“Where there is fire, there is politics”: Ungovernability and Material Life in Urban South Africa

Kerry Chance, Cultural Anthropology

This article combines theories of liberal governance, material life, and popular politics to examine the unruly force of fire in state-citizen struggles. Tracking interactions between state agents and activist networks during South Africa’s celebrated democratic transition, I analyze how the urban poor leverage the material properties of fire to secure techno-institutional claims to energy infrastructure, and more broadly to political inclusion and economic redistribution. I highlight how fire, as a social and historical as well as a chemical process, becomes a staging ground for the promise and endangerment of infrastructure. Approaching fire as intertwined with power, I argue, illuminates how those living on the margins of the city come to inhabit political roles that transform economic relationships in the context of liberalism.

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Women’s Assembly to Build Women’s Power

08 August 2015

Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League Statement on Women’s Day

The Abahlali Women’s League will be honouring the power of those women who organised a march to fight for the rights of all women in 1956. We wish to salute the women who said “enough is enough” and ‘no more dompass woza ID’. Now is our time to make a difference. We will honour the women who marched in 1956 by holding an assembly of the women to build women’s power in our communities, in the struggle and in society.

The assembly of the women will be held at 9:00 on Monday 10 August at the Hindu Surat Hall in Prince Edward Street. Each branch has been invited to elect 15 women to attend. Continue reading →

Road Blockade Happening in Siyanda Now

Thursday, 30 July 2015
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Road Blockade Happening in Siyanda Now
The ANC in eThekwini now support land occupations but only ANC members are allowed to build

When we began our struggle in 2005 the ANC was attempting to ‘eradicate’ shacks. We successfully opposed attempts to ‘eradicate’ numerous shack settlements in different parts of Durban and smaller towns in KwaZulu-Natal. We have also supported many land occupations which we see as the ‘peoples’ land redistribution programme’ or ‘land reform from below’ and as a form of ‘grassroots urban planning’. The ANC has long referred to land occupations, which they have called ‘land invasions’, as criminal acts and have used state violence and other forms of repression to try and prevent them. Continue reading →

We won’t accept oppression, and we won’t bow to censorship: Sendika.Org will not be silenced!

Sendika.Org

To the attention of friend and foe alike:

Amid its murder of socialist youth via the jihadist gangs that it has fed at the cost of many lives in the Middle East, its call to war amid the bombing of Kandil, as well as its operations against socialists and the Kurdistan Freedom Movement under the pretext of fighting ISIL, the AKP has not hesitated to also impose draconian censorship measures.

While giving the order for war, war criminals Tayyip Erdoğan and Ahmet Davutoğlu have also moved to silence the free press. On the morning of 25 July, access to Sendika.Org, ANF, ANHA, DİHA, Rojnews, Yüksekova Haber, Özgür Gündem and BestaNuçe was all blocked. Continue reading →

AKP-backed ISIL group massacres at least 30 in southeastern Turkey

Sendika.Org

At least 30 people were killed and 76 more were injured after a suspected member of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) staged a suicide bombing against members of a socialist youth federation as they prepared to travel to Kobane to help in the city’s reconstruction.

The blast targeted members of the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations (SGDF) at around 13.00 local time at the Amara Cultural Center in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa’s Suruç district, which lies directly across from Kobane in Rojava. Continue reading →