Another great event at the Tinto Coffee House in Toronto, by my friend Jon Elmer.
A month-long photo exhibition, "The Children of Palestine: Images from the West Bank and Gaza Strip", by Jon Elmer will open in our mezzanine starting Wednesday, February 1, 2006.
The other night, the KZN Society of the Arts Gallery invited me to share a panel with Thembinkosi Goniwe -- one of the foremost leading art curators in the country, to discuss art and activism in South Africa. It was an exciting exchange.
The term “sub-imperialism” is often used to describe the relation South Africa has with other African states. In other words, the term is used to describe the economic and military power South Africa has over other African states.
The UN Special Envoy, Anna Tibaijuka, is quoted in the Sunday Times as saying: “Although a case for a crime against humanity… might be difficult to sustain, the government of Zimbabwe clearly caused large sections of its population serious suffering.”
In 2002, reporting on the plight of the San people in Botswana, the UN Human Rights Commission reported that remaining in the Kalahari is essential to the San’s “survival as a distinct people”. The San people are not only distinct, but are indigenous people of Southern Africa; something that the Botswana government refuses to recognize. The government claims that every Motswana (people of Botswana) is indigenous – a self-serving argument that does not stand in the face of historical and archeological evidence.
“Who was there to demand a change in vocabulary?’ – bell hooks
A while back, Trevor Ngwane (from the Anti-Privatisation Forum), wrote a piece entitled “10 Reasons – Why The WSF 2007 Should Not Come To South Africa”. In that article Ngwane argues that the WSF should rather be held in Kenya in 2007 instead of South Africa.
The Mail and Guardian (M&G), a weekly South African newspaper, likes to present itself as one of the best investigative and critical newspapers in the country. This week, the newspaper reports that: “Burundians this week cast their ballots in a poll that should finally end decades of skewed ethnic politics….”
Does the South African alternative media justifiably deserve the label “alternative”? Take for instance the two popular media outlets that can be described as alternative: Chimurenga and Laugh It Off (LIO). What is alternative about Chimurenga and LIO? Put differently, do these media outlets deserve the reputation of being “independent” that they seem to have?
At ZMI (Z Media Institute) this year, Michael Albert asked me a very important question that I couldn’t answer at the time. His question was (am paraphrasing it): why didn’t the African National Congress (ANC) win economically and politically as it had set out to do when it was formed in 1912?
After a long absence, the killing train is being resurrected. Details and normal blogging to follow.
The importance of a resource base for trying to organize is hard to overstate. Much of the reason so much of the 'left' (such as it is) is based on or around campuses is resources: who else has the time, the space (I mean literally, the rooms), the opportunities.
Well, there are other bases. The churches, for example. Much of the Central America solidarity movement in the 1980s was organized through churches. I guess much of the very early civil rights movement in the US was organized around churches.
Of course, liberal non-governmental organizations and political organizations have tremendous resources and can provide these on occasion for real movement work. The anti-globalization movement of the 1990s and the WSFs are related to this resource base.
Still another base, and perhaps the most potentially powerful, is still the unions. Even the small percentage of the workforce that is unionized provides tremendous resources to major national organizations with major infrastructures, whose principal political activity seems to be supporting parties who have more contempt for working people even than the union bureaucracy does.
Every once in a while one of these bases provides enough resources to start something that takes on a life and a momentum of its own. That is what happened with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty some 15 years ago now. Begun with a tiny bit of union funding to organize some anti-poverty actions, OCAP took on a life of its own -- and indeed became very critical of the limited resistance being offered by these unions that have such potential power (see this interview for some of that critique). But while OCAP definitely has a life of its own, including a movement base and an absolutely crucial function, the resource base has been drained away from it, and OCAP has been forced, as radical groups seem frequently to be forced, to rely on the most tenuous resource base -- small donations from activists and sympathetic people. Below is their latest appeal for help with sustainable funding...