Category Archives: Church Land Programme

A Call to the eThekwini Municipality: Do not buy Casspirs

PRESS STATEMENT: A Call to the eThekwini Municipality: Do not buy Casspirs

We are outraged at the plan for the City of Durban to purchase militarised vehicles to deal with protests by the people of the Durban. This marks an alarming and unacceptable escalation of the local state’s increasingly repressive and intolerant response.

The protest actions themselves highlight the deep crises and challenges that we need to be facing together as a community with compassion and inclusion. What is needed is respect for the concerns, freedoms and dignity of the people. What is needed is the effective and immediate deployment of skills focused on listening, on peaceful negotiations and inclusive dialogue. What is needed is to seriously address the root causes of inequality, exclusion, patronage, elite indifference and arrogance that lie behind people’s protest actions.  Continue reading →

CLP: Anna Selmeczi “Haunted by the Rebellion of the Poor” : Thursday 17 March

Padkos and the Paulo Freire Institute, are very pleased to welcome Anna Selmeczi back to Maritzburg. Join us at 4:30 to hear the talk and share some drinks and snacks together.

We last met Anna when she did such a great job as our guest speaker at the launch of our second “Padkos Digest” volume in 2014. Anna currently holds the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI): Social Change, at the University of Fort Hare and has been a consistent partner in our journey to uncover paths towards emancipatory praxis in our South African context. Continue reading →

School of Thought: Part 3: Lewis R. Gordon – What Fanon Said. Wednesday 7th October at 10.30am

School of Thought: Part 3: Lewis R. Gordon – What Fanon Said. Wednesday 7th October at 10.30am

Lewis R. Gordon returns as the next in our remarkable series of radical padkos visitors for CLP’s 2015 “School of Thought”. We’re so grateful and humbled to have had Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar address and engage us in the previous session. It was profoundly insightful, and very productive in relation to our own thinking of emancipatory struggle here. The “School of Thought” continues to be a brilliant space of critical engagement for CLP’s padkos comrades and colleagues. In our ongoing work at CLP, the critical thinking of grassroots militants remains our principal point of entry and departure for emancipatory politics and thought. And there’s no question that this work benefits, and benefits from, mutual dialogue with other emancipatory thinkers and theorists who also take the real thought and practice of liberatory praxis in other places around the world seriously. Continue reading →

Padkos: School of Thought: Part 2: Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar – Bolivia: People’s Power and State Power, Saturday, 12 September at 10.00am

School of Thought: Part 2: Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar – Bolivia: People’s Power and State Power,

Saturday, 12 September at 10.00am

Thanks to Richard Pithouse and all who attended for a stunning first session in the padkos “School of Thought”! What a great discussion exploring current meanings and value in Fanon’s liberatory insistence on the ongoing ‘mutation’ of humans – ‘the recovery of the human from a history of waste’ in the phrasing of Achille Mbembe – through the unity of thought and action in struggle. Continue reading →

Attachments


Interview with Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar

Richard Pithouse on Frantz Fanon opens the Padkos “School of Thought 2015” on 3rd September

Richard Pithouse on Frantz Fanon opens the Padkos “School of Thought 2015” on 3rd September

We had encouraging feedback after the previous padkos mailing that marked the 90th anniversary of Frantz Fanon’s birth. It’s clear that a number of us want to to engage Fanon’s ideas more, and to think them through in and for our own context. Well, here’s a great opportunity! One of South Africa’s leading Fanon scholars – and longtime CLP padkos comrade – Richard Pithouse, has agreed to spend time with us at the Church Land Programme (CLP) offices, 340 Burger Street, on 3rdSeptember at 10.30. Some good coffee will be available from 10.00 and lunch will follow the discussion. Continue reading →

Attachments


Frantz Fanon: Philosophy, Praxis and the Occult Zone