Students for Social Justice Statement on Ayanda Kota's arrest.

We, the Students for Social Justice condemn in the strongest possible terms the vicious police attack on our friend and comrade Ayanda Kota of the Unemployed People's Movement, which occurred on Thursday the 12th of January 2012.  Ayanda Kota was assaulted in barbaric and cowardly fashion in front of his 6 year old son at the Grahamstown police station by Constable Zulu and several other officers. Ayanda had voluntarily gone to the station after having been  accused of the theft of a book lent to him by a Rhodes University academic. The charge of theft is unfounded and part of a private vendetta against comrade Ayanda Kota. Having been informed of the charges, Ayanda acted in good faith by offering to replace the book in question, which he had misplaced.

Youth: Apathy, Whiteness and Juju

In the news feeding frenzy on the latest Julius Malema scandal, the collective imagination of our media yet again fails to address the real issues lurking behind his shadow. Firstly, I am frankly unmoved by the figure of Juju, who seems more have built his public personality on the collective “swart gevaar” fantasies of white bourgeois South Africans. Secondly, there is not all that much evidence of his supposed popularity among poor black youth that the media constantly refer to. Even the recent riots at Luthuli House attracted less than 1,000 people (many of whom are rumoured to have been paid). I would also hazard a guess that many who attend Julius’s rallies either attend because they are offered food or t-shirts or just want to see him say crazy shit. Too often, the liberal media bases much of its coverage on the assumption that an angry black demagogue naturally has thousands of mindless poor black youth following his every word. If I have to read another article decrying the nebulous influences of Juju’s populism and the investor panic emanating from the irrational black youth, I might have to join that great vortex of racism, reaction and stupidity known as the online comment section. The issue which is largely off the agenda of the punditry is that there is a whole generation growing up in South Africa facing little or no prospect of securing a decent job in their lifetime. Nobody really wants to talk about it. Helen Zille’s botox-fueled and (failed) toyi-toying attempts to engage young South Africans are beyond farcical. The fact is that the DA has no clue how to talk to young black South Africans beyond their fetishization of the neo-liberal entrepreneurial spirit lurking behind questionable “100% service delivery” claims and attempts to spread the protestant work ethic around. The truth is that only one major politician in the country is attempting to engage with this particular demographic, and this politician is widely known as ‘Juju’.

This brings me to my final point. Recently, we have seen a debate around the concept of “whiteness” emerge amongst our chattering classes in response to a fairly innocuous paper by Dr. Sam Vice of the Rhodes philosophy department. This paper, due to its discovery by Steve Hofmeyr and his acolytes, led to an orgiastic outbreak of white hysteria. What is evident to me, as much as I disagree with much of Vice’s argument, is that a political ontology of whiteness exists. This is reflected in the explicit attitudes of too many Rhodes Students. This attitude can be characterized in the endless moans of reverse racism, an attitude of self-entitlement and a widespread belief that merely passing is cause for celebration. Tertiary education has become a 3-year excuse to fuck, do drugs and party with little or no consequences, not that these are bad things in themselves, but university is also an opportunity for real political engagement and political reflection without the burdens of adulthood. While youth from Greece to Cairo rise up and exemplify the power of popular politics, being white in South Africa results in yet another night at Friars. Fuck that. I hope my generation can learn from the mistakes of our parents and start building a serious and exciting new left in this country.

On Democracy

Unemployed People’s Movement

Grahamstown

Ten Theses on Democracy

A contribution to the discussion at the Democratic Left Front Meeting, Johannesburg, Friday 2 September 2011

Michael Neocosmos recently gave a seminar at Rhodes University. We very much enjoyed his presentation. He begins and ends with the fact that all people think and looks closely at how this fact is denied in contemporary South Africa. We have had our own discussion on what the Neocosmos paper means for our understanding of the meaning of democracy and our orientation to struggles around democracy. We have prepared this document for the DLF meeting based on that discussion.

Thesis One: The Discussion about Democracy Must be Rooted in the Realities of our Struggles

If our movements have any chance of growing into a popular force that can win real victories against the state and capital then theory must speak to the realities of our struggles. We have to take the realities of our struggles very seriously because it is those realities that will determine whether or not we succeed or fail. We measure theory by how well it can speak to the realities of our struggles.

These Two: Liberal Democracy was not the Final Victory of the Struggle

We are often told that this democracy is the final fruit of the struggle against apartheid. That is not true. This democracy was a compromise in which the masses of the people were expelled from active participation in politics and returned to their allotted spaces in exchange for allowing the state to be placed under black management. As Frantz Fanon put it ‘the people were sent back to their caves’. This is why Mandela told the people to stop struggling when he came out of jail. A radical leader will always encourage the people to keep organising and struggling even when he or she is in power.

Thesis Three: Liberal Democracy Must be Defended

Liberal democracy is not democracy. It is just one very narrow and limited form of democracy that privileges elites and excludes ordinary people from active participation. But liberal democracy is much more democratic than the authoritarian and statist alternatives that the ANC is trying to entrench by rolling back media freedom, undermining the integrity of the courts and repressing social movements. Liberal democracy does give some space for debate and organisation and so we must defend it vigorously. However we must be very careful to avoid elitism and the domination of NGOs in this struggle to defend civil society.

Thesis Four: Liberal Democracy Must be Extended

Communist democracy is popular democracy. It is the democracy of the Paris Commune, of the Soviets, of the people’s power movement of the 1980s (which we must be careful not to celebrate uncritically due to the attacks on BC activists by UDF activists on the East Rand and here in Grahamstown too) and Tahir Square. We need to push wherever we can to deepen liberal democracy, with its dependence on a commodified legal system and the politics of representation by political parties and NGOs, into a politics of direct democracy where people live, work and study. We need to continually radicalise democracy from below.

Thesis Four: Politics Comes Before Economics

There is a strong tendency in the left to put economics before politics. This is a mistake. It’s all very well for people to propose alternative economic arrangements but without the force to implement them they are just ideas. Ideas can only be made a reality when people have the power to force progress forward. This is why politics (the political empowerment of the people) must come before economics (the creation of a just economy). We need to keep discussions about alternative economic models open at all times but our main task is the political empowerment of the people.

Thesis Five: We are not Struggling for Service Delivery

The struggles of the people are relentlessly described as ‘service delivery protests.’ Even many people on the left impose this meaning on our struggles. We reject this. Of course we do struggle for better services sometimes but this is always nested in a deeper struggle for control over our own lives, our own communities and development processes. We are struggling for the political empowerment of the people that can lead to a democratisation of decision making which will lead to a more equal society.

Thesis Six: The State is Sometimes a Threat to Democracy

The state poses a serious threat to democracy. The attacks on the media, the judiciary, social movements and popular protest are all well known. At this point it is grossly irresponsible to see the ANC or the state as democratising forces. They are both actively trying to roll back the limited democratic gains that were made in 1994. We all need to be clear about this. We need to be clear that there can be no progressive resolution of our social crisis from within the ANC and that it is essential to build political alternatives outside of the ANC and the alliance. We should take note of the different way that protests by organisations inside the alliance (e.g. SAMWU, ANC YL, TAC etc) are treated by the police compared to how protests by organisations outside of the alliance (e.g. UPM, AbM, AEC, LPM etc) are treated by the police.

Thesis Seven: Civil Society is Sometimes a Threat to Democracy

It is a myth that civil society is always a democratic space. Civil society organisations are usually hierarchical, professional organisations which are not run democratically, have no democratic mandate and are often threatened by popular membership based organisations. They are often white dominated and always dominated by the middle class. They are often threatened by a politics that organises outside of the realm of professional civil society (the courts, conferences etc). There have been many cases of civil society organisations being as hostile to popular politics as the state and maliciously and dishonestly presenting popular organisations as criminal, violent and irrational. This is as true of liberal civil society as it has been true of some people in NGOs on the left (e.g. those that tried to criminalise AEC and AbM in the mass media and on email listserves).

Thesis Eight: The Criminalisation of our Movements is a Major Threat to Democracy

While we support the campaigns to protect media freedom and the independence of the courts they are often very elitist in how they are organised and in the way that they express their concerns. They usually leave out a major threat to our democracy which is the rampant criminalisation of popular movements. Both the state and the ANC on one side, and elements in NGO based civil society on the other, (including its liberal and left streams), have a record of trying to misrepresent popular struggles as violent, irrational and criminal. It is essentially for all genuinely progressively forces to unite against this criminalisation of popular protest and popular organisation.

Thesis Nine: We Need to Think Democracy Together with Dignity

The indignity with which our people have to live every day is truly horrific. Today the brother of one of our comrades, a man who is 36 and has no job, is walking around Grahamstown with the body of his baby in his arms looking for someone to take the body. The hospital has turned him away. He is feeling useless and desperate. Democracy must not only be something technical. The way that we practice democracy must also contribute to defending and building the dignity of our people.

Thesis Ten: We Must All Practice What We Preach

All our organisations need to be rigorously democratic both internally and in how they relate to each other in forums like the DLF, Right2Know and so on. This means that people must be elected to all positions, accountable and recallable. It means that there must be equal representation of men and women. It also means that comrades from NGOs and Universities cannot assume an automatic right to leadership and that if a democratic process does not elect them or accept their views they must accept this process rather than trying to retain power by manipulating budgets behind the scenes or making wild allegations of criminality, conspiracy and so on.

SSJ Suggested Agenda; for Saturday 20 Aug 2011.

Please add omissions/correct mistakes...
1. Decide on chair & minute taker for the meeting?
............................................................
2. New meeting times (yes, again...).
Time:........................... --- put new time for facebook referendum prior to decision...
3. Task team structure: what do you think of 'bottom-liners' to ensure efficacy?
yes/no
4. Project & events updates:
a) Right 2 Know:
- who's on the task team? ......................................................................
- what, when (deadlines?), how?
b) Creche:
- task team: Mbali, Chantelle and Tai
- want to start in a month, CHOSA funding & criteria, our input, youth centre idea etc..
- Tania fill in on funding? who? org? contact? ................................................
c) Recruitment updates:
- Kayla Roux: Journ and Ecos… Tania helping with Journ..................................
- Michael Glover: English........................................................................
- Mbali Baduzaali : Enviros and Law............................................................
- Benjamin Glyn Fogel: Philosophy.............................................................
- Etai Even-Zahav: History.....................................................................
- Shameez Joubert: politics --- plus whoever did politics 1 with sally's class............
...........................................................................................................
- Anyone else want to join someone or tackle their own department? hard sciences? pub?
- is this method working? if not how do we make it work/new tactics?
More projects?
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
events:
d) Neocosmos: Everyone who's keen to join event on ssj fb page. Chantelle: need help with anything? snacks? is this a collaboration with politics dept? anyone still need the paper?
e) Good: who’s keen to get involved?............................................................................
f) reminder: HIV/AIDS Week: Line-up? SSJ Statement, involvement etc.? ………………
More events?
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
5. Articles, interviews other media: who's done what, and who's writing, speaking, publishing etc. in near future? fill everyone in... anyone need 'seconding'?
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
6. Manifesto updates. Please, if you have time and energy, re-read (its available further down on the facebook page) and bring edited copy.
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
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7. Anything missed out?
........................................................................................................
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8. Open discussion

Israel's social revolution

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/marches-held-across-israel-as-social-protests-enter-fourth-week-1.378052

Voices from Symphony Way Press Release.

Press Release – 9 August 2011
Students for Social Justice
Unemployed People’s Movement
Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign

Event 1: Pavement Dwellers to speak at Rhodes University
Venue: Sociology 1, Rhodes University
Date/Time: Thursday 11 August @ 19h00 – 21h00

Event 2: Symphony Way authors meet the Unemployed People’s Movement
Venue: Duna Library in Joza Township
Date/Time: Friday 12 August @ 3pm

‘A beauty, extraordinary in every way.’
Naomi Klein, author of ‘The Shock Doctrine’ and ‘No Logo’

Students for Social Justice, the Sociology Department, and the Unemployed Peoples Movement in Grahamstown have organized two unique talks by four of the Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers, authors of No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way. This extraordinary anthology of struggle it testimony and poetry written on the pavement of one of the longest running civil disobedience protests in South Africa’s history.

The authors will be speaking on Thursday at Rhodes where they will discuss their struggle for land, housing and dignity with progressive academics and the Students for Social Justice. On Saturday, the authors will be meeting with the Unemployed People’s Movement where they will be engaged in discussions about their respective struggles and ways of building solidarity between poor people throughout South Africa.

No Land! No House! No Vote! is a direct challenge to the publishing industry. We cannot humanise our world through a vanguard media. The right to a voice cannot be held only be elite academics, authors and politicians; it is a right that must be claimed by the poor as well.

Speakers:

• Florrie Langenhoven – Here I’ve learned to share: I don’t work, but if I’ve got dry bread I first look around if my neighbours have got something to eat before I can eat. It feels like a BIG FAMILY.
• Shakeera Samuels – I would never ever want to go back to peoples back yard again where my family will be treated like animals.
• Cynthia Twigg – Symphony Way has its little [vegetable] garden which I look after. I water it and even sew my own seeds. Tomatoes, gen-squash, sweet-melon, and other eatable vegs grew in my little garden which keep me going.
• Bonita Seconds – When they [my children] are going to grow up, they must be something. They are going to change something around in the world.

For more information on the book, please contact:

Bonita Seconds (Symphony Way author) @ 073-841-1111
Sarita Jacobs (Symphony Way secretary) @ 076-469-9843

For event info, directions and struggle info in Grahamstown contact:

Ayanda Kota (UPM) @ 078-625-6462
Ben Fogel (SSJ) @ 071-224-6524

Reviews:

Cape Argus – Street people book their place on library shelf

The New Age – Living in a world turned on its head

Amandla Magazine – Review by Professor Martin Legassick

Acclaim:

“A beautiful and heart-rending book that speaks a story so often undocumented.” – Nigel Gibson, author of Fanonian Practices: From Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo.

“The Symphony Way occupation was a real attempt at an insurgent and tenacious solidarity against an increasingly exclusionary and brutal society…All the tenacity, beauty, pain, desperation, and contradictions that breathe their life into any popular struggle haunt the pages of this searing book.” —Richard Pithouse, department of politics and international studies, Rhodes University, South Africa

“A magnificent and moving account of a long and hard-fought struggle . . . . a clarion call for basic human rights and for human dignity. A powerful insider’s view into the landscape of poverty in neoliberal South Africa.” — Michael Watts, Class of 63 Professor of Geography and Development Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, author of Curse of the Black Gold.

“An extraordinary collection of writings from the spirit of resilience and strength of the collective which lay bare the betrayal of the people in post-apartheid South Africa.” —Sokari Ekine, author and award-winning blogger

“This book carries not only the suffering of the Symphony Way communities but of the millions of poor people of the world. . . . It is through this courage that we can all hope for the real struggle that intends to put human beings at the center of our society.” —S’bu Zikode, president, Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement, South Africa

“As middle-class African journalists and activists, we thought we were telling the tale of the poorest, but here we are surpassed. Their truths, spoken in their sharp vernacular tongue, fly straight to the heart of the matter.” —Michael Schmidt, journalist and author

A better Life for All.

A Better Life for All Remains a Dream for the Poor and the Unemployed

The eThembeni informal settlement was erected in 1992, before the dawn of our democracy. It was called eThembeni, “place of hope”, because the birth of a new nation, the birth of democracy was inevitable. But today people remain unemployed, living without income in mud houses.

Horizontal to the place of hope, 3km away, another informal settlement stands. It is called Phaphamani, a place of vigilant people. Phaphamani was erected in 1992. In both informal settlements there are no human basic services like electricity and sanitation.

The recent floods in Grahamstown left so many people, in particular in informal settlements homeless. The Unemployed People’s Movement were running up and down helping comrades during the flood. I was deployed in Phaphamani and eThembeni. As the rain was pouring I was with a senior citizen, an old woman who is at her late fifties. The house was just full of water. We were moving furniture to the other room, using buckets to evacuate the water that was threatening to form a swimming pool inside the house. It was so quiet, only sounds of water and our buckets. It was hectic, the whole community was just evacuating water non-stop.

As we were busy, the old woman stopped for a moment, looked at me, a smile crawling out of her mouth. Yet I could see the tears making the way through the corners of the eyelids. I then stopped and stared at her. She made a sound, trying to remove a lump in her throat and finally broke the silence. She said “Vote ANC, Vote for Better Life, Vote for Heaven and Vote for Jesus. Better life in heaven indeed not under ANC”.

I was so overwhelmed with emotions. I felt as if something heavy was placed on my shoulders, the muscles were just contracting and my neck became stiff instantly. I immediately thought of a woman, in her late 50’s as well, whom we buried recently. She was living on the foot of a hill and when the sewerage pipe burst at the hill shit would fill her house. It would take weeks before the pipe was fixed. She died because of TB related diseases. Her story was on SABC, in a report by Nomawethu Solwandle. The officials did nothing. A week after her story was on SABC, she died. How does one go to sleep?

One of our mentors, Professor Pedro Tabensky, a protagonist of Black Consciousness, came to my mind. He says that UPM must resurrect hope in our communities and collectivism. As things are at the moment people have lost hope. It is no wonder that there is such brokenness. Reclaiming hope is the first step to action. Another mentor by the name of Richard Pithouse would also quote Frantz Fanon: “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it.” The time has come for our generation to invent our own politics and to take our own stand. People are struggling and thinking and discussing all over the country. These rivers of struggle will join soon. We are already getting a good sense of the new politics. It is a politics that is firmly in the hands of the people. A politics that begins from our daily lives.

I think hope is important. It was hope that brought the generation of 1976 together. They discovered their mission and they were determined to fulfil it at all costs. Just like the Tsietsi Mashinini generation, we will not betray our mission.

In Makana Municipality, there is a backlog of over 13 000 houses. The RDP house that have been built are crumbling down and people are deserting them. There is an unemployment rate of nearly 70%. This woman in eThembeni forms part of the backlog of 13 000 houses. She forms part of the 70% without work. Because of her age, she is at her late 50’s, she does not qualify for an old age income grant. All that she is, in her country of her birth, is statistics. She is like many South Africans. She matters the most during Statistics South Africa surveys and Elections. Her ID is also a constant reminder that she is a South African.

But a country so rich cannot afford her, being a senior citizen, a house nor a job. She watches helplessly as our municipality can not account for R19 million, the mayor who is indebted to the municipality an amount of not less that R60 000, for dining and wining with the girlfriend. Every time she turns on her radio all she is hearing is the plundering of our resources by the elite, the president who will be taking the next wife to be maintained by the tax payers and his friends with their tenders.

Yes, a country so rich, a country that could afford R70billion to purchase arms deal, not for the nation, for the benefit of the elite, and the nation is not even allowed to get the details of how their money was spent. Yes a country so rich, that it could spend R60billion on hosting a World Cup, when the majority of its senior citizens don’t have a shelter. A country so rich that it can only produce billionaires and millionaires, while the senior citizens are dying because of poverty related diseases. Rushing to take the water out of their shacks in the floods. Rushing for water when their shacks are burning.

There is a simple lack of care for us by those who rule us. To them we are just lazy buds who do want to do anything but expect government to do everything for us. Their perception changes during election time. We matter the most during elections time. After that we must go back to our shacks, to our life without an income.

The better life for all remains a dream. To Christians it is certain that they will enjoy such life in heaven. But we also deserve this life while on earth. God has blessed us with all the riches. However under the ANC this will forever be a dream deferred.

Our main task is to give people hope and to invent a politics that can express that hope. That is what Biko did for his generation. Once people have hope everything else follows. We have to care very carefully for every precious spark of hope that still shines in places like eThembeni and Phaphamani.

Ayanda Kota

Chairperson, Unemployed People’s Movement, Grahamstown

078 625 6462