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5398 results in Wits University Press

Page 168 of 270

  • Chapter 7 - EFF and the left claiming ANC turf

  • Susan Booysen
  • Book:
    Dominance and Decline
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 221-260

  • Summary

    The Economic Freedom Fighters have inflicted multiple damages on their onetime parent body and present nemesis the ANC, changes realised precisely in the time of the tortuous and staggered disintegration of the Tripartite Alliance and its constituent member Cosatu. Cosatu's mutation is still unfolding but it is clear that South African politics has entered a new phase. The emerging period stands out for the weakening of the ANC internally (pivoting around the faction that spins for Zuma), and Alliance-wise for the emasculation of the SACP and Cosatu. Two sets of developments were crucial: the remaining part of Cosatu trying to sustain a compliant federation, on the terms of the S'dumo Dlamini faction; and the Numsa-based Irwin Jim grouping, expelled but still claiming the Cosatu tradition, while advancing the formation of a workers’ party.

    Had it not been for the fallout around Zuma a different ANC, Cosatu and Alliance would have prevailed. Highly significant as it is, the EFF is but one streak on the left political landscape, although admittedly one with strategic and electoral advantage – for the time being – over the rest of the left. It has solid populist-nationalist support, high-profile leadership, and enjoys sound media coverage – besides having established a credible electoral footing in 2014.

    This chapter focuses on the EFF and the labour-aligned left, both important for longer-term left politics and the weakening of the ANC. It assesses the ‘moment’ of Cosatu fragmentation and the associated failure of the Tripartite Alliance. It takes stock of the political conjuncture, considering whether a left party is rising. It then focuses on the EFF and its ideological-policy positioning, also asking whether the EFF is in fact a left project with sustainability in terms of organisational, electoral and grassroots appeals. Can it fend off the ‘Cope curse’? The chapter explores both the enigmatic EFF leadership and the nemesis it finds in President Jacob Zuma, and then returns to the fallout from the Cosatu war, issues around the formation of a rival union organisation, and the emerging workers’ party. It reflects on the hurdles a workers’ party would have to overcome in order to become an alternative to the ANC, the EFF and the DA.

    The rebellion of the lambs

    The EFF rapidly grew out of its ANC Youth League shoes to become a 6 per cent opposition party.

  • 9 - Do biofuels offer a solution?

  • from Section 4 - What we can do to avoid and adapt to climate change
  • Bob Scholes, Mary Scholes, Mike Lucas
  • Book:
    Climate Change
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 162-164

  • Summary

    Currently biofuels hardly make a difference in the big picture, but they may fill an essential niche in future, for instance as aviation fuels. Care will need to be taken to avoid competition for land and water between biofuels and food production.

    Coal, oil and gas started out as plant biomass millions of years ago. Plant biomass is currently the biggest energy source in Africa. Even in coal- and electricity-rich South Africa, many families still burn wood and charcoal. Provided the biomass is sustainably harvested, burning biomass is approximately carbon neutral – in other words, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) generated by the fire is the same as the amount originally removed from the atmosphere when the plant grew. Approximately the same amount of CO2 will be removed from the atmosphere when replacement plants grow.

    Modern biomass energy technologies are much more thermally efficient than traditional wood-burning fireplaces, stoves or charcoal kilns. Wood, grass and forestry or agricultural waste can be burned in carefully controlled furnaces, producing energy at a cost quite similar to coal, but without most of the pollution. The problem is that biomass energy is generally spread out all over the landscape, rather than concentrated in a mine, like fossil fuels. The costs of moving it to the power plant can be high. Therefore, efficient use of biomass energy requires a shift from a few enormous power stations to many small power stations.

    One of the most intractable future renewable energy challenges is to provide liquid fuels for ships, trains, vehicles and aeroplanes. Some of these modes of transport can use electricity directly from the grid or stored in batteries. Yet despite great advances in battery technology, their ‘energy density’ (that is, the energy stored per unit mass of the battery) remains too large to be a viable power source for aircraft. Liquid hydrocarbon fuels have a much higher energy density than current batteries. Biomass can be converted to liquid fuel, which can substitute for petrol, diesel and aviation fuel. Biofuels can also be blended with liquid fossil fuels, reducing the overall total carbon footprint. There are several paths to make liquid fuels from biomass:

  • • Oil can be extracted from many species and converted to a diesel fuel suitable for trucks, trains and jets.

  • • Sugars and starches can be fermented to form ethanol, which can be burned in many internal combustion engines. […]

  • Chapter 1 - Reconstituting and re-imagining the left after Marikana

  • from PART 1 - NEW POLITICAL DIRECTIONS?
    • By Noor Nieftagodien, South African Research Chair (SARCHI): Local Histories, Present Realities, Head of History Workshop, School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand
  • Edited by Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Prishani Naidoo, Devan Pillay, Roger Southall
  • Book:
    New South African Review 5
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 18-33

  • Summary

    Since the Marikana massacre in August 2012 the character of what constitutes left politics in South Africa has been experiencing profound transformation. Until then the left was broadly defined in relationship to the Tripartite Alliance, and more specifically by either support for or opposition to the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) project of the African National Congress(ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Undergirded by the ANC's political power, the left in the ruling Alliance placed their hopes in an ANC-led state to deliver ‘a better life for all’. The ANC's hegemony has been constructed on the idea that, as the main party of liberation, it embodies the national aspirations of the black majority and is the ultimate guarantor of freedom. Its dominance was also entrenched by the subordination and institutionalisation of the independent movements of the working class, built from the 1970s, which led the struggle to overthrow apartheid. Unions, civics, youth organisations and women's movements were marshalled behind a political consensus centred on the NDR. Left-wing critics, particularly from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), were tolerated as long they did not pose a fundamental challenge to this consensus – which has consigned them to the purgatory of the seemingly perpetual first phase of the revolution. Those who were deemed a threat have been silenced or purged, to ensure acquiescence to the party line. This has been made evident by, for instance, contestations related to the Marikana massacre, Nkandlagate and the government's macroeconomic policies.

    Although the ANC's comfortable victory in the 2014 general elections seemed to confirm the authority of the ruling Alliance, beneath this veneer of ‘business as usual’ important tectonic shifts were already underway, the effects of which have opened the prospects for wide-ranging changes to the country's political landscape. The Marikana massacre undoubtedly marked a moment of severe disruption to and subsequent fracturing of the Tripartite Alliance. However, the ideological fault lines that have since manifested themselves publicly have been present in the Alliance for many years. Centred on divisions between those who defend the status quo (cohering principally around the ANC/SACP leadership) and those who have found the subordination of the workers’ movement to the economic and political interests of the elite increasingly intolerable, the contestations between them have become increasingly intense.

  • 1 - African Women in Cinema: An overview

    • By Beti Ellerson, founder and director of the Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema.
  • Edited by Jyoti Mistry, Antje Schuhmann
  • Book:
    Gaze Regimes
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 1-9

  • Summary

    African cinema born during the African independence movements of the 1950s and 1960s re-appropriated the camera as a tool to counter the colonialist gaze that had dominated representations of Africa up until that time. The emergence of women in African cinema coincided with this nascent period during which a cadre of film professionals positioned themselves for the creation of a veritable African cinema culture. One such professional of note is the pioneer of Senegalese media culture, Annette Mbaye d'Erneville: feminist, journalist, writer, communications specialist, media activist and culture critic. The first Senegalese to earn a degree in journalism, she studied in Paris in the late 1940s, and since returning to Senegal in 1957 she has devoted her life to the cultural politics of the country, forging important institutions such as the Association Senegalaise de la Critique Cinematographique, Rencontres Cinematographiques de Dakar (RECIDAK), and the Henriette Bathily Women's House.

    Similarly, Guadeloupean Sarah Maldoror, who was born and raised in France, joined forces with artists from Africa and the Caribbean during a time of heightened cultural, intellectual and political discovery. In the early 1960s she went to Moscow to study filmmaking. Having already joined the pro-independence movements, it is not surprising that her films would take on similar anti-colonialist themes. She has been a mentor and role model to many African women filmmakers, notably Togolese Anne-Laure Folly Reimann, whose film Sarah Maldoror ou la nostalgie de l'utopie (1998) traces her own life as filmmaker engagée.

    Several women were among the film professionals who established the Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) and the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI), both created in 1969. These two exemplary African cinema institutions continue to be a reference for continental co-operation and organisation in the area of culture. Zalika Souley, trailblazing actress from Niger, served on the founding committee of FEPACI, while Burkinabe Alimata Salembere, one of the founding members of FESPACO, and whose compatriot Odette Sangho was also a member, presided over the organising committee of the first festival. The documentary Tam Tam à Paris, made in 1963 by journalist Therese Sita-Bella, was among the entries at the festival and is considered the earliest film by an African woman.

  • Chapter 14 - South Africa, the BRICS and human rights: In bad company?

  • from PART 4 - SOUTH AFRICA IN THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA
    • By Karen Smith, Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Studies, University of Cape Town
  • Edited by Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Prishani Naidoo, Devan Pillay, Roger Southall
  • Book:
    New South African Review 5
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 268-283

  • Summary

    The shift in international economic power has been accompanied by an increased demand by the so-called emerging powers for a greater voice in global governance and, increasingly, debates about issues of global concern have to take into account a broader range of views. This has elicited an ongoing discussion about the implications for the future of global governance. One question of great concern is the extent to which the emerging powers, should they gain more influence, would uphold the existing values of the global liberal order – specifically, protection of human rights, respect for international law and institutions and promotion of democracy. Will they adopt principled foreign policy positions?

    This chapter explores South Africa's recent record in promoting human rights as a part of its foreign policy, in the context of its membership of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) grouping, and reflects on the potential implications for South Africa's international reputation. Some might argue that South Africa shares membership of a number of regional and international organisations with countries of dubious human rights records – what makes BRICS different is that it is such an exclusive, intimate grouping. Unlike its position in, for example, the African Union (AU), South Africa is clearly the junior partner in this collection of states and is probably under much more pressure to conform to the positions of the other members, particularly China.

    While some mention will be made in the chapter of the BRICS states’ domestic human rights records, the focus is mainly on human rights in their respective foreign policies and, in particular, on their positions on human rights within the United Nations (UN).

    Before exploring human rights in South Africa's and the BRICS’ foreign policies in more detail, the chapter will present a brief overview of the emergence and development of the BRICS grouping.

    BACKGROUND TO THE BRIC(S)

    The acronym ‘BRIC’ was first used in a report written by investment bank Goldmann Sachs analyst Jim O'Neill in 2001 to refer to the four fastest-growing emerging economies. It was never intended to denote an actual grouping, but was taken up by these four states, who held their first summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia in 2009. South Africa, somewhat controversially, became the fifth member of the grouping, now called BRICS, at the end of 2010.

  • Chapter 3 - Occupy and the dialectics of the Left in the United States

  • from PART TWO - CAPITALIST CRISIS AND LEFT RESPONSES IN THE GLOBAL NORTH
  • Edited by Vishwas Satgar
  • William K. Carroll, Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Isham Christie, Andreas Bieler, Jamie Jordan, Hilary Wainwright, Alfredo Saad-Filho, Sumsngala Damodaran, Niall Reddy, Mark Heywood
  • Book:
    Capitalism’s Crises
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015, pp 78-96

  • Summary

    The bailout of the banks in 2008 represented a crisis not only in the economic system, but also in the hegemonic political and cultural order in the US. The hundreds of billions of dollars that went to the very banks that crashed the economy represented the extent to which the government had been co-opted by corporate interests. It pointed to the effects of ‘too big to fail’, and reminded onlookers of the dangers of monopolisation of any sector, but especially finance. The leftist critique of the concentration of wealth in power, in the hands of a few, became as plain as day. For the several decades prior, the financial sector had been slowly deregulated (or regulated so as to allow for great capital accumulation). Prohibitions on interstate banking were removed. Glass Steagall, which separated commercial and investment banking, was repealed. The oncediverse landscape of banks shrank as small banks were acquired by larger ones, leading to the dominance of four mammoths: Citi, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Chase. Millions of dollars were spent by bank lobbies to influence policy. Meanwhile, millions of Americans were being evicted from their homes, struggling to make ends meet, and graduating from university into an economy that offered a dismal future.

    This crisis was experienced differently by different parts of society. While it ‘proletarianised’ former, largely white, middle-class segments of the population, it had a significantly greater impact on communities of colour. A 2011 Pew Research Center report shows the biggest disparity in family-income ratios since the institution began publishing such data a quarter of a century ago (Kochhar, Fry and Taylor 2011). The median wealth of white households, according to data collected in 2009, was 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households. The report goes on to show that income levels of Hispanic families plummeted by fifty per cent between 2005 and 2009, largely because of the housing bubble. Given evidence that people of colour were being steered into predatory loans, these families bore the brunt of a racialised crisis that was largely caused by bankers seeking to maximise profits.

Page 168 of 270