Nigel Gibson

Statement in Support of Abahlali baseMjondolo

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Statement in support of Abahlali baseMjondolo

9 October 2009

The South African shack-dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) is an egalitarian, democratic organisation dedicated to the self-empowerment and self-education of thousands of disadvantaged people. We the undersigned support the resolve of AbM activists to play a leading part in the determination of their own future, and to help make, rather than suffer, public decisions about housing, land, and development. We condemn all acts of violence and intimidation against AbM members and the residents of South Africa's informal settlements. We condemn any participation or collusion of the government and police in the recent assault against AbM leaders and their families, and in the destruction of their homes and offices. We call on the government to do all that is required to repair the damage done in recent weeks, and to protect AbM activists and settlement residents from any future violence; we note in particular the repeated death threats against AbM President S'bu Zikode and Vice President Mashumi Figlan. We call on the ANC to respect and facilitate, rather than discourage, popular participation in the governing of South Africa.

Democracy’s everyday death: South Africa's quiet coup

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http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/59322

Democracy’s everyday death: South Africa's quiet coup
Nigel Gibson and Raj Patel
2009-10-08, Issue 451

You don’t need presidential palaces, or generals riding in tanks, or even the CIA to make a coup happen. Democracy can be overthrown with far less pomp, fewer props and smaller bursts of state violence. But these quieter coups are no less deadly for democracy.

At the end of September, just such a coup took place in South Africa. It wasn’t the kind involving parliament or the inept and corrupt head of the ANC (African National Congress), Jacob Zuma. Quite the opposite. It involved a genuinely democratic and respected social movement, the freely elected governing committee of the shack settlement at Kennedy Road in Durban. And this peaceful democracy was overthrown by the South African government.

Living Learning

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Click here to download the Living Learning booklet in pdf.

Living Learning

Just two days before Abahlali baseMjondolo was violently attacked in Kennedy Road, the movement was in celebratory mood as hundreds of shackdwellers crowded into the eMmause Community Hall on Heritage Day, 24th September, for the launch of a new booklet, Living Learning.

Living Learning is the collected notes from an extraordinary series of discussions between militants of two key movements in contemporary South Africa, Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Rural Network. When, in late 2008, they made the decision to publish them, these authors explained that “this Living Learning is a living testimony and a record of how we made reflections and distinctions about what we face in life and in our learning. Living Learning is part of a living politics”.

Fanonian Practices and the politics of space in postapartheid South Africa: The Challenge of the Shack Dwellers Movement

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Click here to read an annotated version of this essay in word and here to read it in pdf.

Bu makaleyi Türkçe okumak için buraya tiklayin.

Fanonian Practices and the politics of space in postapartheid South Africa: The Challenge of the Shack Dwellers Movement (Abahlali baseMjondolo)
Presentation at the Frantz Fanon Colloque, Algiers July 7, 2009

Was ist me dem versprochenen land passiert? Post-apartheid Sud Afrika aus der Perspektive Frantz Fanons

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Was ist me dem versprochenen land passiert? Post-apartheid Sud Afrika aus der Perspektive Frantz Fanons

Nigel Gibson

Truthout: The Marikana Massacre: A Turning Point for South Africa?

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http://truth-out.org/news/item/11237-the-marikana-massacre-a-turning-point-for-south-africa

The Marikana Massacre: A Turning Point for South Africa?

by Nigel Gibson

It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things - but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces - but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty - but for the worker, deformity.
-Marx, "Alienated Labor"

It's better to die than to work for that shit. People are coming back here tomorrow. I am not going to stop striking. We are going to protest until we get what we want. They have said nothing to us. Police can try and kill us but we won't move.

Thinking Fanon: Fanonian Translations in and outside the academy

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A presentation by Nigel Gibson (author of Fanonian Practices in South Africa) hosted by the Centre for Contemporary Thought and the African Studies Workshop at the University of Chicago, February 21, 2012

Fanon en Afrique du Sud : une autre « géographie de la raison » (recension et "bonnes feuilles")

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http://www.contretemps.eu/fr/lectures/fanon-en-afrique-sud-autre-%C2%AB-g%C3%A9ographie-raison-%C2%BB-recension-bonnes-feuilles

Fanon en Afrique du Sud : une autre « géographie de la raison » (recension et "bonnes feuilles")

Matthieu Renault, Contretemps

Pratiques fanoniennes en Afrique du Sud, le titre du dernier ouvrage de Nigel Gibson, figure clé des Fanon studies anglophones 1, témoigne à lui seul de la fécondité (internationale) de l’œuvre du psychiatre et théoricien des décolonisations Frantz Fanon depuis sa mort le 5 décembre 1961. Cette fécondité, elle nous a trop longtemps été masquée par l’oubli 2 dans lequel le même Fanon a été plongé en France. Certes, nous ne sommes plus à présent sans connaître le rôle capital qu’ont pu jouer ses écrits dans la fondation des postcolonial studies anglo-américaines, mais l’on ignore encore trop souvent les multiples appropriations théoriques et pratiques dont ils ont pu faire l’objet hors de l’ « Euro-Amérique » : en Amérique latine, en Afrique, en Asie. Che Guevara s’avérait ainsi être un lecteur averti de Fanon — l’on retrouve encore dans sa bibliothèque personnelle à La Havane un exemplaire annoté de Pour la révolution africaine. L’on songera également à Paolo Freire, auteur brésilien de la Pédagogie des opprimés; à Amilcar Cabral, fondateur du Parti Africain pour l’Indépendance de la Guinée et du Cap-Vert, théoricien de la révolution africaine dont les thèses sur la culture nationale ne peuvent manquer d’évoquer celles de Fanon; à Ali Shariati 3, grande figure de l’islam réformiste, idéologue (selon ses mots) de la révolution iranienne et qui fut profondément marqué par sa rencontre avec Fanon. Cette liste est évidemment très loin d’être exhaustive, mais elle fait déjà comprendre tout l’intérêt qu’il y aurait à retracer rigoureusement tous ces déplacements de la pensée de Fanon. Ce serait là à n’en pas douter une contribution importante à une étude des circulations « sud-sud » des idées qui s’inscrirait elle-même dans la perspective d’une géographie des savoirs en rupture avec la thèse de la suprématie épistémique de l’Europe conçue comme lieu (à la fois origine et centre) par excellence de production de connaissance.

¨I dannati¨ di Fanon e la razionalita della revolta

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¨I dannati¨ di Fanon e la razionalita della revolta

Nigel Gibson, Aut Aut

Thinking Fanon, 50 years later: Fanonian translations in and beyond “Fanon Studies"

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http://thinkingafricarhodesuniversity.blogspot.com/2012/02/thinking-fanon-50-years-later-fanonian.html

Thinking Fanon, 50 years later: Fanonian translations in and beyond “Fanon Studies"

by Nigel Gibson

This is the text of talk given sponsored by the African Studies Workshop, the Center for International Studies, the Social Theory Workshop, and the Reproduction of Race and Racial Ideologies Workshop at the University of Chicago, February 21, 2012.

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