The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Dr. Richard Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University where he teaches contemporary political theory and urban studies and runs an annual semester long post-graduate seminar on the work of Frantz Fanon.
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Richard Pithouse -
When the post-apartheid deal went down, the demands for social justice that survived the negotiations were written into the rights enshrined in our new legal order. At the same time, the popular struggles that had forced key issues onto the national agenda were demobilised. It was often assumed that because the rights that had been won were backed by the law, the rule of law over the messiness of social life would ensure that these rights would be prescriptions rather than aspirations.
But...
Richard Pithouse -
The rebellions in the ANC against Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma have broken the hermetic seal that had been tightly wound around electoral politics by the dominance of the ANC since 1994. It is not yet clear which social forces will be able to manoeuvre most effectively on this new and, for the moment, more open terrain. It is possible that once a deal is brokered between the ambitions and principles of the unruly mix of corrupt crony capitalists, conservative patriarchs, liberals, social...
Richard Pithouse -
Shack fires burn hot and fast. It’s not always easy to predict their speed and direction because as paraffin stoves explode in large balls of flame fires can suddenly jump ahead or to the side.
In most settlements the number of taps is entirely inadequate for people to be able to try and put the flames out on their own. Usually the only viable strategy to fight shack fires is to demolish a ring of shacks around the fire and let it burn itself out. But when the wind is...
Richard Pithouse -
Despite all the confident government talk about ‘eradicating slums by 2014’ the fact is that the number of people living in shacks is growing. Recent statistics show that the percentage of the population living in shacks has now increased to 15.4 percent from 12.7 percent in 2002.
South Africa is not the first country where the government has simply announced a date by which shacks will be ‘eradicated’. In 1968 the military dictatorship in Brazil declared that shacks...
Richard Pithouse -
The crisis of social exclusion in our cities is a key factor in the ferment in grassroots political society. It has been central to much popular protest in recent years, to the emergence of well organised grassroots movements to the left of the ANC and, also, the catastrophic pogroms in May.
Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma both support a coercive response to this crisis. Their support for legislation to eradicate shack settlements is, ultimately, support for the state to send in men with...
