tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/1976-soweto-uprising-39736/articles
1976 Soweto uprising – The Conversation
2023-02-02T14:56:20Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197550
2023-02-02T14:56:20Z
2023-02-02T14:56:20Z
Travelling while black: 7 South African travelogues you should read
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507054/original/file-20230130-24-ngiuuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Khadija Farah/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Travel writing in Africa is often associated with colonial ventures of the past or white adventure pursuits of today. But <a href="https://whatsonafrica.org/african-and-african-diaspora-travel-writing-ten-books-and-narratives-for-your-shelf/">Africans</a> themselves have long produced captivating travel texts in oral and written forms. We need to look beyond narrowly western or white accounts as travel writing is produced <a href="https://www.cntraveller.com/gallery/diversity-in-travel-writing">across the world</a> by an <a href="https://www.bulldozia.com/always-elsewhere/">extensive</a> <a href="https://tabishkhair.co.uk/other-routes-1500-years-of-african-and-asian-travel-writing">range</a> of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52951219-the-passport-that-does-not-pass-ports">writers</a>. <a href="https://panoramajournal.org/">Literary</a> <a href="https://www.fortunatetraveller.com/">ezines</a> (electronic magazines on the internet) dedicated to diverse travel writing are thriving. </p>
<p>That said, the cultures and literatures of travel from Africa have long been under-recognised by mobility studies. Exposing structures and norms that privilege white travel, as well as centering the voices of those on the move who haven’t traditionally been counted as travellers, are important aspects of “decolonising travel”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-passport-rankings-show-that-the-world-is-opening-up-but-not-for-everyone-197341">New passport rankings show that the world is opening up – but not for everyone</a>
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<p>The “travelling while black” movement foregrounds racial danger and discrimination around travel, while illuminating distinctive experiences that black travel brings. With this telling phrase as its title, Kenyan writer and analyst Nanjala Nyabola’s <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/travelling-while-black/">ground-shifting book</a> explores multiple dimensions of being a mobile African woman.</p>
<p>As a literary scholar of these books, I’ve recently published a <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/article/873424">research paper</a> that explores how a range of contemporary popular travelogues by black South Africans offer fresh, often provocative, perspectives. The travelogues, mostly focusing on exploring Africa (including South Africa itself), bring to life the places visited and celebrate the acts of travel – while also reflecting deeply on what the travel means.</p>
<p>Travel in South Africa is no straightforward subject. It takes on heightened significance in the light of the country’s history of colonialism and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>. Apartheid, South Africa’s institutionalised system of segregation, attempted to limit or force black mobility and to regulate black travel in intensive ways.</p>
<p>In post-apartheid South Africa, much has been in flux. While race-based mobility laws are no longer in place, questions of black movement, border crossings and belonging are peaking. In many of the travelogues in my research, the writers reflect on how history, race, nationality, gender and other factors affect travel.</p>
<h2>1. Vagabond by Lerato Mogoatlhe</h2>
<p>Journalist <a href="https://africanofilter.org/people/lerato-mogoatlhe">Lerato Mogoatlhe</a>, loved on social media as <a href="https://twitter.com/MadamAfrika">Madam Afrika</a>, shares her action-packed experiences of travelling to 21 African countries over five years in her debut book <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/lerato-mogoatlhe-travel-memoir-africa-vagabond/">Vagabond: Wandering Through Africa on Faith</a> (2019). </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with a map of Africa and an illustration of a mosque" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Blackbird Books</span></span>
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<p>She dedicates her adventures to “those who had gone before”, including her grandparents “who could only travel in their dreams”. What motivates her is the “freedom to wander from place to place and the possibility of knowing the world beyond what’s around my corner”. </p>
<p>She sees travel on the continent as giving her “the opportunity to experience being black and African without disguising or denying myself to fit in”.</p>
<h2>2. Niq Mhlongo’s blog</h2>
<p>Along with tales of book hustles, visa hassles, local brews and astounding sights, novelist <a href="https://www.newframe.com/niq-mhlongo-and-the-return-of-the-short-story/">Niq Mhlongo</a> reflects on how the past and present connect through journeying in his energetic <a href="https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2018/10/01/city-editor-niq-mhlongo-overstays-his-visa-in-dar-es-salaam-morogoro-and-mbeya/">travel blog</a>. </p>
<p>On his 4,459km trip through Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, he emphasises that African travel enables the retracing of “the history of our people that has not been properly documented or told”.</p>
<h2>3. Hardly Working by Zukiswa Wanner</h2>
<p>A multi-country African journey with the thrills and spills of public transport is the story of novelist Zukiswa Wanner’s <a href="https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/delightful-roadtrip-with-zukiswa-wanner-hardly-working-shaazia-ebrahim/">Hardly Working: A Travel Memoir of Sorts</a> (2018) – on one level. She is also on the road to teach her son about the continent beyond the realms of “a textbook”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with a woman standing with her hands in her pockets against a rural setting" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Letter Media</span></span>
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<p>As a child of exiled South African and Zimbabwean parents, she has been transnationally mobile since childhood, but imbues this trip with special importance. It marks her 40th birthday and four decades since the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976 Soweto uprising</a>. </p>
<p>Through her journeying, she powerfully links up personal and historic milestones to reflect on her own life and a nation that hasn’t lived up to its post-apartheid promises.</p>
<h2>4. Reclaiming Home by Lesego Malepe</h2>
<p><a href="https://shewritespress.com/portfolio/lesego-malepe/">Reclaiming Home: Diary of a Journey through Post-Apartheid South Africa</a> (2018) is by author and scholar <a href="https://shewritespress.com/portfolio/lesego-malepe/">Lesego Malepe</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A dirt road through a rural landscape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">She Writes Press</span></span>
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<p>She returns from decades in the US to criss-cross the country of her birth over 11 months. </p>
<p>During apartheid “the many discriminatory laws made travel for a black person very difficult”, so she explores every corner of South Africa for herself and in memory of her brother. </p>
<p>As a political prisoner on <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/916/">Robben Island</a> off Table Bay, Cape Town, for 22 years, her brother was taunted by the view of Table Mountain and all that lay out of reach.</p>
<h2>5. Rainbow Nation, My Zulu Arse by Sihle Khumalo</h2>
<p>Travel writer <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/author/sihle-khumalo">Sihle Khumalo</a> takes to the road to write his first book about his native South Africa in <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/rainbow-nation-my-zulu-arse/9781415209547">Rainbow Nation, My Zulu Arse</a> (2019). While he is known for his upbeat approach (his brawny debut was <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/dark-continent-my-black-arse/9781415200360">Dark Continent, My Black Arse</a> in 2016), he starts this journey at apartheid’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville</a> massacre site in contemplative mode. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A road with a zebra, a rainbow and a map of Africa" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Umuzi</span></span>
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<p>He strikes a note of “looking back” as “part of moving forward” and connects his travel to historical sites, among others, to try and grasp where the country’s headed. </p>
<p>Khumalo’s book is far from solemn though. It rants and raves across the spectacular terrain of nine provinces, bringing to life dusty towns, forgotten communities, bright lights and open horizons. </p>
<p>He accentuates that travel is “about being greedy for new experiences that can never happen if you do not move your sorry ignorant naïve self from one point to the other”.</p>
<h2>6. Blacks Do Caravan by Fikile Hlatshwayo</h2>
<p>Equally ambitious, but striking a different note, is author and businesswoman <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/travel/black-woman-changing-the-colour-of-camping-12006193">Fikile Hlatshwayo</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A landscape with a van and a caravan parked on the side of the road" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jacana Media</span></span>
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<p>Her <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/blacks-do-caravan/">Blacks Do Caravan</a> (2016) is based on an extended family adventure, providing an inspirational, full-colour guide to 60 camp sites across South Africa and neighbouring Eswatini. </p>
<p>Before becoming a tourism champion, she had grown up with the idea that camping was “purely for white people”. Travel has a vital role to play in “breaking down barriers and stereotypes”, says Hlatshwayo.</p>
<h2>7. Those Who Travel Meet Themselves</h2>
<p>In a similar vein, writer Michelle van Onna Green-Thompson edited a booklet of stories, <a href="https://bridgebooks.co.za/products/those-who-travel-meet-themselves-an-anthology-of-travel-stories-celebrating-freedom-editor-michelle-van-onna-green-thompson?variant=42680634966274">Those Who Travel Meet Themselves</a> (2018).</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Poetree Publications</span></span>
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<p>In it she casts herself and fellow millennial travel contributors as “door openers” in 21st century South Africa. </p>
<p>Knitting together travel and life trajectories, she encourages young black South Africans to grab hold of horizons denied to earlier generations. </p>
<p>She links encountering new “spaces” to discovering “pages” of life.</p>
<h2>Claiming spaces</h2>
<p>These vibrant, varied South African writers embrace the open road. Far from needing to “justify their movements”, which tends to be the case for black travellers, as historian <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2016/04/the-myth-of-the-african-travel-writer">Christabelle Peters</a> highlights, they bring irrepressible stories of touring for its own sake. They claim spaces and places as black travellers, as movers and shakers.</p>
<p>At another level, these travelogues don’t miss a chance to explore their mobility as a form of time travel and of human expression. The past is never far away as they think of those who didn’t have the same freedoms. At the same time, they assess how much the country they call home has “travelled” from its past, as well as towards imagined post-apartheid futures. Many of the writers reflect, too, on what it means to visit South Africa as a black person from other African countries, as borders tighten and attitudes sharpen.</p>
<p>For these contemporary writers, who take themselves and their readers on transporting journeys, there’s no turning back.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197550/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Remmington has received funding in the past from Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the National Research Foundation of South Africa.</span></em></p>
These vibrant writers embrace the open road and claim spaces that were denied them during apartheid.
Janet Remmington, Research Associate, Humanities Research Centre (and African Literature Department, University of the Witwatersrand), University of York
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/131065
2020-02-04T09:45:42Z
2020-02-04T09:45:42Z
Santu Mofokeng: master photographer who chased down shadows
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313308/original/file-20200203-41485-1uneryc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Buddhist Retreat, near Ixopo (2003)</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Santu Mofokeng/Santu Mofokeng Foundation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On hearing of the death of the celebrated South African photographer <a href="https://www.contemporaryand.com/exhibition/santu-mofokeng-a-metaphorical-biography/">Santu Mofokeng</a> it felt like a great shadow passing over us, the final withdrawal of one who illuminates. </p>
<p>Final, because the man from Soweto who documented the inner and outer landscapes of black life during and after apartheid, had lived like a shadow himself for years as a result of a harrowing <a href="https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/progressive-supranuclear-palsy/">degenerative disease</a>, resulting in the loss of speech and most physical capacity, certainly unable to take any more photographs. </p>
<p>Some might take consolation in the thought that shadows were his thing, that he tracked the great frailty of humanity which is the predilection for <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Chasing_Shadows.html?id=t_YgKQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">chasing shadows</a>. </p>
<p>And yet the great, transfiguring beauty of many of his photographs – from the <a href="https://aperture.org/blog/santu-mofokengs-sean-otoole/">caves at Motouleng (2004 - 2007)</a>, or the pale headless horse at the Buddhist retreat (2003), or the ghostly <a href="https://themediaonline.co.za/2020/01/the-billboard-is-a-fact-and-feature-of-township-landscape-rip-santu-mofokeng/">winter scene in Tembisa</a> (1991) – can still hit you like stray bullets. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Santu Mofokeng with the Johannesburg skyline behind him at the peak of his internationally celebrated career.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">©️ Steve Tanchel</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The photographer as thinker</h2>
<p>Santu was not just a photographer, he was a thinker in big themes, sculpting allegories, insights and concepts in relation to his images as he did so. As he put it, the rubric was large. Some might call his statements aphorisms, but the idea of a truth contained in a pithy statement was not really part of his vocabulary. </p>
<p>We quoted Santu recently in a book appropriately called <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Ambivalent">Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History</a>, and also in a small teaching video made from audio clips, as he talks about the ambivalence that always informed his work. As he puts it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am interested in the ambiguity of things. This comes not from a position of power, but of helplessness. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He found that famous South African photographer <a href="https://theconversation.com/david-goldblatt-photographer-who-found-the-human-in-an-inhuman-social-landscape-98984">David Goldblatt’s</a> interest in the existence of things, their ‘is-ness’ as Goldblatt put it, crystallised his own position: “I’m not like that.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Winter in Tembisa (1991)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Santu Mofokeng/Santu Mofokeng Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both these two great photographers stated they were not interested in photographing <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25621437?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">violence</a>. Santu’s reason? It was unnecessary, because “the violence is in the knowing”. Santu himself was in his final year at <a href="https://www.morrisisaacsonhigh.co.za/our-history/">Morris Isaacson High School in 1976</a>, the school most closely associated with the start of the Soweto uprising. </p>
<p>At the memorial service held after his death at the school on 30 January 2020, I learned that he never talked about what happened at that time. Violence of so many kinds already pressed so firmly down on many South Africans, that it was the zones of miasma in people’s minds and around them that interested him as a photographer, as well as their flickering moments of transcendence. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Church of God, Motouleng Cave, Clarens (1996)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Santu Mofokeng/Santu Mofokeng Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Poisoned landscapes</h2>
<p>Santu’s later work on climate change certainly took on these things: the human state of mind, and the state of the earth. As he moved into his big theme of <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2020-01-31-taking-the-battle-to-the-grave-south-africas-contested-sites/">poisoned landscapes</a>, he shifted from what he termed people’s “psychic rupture with the land” to the land’s own rupturing with itself. </p>
<p>His photographs pick up on the sediment discharged by histories of mining and abandoned industrial progress, such as acid mine drainage. He draws out the seeping signs of processes happening in and on the earth, often coming from underground, metabolising as toxic, cancerous, or appearing as slow encrustations and eroded rifts. </p>
<p>Much of this work is portentous, ominous, pointing towards the unknown at the threshold of elements, be it water, earth, air or fire. But some photographs present the landscape as completely unfixed, where centrifugal forces have turned things completely upside down. In the photographs of the replacement of sand on Durban’s South Beach (2007), the flying gobs look like some planetary constellation or biblical plague and the ground is framed as flying in bits through the sky. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Replacing of sand washed away during the floods and wave action, South Beach, Durban (2007)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Santu Mofokeng/Santu Mofokeng Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As for people’s state of mind around climate change, Santu used to ask the question: how do you photograph anxiety? In fact, “It’s always been about not knowing.” While some continents burn and others continue to unfreeze, we should remember that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Pictures lay the ground as to what are the issues. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>No South African photographer leaves a more substantial legacy for the country to think with as it encounters the ever more rapidly unfolding dilemmas and catastrophes of climate change. </p>
<p>But Santu never took it for granted that his photographs would be read with the subtlety of his own thought as he contemplated what he had seen. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You make the pictures, you know how they’re going to be played out … It’s not as if I’m neutral, but I don’t allow - I don’t want - people to make me think the way they do.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Santu was unseizable. A great shadow, and he has passed. The photographs he made and the things he said should make us go on thinking. We are not done because he is not done. His work remains. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Telegraph poles standing askew near Brandvlei, Northern Cape (2007)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Santu Mofokeng/Santu Mofokeng Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131065/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia Hayes 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>
No South African photographer leaves a more substantial legacy than Santu Mofokeng. He was adept at mapping interior worlds through haunting images of black life and, above all, his landscapes.
Patricia Hayes, DSI/NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History & Theory, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/118846
2019-06-14T12:16:52Z
2019-06-14T12:16:52Z
A tribute to Raymond Louw: a great South African editor and determined activist
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279499/original/file-20190614-158953-1bhnb4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Raymond Louw, right, with then deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, middle, and veteran journalist Mathatha Tsedu in 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GovernmentZA/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Veteran South African journalist Raymond Louw has <a href="https://www.enca.com/news/veteran-journalist-raymond-louw-dies">passed away</a> at the age of 93. He was a former editor of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/editorial-the-rand-daily-mail">Rand Daily Mail</a> newspaper and tireless press freedom campaigner and mentor. Anton Harber delivered the eulogy at his funeral. This is an edited version.</em></p>
<p>There are dictators and autocrats who are breathing a little easier today. The intolerant, the narrow-minded, the scared, the defensive, the haters of freedom and particularly freedom of speech, are watching us lay to rest the man who never left them alone. </p>
<p>Like a mosquito on a hot summer’s night, Raymond Louw buzzed around the heads of those who challenged our right to speak our minds. They cursed him and tried to swat him away, but he persisted, circling, watching and settling wherever he could to disturb and irritate them. Today, they hope they can rest a little easier, because Ray is gone.</p>
<p>There are lawmakers who are thinking: perhaps now we can slip a Bill through without “Oom Ray” (“Uncle Ray”, as he was known), noticing that it has implications for media freedom. There are political leaders who will be thinking, maybe now I can get in a swipe at journalists without him giving me a hard time.</p>
<p>And, if we are to be honest, there are also many of Ray’s friends and colleagues who feel that they might get a brief rest. Because the man who cajoled and prodded them, who constantly reminded them of the need to be alert and vigilant for new threats to our freedom, the man who volunteered first and then obliged you to follow him, who wrote countless petitions, memoranda and policy documents, who never slowed down, has left us.</p>
<p>Yet Ray was the one with the energy, the steely resolve and the staying power. Even at 93 years old, until the last few weeks, Ray was the most solid, consistent and reliable activist in the world of anti-censorship, putting to shame younger men like me. When we were exhausted, Ray would keep going. When we wanted to give up, Ray would not let us.</p>
<p>There are a number of parts to Ray’s legacy.</p>
<h2>Oom Ray’s legacy</h2>
<p>If we just think of him as the finest editor of one of the finest newspapers, it would be enough for a legacy. There are others who were more ostentatious and quicker to claim credit for the international reputation of the Rand Daily Mail as the newspaper which covered the brutal horrors of apartheid better than any other media of the time, an often lone liberal voice in a cacophony of reactionary hostility and white paranoia.</p>
<p>But I can tell you, as someone who has spent time going through the newspapers of that period, the paper stood out from its peers for its commitment to fine, critical and independent journalism – and that it was at its best and its strongest during Ray’s 11-year editorship. When he took over from <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-laurence-gandar-1185435.html">Laurence Gandar</a>, the man who had turned it from a right-wing rag to a powerful and important critical liberal voice, he told the board of directors he would continue with that tradition. That was Ray – he would not mislead or disguise to get the position; he was straightforward, scrupulously honest and firm in his views. And it was under Ray that the paper reached its zenith in circulation, impact, and was even in profit.</p>
<p>Ray oversaw the Rand Daily Mail’s coverage of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">June 1976 students’ uprising</a>, during which apartheid police killed unarmed schoolchildren. The paper covered those epochal events better, fuller and quicker than its rivals. Ray was first and foremost a hard news man who placed the highest value on getting the story and, above all, getting it right. Journalists who worked under him will tell you that he was a demanding task-master who set high standards, but if you got it right, he would back you to the hilt and stand between you and those who would attack you.</p>
<p>It was Ray who brought the first black reporters and photographers into the newsroom. When a white photographer objected to sharing a darkroom with the now legendary photographer <a href="http://southafrica.co.za/dr-peter-magubane.html">Peter Magubane</a>, Ray’s hands were tied by the law. So he set up a special darkroom for Peter on the roof of the building to get around the segregation laws and ensure Peter could continue working. Peter will tell you that he enjoyed the solitude of his out-of-sight darkroom, and that Ray stood by him during his lengthy spell in detention.</p>
<h2>Journalist’s journalist, editor’s editor</h2>
<p>If we think of Ray as someone who rose from the bottom ranks of newspaper to reach the pinnacle, self-made and self-taught, that would in itself be a legacy of note. Rejecting the path of engineering, he found himself a position as what was then called a copyboy, the lowliest newsroom person who ran with the copy from typewriter to typesetter. He worked his way through the newsroom, step-by-step, reporter, sub-editor, news editor, night editor, and then editor.</p>
<p>It is important to remember what a time it was. The apartheid government was at its strongest, most ruthless and most authoritarian. There were few voices within the country standing up against it, and the Rand Daily Mail’s was one of the most consistent of them. It is true that the newspaper operated within the constraints and limitations of the time, within the framework of the law, commerce and the white parliamentary politics. But it constantly pushed at these boundaries, covering black politics, <a href="http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/Bond%20Townships.pdf">township</a> life and the horrors of apartheid more than any of its competitors.</p>
<p>When Ray was retired as editor, and later as a manager, it was an early sign of the assertion of short-term commercial interests over a longer-term vision for South Africa and its journalism.</p>
<p>If we just considered the period after Ray’s editorship, when he gave his time to the cause of anti-censorship, his extensive work there would also present an admirable legacy. For around 65 years in journalism, he had our backs. He didn’t have to like you, or agree with you, and if so he would certainly let you know, but if you produced good journalism, he would defend you and your work with passion and determination. </p>
<p>He read every Bill, he scoured all the news, read every court document, he was vigilant in seeking out any hint of a threat to freedom of speech, and he would be on it: consistently and relentlessly.</p>
<h2>An editor and an activist</h2>
<p>So we will remember him as a great editor and a determined activist. But Ray was also a man of unbending principle: you never had any doubt about what he believed, what he thought and what he stood for. He was firm, consistent and solid as a rock. He had a spine of steel. And he was an impeccable gentleman.</p>
<p>Every now and then there is a death which gives us pause, a legacy which makes us stop and reevaluate our own lives and values, that has us thinking how much more we can do with our time and our resources and the balance between our public and our private lives. Every now and then there is a model of a life lived to the full that we have to stop and ponder, and see if we could possibly match up to it.</p>
<p>Ray’s life was one of those.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anton Harber is affiliated with the FXI, where he served as chair and director, alongside the subject of this article, Raymond Louw.</span></em></p>
Raymond Louw will be remembered as a man of unbending principle.
Anton Harber, Caxton Professor of Journalism, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/105417
2018-10-23T09:15:58Z
2018-10-23T09:15:58Z
Pik Botha: sympathetic obits fail to recognise that he protected apartheid
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241793/original/file-20181023-169801-bheksr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pik Botha's life’s work was dedicated to the protection and entrenchment of apartheid.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media 24/Alet Pretorius</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/2021882/apartheid-era-foreign-minister-pik-botha-dies/">death of Roelof Frederik “Pik” Botha</a>, South Africa’s apartheid era foreign minister from 1977 to 1994, has produced a range of appraisals of his life. </p>
<p>The general tone of the commentaries – including the governing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/obituaries/pik-botha-dead.html">African National Congress (ANC’s)</a> - has been sympathetic. Many have been prepared to give Botha the benefit of the doubt, viewing him as an essentially reasonable man whose decent political instincts were consistently frustrated at home and abroad by forces beyond his control. An old quote from a Western diplomat was excavated <a href="https://m.news24.com/Obituaries/pik-botha-a-good-man-working-for-a-bad-government-20181012">claiming that Botha</a> was</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a good man working for a bad government, one of the first National Party leaders who saw that democracy was inevitable. South Africa could have avoided years of bloodshed and turmoil if the NP had taken his advice. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This take on Botha as a man of peace and a frustrated democrat is a travesty. It displays a cavalier attitude towards recent southern African history. True, he will never rank among the most brutish defenders of apartheid: he lacked the crude racism of erstwhile apartheid prime minister <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/johannes-gerhardus-strijdom">Johannes G. Strijdom</a>, and the ideological fanaticism of apartheid architect <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hendrik-frensch-verwoerd">Hendrik Verwoerd</a>. He also didn’t have the thuggery of John Vorster, and authoritarianism of a PW Botha, their respective successors.</p>
<p>But Pik Botha certainly helped enable apartheid. </p>
<p>At the heart of the system</p>
<p>Botha defended apartheid internationally and was firmly committed to the system – however “reformist” his version of it. He served successive apartheid regimes that ultimately rested on violence and hugely disproportionate levels of white privilege and power. </p>
<p>Botha also endorsed the policy of aggression towards neighbouring states in the 1980s. Known as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00358538708453820">“destabilisation”</a>, the policy caused catastrophic damage to their economies and societies. </p>
<p>He also served on the State Security Council during the turmoil of the middle to late 1980s, when it was issuing orders for activists to be “permanently removed from society” and “eliminated”. He would subsequently argue before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996 that they had not meant kill. This allowed security force operatives to twist in the wind while the political leadership <a href="https://www.economist.com/international/1997/10/16/ambiguitys-path-to-murder">abdicated responsibility</a>. </p>
<p>It’s a measure of the horrors and of the malign individuals spawned by apartheid that Botha emerges as relatively liberal or, in the jargon of the era, “enlightened” by comparison. But, the key word, is “relatively”. Being an improvement on grotesque figures like Strijdom, Verwoerd and Vorster is hardly enough to be considered a democrat.</p>
<p>An impediment to change</p>
<p>In fact, Botha helped delay the process to democratise South Africa, not facilitate it. </p>
<p>He was a passionate opponent of the economic sanctions that ultimately helped bring down apartheid, and worked closely with foreign leaders against them. Fortunately for him, the governments of then US President Ronald Reagan, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, were extremely sympathetic to the white South African cause.</p>
<p>Botha was also an architect of illicit trade deals and military sanctions-busting arrangements designed to protect the apartheid regime. This enabled it to resist change or strengthen its capacity to change only on <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/opinion/the-real-face-of-pik-botha-17469472">its own terms</a>. The constructive engagement approach favoured by Thatcher and Reagan emboldened apartheid South Africa and encouraged its excesses at home and abroad.</p>
<p>Yet fundamental change finally did come to southern Africa: the destabilisation of neighbouring states stopped, Namibia got its independence in 1990, and FW de Klerk made his historic speech of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/fw-de-klerk-announces-release-nelson-mandela-and-unbans-political-organisations">February 2, 1990</a> announcing the unbanning of liberation movements and release of political prisoners. </p>
<p>Botha’s liberalism amounted, first, to a defence of apartheid. Then, as the cracks in that system began to open in the period following the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976 Soweto Uprising</a>, he embraced “reform”. This was an ultimately disastrous attempt to secure the modernisation of white domination which, in triggering a range of unintended consequences, hastened the demise of the system.</p>
<p>Even in the period following the unbanning of the ANC in 1990 and the beginning of negotiations to end apartheid, Botha, like his party leader De Klerk, supported a convoluted system of power-sharing with a built-in minority veto. This was designed to emasculate an incoming majority-based government and prevent it from tackling the awesome socioeconomic legacies of apartheid.</p>
<p>Finally, Botha’s role in the carnage wrought by apartheid South Africa’s regional destabilisation policy belies the image of the peacemaking diplomat seeking to rein in more hawkish and militaristic elements. A narrative emerged claiming that destabilisation was a South African Defence Force project imposed against the wishes of a Department of Foreign Affairs, led by Botha, which was more interested in diplomatic dialogue and peace deals with neighbouring states. </p>
<p>This was a false dichotomy. </p>
<p>Degrees of hawkishness</p>
<p>As Foreign Minister, Botha appreciated the benefits of a policy of military coercion. This softened up neighbouring states and made them more inclined to sign peace deals and non-aggression pacts on South African terms. Any differences that emerged were over tactics rather than strategy. This included how much military pressure should be applied and at what point it should be reduced. </p>
<p>At no point did Botha oppose military pressure. In fact, he was quite explicit on this point in the South African parliament in May 1984 when discussing the process by which the country had secured the March 1984 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/south-africa-and-mozambique-sign-non-aggression-pact">Nkomati Accord</a> with Mozambique. Then Marxist Mozambique, humiliated and its economy broken by South African attacks, was compelled to sign a non-aggression treaty with the apartheid regime. Botha rejected any idea this was a source of bureaucratic conflict with the military, stating that he was in “absolute agreement with the decisions taken”. He added that the Nkomati Accord was achieved “by way of the military action we took, as well as by way of <a href="https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy4.lib.le.ac.uk/stable/2636749?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">diplomatic action”</a>.</p>
<p>Legacy</p>
<p>He may be remembered as a man who operated at the more liberal end of a thoroughly illiberal regime, and one who came to <a href="https://www.economist.com/obituary/2018/10/20/obituary-pik-botha">read the writing on the wall</a>. This is an achievement of sorts, but he should not be remembered as making a decisive – or even significant - contribution to the demise of apartheid. The credit for that lies elsewhere. </p>
<p>Most of his life’s work was dedicated to the protection and entrenchment of that system, which the United Nations declared a crime against humanity, not its dismantling. And, in the 1980s he was an important cog at the heart of the machinery of repression, the State Security Council. That is a more accurate if unpleasant epitaph for Roelof Frederik Botha.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Hamill 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 sympathetic take on Pik Botha as a man of peace and a frustrated democrat is a travesty.
James Hamill, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/98318
2018-06-15T14:01:14Z
2018-06-15T14:01:14Z
Capturing the Soweto Uprising: South Africa’s most iconic photograph lives on
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223342/original/file-20180615-85834-1wlhyy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Artist Johannes Phokela's ceramic memorial wall.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ruth Simbao</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/masana-nzima">Sam Nzima</a>, the photographer who captured the iconic image of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976 Soweto Uprising</a> <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-05-18-a-story-of-a-memorable-photograph-and-why-it-matters/#.WyOVCFUzbIU">passed away</a>on May 12, 2018. The photograph was one of six frames showing <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2014-06-12-red-herrings-plague-search-for-mbuyisa-makhubu">Mbuyisa Makhubu</a> carrying 12-year-old Hector Pieterson who was shot by police, and Hector’s sister, Antionette Pieterson (now Sithole) running alongside. </p>
<p>Sensing the impact these photographs would have in exposing the cruelty of apartheid, Nzima hid the roll of film in his sock. Following the release of the photograph worldwide, the police were <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/masana-nzima">ordered</a> by the apartheid government to kill Nzima if they found him taking any photographs. When he was summoned to John Vorster Square, the dreaded police headquarters in Johannesburg, he went into hiding. His career as a journalist for the anti-apartheid newspaper, <em>The World</em>, came to an abrupt end.</p>
<p>While Nzima’s photograph quickly became known as the most evocative photograph to emerge from the struggle against apartheid, initially few people associated the photograph with him. At times it was erroneously attributed to acclaimed photographer <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/peter-sexford-magubane">Peter Magubane</a>. </p>
<p>Just over a year later <em>The World</em> was <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/apartheid-government-declares-19-organisations-unlawful">banned</a> by the apartheid government, but Nzima’s photograph lived on. Printed onto numerous T-shirts, posters and pamphlets, it became virtually synonymous with protest.</p>
<h2>Protest and (over)exposure</h2>
<p>What happens to images that appear over and over again in the visual economy? Art historian <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2013-01-18-obituary-colin-richards-1954-2012/">Colin Richards</a> <a href="http://history.msu.edu/hst830/files/2013/09/Simbao_TheThirtiethAnniversaryoftheSowetoUprisings_ReadingtheShadowinSamNzimasIconicPhotographofHectorPieterson.pdf">suggests</a> that powerful images can also be extraordinarily vulnerable, for when they are sensationalised overexposure can weaken the historical moments they capture.</p>
<p>In 1989 liberation struggle stalwart Albie Sachs made a similar assertion when he presented the paper
<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/file%20uploads%20/memorandum_on_the_culture_and_resistance.pdf">“Preparing Ourselves for Freedom”</a> at an ANC in-house seminar on culture. He argued that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the power of art lies precisely in its capacity to expose contradictions and reveal hidden tensions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sachs warned that the repetitive use of visual portrayals of struggle icons such as guns, clenched fists and protest slogans merely flattened meaning and impact. His call to ban the statement “culture is a weapon of struggle” was contentious and ignited an intense debate. Respondents such as historian Rushdy Siers <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/concluding-remarks">argued</a> that culture is based on lived experience, and “vivas, raised fists… AK’s and Amandlas” were indeed the lived experiences of cultural workers.</p>
<h2>The photograph’s shadow</h2>
<p>In Nzima’s original photograph the three figures cast a deep shadow on the ground. However, many versions of this image that were silkscreened onto protest posters and T-shirts flattened the image and omitted the shadow. Artworks that drew from this image, such as Kevin Brand’s <a href="http://history.msu.edu/hst830/files/2013/09/Simbao_TheThirtiethAnniversaryoftheSowetoUprisings_ReadingtheShadowinSamNzimasIconicPhotographofHectorPieterson.pdf">duct tape mural</a> on the outside wall of Musée de Dakar (1998) in Senegal, and Ernest Pignon-Ernest’s <a href="http://pignon-ernest.com/">public murals</a> at Warwick Triangle (2002) in Durban reintroduced the shadow, suggesting that this powerful photograph withstood potential numbing often induced by repetition.</p>
<p>Recalling philosopher Roland Barthe’s <a href="https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/roland-barthes-pleasure-text/">assertion</a> that texts need shadows in order to be productive and subversive rather than sterile, the shadow of this photograph and its numerous re-representations can be read as a metaphor for the rich debate that this image continues to bring to the surface. Commemoration is contested, and Nzima’s photograph has raised numerous debates.</p>
<p>An important question to ask is: to what degree does a powerful photograph reduce commemoration to the name of one person, thus overlooking the tragedies of other individuals who were killed on the same day? Due to the wide reach of Nzima’s photograph, it was initially believed that Hector Pieterson was the first student to be killed by the police. But oral testimonies <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/soweto-76-reflections-on-the-liberation-struggles-commemorating-the-30th-anniversary-of-june-16th-1976/oclc/70686405">suggest</a> that Hastings Ndlovu was not only the first to be gunned down, but was also deliberately sought out by the police. </p>
<p><a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2015-10-29-messing-with-the-western-art-cannons-masters">Artist Johannes Phokela</a> created a ceramic memorial wall that is dedicated to student leader Tsietsi Mashinini. It was <a href="http://history.msu.edu/hst830/files/2013/09/Simbao_TheThirtiethAnniversaryoftheSowetoUprisings_ReadingtheShadowinSamNzimasIconicPhotographofHectorPieterson.pdf">unveiled</a> at the 30th anniversary of June 16 in 2006. The memorial is shaped like an exercise book and the grouting between the tiles represents the lines on the pages. </p>
<p>This commemoration does not erase the memory of Hector Pieterson. Nzima’s photograph is portrayed behind the words of Mashinini that are written on the wall. Representing an open book, the commemorative wall suggests a willingness to accommodate counter-narratives of the uprising. As such, the horrific events of this day are not flattened, but are presented as stories or texts with shadows.</p>
<h2>History reanimated</h2>
<p>The persistence of Nzima’s photograph is remarkable. Not only was it used on T-shirts, posters and pamphlets in the 1980s, but it has reappeared in the form of artworks, memorials, monuments, and numerous cartoons, including the <a href="http://history.msu.edu/hst830/files/2013/09/Simbao_TheThirtiethAnniversaryoftheSowetoUprisings_ReadingtheShadowinSamNzimasIconicPhotographofHectorPieterson.pdf">work</a> of cartoonists Sifiso Yalo and Zapiro. The fact that it raises ongoing debate is important, as this works against the grain of much government-led commemoration that tends to reduce historical events to one-dimensional interpretation. </p>
<p>One of the most poignant forms of response to this iconic image is the live re-enactment of the photograph. When I participated in the 2006 commemorative march from Morris Isaacson High School to the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Orlando West, a group of young people ended the march with a re-enactment of the famous Nzima photograph.</p>
<p>This performative engagement with Nzima’s photograph, like the recent <a href="https://www.news24.com/Video/SouthAfrica/News/watch-sowetos-spirit-in-1976-and-rhodes-must-fall-in-2015-20160608">correlations</a> between the Soweto Uprising and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/the-real-meaning-of-rhodes-must-fall">Rhodes Must Fall</a> movement, is critical in terms of the reanimation of history. Not only are the historical events of Nzima’s photograph recalled, but new generations redefine events on their own terms and in relation to their own contexts. This brings alive the shadow of this iconic photograph.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98318/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Simbao receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. </span></em></p>
The persistence of Sam Nzima’s June 16 photograph is remarkable. The shadow in the photograph can be read as a metaphor for the rich debate that this image continues to bring to the surface.
Ruth Simbao, SARChI Research Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa, Rhodes University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/79543
2017-06-15T17:54:46Z
2017-06-15T17:54:46Z
South Africa has failed its young people. What can be done about it
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174077/original/file-20170615-24999-m0p6rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is more than 40 years since young people, first in Soweto, and then around the country, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">rose up against the apartheid regime</a>. Initially their protest was against the introduction of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools. But it quickly spread into a general uprising against apartheid.</p>
<p>Four decades later and more than two decades after democracy, what prospects do young South Africans have?</p>
<p>The end of apartheid should have heralded a new South African dream for the generation born at its demise. The “<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27146976">born frees</a>” comprise about one fifth of the population. If the definition of youth is extended to include those between 15 and 34, they make up almost <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P02114.2/P02114.22015.pdf">55% of the population</a>.</p>
<p>The hope was that this generation would be living radically different lives from the young people who rose up in 1976. But that dream is <a href="http://www.ci.org.za/depts/ci/pubs/pdf/general/gauge2015/ChildGauge2015-lowres.pdf">still out of reach for most</a>. <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/sa-children-hardest-hit-by-poverty-2092671">Two thirds</a> of the country’s children live in poverty. About <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2017/02/14/what-south-africa-can-do-about-youth-unemployment-in-the-short-run">50%</a> of young people are without jobs.</p>
<p>Without doubt, there have been key improvements. Education is now provided to all, and years of schooling have increased; child support grants have made substantial differences to nutrition and wellbeing; the delivery of public housing has helped many secure a home for the first time. </p>
<p>Yet the quality of life and opportunities for young people are still defined, to a large extent, by the legacies of their parents. This also means that young South Africans are in no position to help drive economic growth. The country is missing its <a href="http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2006/09/basics.htm">demographic dividend</a> moment.</p>
<p>So what can be done about it? An initiative that connects researchers and local governments, combined with a <a href="https://youthexplorer.org.za/">web tool</a> that draws together detailed local information about young people, could help policy makers take a fine-grained rather than a scatter-gun approach to support youth wellbeing. </p>
<h2>Missed chances</h2>
<p>Life’s chances are determined by the quality of education. And that in turn is determined by the income of parents. South Africa’s schooling systems has failed young people abysmally. Drop out rates are <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/general/149291/shocking-drop-out-rates-where-in-south-africa-the-fewest-kids-make-it-to-matric/">shockingly high</a>, with nearly half the country’s learners leaving the schooling system before they matriculate.</p>
<p>These numbers are dismal enough. But there’s an added twist. Unless a young person passes matric – or gets a tertiary qualification – their chances in the labour market are slim. An employer generally doesn’t distinguish between three years of schooling or six or eight or even ten.</p>
<p>It has given rise to a desperate group of young people known as <a href="http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_343153.pdf">NEETS</a>, which stands for Not in Employment, Education or Training. They can include young people with matric, but all are unemployed and few have prospects for further education.</p>
<p>The government has consistently committed to putting youth development high on its national agenda. It has put a number of initiatives in place, including: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>The adoption of a new youth policy in 2015. More recently, President Jacob Zuma promised that all government departments would prioritise programmes that are critical to youth development. There’s little evidence that the national youth policy and the ones that came before achieved anything.</p></li>
<li><p>In 2014 the National Treasury implemented a youth incentive employment tax to encourage employers to give young people their first foot in the door of an increasingly tight labour market. It’s too early to assess whether this is making a difference.</p></li>
<li><p>The creation of a policy-oriented research project on employment, income distribution and inclusive growth at the University of Cape Town (UCT) to look into the stubborn problems of youth unemployment, among other issues. The youth unemployment project is due to present its findings in the next few weeks.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Clearly more needs to be done. Later this month local governments will be asked to play a more proactive role in youth development. This could be a critical contribution.</p>
<h2>Fresh attempt</h2>
<p>A local approach could be significant because the spatial legacy of apartheid still largely determines a person’s life chances. This means that there are vast differences between young people based on where they live. This includes income, education and employment opportunities. </p>
<p>A web tool, called the <a href="https://youthexplorer.org.za/">Youth Explorer</a> , has been developed to help a host of players, including policy makers, to access information about young people in a particular area. It does this by drilling down into conditions in every ward across the country. </p>
<p>The Youth Explorer also allows for comparisons within provinces and between different rural and urban areas, allowing policymakers to compare one area to the country as a whole. </p>
<p>To illustrate its usefulness, take the <a href="https://youthexplorer.org.za/compare/municipality-KZN286/vs/ward-79800103/">information that’s been put together comparing</a> Nkandla, President Jacob Zuma’s rural home constituency, and Sandton, one of the country’s wealthier urban areas. The profile shows that:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>22% of the population is between 15 and 24 years of age compared with just 10% in Sandton, </p></li>
<li><p>Just under 50% of young people aged between 20 and 24 have completed matric or higher. The comparable figure in Sandton is about 88%,</p></li>
<li><p>the NEETS category is about 31% in Nkandla and less than 7% in Sandton,</p></li>
<li><p>76% of young people live in households with no access to the internet in Nkandla, compared with 13% in Sandton,</p></li>
<li><p>more than three quarters of people live in households where there is no employed adult, compared with 10% in Sandton, and </p></li>
<li><p>More than 50% of Nkandla homes have no electricity, hardly any have flush toilets (13% have no toilets at all), and 33% live in overcrowded households (defined as more than two people to a habitable room). In Sandton, only 2% have no electricity, everyone has access to a flush toilet and only 1% live in overcrowded households.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Detailed information like this could lead to focused policy interventions that are in tune with young people’s local realities, and conversations that may be able to break the inter-generational cycle of inequality and poverty area by area. </p>
<p>It could help ensure that the South African dream of the “Born-Free” generation may not be entirely lost.</p>
<p><em>Emily Harris and Pippa Green co-authored this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79543/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ariane De Lannoy 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 end of apartheid should have heralded a new South Africa for the generation born at its demise. But that hasn’t happened.
Ariane De Lannoy, Senior Researcher: Poverty and Inequality Initiative, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/79514
2017-06-15T13:43:35Z
2017-06-15T13:43:35Z
Young South Africans aren’t apathetic, just fed up with formal politics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174002/original/file-20170615-3453-tz20z0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Children marching on the
anniversary of the Soweto uprising.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s youth-led movements such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/feesmustfall-the-poster-child-for-new-forms-of-struggle-in-south-africa-68773?sa=google&sq=fees+must+fall&sr=8">#FeesMustFall</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-student-protests-are-about-much-more-than-just-feesmustfall-49776?sa=google&sq=RhodesMustFall&sr=5">#RhodesMustFall</a> provided contrasting view to perceptions that young people are apathetic and disinterested in the future of their country. But the protests didn’t quite dispel concerns about their lack of political involvement, particularly during elections where there’s been <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/131652/this-is-the-biggest-reason-why-young-south-africans-arent-voting-next-week/">low youth voter turnout</a>. </p>
<p>So we asked young people what they thought about politics. Our research involved focus groups with South Africans aged between 15 and 25 years of age from very different backgrounds. Sampled areas ranged from the rural Eastern Cape, to peri-urban Orange Farm and middle class Kensington, a Johannesburg suburb, amongst others. </p>
<p>Our findings challenge the widely reported perception that young people in South Africa are despondent and don’t care about politics or their role as citizens. What emerged from our research was a picture of young people with strongly defined opinions and knowledge of current affairs. Many said they were involved in some kind of civic activity. </p>
<p>All of the participants expressed a distrust of formal politics. But they also said they have a keen interest in the future of the country and are staking their claim in forging that future, albeit in different and new ways. </p>
<p>What was clear from the research is that young South Africans are engaging with politics very differently to the way in which young people got involved in the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976 Soweto uprising</a>. They have found new platforms and ways to share information, make their voices heard and ultimately be politically engaged on the back of growing internet based communication, especially social media. </p>
<p>In 1976 young people taught South Africa that they can’t be ignored. They are a powerful force that can shift the course of a country’s future. Today’s youth are no different. They are interested and engaged. </p>
<h2>Distrust of formal politics</h2>
<p>The people in our focus groups expressed distrust of formal political mechanisms such as voting, demonstrations, and membership of political parties. </p>
<p>Most indicated that they held little faith in the current leadership of the country. They found political leaders to be self-serving and disinterested in them and their communities. While they enjoyed watching parliament in action, this was because it provided entertainment value rather than serious content.</p>
<p>The discussions laid bare why many young people don’t vote. Most expressed alienation from all of South Africa’s political leaders. They said they didn’t know who they could trust or which political party would serve their interests. </p>
<p>As one put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Well, there’s ANC, an old promising party who is no longer keeping its promises, then follows the DA which is led and dominated by white people and you’d think when they are in power they may neglect us and care for whites only and also there is Malema who we think is going to corrupt us, so you just think it’s better not to vote.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They also said they didn’t see any point in voting given that there seemed to be little relation between what politicians said they would do versus what they actually did. A common sentiment is reflected in these quotes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What is the point in voting? Nothing ever changes anyway. </p>
<p>We are not going to vote either because it’s not going to make a difference.</p>
<p>Personally for me I would vote for a party that I have seen making the biggest difference but everyone is fighting in parliament and they are not going out and making the difference that they are supposed to. And when it comes to voting time then all the municipalities jump up and start to do what they were supposed to do. I think that’s the thing. We don’t know who to vote for because no one is making a big difference.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This distrust and alienation often means that young people opt out of formal political processes such as voting and engagement with political parties. </p>
<p>But this should not be read to infer political disinterest and apathy. On the contrary, young people have found other ways to voice their opinions. </p>
<h2>Different approaches</h2>
<p>Social media is widely used, across the spectrum of youth interviewed, both to voice protest as well as to engage on issues they care about. And many said they have heated face-to-face discussions with their peers about key issues, particularly those affecting their own communities. All these approaches were more appealing, meaningful and accessible than political party membership and voting.</p>
<p>They also held very fervent issues-based views. The focus groups prompted heated debates about xenophobia and the role of foreign nationals in their communities. The participants also felt strongly about common challenges in their communities such as substance abuse, crime and teenage pregnancy. </p>
<p>Our research shows that young people are thinking about key issues in their communities and that they’re getting involved, particularly where issues affect them directly. The difference between this generation and the 1976 generation is that they’re doing so in non-formal ways. </p>
<p>The #feesmustfall campaign is a good example of this. It arose out of an issue that directly affected the lives of many young people. They did not feel that formal democratic processes served them, leading them to engage in a wave of protests driven largely by social media engagements across campuses. </p>
<p>Political parties trying to win the youth vote need to reconnect with where the majority of young people are, more so because young people will continue to form potentially the biggest proportion of the voter base at least until 2050. It’s time the country stopped stereotyping them as apathetic, disinterested and morally bankrupt and started engaging them in ways that are meaningful to them, and connect with the issues they’re interested in. </p>
<p>_This article was co-authored with Lauren Stuart, Thobile Zulu and Senzelwe Mthembu.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79514/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This study was funded by the University of Johannesburg's Faculty Research Committee and and University Research Committee as well as through a small grant made by Prof Valerie Möller of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University.</span></em></p>
It’s time South Africa stopped stereotyping its young people as being disinterested and morally bankrupt and started engaging them.
Lauren Graham, Senior Researcher at the Centre for Social Development for Africa, University of Johannesburg
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.