Amandla! Media – Details, episodes & analysis

Yesterday, we launched the 78th issue of Amandla magazine that focuses on the local government. Amandla Collective’s Shaeera Kalla was in conversation with Issue #78 contributor Ayabonga Cawe. 

We are in the middle of what some call the ‘silly season’, while the poor are plunging deeper into the abyss of poverty due to the high unemployment rate and severe joblessness aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic, politicians are out in full force waxing lyrical about what they plan to do in addressing this calamity as they campaign for the upcoming local government elections. These are empty promises poor communities receive every five years when politicians are on the campaign trail. Very little has changed since the dawn of democracy but every five years brings a glimpse of hope to some neglected and excluded communities as they believe things will change for the better once they vote.

In this special issue of Amandla, we featured a different crop of leaders. Community leaders who have been active in our communities for years, campaigning for decent housing, land, affordable basic services, jobs and against corruption have decided to come together to campaign in this year’s local government election under a common banner – the Cry of the Xcluded. They are not politicians but activists. They affirm that their campaign is not only about the crisis of local government or for the delivery of better services, but for a SOCIALIST South Africa where the enormous wealth of this country would be freed from the greed of the few and be used to ensure that everyone has a decent life, a life of dignity.

Also in this issue, Ayabonga Cawe delves deeper into municipal dysfunction and how it negatively impacts economic production. Poor service delivery does not only affect households but some municipalities are also losing investors as factories are closing down and moving production to towns with better infrastructure and this has a negative impact on job-creation efforts and poverty alleviation. Cawe states that no industrialist will locate themselves in an area without roads for example.

Lastly, we also looked at water scarcity in Eastern Cape and Gauteng. Our constitution states that everyone has the right to clean water and basic sanitation and Chapter 4 of the National Development Plan envisages a South Africa that recognises the importance of secure and equitable access to water and sanitation as catalysts for socio-economic development. But for communities like Lurholweni township, in the Amadiba administrative area in Mbizana, Eastern Cape this is nothing but a pipe dream as their taps run dry. Twenty years later, there is no free basic water in Lurholweni. Water provision is private, via the informal economy.

This webinar illustrates that equity is a central issue in public health and that there is an inescapable link between poverty, the feminization of poverty and access to health care, particularly in the South African context. This webinar furthermore, seeks to build systems of solidarity among affected marginalised groups as a result of the pandemic.

Hosted by the Alternative Information and Development Centre + the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southern Africa

Building a new Eskom: Fully Public and Serving the People with Daniel Chavez, Sean Sweeney and Brian Ashley 

The crisis at ESKOM must not be used to further liberalise and privatise the energy sector. The proposal to break-up ESKOM into different companies WILL lead to greater privatisation of the energy sector. Electricity will become more expensive and jobs will be lost. Another strategy is possible and necessary. A “New Eskom” is necessary. Eskom must remain publicly owned, but it must be radically transformed and the process of corporatization and marketization that began in the late 1980s must be reversed. AIDC together with NUMSA, NUM and other trade unions, supported by Trade Unions for Energy Democracy and Transnational Institute are developing proposals for addressing the crisis of ESKOM in ways that enhance energy democracy and a just transition to a low carbon development path.  

With inputs from Daniel Chavez (TNI), Sean Sweeney(TUED) and Brian Ashley (AIDC)

"The on-going calls for ‘radical economic transformation’ as well as arguments about how lack of ‘economic freedom’ undermines political independence, sharply raise questions about the nature of the ideology that drove the liberation struggle, African nationalism. As we examine African nationalism, it is vital to reflect on nationalism that developed in other parts of the global South. India is good case study to consider. Emerging in the 1880s, Indian nationalism drove the struggle against British colonial rule and anchored the mass movement that won political independence in 1947."

At a joint Amandla, Tshisimani and IFAA Forum on 2017 Vivek Chibber presented a lecture on Indian nationalism from the days of the Bombay Plan, which advocated strong economic planning measures, to the turn to neoliberalism. Chibber also touched on contemporary right-wing and ethnic nationalism in India.

Chibber is an American-based academic, Marxist theorist and Professor of Sociology at New York University. He is the author of Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India (2003) and Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (2013). 

Gramsci is now a "star in the firmament" of humanities.

Can his fame help us to better understand his thought or does it risk producing a misinterpretation of his thought?

We will try to answer this question by focusing on the idea of hegemony, likely Gramsci's most famous analytical category

"In this period where activists have begun to expose the pervasive nature of patriarchy and misogny in activist spaces - this is a period where the labour movement needs to authentically and genuinely deal with the pervasiveness of patriarchy and misogyny in the workplace but also in the unions that are meant to protect workers. What we find in the labour movement is an entrenched culture of patriarchy and sexism with many womxn and queer people not being in leadership roles within the unions, many people being sexually harassed and violated and being told not to say anything as it will cause fragmentation and divisions with in the unions and that all policies that unions have developed around gender have not substantially been implemented and they are relegated to gender desks with limited or no power.   

If the labour movement in South Africa is actually committed to the liberation of workers from capitalist exploitation then how do we deal with this pervasive culture of sexism in the labour movement in order for all workers to be truly liberated." 

With guest speaker Prakashnee Govender

 On Friday the 14th of June, Brazil witnessed one of the largest general strikes in recent years. Workers from various sectors joined the General Strike against the Pension Reform, in defense of Education and by jobs. Segments in the transport sector, public servants, education professionals, metallurgists, bankers, construction workers, petroleum worker's and traders joined the day of struggle against the Jair Bolsonaro government's attacks on social security rights, employment and education cuts. 

This forum gives an overview of Brazil under the Bolsonaro administration. It  does so by situating Brazil within the broader Global Political Economy, going over the developments that have taken place under Bolsonaro and have led to one of Brazil's largest general strikes in years. In addition the offers an analysis of the state of working class politics and resistance in Brazil during the Bolsonaro era.

South Africa’s distorted distribution of wealth is one of the biggest challenges facing the country’s economy, with unemployment sitting at an unsustainable 27.7%. In terms of wealth, the top percentile households hold 70.9% while the bottom 60% holds a mere 7%. 76% of South Africans face an imminent threat of falling below the poverty line. With such statistics, the inequality crisis in this country is at a desperate level and strategies to remedy this challenge seem shallow and lack urgency.

In this context, the Institute for African Alternatives has brought together a series of papers written by eminent South African academics and policymakers to serve as a catalyst to finally confront and resolve inequality. With papers from former Public Prosecutor Thuli Madonsela, Ben Turok and former President Kgalema Motlanthe, this book provides a guide to how the nation can confront and resolve the inequality plaguing the country. The nation is headed to the polls later this year and books such as this are vital for providing a strong guide on how those in power can address South Africa’s biggest economic crisis.

A great contribution to the current political discourse, the book both confronts the issue and provides strategies on how to remedy inequality.

The twentieth century has brought considerable political, social, and economic change for South Africa. While many would choose to focus only on the issues of race, segregation, and apartheid, this book tries to capture another facet: its drive towards modernisation and industrialisation. While considering the achievements and failures of that drive, as well as how it related to ethnic and racial policy making, Bill Freund makes the economic data come alive by highlighting people and places. He proposes that South Africa in the twentieth century can actually be understood as a nascent developmental state, with economic development acting as a key motivating factor. As a unique history of South Africa in the twentieth century, this will appeal to anyone interested in a new interpretation of modern South African economic development or those in development studies searching for striking historical examples.

 

How do class, race and gender impact on the production of knowledge? Is it enough to include those who have been excluded from advanced knowledge? Or has knowledge itself been tainted by the exclusions of class, race, gender and colonial conquest? How to proceed with such realisations? How do we decolonise our minds and our universities? Should we repudiate existing knowledge and start again at zero? Or should we return to the indigenous knowledge of our ancestors? Or should we engage in a radical and critical transformation? How has Rhodes Must Fall dramatised these dilemmas? What does Marxism have to offer in working through these issues? 

About the Speaker:

Professor Helena Sheehan is emeritus professor at Dublin City University where she taught history of ideas. Her books include: Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History, Irish Television Drama: A Society and Its Stories, The Syriza Wave and Navigating the Zeitgeist. Her publications also include many journal articles, book chapters and conference papers. Her most recent articles have appeared in Monthly Review and Jacobin. She has lectured in many countries, from the US to the USSR, from Ireland to South Africa. She has come to South Africa five times previously, including two sabbaticals, to study transformation in higher education. She has been active on the left for many years, beginning with the US new left in the 1960s and persisting through many campaigns, movements and parties. She believes that Marxism is the unsurpassed philosophy of our times.