The Mandela Legacy - The Repetition of Violence.pdf (original) (raw)
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY, IDENTITY, AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF VIOLENCE IN NELSON MANDELA'S LONG WALK TO FREEDOM
SARJANA: JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA, KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA, 2017
From the vantage positions of the blacks, the South African Apartheid State was created on the principle of violence towards them. In fact, the system of apartheid was sustained and nourished through a brutal use of force against this majority by perniciously suppressing and negating their humanity. In addition to this state sanctioned violence, there is also the black-on-black violence that had resulted to numerous loss of lives. In fact the story of this black-on-black violence occupies a central space in Nelson Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. This paper, therefore, looks at how violence is used as a narrative trope in Nelson Mandela's autobiography. The paper focuses on how Mandela uses the trajectory of violence to construct his identity on the one hand and the identity of his opponents especially members of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) on the other.
Rejecting Rights: Vigilantim And Violence In Post-Apartheid South Africa
African Affairs, 2015
Academic and policy interest in the emergence, development, and efficacy of rights has increased substantially over the last twenty years. One particular effect that scholars have recently identified is the connection between the spread of rights across the globe and large-scale reductions in violence. While the expansion of rights may enable reductions in violence, the evidence in this article suggests the opposite may also be true. Drawing on ethnographic research on vigilantism in South Africa, a country deeply invested in the twentieth century rights revolution, the article shows how vigilantes have used the state's expanding rights regime to justify violence. Specifically, it examines the growth and spread of what was at one time South Africa's largest vigilante group, Mapogo a Mathamaga. Mapogo first emerged shortly after the country's transition to democracy and rapidly grew as its leadership preached a gospel that rejected rights, claiming that rights enabled crime and allowed immorality to proliferate. By assaulting suspected criminals, Mapogo's members claim that they are correcting the criminal, the post-apartheid state, and the flawed rights regime on which it is based, an outcome which the existing literature on rights and violence has difficulty explaining.
Winnie Mandela's Banning Order, the Territoriality of Power and Political Violence
1996
Political violence' is a weak concept with a weak empirical basis. Counting acts of violence as 'political' are ultimately done on a subjective basis. By leaving out 80-90% of all violence in society (counted by murders) it is not able to capture the real power relations in society. A less subjctive and more comprehensive concept of violence would be preferable. In this paper I outline such a concept in three steps. First I consider the difference between violence and power; and secondly I explore Winnie Mandela's banning order for clues to the territoriality of power. It reveals four territorial units: state, ethnic group, town and house. I argue that across the borders of exactly these four territorial units are all power relations of any nation-state articulated. Finally I return from power to violence in order to sketch a comprehensive way of coding of data on violence based on the four territorial units.
Protest, 2021
Based on interviews with Ronnie Kasrils, a former ANC military commander and former intelligence minister in South Africa, this article examines that country’s struggle against apartheid. It looks at the interplay between violent and non-violent forms of resistance, explains the reasons for the ANC and other South African liberation movements adopting the armed struggle after almost half a century of commitment to non-violence, and discusses the dilemmas within the movement in trying to ensure that the military component of the struggle always remained subservient to the political. The article also looks at the development of the political underground in South Africa, and its role, together with the armed struggle, in effecting the end of apartheid. Kasrils also discusses the period of political negotiations in South Africa, from 1990 to 1994, and the relationship between that and on-the-ground struggles – both armed and unarmed.
Justice denied: political violence in Kwazulu‐Natal after 1994 (AFRICAN AFFAIRS)
African Affairs, 2002
To unravel post-apartheid political violence in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, three case studies are presented: the Shobashobane massacre (1995); the Richmond killings (which reached their height in 1997-98); and the Nongoma assassinations (1999)(2000). Detailed consideration of the activities of paramilitary forces, the security forces, and the criminal justice system reveals that post-apartheid political violence is systemically related to the dynamics of the 'unofficial' war between Inkatha and the African National Congress. In this context, it is argued that a failure to confront this war -in terms of asserting political authority or through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission -has worked to drive political violence and to push it into new forms, with lethal effect.
Mandela and Beyond: Thinking New Possibility in the 21st Century
Routledge eBooks, 2020
To map my way, I'd like to begin with two recent cultural texts or events featuring the name and biography of South Africa's first democratic president. One is an exhibition, the other a poem. Both after their fashion approach Nelson Rohihlahla Mandela as a symbol that, though built on a twentieth century base, also bears reference to twenty-first-century culture and politics. The texts allow me to ask something I have asked before, in my short 2008 biography Nelson Mandela, but to angle that question to the decades that lie ahead. 1 The question probes the value of Mandela's career and life's work as an ongoing object lesson or theory-in-practice. How did his way of doing politics, his almost charmed facility of interacting evenhandedly with political enemies and friends alike, lay down a model for South Africa in the future? In particular, what might Mandela's story continue to teach us, further into the twenty-first century-especially when that story is re-evaluated, freshly interpreted and historically re-angled, as in this special issue? My first 'text' is the Nelson Mandela Official Exhibition that ran at the Leake Street Gallery in London from 8 February to 2 June 2019, and then travelled internationally. It was supported by the Robben Island Museum, the Mayibuye Archives at UWC, and others, including Zelda La Grange, Mandela's long-serving personal assistant, and members of the Mandela family. The exhibition sought to represent the life of the statesman through photographs and video clips, as well as a selection of his treasured objects, ranging from handwritten letters through to his watch. But it also had an interest in calling visitors to a sense of moral action by insistently reminding them of the values of justice, peace, reconciliation and humanity for which Mandela stood. 2 My second text is '1994: a love poem', a hard-hitting, witty lyric by the Cape Town poet-activist Koleka Putuma. In the 21-line poem, she calls for someone to love her adoringly, even abjectly, fawningly, 'the way that white people look at / and love / Mandela'. 3 She wants, she quips, 'a TRC kind of lover'. The poem threads together a series of loose couplets linking white 'love' for Mandela to 'betrayal', 'fuckery' and living in the past, culminating in an intentionally shocking charge-that white
Violence and Democracy in South Africa's Community Protests
2015
Community protests in South Africa are often described as violent. Drawing from newspaper articles, interviews with protesters and statements by public officials, this paper unpacks the meaning of ‘violent protest'. It shows that violence is both ambiguous and deeply entangled with democracy. On the one hand, violent practices may become a tool of liberation, promoting democracy by empowering marginalised groups. On the other hand, democracy may become a tool of domination, undermining dissent by constituting as violent those persons and actions that deviate from formal institutional channels. The analysis urges scholars to adopt a critical and nuanced view of violence.