Tag: apartheid

This searingly observant illustrated history of the women of Crossroads during the 1970s and 1980s tells a history of past and present organised resistance movements led by black women.

On January 24th Minister Stella Ndabeni Abraham proudly told the public, “We have a responsibility to enforce regulatory compliance in the SMME (Small Micro Medium Enterprises) sector and close businesses that are trading illegally.”

In a bold and fascinating narrative, June Bam presents a history of the imposition of history and the suppression of knowledge. She considers the voices that have been left out of the official history of our deep pasts and how this omission has impacted on our knowledge of South Africa’s pasts.

This extraordinary account of imprisonment shows with exacting clarity the awful injustices of the system. Sylvia Neame, activist against apartheid and racism and by profession a historian (see the three-volume, The Congress Movement, HSRC Press, 2015), has not written a classical historical memoir.

All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa revives six true stories of resistance by marginalised South Africans against the country’s colonial government in the years leading up to Apartheid.

Written in an engaging and self-deprecating style, this book is an unexpectedly funny and candid, behind-the-scenes account of what was unfolding in those newsrooms as the stories broke, peppered with anecdotes around those involved in making those stories happen around those involved in making those stories happen.

The recent press reports of the Venezuelan government relaxing its controls over the economy is heartening. This comes after the government of Zimbabwe also in recent years signalled its intention to open up for business and set right the disaster of Mugabe-era land grabs. South Africa would do well to take heed of this trend away from socialism toward freedom.

South Africa’s flirtation with the idea that government should be allowed to expropriate private property without being legally required to compensate owners for it stands in stark contrast to the constitutional democracy we chose 26 years ago and is already doing great damage to the economy.

Six years since his death (2013), Nelson Mandela still occupies an extraordinary place in the global imagination. Internationally, Mandela’s renown seems intact and invulnerable. In South Africa, however, his legacy and his place in the country’s history have become matters of contention and dispute, especially among younger black South Africans.

South Africa is limp wristed from unclear definitions and objectives that are used at different moments to drive ambiguous agendas. South Africa lacks a clear definition for transformation, and thus every other organ of change abdicates their role in shaping the country in a progressive direction.