </p>
<p>South African author Nadine Gordimer <a href="https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2019/01/17/hugh-lewin-1939-2019-rip/">wrote</a> about the book: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There have been many accounts of life in the active struggle against the apartheid regime but this one is a fearless exploration into the deepest ground – the personal moral ambiguity of betrayal under brutal interrogation. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/our-authors/2273-hugh-lewin">won</a> the Alan Paton Award in 2012 – one of many honours he has received. </p>
<p>During these later years, Lewin also continued his involvement in training, travelling to the Myanmar border to work with refugees with his partner Fiona Lloyd. However, failing health made this more and more difficult. </p>
<p>Lewin leaves his partner, two daughters from an earlier marriage and three grandchildren.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110100/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Franz Krüger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hugh Lewin is best known for two books that arose from his early involvement in the anti-apartheid underground.Franz Krüger, Adjunct Professor of Journalism and Director of the Wits Radio Academy, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/944322018-05-03T14:32:22Z2018-05-03T14:32:22ZLiberation psychology: why an idea from the Salvadorean struggle is relevant today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216285/original/file-20180425-175038-4k48mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students perform a re-enactment of the 1989 killing of six Jesuits, including Ignacio Martin-Baro, during the Salvadorian civil war.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oscar Rivera/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Atlacatl Battalion was a notoriously violent US-trained “counter-insurgency unit” of the Salvadoran Army. On <a href="http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/salvador/informes/truth.html">16 November 1989</a> its soldiers entered the <a href="http://www.uca.edu.sv/">Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas</a> (or, UCA, to use its English acronym) in El Salvador in central America at around 1:00 AM.</p>
<p>In what became known as the <a href="https://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/04/04/remembering-the-uca-massacre/">UCA Massacre</a>, the soldiers shot and killed a rectory housekeeper and her teenage daughter. They also killed six Jesuit priests who had vocally advocated for a peaceful negotiated settlement between the military-led government of El Salvador and the <a href="https://www.solidarity-us.org/node/2151">Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional</a>, which had been at war with the government for a decade. The Salvadorian government was resourced financially and militarily by the US. </p>
<p>The UCA Massacre was indicative of the brutal violence that characterised much of the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012228123122975116.html">Salvadoran Civil War</a>. Clashes between popular movements and paramilitary forces during this time saw <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23866226">thousands</a> of political assassinations.</p>
<p>Social psychologist <a href="http://www.martinbarofund.org/about/Portillo_PAC.pdf">Ignacio Martín-Baró</a> was one the Jesuits killed in the UCA Massacre. Today, he is best known for his pioneering work on liberation psychology. His aim was to develop a critical approach to psychology that uses the discipline to help people challenge as well as change systems of oppression.</p>
<p>Almost 30 years after his death, Martín-Baró remains under-studied outside of South America. This is largely because he wrote in Spanish and his work was always rooted in Latin American experiences.</p>
<h2>Oppressive ends</h2>
<p>For a number of reasons the job of revitalising a psychology of liberation seems particularly pressing at the moment. For example, the <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-27386-001">“relevance”</a> of psychology is being called into question. Furthermore, mainstream psychologies are frequently used <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-45289-0_14">towards oppressive ends</a>.</p>
<p>Take the popularity of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/how-dangerous-is-jordan-b-peterson-the-rightwing-professor-who-hit-a-hornets-nest">Jordan Peterson</a>, a right-wing psychology professor at the University of Toronto. His case raises troubling questions around how psychology can and should be used. </p>
<p>Among other <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/26/17144166/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life">things</a>, Peterson’s unfounded, toxic and vitriolic rhetoric has claimed that feminists present <a href="https://twitter.com/_Saeen_/status/955889027957297152">“an unconscious wish for brutal male domination”</a>. Nations in the Global South are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgcoHmgqLBE">“pits of catastrophe”</a>, he says, and gender neutral bathrooms are <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37875695">entirely unnecessary</a>.</p>
<p>But there are alternatives. In developing a liberation psychology in, of, and for <a href="http://www.pins.org.za/pins/pins54/editorial-pins54-ratele.pdf">Africa</a>, we may benefit from returning to and, importantly, adapting Martín-Baró’s work. This work would need to be located in specific contexts. It would also need to align with broader liberation struggles, such as global feminist movements as well as anti-racism, anti-capitalism and decolonisation projects.</p>
<p>In an attempt to do this, the critical community psychologist Mohamed Seedat places liberation psychology in South Africa by <a href="http://libpsy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Libeartion-Psychology-Reflections-Nov-16-20141.pdf">imagining</a> a conversation between black consciousness thinker and activist, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a>, and Martín-Baró in 2014. Seedat imagines that both would reflect on the place of solidarities, emotion, compassion and imagination in struggles for liberation. This is especially important when considering the stark inequalities that mark contemporary South Africa’s liberal democracy.</p>
<h2>Developing a psychology of liberation</h2>
<p>Liberation psychology sets out to reposition psychology as a discipline that is able to speak to the psycho-social traumas of majority populations. Its starting position is to stand in solidarity with oppressed peoples. Liberation psychology aligns with their concerns, histories and values, while galvanising them towards radical social action.</p>
<p>Although not a distinct field of psychology, liberation psychology is perhaps best understood as a paradigm from which to conduct psychological work. This means that all psychology can (and should) be practised as liberation psychology. As Martín-Baró <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=EqMdtWL32K0C&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=a+psychology+of+liberation+requires+a+prior+liberation+of+psychology&source=bl&ots=aBEZbBv68f&sig=7e5rFeaDLHk3nmguQ_RVklg16ec&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjwor-WmNfZAhXHIMAKHb09CN4Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=a%20psychology%20of%20liberation%20requires%20a%20prior%20liberation%20of%20psychology&f=false">remarked</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a psychology of liberation requires a prior liberation of psychology. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He argued that dominant psychologies frequently sustained, bolstered and individualised oppressive social systems. Liberation psychology then challenges this globally dominant psychological approach. That’s because the latter had little to say about the cultures, politics and ideologies of the Latin American context in which he worked. </p>
<p>Liberation psychology requires psychologists to assume an explicitly political position when it comes to injustice. It therefore counters the kind of “neutrality” typically adopted by mainstream psychologies.</p>
<h2>Commitment to social justice</h2>
<p>Martín-Baró became increasingly well-known in the mid-1980s. He accepted a number of visiting professorships and served on various scientific committees. He always took time to speak out against the Salvadoran government and US imperialism.</p>
<p>His political allegiances and unwavering commitment to social justice were clear both in his life and his work. From 1987, under the tremendous violence that marked the presidency of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/24/obituaries/jose-napoleon-duarte-salvadoran-leader-in-decade-of-war-and-anguish-dies-at-64.html">José Napoleón Duarte</a>, he went into periods of hiding. Despite being born in Spain, Martín-Baró refused to leave El Salvador even after six attempts on his life and many prestigious job offers from around the world.</p>
<p>He wrote prolifically. Strands of politics and psychology are present in his 12 books and over 100 published articles. But he also wrote on war, education, gender, theology and population density. </p>
<p>Martín-Baró’s choice to write in Spanish, despite speaking English fluently, meant that, during his lifetime, his writing was largely ignored in Europe and America. But his reliance on Spanish ensured the relevance of his work within the contexts in which he worked.</p>
<p>Shortly after his 47th birthday, and 10 years to the day after receiving his doctoral degree, Martín-Baró was working on a manuscript. The Atlacatl Battalion entered the UCA campus, murdering him and his colleagues. It has been <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=jkKvCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=martin+baro+this+is+an+injustice;+you+are+scum&source=bl&ots=GX8FjSGH5o&sig=ZyaVddnld_SgH3IvO_0BW29JNF0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjy_8iewcrZAhWjLcAKHfSfDrUQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=martin%20baro%20this%20is%20an%20injustice%3B%20you%20are%20scum&f=false">reported</a> that his last words to the soldiers were:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>this is an injustice; you are scum.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Liberation psychology today</h2>
<p>Social, educational and - especially - community psychology have taken most readily to the liberation psychology paradigm. But Martín-Baró’s work reminds us of the urgency to bring all psychology into the orbit of liberation. Doing so allows for a necessarily ambitious and contextually-sensitive conception of liberation. Such a conception is both local and global in scope. It also disregards any false distinctions between psychology, politics and freedom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94432/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Malherbe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Social psychologist Ignacio Martín-Baró’s work reminds us of the urgency to bring all psychology into the orbit of liberation. Doing so allows a necessarily ambitious conception of liberation.Nick Malherbe, Researcher, Institute for Social and Health Sciences, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/916702018-04-09T14:54:29Z2018-04-09T14:54:29ZAn appreciation of South Africa’s jazz stalwart Jonas Gwangwa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212255/original/file-20180327-109175-tz2jim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C338%2C1985%2C1730&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa performing in Germany in 2010.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Music galore marked the passing early in 2018 of two South African titans of culture, Poet Laureate <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tribute-to-keorapetse-kgositsile-south-africas-poet-laureate-89700">Keorapetse Kgositsile</a> and trumpeter <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a>. Notable at their memorial events were powerfully moving tributes by two veterans still living: <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/biography-caiphus-semenya">Caiphus Semenya</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jonas-mosa-gwangwa">Jonas Gwangwa</a>. They have shared stages and the perils of exile with both. </p>
<p>Semenya and Gwangwa’s histories raise a persistent question – why, given the scale of their achievements, are they not more famous? The answer may be rooted in the prominence of live performance over composition: everybody remembers the man or woman on stage. Fewer enquire about who wrote – let alone arranged – the song.</p>
<p>So the 80-year-old Jonas Mosa Gwangwa can command instant warmth and recognition on stage, singing or playing trombone. That music has won him friends and fans around the world. The democratic South African government acknowledged his role in, as they termed it, “singing down apartheid” with the Order of Ikhamanga (Gold) in 2010. But even the <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/jonas-gwangwa">citation</a> for that award omitted much about the scope of his work as composer, arranger and director of stage shows.</p>
<p>Gwangwa was born in Orlando East, outside Johannesburg in 1937. As a student, he became a founder-member of the influential Huddleston Jazz Band alongside Masekela. And, like his contemporary, he also moonlighted wherever there was band work – for example, in trumpeter Elijah Nwanyane’s Rhythm Kings. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa often performed in Elijah’s Rhythm Kings.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When American pianist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/05/obituaries/john-mehegan-jazz-pianist-wrote-4-volume-textbook.html">John Mehegan</a> visited South Africa in the late 1950s, Gwangwa was one of the improvisers with whom he chose to work.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa performed with John Mehegan.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Those and other collaborations led, in turn, to the 1960 release of the <a href="http://revive-music.com/2011/06/21/the-jazz-epistles-jazz-epistle-verse-1/">“Jazz Epistles, Verse One”</a>. It was the first LP released by black modern jazz players in South Africa. It also featured <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kippie-jeremiah-moeketsi">Kippie Moeketsi</a>, Masekela, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abdullah-ibrahim">Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim)</a> and more. As Gwangwa told me in my book <em><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/soweto-blues-9780826416629/">Soweto Blues</a></em> (2004):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Kippie got interested in both Hugh and I because we were attempting all those Charlie Parker things, and Kippie said: ‘Oh, so you like this music? Come here, let me teach you…’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was during the making of the Jazz Epistles album that Gwangwa began to compose: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I sat at the piano, messing around until I came up with this tune <em>Carol’s Drive</em>… a style was being formulated, of course, only I was not aware of this… I was thinking that I could improvise so why can’t I compose?</p>
</blockquote>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Jazz Epistles with the Gwangwa composition, ‘Carol’s Drive’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His music writing skills grew when he was engaged as a copyist and pit player for the famous musical <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/king-kong-musical-1959-1961">“King Kong”</a>. When the production toured abroad in 1961, Gwangwa was one of many cast members who chose not to return to apartheid South Africa after the show’s run concluded. He ended up with Masekela at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. </p>
<p>Gwangwa played a pivotal role in selling South African music to initially uninterested US audiences. He was arranger and orchestra director on Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba’s 1965 Grammy winning album <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/an-evening-with-belafonte-makeba-mw0000453025">“An Evening with Makeba and Belafonte”</a>.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Train Song’ from ‘An Evening with Makeba and Belafonte’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over the following decade, he also had his own projects, touring with Masekela and Semenya in the band, Union of South Africa, alongside American jazz band, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-crusaders-mn0000136075">The Crusaders</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Union of South Africa.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gwangwa also released infectious Afro-pop with his band African Explosion.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HN9Jn74wi4I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Gwangwa’s band African Explosion.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Politically meaningful</h2>
<p>But, increasingly, the necessity to do something more politically meaningful with his music was becoming. As Gwangwa told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I figured that before I became an Americanised African, I have to go home and… grab a little kryptonite.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the early 1980s he was summoned by the president of the then banned <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/african-national-congress-anc">African National Congress (ANC)</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-kaizana-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a> to assist with a group of young musicians in the ANC training camps in Angola who wanted to perform. The result was a musical, called <em>Amandla!</em>. With its slick, disciplined stagecraft, varied programming, comedy, dance routines and original as well as traditional and struggle songs,<a href="http://www.peripherycenter.org/music/music-anti-apartheid-south-africa"> <em>Amandla!</em></a> was light years away from simplistic agit-prop.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The track ‘Sasol’ from the original musical ‘Amandla!’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The script-line was kept sharply up to date:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I always added or changed something to tally with whatever’s happening inside the country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Between tours, Gwangwa spent as much time as he could in the ANC’s military camps, rehearsing, scouting new talent and sharing the risks. After a vehicle accident in Angola shattered his leg, he spent more time in Botswana, working with the Gaborone-based Medu Arts Ensemble. It was there that much of his best loved <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/pure-sounds-of-africa/987954418">material</a> was developed.</p>
<p>The physical perils of exile manifested tragically on 14 June 1985 when the South African Defence Force <a href="http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/glossary/gaborone_raid.htm?tab=report">raided Gaborone</a>, killing more than a dozen people, many connected with Medu. For weeks afterwards, unmarked vehicles with South African number plates spied on Gaborone. One hunted Gwangwa through the streets until he evaded it in the narrow alleys of an informal settlement.</p>
<h2>Shortlisted for an Oscar</h2>
<p>In 1987, Gwangwa worked with UK composer George Fenton on the soundtrack for the movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092804/">“Cry Freedom”</a>, based on the friendship between newspaper editor Donald Woods and civil rights activist, Steve Biko. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cry-Freedom-Original-Picture-Soundtrack/dp/B000002O5E">music</a> was shortlisted for an Oscar and multiple other international awards, winning both an Ivor Novello and a Black Emmy award. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The title track from the soundtrack of ‘Cry Freedom’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although Gwangwa continued to perform – he played at both the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/british-anti-apartheid-movement-hosts-concert-mandela">1988 Nelson Mandela Birthday Concert</a> and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01b78f7">1990 Mandela release concerts in London</a> – that exposure opened additional doors to composing opportunities. Back home, by the mid-1990s his name was both a regular feature on music festival programmes, and a regular pop-up on film in composers’ credits. Since his return home, he has released eight albums.</p>
<p>Although composing now dominates his time, Gwangwa is still a powerfully compelling live artist. It may be a cliché, but one that is sometimes true: Gwangwa’s music at two memorial services for Kgositsile earlier this year – reprising songs that Medu veterans remember well from Botswana – really did not leave a dry eye in the house.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Gwangwa at a memorial service for Keorapetse Kgositsile.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South African jazz veteran Jonas Gwangwa has been getting recognition for the pivotal role he played in ‘singing down apartheid.’Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/829522017-09-04T08:58:38Z2017-09-04T08:58:38ZWhy is Steve Biko’s remarkable legacy often overlooked?<p>While Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Desmond Tutu are rightly venerated for their role in opposing and ending white minority rule in South Africa, another leader of the liberation years has been remarkably overlooked: Bantu Steven Biko, who led the enormously influential <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/sanov75.pdf">Black Consciousness Movement</a>. Four decades after his death in police custody on September 12 1977, he deserves to be recognised as one of the towering heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle.</p>
<p>Black Consciousness re-energised black opposition to apartheid and helped draw the world’s attention to the brutality of South Africa’s white minority rule. It began after the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville Massacre</a> in 1960, when established liberation movements such as the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) were banned by the South African government and forced into exile. With the organised opposition apparently moribund, the South African state presided over an economic boom for the white minority and created the conditions for apartheid’s so-called <a href="http://www.sadet.co.za/road_democracy_vol1.html">golden age</a>. </p>
<p>In 1969, with overt political activism and leadership largely dormant, Black Consciousness emerged from the South African Students’ Organisation to fill the void. Biko advocated that black liberation would only follow once psychological liberation from the internalised acceptance of racial oppression was achieved, <a href="http://www.sbf.org.za/home/index.php/steve-biko-quotes/">arguing</a> that “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”. </p>
<p>At its heart, Black Consciousness demanded pride, self-assertion, and self-confidence. Biko’s idea was that this would in turn stimulate a “revolution of the mind”, allowing oppressed peoples to overcome the racial inferiority <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/sasep71.pdf">and fear</a> propagated by white racism so they could appreciate that they were not just “appendages to the white society”. This relatively simple idea radically changed perceptions of the struggle. It helped instil a new cultural and psychological outlook among the black population, and thereby renewed the challenge to the apartheid system.</p>
<p>Biko turned ideas into a potent new weapon, and the white minority state was slow to appreciate that the spread of ideas could not be contained by physical force alone. As a consequence, Biko was given a <a href="https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/asset/biko-s-banning-order/IQEhU3uuNE2REg">banning order</a> in 1973, which confined him to King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape, and prevented him from speaking in public. </p>
<p>In fact, as <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2253092.stm">Nelson Mandela</a> put it, the apartheid state was so fearful of Biko’s influence that “they had to kill him to prolong the life of apartheid”.</p>
<p>In 1977, Biko was killed in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG5Zjt2SE28">police custody</a> after brutal interrogation and torture. Despite a subsequent political <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/11/18/lawyer-alleges-coverup-on-biko-death/ee85b03e-b0de-4a17-ba4c-d68e0d0f6634/?utm_term=.c578f80a0310">cover up</a>, the circumstances of his death were exposed, laying bare the violence of the apartheid state. His death led to greater international pressure against white minority rule, particularly via the global <a href="http://www.aamarchives.org/">Anti-Apartheid Movement</a> and influential people such as white journalist and activist <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/world/donald-woods-67-editor-and-apartheid-foe.html?mcubz=1">Donald Woods</a>, whose friendship with Biko was the subject of the 1987 film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq4VjE0_AVQ">Cry Freedom</a>.</p>
<h2>Squeezed out</h2>
<p>So why hasn’t Black Consciousness left as deep an institutional footprint as the ANC and its like? Part of the answer is that as a movement, it was relatively weak organisationally. </p>
<p>Beyond its activists’ community projects, Black Consciousness was never an effective or broad-based organisation; with most of its leaders imprisoned or banned by the mid-1970s, it was predominantly an intellectual movement confined to South Africa’s urban areas. As newly politicised South Africans variously joined and formed alternative organisations, it fragmented and began to lose influence. By 1977, it was deemed illegal under the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/apartheid-government-declares-19-organisations-unlawful">Internal Security Act</a>, and Biko’s murder robbed it of its intellectual and political leader. </p>
<p>But the movement was long outlived by its ideology. Ideas are very difficult to extinguish, and they don’t necessarily need an institutional home to flourish. The “revolutionary consciousness” Biko called for enabled people to appreciate their subjugation, and to take action. It inspired the children of Soweto to protest against the imposition of Afrikaans in schools in 1976, resulting in <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">an uprising</a> that caught the world’s attention and put the regime under more pressure than ever. </p>
<p>In fact, Black Consciousness was a more powerful catalyst than the established liberation movements. It “freed” minds, revived and mobilised political opposition, and re-energised the declining ANC as militant young activists joined the exiled armed struggle.</p>
<p>Yet since the end of apartheid in 1994, the governing ANC has worked hard to <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2017-07-20-the-anc-has-captured-the-countrys-history/#.WZ2eGD6GOpo">monopolise</a> the history of liberation. A plethora of groups including Black Consciousness, the <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/udf/origins.htm">United Democratic Front</a>, the <a href="http://newafricanmagazine.com/sobukwes-unremembering/">PAC</a>, and student organisations were all involved in the anti-apartheid struggle, yet the ANC has worked to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/31/anc-centenary-airbrushing-history">disregard</a> the efforts of alternative actors. To fully recognise the power and influence of Biko’s ideas would disrupt the ANC’s preferred version of history.</p>
<p>So even though Biko became a martyr for the anti-apartheid struggle in his day, he is too often left out of the story. The same goes for other figures who helped topple the system, especially those who worked outside the ANC. It’s long past time to properly celebrate these other elements of the struggle – of whom Steve Biko was surely among the strongest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82952/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Graham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The ANC has worked hard to monopolise the history of the anti-apartheid struggle – meaning transformational figures are being left out.Matthew Graham, Lecturer in History, University of DundeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/755992017-04-05T14:54:45Z2017-04-05T14:54:45ZWhy every generation of students must find, fulfil or betray its mission<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163641/original/image-20170403-21966-10yk9fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Student protests in South Africa have centred around free tertiary education.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Sumaya Hisham</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a recent opinion piece in the Business Day newspaper, author and academic Jonny Steinberg <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/business-day/20170303/281767039009215">suggested</a> that a “generational estrangement deeper than we have acknowledged” had emerged between the Fees Must Fall generation – those who’ve led protests against high university tuition fees and higher education structures they say are unjust – and their “scorn for almost everyone over the age of 40”. </p>
<p>At times over the past two years it may have seemed that a generation had emerged on South Africa’s campuses that has disowned the past. But generational rebellion is an enduring feature of all societies. Indeed, it’s the dynamic through which societies renew themselves and move forward. </p>
<p>Reflecting on more than 40 years of teaching three generations of University of Witwatersrand (Wits) students – incidentally, Steinberg was among them – I couldn’t help observing how each generation developed a distinct self consciousness; a world view. Each generation was shaped by particular political icons and engaged in particular forms of political action.</p>
<h2>Repression and state violence</h2>
<p>The first generation, the Soweto generation, looked for theories of radical – even revolutionary – change. The central figure was <a href="http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/marx.HTML">Karl Marx</a>, whether students chose to reject him and go in a different direction or to adopt one or other of the intellectual currents that had their source in Marx. These included <a href="https://global.britannica.com/biography/Antonio-Gramsci">Antonio Gramsci</a>, <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/leon-trotsky-9510793">Leon Trotsky</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/23/ernesto-laclau">Ernest Laclau</a>, <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/vladimir-lenin-9379007">Vladimir Lenin</a> and so on.</p>
<p>In 1981 half of the students in my honours class in industrial sociology were held under the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01828/05lv01829/06lv01927.htm">Terrorism Act</a>. Some were detained for months without trial. It was the time of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/united-democratic-front-udf">United Democratic Front</a>; of trade union militancy and nationwide resistance to apartheid. </p>
<p>But it was also a time of repression, of state violence – even assassination. The assassination of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/david-joseph-webster">David Webster</a>, a colleague in the department of anthropology, was a dramatic illustration of those times.</p>
<p>The release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and 1994’s new democratic government was an event that profoundly changed the classroom. This, the 1994 generation, was quite different from those who’d come before.</p>
<h2>Decolonisation of knowledge</h2>
<p>For many, the classroom was an opportunity to escape the poverty and political turmoil of the townships for a career in a transformed public sector or the private sector. But they were rebels too. I recall students occupying the administrative building and trashing the campus in support of their demands for the transformation of Wits. Indeed, one of the demands was for free education. </p>
<p>By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, around 2009, I sensed a new assertive spirit in the corridors of the humanities faculty at Wits. A new generation was in the making, a third generation. It was to culminate in the Fees Must Fall movement of 2015 and 2016. </p>
<p>In February 2016 I was in discussions with my new, black female Masters interns about what they wanted to research for their theses. They announced: “We are tired of white people studying blacks; we want to study whites.” This generation had found its voice and the language to express their feelings of discomfort and <a href="https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/article/view/2839/2543">sense of racial injustice</a> in a world where knowledge production is still dominated by whites. </p>
<p>The decolonisation of knowledge was their aim. Post-colonial theory was their guide. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/26/arts/edward-w-said-literary-critic-advocate-for-palestinian-independence-dies-67.html">Edward Said</a> and <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/fanon/national-culture.htm">Frantz Fanon</a>, and African intellectuals such as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a> and <a href="http://www.ngugiwathiongo.com/">Ngugi Wa’ Thiongo</a> were now the key theorists. </p>
<p>What’s striking about this, the third generation, is the leading role played by black female students. Black feminism, the black body and sexuality become the dominant discourse of this generation. This third generation had found its voice. They were now comfortable in their skin and proud of their identity.</p>
<p>The teacher student relationship – what I call the chalk face – is a crucial interface between the generations. It’s here that academic generations are made. A central demand of the current generation of students is the need to recognise their dignity, their material needs, their distinct family and cultural backgrounds, and of course their language.</p>
<h2>Discovering a new mission</h2>
<p>But the generational rebellion that Steinberg refers to is not simply about the need for better communication. </p>
<p>It’s a demand that goes back many generations. Indeed it was <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/robert-sobukwe-inaugural-speech-april-1959">a demand</a> made by Pan African Congress founder <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-mangaliso-sobukwe">Robert Sobukwe</a> when he was a tutor at Wits nearly 60 years ago. </p>
<p>It’s a demand to change the content of the curriculum so that South Africans, especially black men and women from all over Africa, can become the producers of knowledge. </p>
<p>To rebuild trust and mutual respect between the generations we need to make our classrooms places where our students are not only the consumers of knowledge produced elsewhere. This is the challenge for the graduating class of 2016. In the memorable words of Fanon:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Your mission is to become the authors of the books the next generation of students read; the articles they cite and the theories that shape their thinking. </p>
<p><em>This is an edited extract of the author’s speech on the occasion of being awarded an <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/graduations/2017/a-life-servicing-many-generations-.html">honorary doctorate</a> from the University of the Witwatersrand.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Webster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Generational rebellion is an enduring feature of all societies. Indeed, it is the dynamic through which societies renew themselves and move forward.Edward Webster, Professor Emeritus, Society, Work and Development Institute, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/753262017-03-28T14:56:36Z2017-03-28T14:56:36ZZille, tweeting and inanity: more reasons for white South Africans to shut up<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162927/original/image-20170328-30784-7cj17z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Western Cape Premier
Helen Zille.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mark Wessels</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s remarkable how much of a shitstorm Twitter creates when in the hands of politicians – with serious costs for the rest of us. </p>
<p>Helen Zille, premier of the Western Cape province and former leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance’s (DA), is – according to her acolytes in the press and most of white South African Facebook followers – irredeemably insightful, strong, lover of truth, seeker after justice, <a href="http://thoughtleader.co.za/traps/2009/05/19/zille-needs-to-understand-symbolism/">Biko champion</a> and barely a whisker away from being canonised.</p>
<p>Championed by luminaries ranging from ostensible liberals and outright righwingers, how could she possibly go wrong? </p>
<p>Well, by making utterly stupid arguments, for starters. And then going on to defend her own stupidity in a piece of breathtaking solipsism. And tweeting all the way down.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"842260539644497921"}"></div></p>
<p>Let’s apply some (very basic) logic to what she actually wrote. What should have been Zille’s starting point (somehow, she ended with this), is one we all recognise: that at the end of colonialism, about to elect a strong man leader for 30 years and throw human rights out the window, Singapore was (in her own words) a</p>
<blockquote>
<p>dirt-poor country [with] mass unemployment, lack of education, almost non-existent sanitation, a dearth of natural resources (not even sufficient water), squalid shack settlements prone to major fires, opium addiction, the absence of a sense of nationhood and national pride among people with myriad languages, “races”, cultures, <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/what-i-learnt-in-singapore">religions</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Why not stop there? All that anyone can say for colonialism is that it was barbaric. Zille seems to have an awareness of that fact, and every colonial subject can recognise it. </p>
<h2>Defending the indefensible</h2>
<p>I presume that Zille would agree that there can never be a defence of one country claiming to own another. The function of colonialism was theft – of resources, labour, rights, freedom, culture, practice, history, bread – everything. It was not a magnanimous sharing of education and culture and sipping tea. It was brutal, violent and murderous. </p>
<p>Bodies – black and brown bodies – were a colonial commodity. Colonies provided the slaves that built much of the vaunted “first world infrastructure” of large swathes of the world. The families of those slaves live with us today. That is already a massive, global psycho-social rent in the social fabric that beneficiaries refuse to recognise. The wealth generated by slave ownership still shapes the power structure of <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/">present-day Britain</a>.</p>
<p>Colonial powers have in recent times tried to paint themselves as more or less benevolent – but the truth is that all colonialism is destructive, rapine and hideous. The British populace disagree – over 40% believe Empire was <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/07/26/britain-proud-its-empire/">“a good thing”</a>. Old Etonian David Cameron <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-people-are-proud-of-colonialism-and-the-british-empire-poll-finds-a6821206.html">claimed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think there is an enormous amount to be proud of in what the British Empire did and was responsible for. But of course there were bad events as well as good events. The bad events we should learn from and the good events we should celebrate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some “bad events” like the slave trade, the murder of indigenous people, combined with theft of the natural resources from millions, the simultaneous impoverishment of millions more, and the destruction of local custom and culture that got in the way of “progress”. </p>
<h2>Conflating colonialism with post-colonialism</h2>
<p>I don’t for a moment assume Zille agrees with this nonsense – so why the fuss? Because she conflates a post-colonial narrative, and of a modernising global economy, with colonialism. Surely even Zille can see that colonialism doesn’t equate with post-colonialism? </p>
<p>I fear not, since her follow-up self-aggrandising piece on <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/what-i-learnt-in-singapore">“what I learned in Singapore”</a> uses the personal pronoun a remarkable 108 times, suggesting an ego that may do with some of the Buddhism that is the main religion in Singapore. But even with the glaring limitations on human rights in Singapore, surely it is apparent that a post-colonial nation can trade its way to cellphones and microsurgery – it’s not a gift of colonialism, it is how a country manages its affairs after colonialism. </p>
<p>So we hopefully agree – Singapore was stuffed up by colonialism. As was most of Africa and most of Asia. Singaporeans don’t go around lauding colonialism and the gifts it bestowed, and no-one else should either. They talk about what they did after Empire sidled out of the picture. The post-colonial path is what is in fact being discussed. </p>
<p>Zille got it completely wrong, then continued arguing how right she was.</p>
<p>South Africa’s independent judiciary isn’t because of colonialism, which sent black freedom fighters to the gallows. It’s guaranteed by the country’s post-colonial <a href="http://www.gov.za/DOCUMENTS/CONSTITUTION/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-1">constitution</a>, drawn up in large part by the African National Congress. </p>
<p>The country’s transport infrastructure was a great colonial inheritance – it ensured that white South Africans had buses and trains and tarred roads and traffic lights – and black South Africans had none. Entrepreneurial black South Africans created the minibus taxi industry because blacks felt they may want to go – well, anywhere they wanted – while the authorities felt they only needed to go to work, and then back home. </p>
<p>So, wrong again – South Africa’s post-colonial transport infrastructure created linkages between spatially and racially separate communities, introduced sustainable mass transit systems, the <a href="http://showme.co.za/pretoria/tourism/a-guide-to-the-gautrain/">Gautrain</a>, and the rest. </p>
<p>The country’s piped water is a miracle – of post-apartheid delivery. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>(In 1995) only 33% of African households, compared with 72% of coloured, and 97% of both Indian and white ones, have the use of running tap water inside the dwelling for <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/LivingInSA/LivingInSA.pdf">drinking purposes</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yup, that’s colonialism for you. So what did the new South African government do? It made access to clean water a right in the constitution, and since then has connected virtually all urban dwellings to piped water, though rural lags some way behind. </p>
<p>In the examples cited by Zille, not one stands up to her own test. </p>
<h2>Through whites-only glasses</h2>
<p>So when Zille tells black people how stupid they are for electing the corrupt ANC and for not following the Singaporean path, she’s quintessentially white: rights don’t matter, money does. When you’ve always had rights, you don’t value them or understand why others coo about them so much. You can’t eat or trade them, right? Surely you’d rather have a job now, and not waste time on those pesky freedoms? Much rather be arrested for littering the streets of Singapore, secure in the knowledge that your country has modernised at the expense of human rights – the perfect neo-liberal trade-off. </p>
<p>It takes a spectacularly blind set of whites-only glasses to make this argument. And there seems to be a whole horde of white South Africans ready to support her – to agree that all modern technology in the country is the “gift” of the whites, for which blacks should be grateful. </p>
<p>The justification for this argument? The usual – just look at the ANC. </p>
<p>Be clear, dear reader, this article is not a defence of the ANC. It’s a defence of the right of indigenous people to their own freedom, and to use it however they choose – exactly what colonialism denied. Many used those freedoms to vote DA. I wonder if they will think twice next time, knowing that their glorious former leader seems to feel that colonialism was the white man’s burden, and modernity is the white man’s gift. </p>
<p>Why don’t they thank the whites for it?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75326/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Everatt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Western Cape Premier Helen Zille ‘s Twitter rant about colonialism caused an uproar as it brought back memories of a brutal and violent time in South Africa.David Everatt, Head of Wits School of Governance, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/737902017-02-28T14:52:01Z2017-02-28T14:52:01ZRest in power, Miriam Tlali: author, enemy of apartheid and feminist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158727/original/image-20170228-29917-u3nyzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Portrait of Miriam Tlali as part of Adrian Steirn’s 21 Icons South Africa project. Date: 15.10.2014.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adrian Steirn/Courtesy of 21 Icons South Africa</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Renowned South African author <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/miriam-tlali">Miriam Masoli Tlali</a> passed away on February 24 2017, aged 83. Born November 11 1933 in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, Tlali was the first black South African woman to publish a novel in English within the country’s borders. She is best known for this work, first published as “<a href="http://www.postcolonialweb.org/sa/tlali/mukhuba3.html">Muriel at Metropolitan</a>” in 1975 by Ravan Press. </p>
<p>It was re-issued in 2004 by the title she had preferred from the start, “Between Two Worlds”. Based on her time as an administrative assistant at a furniture store in downtown Johannesburg during the height of apartheid, the novel documents the daily humiliations of petty apartheid. There were two types of apartheid, grand apartheid and the petty version, which the <em>New York Times</em> once <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/14/opinion/before-it-s-too-late-in-south-africa.html">described</a> as,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the practice of segregation in the routine of daily life – in lavatories, restaurants, railway cars, busses, swimming pools and other public facilities. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Muriel at Metropolitan”/“Between Two Worlds” was the first literary text that portrayed the degrading conditions under which African women laboured during apartheid. It highlighted how strict influx control into “white” cities hampered black women’s opportunities for employment and fulfilling family lives.</p>
<p>Tlali hated the original title of her first novel. She agreed to have it published under that name because her mother was close to dying, and she wanted her to see the novel in print before her death. In the preface to “Between Two Worlds”, Tlali recounted that after the novel’s publication: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I returned to my matchbox house in Soweto, locked myself in my little bedroom and cried… Five whole chapters had been removed; also paragraphs, phrases, and sentences. It was devastating, to say the least.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite these misgivings, “Muriel at Metropolitan” made a big impact globally. Forty five different editions of the novel were published between 1975 and 2005, with translations into three languages.</p>
<h2>Protest literature</h2>
<p>Tlali recovered from her devastation, going on to publish the Black Consciousness novel “<a href="https://theconversation.com/under-the-influence-of-the-black-consciousness-novel-amandla-62374">Amandla</a>” (1980). It was grouped by critics as part of the “Soweto School” of protest literature. </p>
<p>The novel is a rich evocation of the youth uprising against apartheid education and the apartheid state in 1976. Inspired by the uprising and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a>’s Black Conciousness <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/defining-black-consciousness">ideology</a>, it centres around Pholoso, a young freedom fighter who rallies the youth of Soweto against apartheid. He goes on to become part of the underground resistance, eventually going into exile.</p>
<p>Soweto, and its abject relationship to the wealthy Johannesburg, was an enduring concern for Tlali in her fiction. She published “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1118155.Footprints_In_The_Quag">Footprints in the Quag: Stories and Dialogues from Soweto</a>” (also published as “Soweto Stories”), a collection of short stories delving in the experiences of Sowetans (mostly women) in 1989.</p>
<p>She also published a collection of short stories, interviews and essays in “<a href="http://www.news24.com/Archives/City-Press/Behind-the-Icon-Miriam-Tlali-Her-story-20150429">Mihloti</a>” (1984), published by Skotaville Press, which she helped establish. Tlali was also a frequent contributor to the anti-apartheid literary journal “<a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/staffrider-magazine-1978-1993">Staffrider</a>”, which she co-founded. The journal was an important vehicle for publishing black literature and criticism during the apartheid years, often the only South African outlet for black creative writing.</p>
<h2>Enemy of the state</h2>
<p>Because of her stature internationally and the political content of her novels, Tlali became an enemy of the state. Both her novels were immediately banned by apartheid censors. Her political and literary prominence made her a target of the regime’s notorious <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03497.htm">Security Branch</a>. This dreaded secret police unit repeatedly harassed, arrested and assaulted Tlali as a tactic of intimidation. </p>
<p>When I interviewed her in 2006, Tlali recalled being brutally beaten in her home in Soweto by police on several occasions. During those years, she would wrap her manuscripts-in-progress in plastic shopping bags at the end of each day, and bury them in her back yard to avoid police confiscating them during raids.</p>
<p>Despite this persecution, Tlali never countenanced leaving her beloved Soweto. For her, going into exile was “unthinkable”, though she travelled frequently to take up residencies and teaching opportunities. </p>
<p>She recalled, on her return to South Africa from a residency at Iowa State University, having to smuggle her manuscript off the plane. Police were waiting for her at passport control, ready to seize any politically incendiary material. Tlali gave her manuscript to an American on board the flight while waiting to deplane. She quietly retrieved it from the American embassy at a later date. </p>
<p>She was also resident at Yale University between 1989 and 1990, wrote a play, “Crimen Injuria”, while at a residency in Holland, and was often more recognised internationally than in her own country.</p>
<h2>Intersectional feminist</h2>
<p>Tlali was an intersectional feminist long before this term was coined by <a href="http://www.aapf.org/kimberle-crenshaw/">Kimberlé Crenshaw</a> in 1989. Or before intersectional feminist politics was made current in South Africa by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/rhodesmustfall-23991">#RhodesMustFall</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%23FeesMustFall">#FeesMustFall</a> student movements.</p>
<p>Her fiction, at first dismissed by literary critics (mostly men) as too descriptive – they say it had an almost stenographic quality. It is the only work of its time and place that systematically dissects the overlap of apartheid racial discrimination and patriarchal oppression. Tlali’s fiction depicted the intersectional nature of African women’s oppression under both of these systems. </p>
<p>She belonged to the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/womens-national-coalition">National Women’s Coalition</a>, which advocated for the inclusion of women’s rights in South Africa’s constitution in the run-up to the first democratic election in 1994. As a member Tlali had an incisive analysis of women’s oppression, and was a passionate advocate against gender-based violence. </p>
<p>This is a prominent theme in her fiction. Both “Amandla” and “Footprints in the Quag” highlight the occurrence and effects of domestic violence, rape and sexual harassment in the township of Soweto. Yet her women characters are not victims – they fight back, physically or through educating their communities. They carve out for themselves social spaces where they are able to organise against such abuse. </p>
<p>Tlali received numerous awards during her lifetime, most notably, the Presidential Award, the <a href="http://www.gov.za/about-government/national-orders-awards-28-october-2008">Order of Ikhamanga (Silver)</a> in 2008, as well as a <a href="http://sala.org.za/2005-2/miriam-tlali/">lifetime achievement award</a> from the South African Literary Awards.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73790/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barbara Boswell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Author Miriam Tlali was an intersectional feminist long before this term was coined or its politics made fashionable in South Africa by student movements.Barbara Boswell, Senior Lecturer, English, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/708662017-01-05T17:58:38Z2017-01-05T17:58:38ZRamaphosa has what it takes to fix South Africa’s ailing ANC. But …<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151714/original/image-20170104-18647-21pae9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cyril Ramaphosa celebrates his election as deputy president of South Africa's embattled governing ANC.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s deputy president <a href="http://www.gov.za/about-government/leaders/profile/987">Cyril Ramaphosa</a> has confirmed his availability to <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/ramaphosa-i-am-available-to-lead-20161215">contest the presidency</a> of the governing <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/splash/index">ANC</a> at its 54th national conference later this year. He has already secured the endorsement of the South African Congress of Trade Unions <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/politics/2016-11-24-politics-live-why-cosatus-backing-is-a-big-deal-for-ramaphosa/">(Cosatu)</a>.</p>
<p>He failed in his bid to lead the party once before. Twenty years ago his comrades Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma were chosen ahead of him for the top two jobs at the party’s <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/anc-national-conference-1991-2013">1997 Mafikeng Conference</a>. If his dream is going to be realised this time he is going to have to take on a major task of convincing ANC branches of his suitability.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa will need a restoration and renewal narrative to convince them. He’ll need to show he has a plan to rebuild the party, and inspire its cadres sitting on the side-lines to join in his renewal efforts.</p>
<p>If successful, he will need to switch immediately to election campaigning mode. The country goes to the polls in 2019 and he will have to do everything in his powers to salvage the former liberation movement’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/sharp-tongued-south-african-voters-give-ruling-anc-a-stiff-rebuke-63606">declining electoral support</a>.</p>
<p>For South Africans at large, he will need to show how the ANC as a brand can reclaim its sentimental and inspirational traits to warrant their trust.</p>
<p>These tasks seem insurmountable when one considers the extent of damage done to the party since Zuma’s rise to power was solidified at the ANC’s bitterly divisive <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-11-02-polokwane-and-mangaung-shades-of-difference/#.WG36ext97IU">Polokwane conference in 2007</a>. But Ramaphosa has faced seemingly insurmountable tasks of building organisations in challenging times before. He has also served in various international organisations and has been a member of teams appointed to <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/cyril-ramaphosa-anthony-butler">help countries in transition</a>.</p>
<p>He will need to draw on all this experience to succeed.</p>
<h2>A history of organising under difficult conditions</h2>
<p>Born on November 17 1952, Ramaphosa is from a generation I <a href="http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fwMoyHJCMfM">regard as the agitators</a> in the struggle for South Africa’s liberation. Inspired by <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-bikos-black-consciousness-philosophy-resonates-with-youth-today-46909">Steve Biko</a>, among others, this generation – born in the early 40s to late 60s – injected greater momentum to the fight against apartheid in the 1970s and 1980s.</p>
<p>As a young person Ramaphosa was an active member of the erstwhile <a href="http://v1.sahistory.org.za/pages/people/bios/ramaphosa-cm.htm">Student Christian Movement</a> (SCM) at Sekano-Ntoane High School in Soweto. His evangelical experience cannot be understated in the task that confronts him now. Much like the biblical character <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Nehemiah+2&version=NKJV&interface=am">Nehemiah</a>, his task is to inspire a dejected and hopeless people with a new vision.</p>
<p>That will not be a new experience for Ramaphosa. As historian Anthony Butler writes, while pursuing standard nine and ten at Mphaphuli High School in his parents’ village of Sibasa in Venda, he built a <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/cyril-ramaphosa-anthony-butler">stronger SCM within a short time</a>. This was after he was elected to its leadership in the first year of his arrival.</p>
<p>The same happened when he went to study at the then University of the North (now University of Limpopo). The SCM was weak and seen by some as a tool of domination. Rhamaphosa worked tirelessly with <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/frank-chikane">Frank Chikane</a> and others to turn it into a vibrant organisation. It became a vehicle of struggle when the Black Consciousness student movements <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/banning-south-african-students-organisation-saso-and-student-politics-1980s">were banned</a>. </p>
<p>Ramaphosa’s claim to fame, however, is the work he did in founding the National Mineworkers Union (NUM) in the early 1980s. The NUM operated under the auspices of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/council-unions-south-africa-cusa-formed">Council of Unions of South Africa</a>. Until then, attempts to unite mineworkers and fight for their representation in the mines had <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/cyril-ramaphosa-anthony-butler">failed</a>.</p>
<p>The fact that Ramaphosa was able to build a union in a mining industry fraught with ethnic politics, worker fragmentation and a history of state-sanctioned exploitation attests to his organisation building capabilities. This is especially so considering that he had never worked on the mines himself.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa’s colourful leadership continued over the next three decades across various settings. He became the ANC’s chief negotiator during the country’s transition from apartheid to democracy, beating ANC president Oliver Tambo’s protégé, Thabo Mbeki, to the position. </p>
<p>Ramaphosa became the secretary general of the ANC at its <a href="http://www.incwajana.com/cyril-ramaphosa/">1991 National Conference in Durban</a> after out-campaigning Zuma. He was succeeded in the position in 1997 by <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kgalema-petrus-motlanthe">Kgalema Motlanthe</a>, with whom he had worked at the NUM. </p>
<p>As the chief negotiator of the ANC he managed the negotiating committee. He showed great leadership, alongside the National Party’s counterpart Roelf Meyer when the talks broke down.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151726/original/image-20170104-18644-10uzn9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cyril Ramaphosa holds the newly signed South African Constitution as President Nelson Mandela looks on.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ramaphosa became a member of parliament in 1994 and headed the constitutional assembly which <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/drafting-and-acceptance-constitution">drew up the final constitution</a> of the republic. This was finally approved – to international acclaim – in <a href="http://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-1">1996</a>.</p>
<p>But after his crushing defeat by Mbeki to the post of deputy president in 1997 Ramaphosa went into business but maintained some involvement in politics. He was to make a sterling return 15 years later when he was elected ANC deputy president in 2012 at the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/53rd-national-conference-mangaung">53rd National Conference</a> in Mangaung.</p>
<h2>Ramaphosa the businessman</h2>
<p>Ramaphosa was among the first beneficiaries of the first wave of <a href="http://www.gov.za/broad-based-black-economic-empowerment-summit">equity-based black economic empowerment deals</a> in 1997. In partnership with medical doctor and anti-apartheid activist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nthato-harrison-motlana">Nthato Motlana</a> he joined <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=883851">New African Investment Limited</a>. From those early beginnings he was to form <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=25599686">Shanduka Group</a>, an unlisted entity with interests in resources, energy, real estate, banking, insurance and telecommunications. </p>
<p>He also chaired a number of South Africa’s largest companies, such as <a href="http://www.bidvest.com/downloads/pdf/Bidvest_Prod_Bro_Aug2013.pdf">Bidvest Group</a> and <a href="https://www.mtn.co.za/Pages/Home.aspx">MTN</a> and held non-executive board positions of others such as <a href="http://www.standardbank.co.za/standardbank/">Standard Bank</a> and <a href="http://www.ab-inbev.com/">SABMiller</a>.</p>
<p>His most <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-06-19-00-marikana-shootings-will-always-stalk-ramaphosa">controversial role</a> was as a non-executive member of the mining group Lonmin’s board. Shanduka was a minority shareholder in Lonmin, which owned the mine in Marikana <a href="https://theconversation.com/marikana-tragedy-must-be-understood-against-the-backdrop-of-structural-violence-in-south-africa-43868">where 34 miners were shot by police in 2012</a>.</p>
<h2>Leadership qualities</h2>
<p>Ramaphosa has the leadership experience to salvage the ANC and become a great president with a wide range of skills. He has the potential to restore hope at the top of the ANC following a period of mediocrity and scandal.</p>
<p>However, while he has a chance in convincing ANC members of his potential, the broader South African public will be even harder to convince. Firstly, as a key player at Lonmin, Ramaphosa is seen as having failed to improve the working conditions of the mineworkers he fought for in the 1980s. </p>
<p>Secondly, his relationship with Zuma, whom he has served as deputy president, has led to some awkward questions. Until last year he appeared to be complacent – or actively defended – Zuma even as the president became more deeply embroiled in alleged corruption scandals. This silence was evident even when Zuma was accused of violating the constitution Ramaphosa was party to creating.</p>
<p>It may be that Ramaphosa has the restoration and renewal narrative – as well as the organisational building skills and tenacity – to turn his own fate and that of the ANC around, but it’s going to be a ‘<a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-12-05-ramaphosa-my-long-walk-has-not-yet-ended/#.WG4S0xt97IU">long walk</a>’ as he put it. Time will tell.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70866/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ongama Mtimka chairs the board of Isidima Development Council which seeks to advance socioeconomic transformation in the Eastern Cape. </span></em></p>Cyril Ramaphosa is in pole position to become president of South Africa’s ruling ANC, 20 years after he lost the position by Thabo Mbeki. But, it won’t be easy. Neither will rebuilding the party.Ongama Mtimka, Lecturer and PhD Candidate, Department of Political & Conflict Studies, Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/652572016-09-29T17:24:48Z2016-09-29T17:24:48ZThe Mandela Foundation’s verdict on the Mandela era: it failed …<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139460/original/image-20160927-11541-sq8bj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nelson Mandela, accompanied by his wife Winnie, walks out of the Victor Verster prison on February 11, 1990.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ulli Michel/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a little-heralded move in 2015, the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/">Nelson Mandela Foundation</a> released a <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-15-the-nelson-mandela-foundation-race-and-identity-in-2015/">“position paper”</a> on race and identity. It was written by the Foundation’s CEO Sello Hatang and archivist Verne Harris. </p>
<p>Sadly, it triggered little debate, possibly overtaken by #Rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall, the subsequent political fallout and rise of Fallist <a href="http://digitalcollections.sit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3363&context=isp_collection">movements</a>. This is ironic, given that the purpose of the paper seemed to be re-positioning the Foundation to be a part of the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/real-state-of-the-nation-south-africa-after-1990/oclc/54363879">segment of civil society</a> that regards 1990-1994 as a moment of failure.</p>
<p>The African National Congress (ANC) and other liberation movements were unbanned by the apartheid government in 1990. In 1994 South Africa had its first democratic election, which the ANC won. The four year period came with a number of gains, most obviously formal equality, gender equality and others. There was also defeat for many less savoury proposals such as minority rights and so on. </p>
<p>Inevitably, there were also compromises such as “<a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/negotiations-toward-new-south-africa-grade-12-1#sthash.i13r9Iqn.dpuf">sunset clauses</a>” that guaranteed the gradual phasing out of white rule rather than one dramatic handover of power. These clauses ensured public service jobs for white people for a period of time. A key compromise protected private property - the latter arguably entrenching existing inequality and appearing later in the <a href="http://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/constitution-republic-south-Africa-1996-1">Constitution</a>.</p>
<p>For a foundation honouring Nelson Mandela, this revisionist piece was quite a move. Here 1994 is re-imagined as a moment of defeat, in which “white” capital entrenched itself in return for political power for the ANC, and bought off the total defeat of total strategy for 30 pieces of silver. </p>
<p>That a complete military and political victory for the ANC was even on the cards in 1990-1994 is the product of malfunctioning hindsight. But it has become part of a discourse that looks back at 1994 as an opportunity lost, the onset of failure, because the present feels too much like the past and change is slow and uneven.</p>
<p>The paper does three quite remarkable things. It jettisons non-racialism (to which Mandela’s political life was dedicated) in favour of black consciousness. Secondly, it sees the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) macroeconomic strategy, adopted while Mandela was president, as the source of our current malaise by “either setting or being closely aligned to a global neoliberal agenda”. Lastly, it writes off most of Mandela’s reign as comprising “grand symbolic gestures” and reconciliatory moves, which (it argues) failed.</p>
<h2>New lingo</h2>
<p>The paper ignores non-racialism by seeking to create new terminology. The authors ignore the <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-origins-of-non-racialism/">fact</a> that non-racialism emerged from the 1950s when racists were termed “racialists” and non-racialism was and is, at its core, anti-racist. </p>
<p>The authors drop any mention of non-racialism whatsoever. They fail to grapple with how South Africans get beyond the present other than by appealing to black consciousness and railing against white supremacy. This elision reflects an error in judgement. Non-racialism was born not out of a wishy-washy “can’t we all just get along” set of sentiments. It was, from the outset, the adversary of racialism, in the language of its time.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139463/original/image-20160927-11554-19xop1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139463/original/image-20160927-11554-19xop1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139463/original/image-20160927-11554-19xop1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139463/original/image-20160927-11554-19xop1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139463/original/image-20160927-11554-19xop1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139463/original/image-20160927-11554-19xop1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139463/original/image-20160927-11554-19xop1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Graca Machel, the late former South African president Nelson Mandela’s wife at the annual Nelson Mandela Lecture in 2016. It is arranged by his Foundation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cornell Tukiri/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although Mandela stood by non-racialism through his political life (after flirting with more exclusive Africanism while in the ANC Youth League), the authors argue that South Africans should rather use “non-racism”. To waste the long history and constitutional <a href="http://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/Constitution-Republic-South-Africa-1996-1">imperative</a> around non-racialism seems at least poor strategy, compounding questionable history.</p>
<p>The paper adopts similar views to those expressed by various Africanist movements: that non-racialism is an outdated liberal colour blindness, a soft search for a “Kumbaya moment” rather than toughing it out by <a href="http://thoughtleader.co.za/simonhowell/2012/11/26/the-problem-with-non-racialism/">confronting race</a>. There seems to be a desire to be “relevant” by pandering to a more racially muscular black consciousness.</p>
<p>Emerging from this view of history, the solution is to return to and tear up the compromises that were made. The next step is to organise an “economic <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/codesa-negotiations">Codesa</a>” – the forum where all political formations negotiated the post-apartheid future – and, by destroying the economic underpinnings of white privilege, attain equality. </p>
<p>This is an undeniably attractive proposition. It however ignores context and what practically could be done then, or now. Rather than accepting the compromises that were required and taking the struggle for a just society forward, meeting old and new challenges as they arise, the Foundation’s proposed move is backward, to shred the 1990-1994 compromises and start afresh.</p>
<h2>A meeting of equals</h2>
<p>South Africa’s best known proponent of black consciousness, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a>, <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/nonracialism/black_man_youre_on_your_own.htm">wrote eloquently</a> of the need for integration to be based on full and substantive equality. </p>
<p>This requires a meeting of equals, not the subsuming of black people into white society – a point central to critical race theory and identity politics. But this also applies to non-racialism, which <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589346.2012.656912">asserts substantive equality</a> as its starting point. </p>
<p>The authors of the “Position Paper” clearly find much to value in <a href="https://spacrs.wordpress.com/what-is-critical-race-theory/">Critical Race Theory</a> and black consciousness. But they identify a hierarchy within “race and identity” that is headed by white domination and black un-freedom. No intersectionality here, even though it is core to Critical Race Theory. No integrated approach that regards the challenges of race, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity and so on as equally important and fundamentally linked. </p>
<p>No-one walks a single path through life. But the paper shows little appreciation of this. Race – white domination, to be specific – trumps all. Flowing from this logic, xenophobia was tritely rejected as an “unhelpful label”. That provides scant comfort to the victims of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/xenophobic-violence-democratic-south-africa">xenophobic violence</a> that erupted a month or so after the paper appeared.</p>
<p>According to the authors, race “is still a critical fault line in South Africa’s social landscape”, a point all South Africans agree with. They go on to argue:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Public discourses on race, in our view, are dominated by expressions of denial, alienation, obfuscation and even self-hatred. Listen to the spiteful chattering on social media and radio talk shows, in letters to newspaper editors and at dinner parties. Listen to the often laborious constructions and deconstructions of the academy. Listen to the platitudes of politicians and bureaucrats either papering over or playing fast and loose with the pain and confusion of daily experience.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Few authors like being told, “it is more complicated than that”. But this is glaringly the correct response. The work of civil society, the efforts of individuals, of organised labour and feminist and LGBTIAQ+ movements, of civil and uncivil society, and of those public servants and politicians who try to do their work honestly, are written off in a pastiche designed to conclude that everything is dominated by white racism.</p>
<p>The Mandela government had three strategies for transformation: nation-building, interventions geared at redress and longer-term societal restructuring. The authors want these revived – because they have failed and “the state … has had little success in shifting apartheid-era socioeconomic patterns”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139466/original/image-20160927-11544-10nkabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139466/original/image-20160927-11544-10nkabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139466/original/image-20160927-11544-10nkabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139466/original/image-20160927-11544-10nkabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139466/original/image-20160927-11544-10nkabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139466/original/image-20160927-11544-10nkabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139466/original/image-20160927-11544-10nkabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Credited for his ‘grand gestures’, Nelson Mandela hands over the rugby world cup to Springbok captain Francois Pienaar in 1995.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The authors give Mandela credit for “grand gestures” in the area of reconciliation, but cannot square the circle: Mandela was also the president who ushered in the GEAR macroeconomic policy. </p>
<p>Nation-building was spearheaded by Mandela, for whom national reconciliation was the priority for his presidency.</p>
<h2>Nifty footwork</h2>
<p>There is also some adroit footwork here. Mandela is given credit for a number of grand symbolic gestures for reconciliation – even though they are regarded as ultimately futile. But then his name is not invoked in relation to GEAR, nor is he criticised for failing to push for “total victory”. The authors see the post-1994 strategies as necessary, but are unsure where to place blame for their failure.</p>
<p>The paper concludes gloomily that the notion that South Africa “belong[s] to all who live in it” – a statement indelibly associated with Mandela – seems to be “an impossible ideal”. Mandela emerges as a reduced figure in this narrative, from the iconic to the initiator of a set of well-meaning but failed interventions. Perhaps some revisionism away from hagiography is not a bad thing. Revisionism however should be based on decent history.</p>
<p>Looking to the future, the paper offers “key insights”, which are sadly pedestrian such as: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>combating racism will not be easy or speedy; </p></li>
<li><p>there are no “quick-fix” solutions; </p></li>
<li><p>inequality must be challenged by economic growth (how growth will diminish inequality is not explained); and</p></li>
<li><p>South Africans need to engage in more dialogue.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The key problem with the Foundation’s paper is that it hankers for an opportunity to turn back the clock and rewrite 1994, rather than looking forward and rising to meet the new challenges of a democratic, unequal, racist and stubbornly human South Africa. Attaining formal democracy was a critical first step – but only a first step – in a long struggle to establish a just society. The Foundation should be leading us in the long walk ahead, not looking backwards.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65257/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Everatt is affiliated with the Wits School of Governance, which receives research funding from various sources.</span></em></p>The foundation founded by Nelson Mandela in 1999 has done a major revision - it has written off most of his reign as comprising “grand symbolic gestures”.David Everatt, Head of Wits School of Governance, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/640312016-08-17T19:00:42Z2016-08-17T19:00:42ZUnder the Influence of … Paul Stopforth’s Biko painting called ‘Elegy’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134410/original/image-20160817-3597-1t5w78l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Paul Stopforth (b. 1946) 'Elegy' (1980). Graphite and wax on paper on board: 149 x 240 cm
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Durban Art Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our weekly series, “Under the influence”, we ask experts to share what they believe are the most influential works of art in their field. Here, artist/academic/forensic practitioner Kathryn Smith explains why she believes Paul Stopforth’s “Elegy” (1980) is hugely influential.</em></p>
<p>“Elegy” is a postmortem portrait of South African Black Consciousness activist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Stephen Bantu Biko</a> (1946-1977) by <a href="http://paulstopforth.com/">Paul Stopforth</a> (b. Johannesburg, 1945). It is executed in graphite powder painstakingly polished into layers of Cobra floor wax from which countless hair-fine excisions then excavate the figure from its ground.</p>
<p>Measuring 149 x 240 cm – near life-size – it hovers between drawing, photography, sculpture and painting, demonstrating kinship with all these media and yet claiming a singular materiality. </p>
<h2>My relationship with the work</h2>
<p>The work was completed in 1980, three years after Biko’s violent death in police custody. It was purchased by the <a href="http://www.durban.gov.za/city_services/parksrecreation/durban_art_gallery/Pages/default.aspx">Durban Art Gallery</a> in 1981, where I first encountered it as a young child.</p>
<p>I have a distinct recollection of being drawn towards the surface of this phantom image. Of it filling my child-self’s visual field from above as I tried to make sense not of what, but how it was: it was obvious to me that whoever this man was, he was not asleep. And why did the light in the picture seem so off, seeping out from this body’s darkest parts like a photograph gone wrong?</p>
<p>As with the series of smaller, more fugitive drawings of Biko’s hands and feet that preceded this monumental study, “Elegy” was made with direct reference to the forensic photographs of his postmortem examination, given to Stopforth by the Biko family’s lawyer. There can be no doubt that it borrows from religious iconography, presenting Biko as a secular martyr (the clue is in the title). </p>
<h2>Why it is/was influential</h2>
<p>Art historian Shannen Hill suggested in her 2005 article “Iconic autopsy: postmortem portraits of Bantu Stephen Biko” (published in a special edition of the journal <a href="http://www.international.ucla.edu/africa/africanarts/">African Arts</a>) that Stopforth’s graphic techniques “disrupt detached viewing”. Our experience is a kind of looking that is tactile, penetrative, what I would call a forensic gaze.</p>
<p>Forensic photographs embody a beguiling paradox: they perform as evidence, yet they are not self-evident. We demand that they act as arbiters of empirical data, while knowing they are technological constructions that require expert interlocution to reveal their truths.</p>
<p>“Elegy’s” impact on my childhood idea of what art could be – do even – was utterly formative, not least because it was through an embodied connection with an image that I later learned of the existence and significance of its subject. </p>
<p>“Elegy” could be said to represent the critical coordinates of my creative and intellectual life, which has been consistently involved with ideas of the body as image and as experience, evidence and affect, absence and presence. </p>
<p>My praxis is now bifurcated between my experimental (and perhaps even impolitic) interests as an artist, and my professional responsibilities as a forensic practitioner. It requires of me, among other things, to recreate convincing facial images for deceased or disappeared individuals who cannot be otherwise legally identified, in the hope that they might be.</p>
<p>This work feeds the tensions I perceive between conceptions of identity and technologies of identification, the revelatory and obfuscatory powers of archives, and the capacity of objects to be simultaneously loquacious and mute. So it is productive to think through “Elegy” as a sort of conceptual and ethical compass. </p>
<p>Did this image subconsciously navigate my earliest tussles with school teachers who insisted that my mutual inclination towards both visual art and forensic pathology was at worst impossible and at best, deeply conflicted? Did it silently guide me, many years later, from Durban to Johannesburg, and to the <a href="http://wsoa.wits.ac.za/fine-arts/">Wits Fine Arts</a> department, where I would encounter an influential tutor who insisted the opposite, and who showed me how it could be so?</p>
<p>That tutor was <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2013-01-18-obituary-colin-richards-1954-2012/">Colin Richards</a> (1954-2012). I would later discover that he’d had his own powerful encounters with images of Biko’s body, twice. The first was while working as a medical illustrator at Wits in the late 1970s. The second was as a deliberate confrontation with his perceived complicity in the administration of Biko’s death. The outcome he presented as the multi-part work, “Veils” (1996).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Colin Richards (1954-2012) - ‘Veils’ (1996). Mixed media.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the author</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here Richards employs a representation of the Biblical “<a href="http://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/mysterious-veil-veronica-masterpiece-or-miracle-004917">veil of Veronica</a>”, a piece of cloth onto which the face of a suffering Christ was reportedly imprinted. As an analogue “print” made directly from a source, it is considered to be the first photograph. On his recrafted veils, Richards instead imprinted facsimiles of images of the cell in which Biko was tortured, and two macroscopic pathology photographs which do not identifiably belong to a specific body (yet they are Biko). </p>
<p>In an interview with Richards in 2004, he suggested to me that “Illustration is a hinge between the linguistic and the visual, and it can turn many ways”. This is particularly true of forensic images. Their simultaneous ability to be authoritative and obtuse is the source of their potency and fallibility. </p>
<p>Public memorialisation of the dead pivots on a core ethical decision: whether to respect personal privacy through maintaining anonymity, or to name. The dead cannot give informed consent. Publishing images of corpses is regarded as something which requires very careful management, lest such dissemination is seen to either objectify or profit from the deceased. Like public shaming, such exposure can turn many ways. And that line is thin indeed.</p>
<p>The figure in “Elegy” is not visually identifiable as Stephen Bantu Biko. This has two possible effects, neither of which are easy: sublimating his identity counts as yet another violation of the historical specificity of Biko as an individual. Protecting his identity could be considered a sensitive choice – a tactical dehumanisation, if you will.</p>
<h2>Why it is still relevant</h2>
<p>In many ways, “Elegy” tests the very limits of representational politics. After all, it’s yet another instance of a violated black man represented by his social and political opposite, an artist who embodies Apartheid’s privileged classes, specifically the white, patriarchal subject position it worked to strengthen and maintain.</p>
<p>Should this difficulty make us avert our gaze or even more seriously, reject the image? I cannot, because its effect on me now is as potent as it was three decades ago: the sharp, sour shock of touching your tongue on a battery.</p>
<p>Significant events are unlikely to rise to public consciousness without a visual record, and recent events in South Africa - such as the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012">Marikana massacre</a> where police killed 34 striking mineworkers - have demonstrated the extraordinary productive and destructive power of images. A direct response to the atrocities of its moment, “Elegy” reflects on political oppression, those tasked with propagating the abuse of state power and those set up to bear such abuse. It represents processes of concealment and revelation with very real social and political consequences.</p>
<p>Yet images like this are not stable; their significance is neither continuous nor equivalent. They are ciphers for what it means to be human and vulnerable within a social and political regime in which not all bodies are considered equal, and where a state under threat resorts to covert and fatal tactics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64031/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Works like “Elegy” are ciphers for what it means to be human and vulnerable within a social and political regime in which not all bodies are considered equalKathryn Smith, Visual/forensic artist, PhD researcher, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.