Anti-Apartheid Movements Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Intrigued by the so-called “rebellion of the poor,” this paper traces back the current South African concern with popular protest to its reconfiguration during the last years of the apartheid order. Focusing on the discourse around grassroots resistance in the mid- to late-1980s, I begin by showing how, in juxtaposition to an ideal notion of civil society, popular mobilization had been largely delegitimized and the emancipatory politics of ungovernability recast as antidemocratic by the first few years of the post-apartheid regime. In deploying particular notions of violence and culture, this discursive shift, I suggest, fed into reconstructing the ungovernable subject as the racial other of the new South Africa’s citizenry. The second part of the paper mobilizes Foucault’s genealogy of liberalism to draw parallels between this process and the liberal effort to resolve the potentially conflicting principles of governing the economic subject and the subject of rights within the realm of civil society. Finally, via the postcolonial critique of liberal notions of civility and their rootedness in racial thinking, I suggest that civil society secures the governability of the population through rendering the potentially disruptive freedom of the people as the excess freedom of the racialized other.

- by
- •
- Governmentality, South African Politics and Society, Resistance (Social), Post-Colonialism

Independent Tanzania became a prominent frontline state in the struggle against white minority regimes in the early 1960s and remained committed to the total liberation of Africa until South African repatriations in the early 1990s. For three decades the country was a hub of Pan-Africanism and saw an extraordinarily high involvement of Tanzanians in supporting the southern African liberation movements in ways that went beyond TANU/CCM’s primary directions. While some research has been done on the daily interactions, relationships and tensions in the ANC/MK and SWAPO settlements and military training camps as well as in the nearby towns and villages that hosted them, this article shifts the focus from the camps and their surroundings to the forging of solidarity and transnational connections in urban leisure spaces, particularly the music scene. It seeks to bring to light both the enduring and fleeting intimate relations and everyday forms of conviviality between South Africans and Tanzanians which were produced in Dar es Salaam’s nightclubs. The central argument is that artistic collaborations with South Africans outside the camps not only amplified and solidified Tanzanians’ ability to transcend the idea of the national, but were key to the shaping of a specific form of grassroots pan-Africanism that I will call ‘convivial transnational solidarity’. The latter is intended as a practice rather than as an ideology. As I will show, the urban soundscape was central to its emergence. The article first charts how national politics – a key aspect of which was the duty to embrace transnational solidarity – extended into the lower echelons of Tanzanian society through the airwaves, the press and liberation songs. Following the trajectory of the Tanzanian band Afro-70 and its leader Patrick Balidisya, it then examines the everyday acts of welcoming that unfolded in Dar es Salaam’s music scene during the brief historical juncture between 1969 and 1977, which coincided with ujamaa and with Afro-70’s rise and demise. The last part of the article problematises the process of total liberation and the idea of transnational solidarity by exposing their fragility.

- by Maria Suriano
- •
- African Studies, Transnational History, Tanzanian Studies, Anti-Apartheid Movements

Following a hiatus in the 1960s, the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) was revived in 1971. This study brings the inner workings of the NIC to life against the canvas of major political developments in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, and up to the first democratic elections in 1994. The NIC was relaunched during the rise of the Black Consciousness Movement, which attracted a following among Indian university students, and whose invocation of Indians as Black led to a major debate about ethnic organisations such as the NIC. This debate persisted in the 1980s with the rise of the United Democratic Front and its commitment to non-racialism. Despite threats of banning and incarceration, the NIC kept attracting new recruits. This included students radicalised by the 1980s education boycotts and civic protests, who encouraged the development of community organisations. Drawing on varied sources, including oral interviews, newspaper reports, and minutes of organisational meetings, this engaging history challenges existing narratives around Indian ‘cabalism’, and brings the African and Indian political story into present debates about race, class and nation.

- by Goolam Vahed
- •
- History, Anti-Apartheid Movements, Politische Ideengeschichte, Indian South Africans

This paper seeks to identify some of the factors that can enhance the strength and influence of international civil society solidarity networks that mobilise around issues of concern. To this end, we focus on the Palestinian-inspired Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign and examine the significant differences that exist between it and the global anti-apartheid movement from which the Palestinian initiative derived much of its inspiration and strategic thinking. Differences between the contemporary BDS campaign and the anti-apartheid movement of the 1970s and '80s fall into three main categories: internal factors related to the organisational profile and membership of the anti-apartheid movement; ideational factors that influenced the level of legitimacy that movement enjoyed; and contextual factors particular to the socio-political and economic environment within which the anti-apartheid movement found itself operating. We conclude by emphasising the importance of the dynamic relationship between 'internal' popular resistance and the global solidarity movement that the anti-apartheid sanctions inspired. If the BDS movement is to exercise comparable leverage, it is imperative that unarmed resistance against the ongoing Israeli occupation remains buoyant both at local and international levels.

- by andrew rigby
- •
- Anti-Apartheid Movements, Palestinian Studies